Wise Guys

Wise Guys (1986)

What kind of guys gamble with the boss's money, swipe a killer's Cadillac, and party on the mob's credit card?

Harry Valentini and Moe Dickstein are both errand boys for the Mob. When they lose $250,000, they are set up to kill each other. But they run off to Atlantic City and comedy follows.

Date of release
1986-04-17
TMDB
5.4 / 10 (129)
Runtime
1h 32m
Genres
Comedy, Crime
Director
Brian De Palma

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: New Jersey

Wise Guys is a 1986 American black comedy crime film directed by Brian De Palma and produced by Aaron Russo from a screenplay written by George Gallo and Norman Steinberg. It stars Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo as Harry Valentini and Moe Dickstein, two small-time mobsters from Newark, New Jersey, and features Harvey Keitel, Ray Sharkey, Lou Albano, Dan Hedaya and Frank Vincent.

Production

Writer George Gallo later recalled the film was a "CAA package". He said Brian De Palma "was a CAA client, and that was when CAA was like the Mafia. They would just plug their guys in. Brian said he wanted to do a comedy, Joe was CAA, Danny was CAA, Brian was CAA and so was [producer] Aaron [Russo]. And at the time so was I."

De Palma had directed comedies in the early part of his career but this was his first comedy since 1973. "I think it’s important to try to do more and more challenging and new things," he said. "In order to do that, you have to work a lot and be able to learn from your past experiences, the good as well as the bad ones...

Joe Piscopo later said of the film, "I play more of myself, where I should’ve probably played a developed character. That’s what I do best. If I’m not in front of a live crowd ingratiating them where my full strength is … I can play a character, and I should’ve probably done that with Wise Guys."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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