| My Cousin Vinny | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Jonathan Lynn |
| Written by | Dale Launer |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Peter Deming |
| Edited by | Stephen E. Rivkin |
| Music by | Randy Edelman |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
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Running time | 119 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $11 million |
| Box office | $64.1 million[2] |
My Cousin Vinny is a 1992 Americancomedy film directed byJonathan Lynn and written byDale Launer. It starsJoe Pesci,Ralph Macchio,Marisa Tomei,Mitchell Whitfield andFred Gwynne in his final film appearance before his death in 1993. The film was distributed by20th Century Fox, and released in the United States on March 13, 1992.
Macchio and Whitfield respectively play Bill Gambini and Stan Rothenstein, two young New Yorkers who are arrested inAlabama and put on trial for a murder they did not commit. Unable to afford a lawyer, they are defended by Gambini's cousin Vinny Gambini (Pesci), newly admitted to thebar, who arrives with his fiancée, Mona Lisa Vito (Tomei). The clash between the brashItalian-American New Yorkers and the more reservedSouthern townspeople[3] provides much of the film's humor. The principal location of filming wasMonticello, Georgia.[4]
My Cousin Vinny was a critical and financial success, with Pesci, Gwynne, Macchio and Tomei praised for their performances. Tomei won theAcademy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Attorneys have also lauded the film for its accurate depiction ofcriminal procedure, therules of evidence, and trial strategy.
While driving through Alabama, New York college students Bill Gambini and Stan Rothenstein stop at a convenience store, where Bill absentmindedly pockets a can of tuna. After they leave, the store clerk is found robbed and murdered, and the boys are pulled over and arrested. At the police station, Bill assumes he has been caught shoplifting and confesses, leading to his being charged withmurder in the first degree and Stan as anaccessory. Lacking the money for a private attorney, Bill calls on his cousin, Vinny Gambini, apersonal injury lawyer from Brooklyn, who agrees to take the case. Unbeknownst to them, Vinny has only justpassed the bar after multiple failed attempts and has no trial experience. He travels to Alabama with his fiancée, Mona Lisa Vito, to defend the boys.
Vinny convinces the trial judge, Chamberlain Haller, that he is an experienced New York attorney practicing under the alias Jerry Callo. Haller, however, repeatedly finds him incontempt for his attire, attitude, and lack of courtroom decorum, leading to several brief jail sentences. The prosecuting district attorney, Jim Trotter III, presents a strong but circumstantial case, calling multiple witnesses who implicate Bill and Stan in the murder. Vinny declines tocross-examine these witnesses during thepreliminary hearing, alarming the defendants. Stan subsequently fires Vinny and retains thepublic defender, John Gibbons.
Vinny's inexperience leads him to attempt tricking Trotter into sharing evidence, until Lisa informs him that he can legally obtain it throughdiscovery. She also encourages him to begin interviewing the witnesses, which he proceeds to do. Lisa grows frustrated with Vinny, reminding him of his promise to marry her once he wins his first case, and fearing that day may never come. At the same time, Vinny is eager to prove himself to his mentor, Judge Malloy, who had persuaded him to pursue a career in law.
During the trial, Gibbons's nervousness and severe stutter undermine Stan's defense. Meanwhile, Vinny adopts an aggressive but perceptive questioning style that steadily discredits Trotter's witnesses. He uses his newfound knowledge of the cooking time ofgrits to show that one witness's timeline of the crime is inaccurate. He then challenges the others by questioning their ability to positively identify the suspects due to obstructions in their sightline and impaired vision. Impressed, Stan promptly rehires Vinny to represent him.
The next day, Trotter calls a surprise witness,FBI analyst George Wilbur. Wilbur testifies that tire tracks at the crime scene match those of the boys' 1964Buick Skylark, though Vinny gets him to admit the tires are among the most common in the United States. Haller then orders a lunch recess and denies Vinny's request for a full-day continuance to prepare a rebuttal. Exhausted from lack of sleep, strained by Haller's hostility, and fearing he will lose the case, Vinny lashes out at Lisa when she tries to help. Soon after, however, he realizes that one of her photographs, showing the tire marks at the scene, may help the case.
Vinny compels a reluctant Lisa to testify as an expert witness, drawing on her family background in auto repair and her encyclopedic knowledge of cars. Examining the photograph, Lisa explains that only the 1963Pontiac Tempest, which resembles a Buick Skylark, could have made the tire tracks, due to itsindependent rear suspension andPositraction. Vinny recalls Wilbur to the stand, who confirms Lisa's testimony, simultaneously discrediting his own. The sheriff then testifies that, at Vinny's request, he identified two men fitting Bill's and Stan's description who were arrested in Georgia while driving a stolen Pontiac Tempest, and were carrying a gun matching the murder weapon. With the prosecution's case dismantled, Trotter moves to have all charges dismissed.
