The latest round of Oscar nominations have just been announced, and although Robert De Niro was snubbed for a Best Actor nod, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman managed to score a whopping 10 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Joe Pesci and Al Pacino.
After years of trying to claw their way in, Netflix finally has a chance at winning a couple of major Academy Awards. With its groundbreaking use of de-aging effects and it’s three-and-a-half-hour runtime, The Irishman was quite an accomplishment of filmmaking. So, here are 10 behind-the-scenes facts about The Irishman.
Robert De Niro discovered Frank Sheeran’s story when Martin Scorsese approached him about a different “aging hitman” story
In an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Robert De Niro explained how he and Martin Scorsese first became interested in telling Frank Sheeran’s story. Scorsese had come to De Niro with the idea of telling a completely different story about an aging hitman.
In his research for that project which never materialized, De Niro came across I Heard You Paint Houses, the Sheeran biography that this movie was based on. He then took the book to Scorsese and convinced him to tell Sheeran’s story instead. Like Henry Hill and Jake LaMotta before him, Sheeran is a complex guy with a fascinating (albeit probably fictionalized) past.
Martin Scorsese had wanted to work with Al Pacino for years
Martin Scorsese had known Al Pacino for nearly 50 years before he finally directed him in a movie, but he’d always wanted to work with him. The director explained, “I’d been wanting to work with Al [Pacino] for years. Francis [Ford] Coppola introduced me to him in 1970. Then, he’s in The Godfather I and II, and he’s in the stratosphere.
“For me, Al was always something unreachable. We even tried to make a film in the 1980s, but couldn’t get the financing for it. I said, ‘What’s he like to work with?’ Bob [De Niro] said, ‘Oh, he’s great. You’ll see.’” And on the set of The Irishman, he did see.
There was a “posture coach” on the set
No matter how great the de-aging CGI was, it wouldn’t be truly convincing if the actors didn’t carry themselves like a man of whatever age they are in a given scene. Martin Scorsese first spotted this in a scene with Al Pacino. The 78-year-old actor was doing a scene as a 47-year-old Jimmy Hoffa, and as he stood up from his chair, Scorsese realized it was too stiff for a man in his 40s.
So, Gary Tacon was brought onto the set as an uncredited “posture coach” to help each of the actors play their characters as the right age.
Anna Paquin was cast for her non-verbal communication skills
Martin Scorsese has said that the main reason why he cast Anna Paquin to play the older version of Peggy, Frank’s daughter, was that she’s great at communicating emotions non-verbally. The director had been aware of her knack for this kind of acting since he produced Margaret, which Paquin starred in.
Due to Paquin’s casting in The Irishman, Scorsese told screenwriter Steven Zaillian to give her character as few lines as possible, so she could show off her talents. Scorsese explained, “Anna, ultimately, was amazing in the looks. She has one line in the film. There’s something you can’t talk about. She knows it. She knows who he is. He knows she knows.”
Each decade was shot differently
When he was envisioning The Irishman, Martin Scorsese wanted the movie to look old-fashioned, but wanted to avoid the graininess and shakiness of shooting on an 8mm camera. So, cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto gave each decade its own look.
The ‘50s-set scenes have a Kodachrome look; the ‘60s-set scenes have an Ektachrome look; the ‘70s-set scenes have a silvery layer plastered over them; and any scene set in the ‘80s and onwards have a “bleach bypass” look, and are also more de-saturated than the other scenes. Prieto kept track of how to shoot each scene with a series of lookup tables.
Stephen Graham didn’t tell Al Pacino he was going to swat away his ice cream
The tension between Al Pacino and Stephen Graham was one of the most gripping parts of The Irishman. During the scene in which they fight in the prison cafeteria over Jimmy Hoffa’s use of the term “you people,” Graham wasn’t supposed to slap Pacino’s ice cream away before the scuffle.
This was Graham’s own idea, and he cleared it by Martin Scorsese before doing it, but he wanted to surprise Pacino. So, everyone on the crew knew that Graham was going to swat the ice cream, but Pacino didn’t. As a result, his stunned response in the film is genuine.
The Irishman had the longest shoot of Martin Scorsese’s career
With a grand total of 108 shooting days, The Irishman had the longest production phase of any Martin Scorsese movie. Across those 108 days, the cast and crew were required to shoot 309 scenes across 117 locations, and on some days, the whole production would have to move between three locations.
All of this required a gargantuan budget of around $160 million, which no major studio was willing to fork out; only Netflix would agree to it. With a runtime of 210 minutes (exactly three-and-a-half hours), The Irishman is Scorsese’s longest film, so it makes sense that it also took the longest to shoot.
The editing was intentionally simplistic
Thelma Schoonmaker, the editor who cut The Irishman together, has worked with Martin Scorsese throughout his entire career. The two have collaborated on more than 20 films together over the past half-century.
Schoonmaker explained that the critically acclaimed editing was intentionally simplistic: “Marty wanted to show the banality of the violence...It’s not like the incredible camera moves or flashy editing of the earlier movies. Victims are killed in an instant – often in very simple wide shots. And his brilliant idea of slamming the titles in front of the audience [describing how each character that’s introduced died]...was a way of showing that being part of the Mafia is not a good idea.”
There’s a spoiler hidden in the opening scene
In the opening sequence of The Irishman, as Frank Sheeran delivers a monologue from the nursing home, he mentions that he used to “paint houses.” To establish what this means in the criminal underworld, Martin Scorsese cuts to a shot of Sheeran shooting a man in the back of the head, spraying (or, “painting”) the wall with his brains.
Due to the quick panning of the camera and the fact that it only appears for a second, it’s unclear, but the person Sheeran is shooting is Jimmy Hoffa. If you pause the movie at the right second, you can see that it’s Hoffa. So, the movie secretly spoils its climactic murder in the first scene.
Joe Pesci reportedly turned down the role of Russell Bufalino 50 times
Martin Scorsese has been planning The Irishman for years, and only managed to make it when CGI technology had developed to the point that he could use the same actors for all the characters at various different ages. He always wanted Joe Pesci for the role of Russell Bufalino, but since the actor had retired, he didn’t want to take the job.
Scorsese had to offer him the role a lot of times before he eventually wore him down and got him to accept. According to some sources, the director offered Pesci the part a whopping 50 times before he agreed to do it.