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Joe Viterelli
Specialty: Fat, Slow-Witted Gangsters Who Are Knowledgeable About Veal
You know how in every mob movie there's always one psycho gangster with an itchy trigger-finger, who'll kill anything that moves? And then there's always one conflicted gangster, who's good-looking and dresses well and is loyal to the family but also has misgivings about the ruthlessness of his profession? And then there's always one big, fat gangster who's kind of slow-witted but really knows a lot about cooking and food, especially veal?
Joe Viterelli is that last one. The veal-knowledgeable gangster.
Of course, it's been awhile since Joe Viterelli played an actual gangster in an actual gangster movie. Lately, he's well-known for playing goofy gangsters in spoof gangster movies. As he did in Mickey Blue Eyes (Hugh Grant -- as a gangster!) and Analyze This! (Billy Crystal -- as a gangster's therapist!) and Mafia! (Yeah, like we saw that movie).
But recent aberrations aside, everything you really need to know about Joe Viterelli is contained in Joe Viterelli's résumé, a sampling of the characters on which reads like this:
- Fat Tony Ragoni
- Vinnie 'The Shrimp'
- Dominick Clamato
- Salvatore Greco
- Mickey
- Tony
- Didi Giancano
- Nick Valenti
- Ugolino
- Joey Morolto
- Gino Marchese
- Joe Profaci
- Fat Tommy Carducci
- Gino
And so on.
If you've reached the point in your career at which you've played two different characters named "Fat Blanky Blank-Blanky," you've probably figured out that you're not renowned far and wide for your ability to "disappear into a role."
Nonetheless, we love us some Joe Viterelli, because we love gangster movies, and without guys like Joe Viterelli, there would be no gangster movies. Or there would be, but they would star, like, Dylan McDermott and Tommy Tune or something, which hardly seems as fun.
The real question, however, is this: if you were casting the part of an Irish man named Steve Shanahan, who's the CEO of a financial company and the father of Gwyneth Paltrow, of the multitude of actors in the greater Los Angeles area, would you choose Joe Viterelli?
No, of course you wouldn't -- unless you were the Farrelly Brothers, who did just that in Shallow Hal. Then again, you probably wouldn't write and direct a movie about a guy who is hypnotized into thinking that fat women are actually [gasp] beautiful, and actually [gasp] falls in love with one, even though she jumps in a pool and makes a splash so big that a little kid ends up crying in a tree. And the Farrelly Brothers did that, too, so there you go.
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