Bill, Stan, the sheriff, Trotter, and Judge Haller congratulate Vinny on his success. As he and Lisa drive away, she reveals that she persuaded Judge Malloy to vouch for Vinny's fictitious "Jerry Callo" résumé. The couple then resume bickering over their long-delayed wedding plans.
ScreenwriterDale Launer came up with the idea forMy Cousin Vinny as a college student, after hearing about a lawyer who had finally passed the bar after their 13th attempt. Launer thought it would be funny to have someone traveling through the Southern United States run into legal trouble and end up being represented by that type of lawyer.[5] Launer did not develop the concept until after he had written a few successful screenplays, includingRuthless People andDirty Rotten Scoundrels. He was inspired by the comedy ofSam Kinison, particularly his approach withhecklers, in developing Vinny, and he based the relationship between Vinny and his fiancée on two dating friends who would argue frequently.[5] Launer also took a road trip through the South in which he got stuck in the mud and had repairs to fix his car, which became part of the script. He met an assistant district attorney who became the basis of the character of Jim Trotter.[5] He spent several sessions with an attorney to review the process of legal trials, and learned from him that much of criminal court proceedings are not taught in law school but come from practice, which served well for Vinny's character.[5]
For casting, the studio originally wantedAndrew Dice Clay for Vinny, but this did not work out. Other considerations includedDanny DeVito,Peter Falk,Robert De Niro, andJim Belushi, but save for De Niro and DeVito, none of these were the Italian American they were looking for. They eventually castJoe Pesci, who had just finishedLethal Weapon 2, was finishing filming inGoodfellas, and was an ideal choice for the role.[5] For Mona Lisa, they approachedLorraine Bracco andCarole Davis, but both passed on the role. DirectorJonathan Lynn auditioned several other actresses, but foundMarisa Tomei when he was invited to the set of the movieOscar byJohn Landis, where Tomei had a minor part. While Fox wanted an actress with more fame, they agreed to Tomei.[5]Ben Stiller andWill Smith were considered for the roles of Bill and Stan but, in both cases, there was concern related to the incarceration of a Jewish and Black person in the South, andRalph Macchio andMitchell Whitfield were hired instead.[5]
Exterior filming was done near the town ofGreensboro, Georgia; the exterior shots of the courthouse and the surrounding square were shot inMonticello, Georgia, and the courthouse scenes were shot in a set inCovington, Georgia, used forIn the Heat of the Night.[5] The prison scenes were shot in a real, working prison (Lee Arrendale State Prison inAlto, Georgia) and the prisoners appearing as extras were actual convicts.[6]
With a budget of $11 million,My Cousin Vinny was more successful than anticipated, grossing $52,929,168 domestically and $11,159,384 internationally, bringing its overall worldwide total to $64,088,552.[2]
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 85%, based on 61 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "The deft comic interplay between Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei helps to elevateMy Cousin Vinny's predictable script, and the result is a sharp, hilarious courtroom comedy."[7] OnMetacritic the film has a score of 68 out of 100 based on reviews from 23 critics.[8] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film a grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[9]
Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4. He thought that despite Macchio's co-star billing, the actor was given little to do, and the film seemed adrift until "lightning strikes" with the final courtroom scenes, when Gwynne, Pesci, and Tomei all gave humorous performances.[10] Ebert's television partner,Gene Siskel of theChicago Tribune, liked the film more, singling out Dale Launer's screenplay for praise.[11]Owen Gleiberman ofEW described it as a "lumbering, amiably stupido fish-out-of-water comedy" without the wit ofDoc Hollywood. Yet he admired the dynamic between Pesci and Tomei: "Punch and Judy gone Brooklyn."[12] Kathleen Maher ofThe Austin Chronicle thought it was "a good-natured comedy" that rose "above its simple-minded premise and its promise of humor in stereotypes." She disliked how the film seemed to divert "from what we know good and well is going to happen", yet believed watching it was "time pleasantly spent."[13]
| Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Academy Awards | Best Supporting Actress | Marisa Tomei | Won | [14] |
| American Comedy Awards | Funniest Actor in a Motion Picture (Leading Role) | Joe Pesci | Won | [15] |
| Funniest Actress in a Motion Picture (Leading Role) | Marisa Tomei | Nominated | ||
| Funniest Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture | Fred Gwynne | Nominated | ||
| Chicago Film Critics Association Awards | Best Supporting Actress | Marisa Tomei | Nominated | [16] |
| Most Promising Actress | Marisa Tomei(also forChaplin) | Won | ||
| MTV Movie Awards | Best Breakthrough Performance | Marisa Tomei | Won | |
| Best Comedic Performance | Joe Pesci | Nominated |
My Cousin Vinny is generally considered to have held up as one of the most remembered and watched movies of the 1990s. The movie performed well in home video sales and rentals and received frequent play on cable television. The film's catchier quotes became well known as well.[17]
