Joe Pesci is an incantation. Just say his name and everything appears: the smokey room, the playing cards, the Cutty Sark and water with no ice, the golf polo, the fedora, the gun. Or the explosions of rage. Of course, in interviews, Joe Pesci barely says a thing. He doesn’t need to. He knows the economy of cool.
On the Late Show in the mid-90s, Letterman asks him if he’s good at golf, and Joe Pesci says he shoots a sixteen handicap. “I don’t know what that means,” Letterman says. “Is that good?” Pesci glances at the cigar, shrugs. “Well, I’m sorry,” and takes a long drag.
Joe Pesci is a man who knows what he wants and knows everything he’s about. When Joe Pesci plays golf, he’s going to smoke. When Joe Pesci goes on Letterman, he’s going to curse. When Joe Pesci is going to break a rib on the set of a Scorsese film, he’s going to break the exact same rib he broke the first time, 15 years before, which, if you’re Joe Pesci, seems less like a coincidence and more like a commitment to precision. What a weirdo. What a wild card. What a king.
Joe Pesci is a genius we hadn’t seen in two decades until Martin Scorsese pulled him out of retirement for The Irishman. But even in retirement, Joe Pesci remained a man with potent style and charisma. Not a fashion icon, but something bigger and better: a man with a look, onscreen and off (mostly on the golf course). Wild black pompadour. That no-bullshit pout. A short guy, I guess, at 5’7’’, but that doesn’t seem quite right. It’s more like he’s compact, with total control over some terrifying energy just underneath. He’s loose and wacky in black leather jackets in My Cousin Vinny, and a coil of well-tailored psychopathy in Scorsese’s Goodfellas—and almost always in a giant spearpoint collar, its sharp leaves plunging down between the lapels of his jacket like two medieval spearheads. It might be the most terrifying garment in cinema history: if Joe Pesci is wearing the spearpoint collar, you know he might kill you.
Source: Joe Pesci’s Pointy-Collared Shirts Are the Scariest Garments in Cinema History | GQ