Don’t tell me you didn’t notice that Joe Pesci has been gone from movie screens since 1998’s Lethal Weapon 4. And hey, being in that movie would have sent me into hiding as well. But it looked like he was done with acting, especially after all those bribes to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ended up in the wrong hands and Tomei got the Oscar.
But now he’s coming back, playing a small role in The Good Shepherd, a movie about the early days of the CIA. Apparently buddy Robert DeNiro has coaxed him out of hiding, perhaps using a small piece of chicken or a Pounce! Cube, which is what I do when one of my cats is hiding.
Matt Damon will be playing James Wilson, a character based on the fascinating real life guy James Jesus Angleton, and we’ll follow him from a membership in Skull & Bones through OSS and into the founding of the CIA. DeNiro will be Bill Sullivan, the General who brought Wilson in to the OSS. Pesci will have a small role – a mob boss named Palmi. It’s possible that this will play into how the OSS teamed with the mob to protect American docks from sabotage. Or maybe it will be somehow tied in to the CIA’s partnership with the mob to get rid of Castro.