The actor Oliver Stone called a Tasmanian devil: “Who else could put all that across?”
Being outspoken and unbothered by criticism or backlash has been detrimental to many careers over the years, but Oliver Stone ended up becoming one of the most renowned auteurs of a generation by sticking firmly to his guns, regardless of what his detractors had to say.
The filmmaker’s political viewpoints are a key part of his persona, whether he’s railing against the socio-political system of the United States, peddling conspiracy theories he maintains are nothing but 100% factually accurate, coming under fire for openly backing Russian legislation, backing Julian Assange to the hilt, or weighing in on his home country’s foreign policy.
Stone couldn’t care less who he upsets with his regular verbal tirades, but channelling that energy squarely into his work ended up winning him four Academy Awards and five Golden Globes to go along with an esteemed back catalogue of credits that includes Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, and Natural Born Killers among others.
He’s an unrestrained fellow, to put it lightly, which helps explain why he found himself so drawn to an actor who shot to fame for being a tightly-coiled ball of rage and fury that could explode at any given moment while achieving greatness on-screen, something that can very much be said of Stone himself.
In one of his first major roles after the back-to-back blow-away success of his Oscar-winning turn in Goodfellas and his scene-stealing antics in Home Alone, Stone drafted in Joe Pesci to play David Ferrie in JFK, the pilot who was accused by Jim Garrison of having been complicit in a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy.
He denied that he’d ever known Lee Harvey Oswald, but photos later emerged that they’d been part of the same air patrol unit in the 1950s. As a result, JFK required a powerful performance from a powerful star, and Stone couldn’t have been happier that he snagged Pesci for the part.
“He’s a Tasmanian devil,” he said to Entertainment Weekly. “Ferrie was so many things, and very different things to different people – some knew him as a pilot, some as a mafioso, some people thought he was straight – who else but Joe Pesci could put all that across?”
Although Kevin Costner’s Garrison was the main character, Pesci’s turn as Ferrie was one of the most memorable in JFK, no mean feat considering Stone assembled a murderer’s row of talent that numbered Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Bacon, Gary Oldman, Sissy Spacek, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Donald Sutherland, and John Candy.
Famed for his whirlwind charisma and barely-contained indignity, Pesci has always been equally adept at injecting his characters with additional complexities and subtleties, which left Stone in awe of the way he approached the part of Ferrie.
