Ray Leota will undoubtedly be remembered first for his iconic role as Henry Hill. Goodfellas But I will always be associated with him Dream field, Which was published a year ago Goodfellas And where Liotta had a much smaller role, and that’s her performance in that movie that I will always appreciate above everyone else.
I’m 34 now, and I don’t need anyone to explain it to me Dream field The depiction of core American values is almost unbearably uncomfortable. Even when I was younger, and watched the Curse movie dozens of times a year on Basic Cable, I think I realized that everyone, at least, does it a little more. The whole movie is a series of periodically booming and waterlogged monologues, each of which does not try too hard to pull the strings of your heart but punches them for submission. I don’t think anyone ever made it through the climatic discourse of James Earl Jones about the true meaning of baseball without ever turning a blind eye. But Jones and Kevin Costner and Bert Lancaster have never been the ones who really put the movie in the first place and I still wouldn’t come back to it from time to time if it only offered them acting. The man who has always been the center of the movie, who really held it together, was Ray Leota, who was given the role of the ghostless Joe Jackson in the shoes.
The second Leota comes on screen, the whole time the movie changes. Suddenly an icy, mysterious presence cuts across all that warm sunlight and that beautiful golden field of corn. Leo’s commitment to leaning into this excitement is to be present in the film while vibrating at a different frequency than his co-stars, which holds the whole thing together. Leotta gets some lectures of her own, and I often wondered how bad the movie would be if she did what others on the set would do with those scenes, and dial tears and voices. From 11. Although it wasn’t really Lioter style, and so he brought the same kind of edge to his line that he would bring later. GoodfellasWhich may be the most different of the single film Dream field Details. It’s hard for any actor to do too much with a line like “I used to play for money”, but Leota snaps at it. While others may enjoy the opportunity to play intelligent and ethereal ghosts, Leota Schulz has turned the jockey into something more angry and more authentic.
There are worse versions of this movie in some alternative universe, in which, I don’t know, Richard Gere played the role of shoeless Joe and filled the screen with a whole new set of big, meaningful moments. Thank God our version was acclaimed by Leotta, a man who knew exactly how to add a perfect gangster’s cockle to the line through feeling, Stop!
Leota died this week, according to a report from DeadlineAt age 67.