He said that the movie was very true to life. Two observations he made. One was that the relationship with the black girl was bs. He said it never would have happened back in the neighborhood
He's right. And this has nothing to do with race relations or how liberal and/or tolerant you are
TODAY. But we're talking about the '60s. And I've got news for you, the old ladies would have been more judgemental than the men.
It's like I said, it wasn't in the play. We saw it when it opened back in '89. There was no mention of a Black girl whatsoever. DeNiro added that when he directed the film.
the scene with the dice game in the basement. My father said that some of the guys in the scene were Bronx guys (gangsters) that my father grew up with and DeNiro put them in for authenticity.
Half true, in the sense that they WERE neighborhood guys. And I say half true because those scenes weren't actually filmed in the Bronx.
30th Avenue in Astoria doubled for Arthur Avenue because the logistics couldn't be worked out. Filming around Fordham in the summer of 1992 would have been impossible. The only scenes that were actually filmed in the Bronx were the bus scenes. Namely the scene where DeNiro was on City Island with young Calogero.
So yeah, they did use old neighborhood guys (no made guys, by the way). But it was more a matter of Chazz reaching out to them and asking them to appear in the film. It's not like they were randomly picked off of Arthur Avenue. Because, like I said, they didn't film on Arthur Avenue.
