In our last episode we bummed you guys out by revealing that 'Wayne's World'
came out 25 years ago.
Well, let's pile on to that lingering depression with the sobering reality that
'Donnie Brasco' has its 20th anniversary next week.
Forget about it, hopefully this will cheer you up.
- Forget about it, right?
- Here are seven things you didn't know about 'Donnie Brasco', probably.
(Music)
I bet you forgot that Paul Giamatti and Tim Blake Nelson were in 'Donnie Brasco',
but that's not what our first thing is.
It's things you didn't know, not things you maybe forgot.
Anyway, in this scene where Donnie is explaining the many nuances of forget
about it, there's an audio swap.
- Hey, Pauly, you got a one inch pecker, and Pauly says, forget about it.
- Right there when they refer to Pauly the name was changed from Boobie, and
you can hear it in the audio.
- Hey, Bauly, you got a one inch pecker.
And Bauly says, forget about it.
- They had to change the name because with Donnie Brasco being based on a true story,
they had to deal with a lot of real people.
And the real Boobie objected to having his name used, and
put an injunction on the film.
Quite frankly, if my name was Boobie, I'd object to it being used too.
In the end a judge wound up throwing it out anyway.
Forget about it, the judge said.
Boobie was a real criminal who didn't have a leg to stand on.
But using his name wouldn't really have made a big difference in the final film
overall, so it definitely wouldn't have been worth dying on that hill.
- Forget about it.
Pauly, forget about it.
- (Laugh) - Next thing.
(Sound) Now let's talk about a scene where they didn't swap or loop any dialogue.
For this boat scene, they were actually filming in an area that was on the flight
path to the closest airport.
Typically when you're dealing with tons of garbage background noise,
you shoot the scene and just fix it in post with ADR.
And that was the plan.
But surprisingly,
they decided against looping because the performances were so good.
- The problem is that you think that he's helping you, but he's hurting you.
- After all, it's a scene where nothing is really happening.
It's just two characters talking.
So the performance and dialog are everything, which made director
Mike Newell decide to use the original noisy track from the location.
He made the same call here for this car scene.
This time the issue was the sound of their leather jackets creaking against
the car seats.
- Forget about it.
One thing I know is boats.
I like to pop them, throw them in the water, take the (Bleep) boat.
- Once again, Newell felt the performances were just, I mean, forget about it.
So the creaky jackets stayed in.
Moving on.
(Sound) One of the best parts of the Florida montage is this part,
where all the guys are playing tennis.
But you probably didn't know that all of the action in this scene was completely
improvised.
They were running behind schedule that day and losing light.
They just didn't have the time to plan and
choreograph the scene's action like they thought they would.
So it fell on the actors to come up with ways to be funny while they were
playing tennis.
As far as whether they succeeded, come on, forget about it.
(Sound) (Sound) - (Bleep).
Christ, I think I (Bleep) my pants.
- Riding around with a lion in the backseat of the car seems like one of
the more outlandish parts of 'Donnie Brasco'.
But even this part of the movie is based on reality.
The real Lefty did, in fact, ride around with a lion in the backseat.
His biggest gripe was about the lion scratching his leather interior.
Kinda seems like Lefty couldn't see the forest for the lion that was in his car.
- Forget about it.
- It's worth clarifying that the lion was still a cub when Lefty got him, so he
usually kept the lion in the social club, and would feed him 20 to 30 steaks a day.
Eventually the lion got too big, as lion cubs tend to do, circle of life and
all that, and the guys couldn't play with him anymore.
To get rid of the lion, they eventually chained him to a tree in park in Brooklyn
and paid a couple a few hundred bucks to call the cops and
tell them there was a lion in the park.
Problem was, the police thought the couple was just a pair of drunks, and
didn't come to the park.
They had to run the whole scheme again the next night.
And then that time the cops finally sent a squad car and found the lion.
Made all the papers and everything, forget about it.
(Sound) One thing that deviated from reality in 'Donnie Brasco' was how
much the real Joseph Pistone slash Donnie Brasco got to see his family,
because it was way worse in real life.
- I'll bet youse $20 that you can't get through this
entire meal without saying three words, all right?
- You lose.
- The real Pistone family was moved across the country after Joseph's
first nine months undercover.
And here is where it gets rough.
He was undercover as Donnie Brasco for
six years, his only contact with his family was by telephone that entire time.
When he was finally pulled out of the operation,
he was actually on the verge of being made.
In fact, Pistone didn't wanna be pulled out for that reason, but
the FBI felt that letting him essentially join the mob would cross the line of him
straight up becoming a criminal in order to bring down criminals.
Forget about it, would have been a total quagmire, said the FBI.
(Sound) (Sound)
This shot right here,
this shot literally only exists because of the trailer.
The studio insisted that they get a shot of Johnny Depp firing a gun,
wearing a shirt that said FBI on it because they wanted it for the trailer.
So Mike Ewell and the team figured this would be the best place to crowbar it into
the movie, and it worked well enough.
- Excuse me, Joe Pistone, remember me, southern district?
- (Bleep) (Sound) - Hey, what are you doing?
- He grabbed my cock.
- While we're at it, this is another scene that Newell hadn't planned for the movie,
and it's actually his most hated scene in the entire film.
The studio felt that there weren't enough scenes with Donnie in any real danger.
So they came up with this whole situation of him getting
recognized by someone at the airport.
And right about now, you're probably recognizing,
boom, forget about it, bonus thing you didn't know.
And if that's not enough for you we have another.
This scene is only in the movie because of Al Pacino.
He felt that the film needed a moment where we see
the irrational violence of the mob guys.
Though Newell felt that they'd already gotten
that in the film, he listened to Pacino.
And once the film was completed, forget about it, he was very glad that he did.
(Sound) (Sound) Forget about it.
- Lefty's sunglasses were a pretty big part of his whole look.
In fact, Al Pacino chose Lefty's glasses himself, boom, bonus thing.
But another important character trait was that Lefty was a smoker.
In fact, the real Lefty died of lung and
testicular cancers after being released from prison.
Boom, yet another bonus thing.
- Yeah, he has cancer of the prick.
Yeah, you didn't know that?
I'm in the medical books for that.
- It was kind of a hassle to deal with the smoke and smoking on set,
though, especially in this car scene.
They had to have a prop
guy in the back seat just to pump all of the smoke in the car.
For the scenes where we actually see Lucky smoking,
Al Pacino didn't smoke real cigarettes.
They were herbal, total fugazis.
- How do you know it's a fugazi You looked at it for two seconds.
- Well, these are fake.
- Fake, yeah, I know what a fugazy.
- By the way, the word fugazy was itself a fugazy.
It wasn't real mob slang at the time of the film.
It was completely made up.
They stole the word from the name of a very real limo service in New York,
and boom, that was a very real bonus thing you didn't know.
You want bonus things?
Forget about it, we got them all.
Okay, maybe not them all, but we got several.
- All right, forget about it.
- Well, we've lost track of how many things we covered today.
Once you factor in all the bonus things, forget about it.
We've also lost track of how many times we've said forget about it.
And if you were taking a shot every time we said forget about it,
seek medical attention immediately.
Thanks for watching and subscribe to Cinefix for more truish things about
movies and sometimes ways to get rid of your illegal pet lion,
right here on Things You Didn't Know.
(Music)
- Forget about it.