Joseph Russo had the difficult job of playing a young Joe Pesci in Jersey Boys, the feature film adaptation of the long-running Tony Award-winning musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Russo hadn’t watched the play prior to taking on the role in Jersey Boys, but he came into the film a huge Joe Pesci fan.
Determined to pay homage to the Oscar-winner while not imitating the actor’s voice, Russo worked on getting Pesci’s attitude and style correct on screen.
Jersey Boys, directed by four-time Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood, opens in theaters on June 20, 2014 and in support of the film’s theatrical release I had the opportunity to chat with the scene-stealing Russo about being part of this much-anticipated film adaptation.
Joseph Russo Exclusive Interview
How familiar were you with Frankie Valli’s music before taking on the role in Jersey Boys?
Joseph Russo: “My family coming from New York, and then, especially all Italian, that was kind of my parent’s vein of music so I was really familiar. That was the kind of music I was raised on. I was really familiar as far as the music that they played, but I was not familiar at all with the story that went behind it. Also, a lot of the songs I didn’t know they wrote and performed.”
Joe Pesci’s an interesting character actor. Most moviegoers know him from playing tough guy roles, but this is a side of Pesci audiences aren’t necessarily familiar with. Can you talk about playing Joe Pesci as he was prior to making it in films?
Joseph Russo: “Even in doing the research on what I could find about Joe Pesci … He’s one of my heroes as far as acting is concerned and I really wanted to pay him homage. That was one of the things that I wanted to do when I auditioned for the part was I didn’t want to make it a caricature. I did not want to change my voice and do ‘him’. I just wanted to pay him homage.
It was really interesting because when I started doing the research on the role what I found out he was really big into entertainment, which I never thought, especially at a really young age. He was a guitarist for a jazz band. I know that he managed a couple of bands. He was friendly with Frankie Valli and all them because they grew up in Newark together. I know he was on this TV show called Startime which is like a variety show in the ’50s and it was kind of like a Mickey Mouse Club, thing and it was great. That was one of the most fulfilling things about this part was I learned so much about him.
Then I tried calling him. I wound up being able to talk to Tommy DeVito – the real Tommy DeVito – and he gave me some insight. I heard from multiple places that Joe Pesci’s dad encouraged him to become an entertainer. He felt as though that’s what he was. It was really odd because you don’t see that in that time period of parents telling someone to go into that lifestyle.
It was really neat finding out and doing all the research for it. You realize they’re characters that he plays and it’s not really him. He’s an artist. He’s an artist and sometimes as viewers, you think that that’s the actual person but it’s not. He’s so much deeper than that.”
You were saying you didn’t want to change your voice, and Joe Pesci has such an unusual, unique voice. Why didn’t you attempt to try and copy his voice?
Joseph Russo: “Because I felt as though for me to stand out I needed to bring myself into it. I’m from that area, that neighborhood, I’m going to have an accent and I just wanted to make a choice. I just felt as though other people would be doing the voice thing and for me, whether I got the part or not, at least when I audition then I’m going to bring me to it, still while paying him homage. To me there are more important things physically or the way he says things to me is more important than me talking like [him]. Because I don’t know how real that is and I wanted it to be a real person. That was my main thing, and I took a shot. I made a choice and it worked out. Sometimes you do a choice and it’s totally off, but I just figured I’d take a shot at it.”
And director Clint Eastwood was totally supportive of your choice?
Joseph Russo: “Yes. He said that that was actually one of the things that I did that nobody else did. He said that the fact that you did not make it a caricature, you did not make it a joke nor with a high voice, you made it a real person. He loved that I did that. It turned out to work.”
Because you weren’t trying to imitate him and you weren’t doing his voice, did you need to go back and watch his films?
Joseph Russo: “Joe Pesci was born in 1943 and Raging Bull came out in 1981. The movie he did before that I believe is called Family Enforcer. That was 1979 and he had a very small role in that movie. Mainly the first time that we really get to see Joe Pesci is in Raging Bull. He did that when he was 40 and I play him in the time period of 16 to 25 in this movie.
I needed to find a way that I could incorporate everything that he’s done, and so I made another choice that in every scene that was in I sprinkled Joe Pesci from a different movie that we would all recognize. In one scene you’ll see the Leo Getz from Lethal Weapon where I just very subtly throw in, ‘Okay, okay, okay.’