One element that aged somewhat awkwardly was Austin Pendleton's role as a stuttering and ineffective public defender. Pendleton suffered from stuttering in his childhood before overcoming it; during filming he did not enjoy dredging up bad memories from his teenage years and, afterward, he was not pleased to be publicly associated with the character. In a 2022 interview, he said that he felt the role nearly ended his career, and, after receiving angry letters from stutterers, said he regretted agreeing to perform the role at all. Casting director David Rubin said that Pendleton's scenes, while funny, probably would have been changed significantly in a newer movie.[17]
The film's director, Jonathan Lynn, has an English law degree from theUniversity of Cambridge,[18] and lawyers have praised the accuracy ofMy Cousin Vinny's depiction of courtroom procedure and trial strategy,[19] with one stating that "[t]he movie is close to reality even in its details. Part of why the film has such staying power among lawyers is because, unlike, say,A Few Good Men, everything that happens in the moviecould happen—and oftendoes happen—at trial".[20] One legal textbook discusses the film in detail as an "entertaining [and] extremely helpful introduction to the art of presentingexpert witnesses at trial for both beginning experts and litigators";[21] furthermore, criminal defenders, law professors, and other lawyers use the film to demonstrate rules of evidence,voir dire,relevance, andcross-examination.[22][19][23][24]
JudgeRichard Posner of theU.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, one of the most prominent American federal judges of the late 20th century, praisedMy Cousin Vinny[25] as being:
particularly rich in practice tips: how a criminal defense lawyer must stand his ground against a hostile judge, even at the cost of exasperating the judge, because the lawyer's primary audience is the jury, not the judge; how cross-examination on peripheral matters can sow serious doubts about a witness's credibility; how props can be used effectively in cross-examination (the tape measure that demolishes one of the prosecution's eyewitnesses); how to voir dire, examine, and cross-examine expert witnesses; the importance of theBrady doctrine ... how to dress for a trial; contrasting methods of conducting a jury trial; and more.
In "Ten Things Every Trial Lawyer Could Learn From Vincent La Guardia Gambini", federal judgeJoseph F. Anderson praised Vinny's courtroom methods as "a textbook example" ofIrving Younger's "Ten Commandments of Cross-Examination", and wrote that the film predicted the U.S. Supreme Court's 1999 decisionKumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael and its holding regarding theDaubert standard, which governs when expert witnesses can testify in U.S. federal trials. He concluded that Lynn and scriptwriterDale Launer "have given our profession a wonderful teaching tool while producing a gem of a movie that gives the public at large renewed faith in the common law trial and the adversarial system as the best way to determine the truth and achieve justice".[26] In a 2019 decision,Merrick Garland, then the Chief Judge of theUnited States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, wrote "In 1992, Vincent Gambini taught a master class in cross-examination," and further extensively quoted from a cross-examination scene in the film.[27]
John Marshall Law School professor Alberto Bernabe wrote that "Vinny is terrible at the things we do teach in law school, but very good at the things we don't":[28]
[How to] interview clients, to gather facts, to prepare a theory of a case, to negotiate, to know when to ask a question and when to remain quiet, to cross examine a witness forcefully (but with charm) in order to expose the weaknesses in their testimony
Supreme Court of the United States JusticeAntonin Scalia citedMy Cousin Vinny as an example of the principle that a client can choose his own lawyer.[29] The authors ofReel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies (2006) gave the film its highest rating along with several films based on real trials, such asJudgment at Nuremberg andBreaker Morant.[30] In 2008 theABA Journal ranked the film #3 on its list of the "25 Greatest Legal Movies",[15] and in 2010 ranked Pesci's character as #12 on its list of "The 25 Greatest Fictional Lawyers (Who Are NotAtticus Finch)".[31]
Lynn, an opponent ofcapital punishment, believes that the film expresses an anti-death penalty message without "preaching to people", and demonstrates the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. Lawyers find the film appealing, according to the director, because "there aren't any bad guys", with the judge, prosecutor, and Vinny all seeking justice. Lynn stated that both he and Launer attempted to accurately depict the legal process inMy Cousin Vinny, favorably comparing it toTrial and Error, for which he could not make what he believed were necessary changes.[18]
While being interviewed on March 14, 2012, screenwriter and co-producerDale Launer talked about asequel he had written involving Vinny Gambini practicing law inEngland. After Marisa Tomei dropped out, the studio hired another screenwriter to rework the script without Tomei's character, but the project was eventually shelved.[32]
In 2017, author Lawrence Kelter began aMy Cousin Vinny novel series withBack to Brooklyn, which is intended to be in the spirit ofThe Thin Man series. With the setting updated to contemporary times, the series depicts the further cases of Vinny Gambini with Mona Lisa operating as his investigator.[33] After additionally writing a novelization ofMy Cousin Vinny alongside the first sequel, a third book, titledWing and a Prayer, was published in August 2020.[34]
Pesci reprised the Vinny Gambini character for his 1998 albumVincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just for You, which contains the song "Yo, Cousin Vinny". The album cover portrays Pesci in a red suit similar to the usher suit he wore in the film.[35]
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