That was something that I asked Clint and he was happy with and that was something that we did. It worked out. In another scene, Clint told me to go on a riff and I did pretty much Joe Pesci from Casino. With that, I did a little Chicago accent because that’s where he was from. In each different scene, I wanted to make the most of paying him homage so I sprinkled Pesci from what we know as an audience.”
That’s sounds fascinating. It’s an interesting approach to take.
Joseph Russo: “Yeah. It’s funny because some of the people that have seen screeners of the film so far have actually said that they picked up on it and thought it was wonderful. It was very subtle. I just wanted to just put a little touch on it being Joe Pesci. When you take on a role like this, I mean, it’s kind of wonderful that I can do that and I have so much to fall back on.”
When you take on a role like this where you’re playing a person people know and respect, that can add an extra little weight on your shoulders. Did you feel that while you were shooting it?
Joseph Russo: “Yeah. I was glad that we organized rehearsals with the cast. Once it was final on who was hired and cast on the movie, we organized rehearsals with who we had. I’m always super prepared but with this I needed to make sure. It needed to be right. It needed to be really right because he is such a name. It’s not a fictional character; he’s a real person. With all the prep that we did as a cast I felt really comfortable. On set with Clint you feel really comfortable. There’s such energy on set, it’s so focused and it’s so supportive. That’s all you can feel is confident and focused to do what you want to do and that you’ve prepared and set out to do.”
Why is Joe Pesci one of your acting heroes?
Joseph Russo: “For me, Ed Burns, Joe Pesci, obviously Robert De Niro, Pacino, even like Gene Hackman, it’s men like that. Obviously Marlon Brando, it’s like the ‘man’ thing. Me growing up in New York with an Italian family, my family is a very hardworking family, to say you want to go into the arts of theater or this, it’s people like that that kind of make it okay, if that makes any sense to you.”
It makes a lot of sense.
Joseph Russo: “For me watching him and seeing my father watch his movies and be ear to ear smiling or saying, ‘Man, I love that guy. He’s great.’ Now obviously my father knows it’s an actor, but to see how he moves certain people that’s what I was kind of influenced by. He kind of gave me permission. Ed Burns is one of my favorites; he’s just a guy. Marlon Brando, he was just a guy, just a regular guy. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are to do this business, it’s art. That’s what makes it so beautiful. You can be anybody and do it. Whether you’re painting or you’re acting, or you’re singing, or you’re writing, it’s art. Art isn’t judged by the person doing it. It’s just what’s coming out of it.”
Clint Eastwood has a very specific style of directing where he likes to get the take on one and move on. There’s not a lot of extra time spent waiting around doing multiple unnecessary takes. Do you like working like that?
Joseph Russo: “I loved it. I really loved it. I was happy I was well-prepared but it wasn’t like … Let’s say you kept forgetting a word, he wouldn’t just cut the scene. He was there to work with you. He’s an actor as well. I got the idea that his main thing, and I did a lot of research on working with Clint Eastwood to see what he was like, and I heard that his main thing is he doesn’t say ‘action’ or ‘cut’. I know you’ve probably heard that before and he really doesn’t. It’s more just, ‘Okay, go,’ and then, ‘Okay, stop.’ I think he feels that when you immediately go, ‘Action!’ you start losing the naturalness of it being a real person. ‘Okay, now I’ve got to go.’
It’s very loose. It’s very, ‘Okay, go,’ and then you just do the scene and then he lets you button it and finish it and then says, ‘All right, stop. That’s enough. All right.’ It becomes a real free-flowing thing. Coming to set over-prepared you’re okay with that. When you come to set and you’re over-prepared, it’s great. You know that you can start really playing and just kind of feeling it all out. Never once did I feel like he had the pressure of, ‘Oh man, I’ve got to do this in one take.’ No, it was very much like, ‘You get it you get it. You don’t get it, we’ll do it again.’ He was breezy. He was very focused. It was great energy on that set.”
And speaking of sets, Jersey Boys is set in the 1960s. What was it like on the set? Did it feel a little surreal?
Joseph Russo: “Yeah. There were a couple of locations, all the locations, whether we were in the bar or the club or when we went to the bowling alley, you walk in and it was like, ‘Wow, if you can’t feel like you’re in the 1950s, 1960s right now, I don’t know what else you need.’ The attention to detail on the set design and the art was incredible. Everything from the newspaper that was on the ground to even the notepads to the types of pencils that probably weren’t even in the shot. If you couldn’t get into that time period, I don’t know what else you would need. It was literally moments where we all kind of took on everything. Things started changing. The way we smoked our cigarettes and even the packs of fake cigarettes they gave us. It was in a small pack and they were from 1960. Everything, even the Zippo lighters. It was really, really, really neat.”
Did you take anything home?
Joseph Russo: [Laughing] “No, I asked but I didn’t want to start anything. I didn’t. I wanted a Zippo lighter because it was really neat what they had. They had the Zippos from 1940 to 1950 and I wanted to have it framed and nice. I was thinking about it.”
You actually played Joe Pesci in your web series Turbo and Joey. Can you talk about that experience?
Joseph Russo: “My dear friend/mentor/really close person to me is Jerry Luke. He was in Mob City, Don Jon…he’s a dear friend. We were living together and we wanted to do something. We came up with this loose, concept thing where we were two guys from Staten Island moving out to Hollywood and trying to be actors and all that. Funny enough, we were posting them online and Justin Schack and Alev Aydin, they wound up writing six episodes for us. Shooting it, editing it, directing it, and it was great. It was like the same story but really done well with real writers and real directors and shooting. One of the episodes the throughline started becoming created where we wanted to get an audition for the new Joe Pesci movie and in order for us to get this audition, we needed to make a video.
The video that we decided to make was when Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro meet in the desert in the movie Casino and they have an argument. The so talented Justin Schack wound up recreating that scene shot-for-shot out in the desert with us where it was literally shot-for-shot from wardrobe to the glasses that Robert De Niro wore to the glasses that Joe Pesci wore, to the suit. Everything was identical to the T. It actually got a lot of heat. Then I got word that Martin Scorsese did wind up actually seeing it, which is really fulfilling. It was nice. Whether that’s true or not…but I know that I went in for a read on another role and the casting director told me that they saw it and they loved it and that Marty saw it and he loved it.”
Do you think with YouTube, Facebook, web series, and other online outlets it’s made it easier time to be out there and getting noticed by filmmakers and casting directors? Have you noticed it changed?
Joseph Russo: “Yeah. I’m for it. I really am. I’m for the fact that I think it’s all art. I think no matter what it is that people do with it, it’s art and that what’s important – at least in my life. I think that without art we kind of fall short. You become as deep as a puddle if you don’t have art in your life. I think it’s a form of expression. Now, granted, there’s things that clutter up the whole thing and it becomes so huge but why not if people have the opportunity to do it? At the end of the day you still need to perform at the audition. Anything that can help you get in the room, God bless you, I think that would be wonderful.
I know Geoffrey Miclat who cast Jersey Boys was a fan of Turbo and Joey and I know that he saw me do that thing of me playing Joe Pesci. Now that really had nothing to do with me getting the role, but it definitely probably had something to do with me getting in the room at some of these auditions. I don’t see what the problem is with that. I think people that do I think may be a little spiteful for some reason. It’s there for everybody. It doesn’t limit you, and a lot of times in this business it’s tough to even get in the room. The fact that you have an opportunity to put something out that could create some form of a fan base or something like that, then why not?”
And one last question: Why should people who aren’t into musicals check out Jersey Boys?
Joseph Russo: “I don’t think this is a musical at all. To me this fell in the vein of Walk the Line. It’s a dark story. It’s an interesting story and the only time that they sing is when they’re supposed to sing. Whether they’re on the Ed Sullivan Show or they’re doing a concert is when they’re singing but nothing tragic happens and then they jump into a song like Mamma Mia. This is the furthest from that. This is more or less really just the story of them.
It was funny because right when I saw the screener of it I was like, ‘No, this is not a musical by any means.’ The only time they sing is when they’re supposed to sing. It never ever just sporadically jumps into a song. I think it’s really wonderful and I think a lot of people are going to be surprised that this is a really interesting story. There’s a lot that you don’t know.”
