Richard Kuklinski

Ray Liotta on ‘The Iceman’ and How He Does Not Just Play Villains

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Ray Liotta in The Iceman

WRITER’S NOTE: This article was originally written back in 2013.

While Ray Liotta has played a wide variety of roles throughout his long career, he is still best known for playing bad guys or characters on the wrong side of the law. The perception of him being typecast as a bad guy may continue with “The Iceman” in which he plays real life mob boss Roy DeMeo, the man who hired Richard Kuklinski (played by Michael Shannon) to kill dozens upon dozens of people. But while at “The Iceman” press day held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, Liotta reminded us there is way more to him than just playing evil characters in movies.

Critics and audiences see Roy DeMeo as the latest in a long of mob characters Liotta has played throughout his career, but that’s actually not true. Liotta was quick to point out DeMeo is only the second mob character he has ever played, and that Henry Hill (his character from “Goodfellas”) wasn’t even in the mob but was associated with it. But whether he’s playing a good or bad guy in a movie, his decision to take on a role is always based on one thing.

Ray Liotta: (It’s) the script, the story, what they’re saying, how they’re saying it. Henry in “Goodfellas” just beat one person up and the character I played in this (“The Iceman”) whacked people left and right, wasn’t afraid of anybody, where Henry was a little more timid. So, the script just dictated it to be different. It’s really the script, whatever the script tells you, and that’s why you have to make the right choice. If it seems too similar to something else then it’s better to stay away from it, unless you want to do something that’s similar.

During the roundtable interview, one person mentioned how he loved the Liotta’s work on the television show “Just Shoot Me.” Liotta actually made guest appearances on two episodes as himself, and he ended up falling for Laura San Giacomo’s character of Maya. Truth be told, he has appeared in many comedies over the years such as “Date Night,” “Observe and Report,” “Wild Hogs” and “Bee Movie.” When asked if he would like to do more comedy in the future, Liotta replied he certainly would.

RL: Yeah, I would like to. It’s just getting people to see it. I’ve got different scripts that I’ve been trying to do for years and it’s just really hard to get money, and everybody’s a creature of habit. I just did a movie with the Muppets, me and Danny Trejo, and we’re just singing and dancing with the Muppets and it was so much fun. I’ve done it. It just has to come along. It takes a while to change people’s opinions. I’ve done over 80 movies and there’s been a few where I’m funny and nice, but you can’t expect people to see everything.

So far, Liotta has had the opportunity to work with a lot of great directors like Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Joe Carnahan and Ridley Scott. Working with them has left him with many great memories and given him a strong idea of what he wants from a director which is a great passion for the work of making movies.

RL: It’s much better that way. The best directors that I’ve worked with have the most passion about make-believe situations, and I mean obsessively so. I remember in “Goodfellas,” Marty (Scorsese) every day would have to tie my tie because he wanted it to look a certain way. The best directors know top to bottom what’s going on. I’ve always been taught by what Da Vinci said, that he saw the Statue of David in the marble and chipped away the excess. You know what you’re going to do going in.

“The Iceman” takes place in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, and it is tempting to think doing a period piece like this is like time travel. We always hear about actors getting lost in the moment when they are on the set, and we like to think this happened here since the actors were all dressed in the clothes and driving the cars of that era. Liotta, however, was quick to shoot down this perception as he pointed out there was always something to remind everyone they were still existing in the present.

RL: You’re looking at that, you’re doing your scene, and then you turn around and there’s the crew with their beer bellies and shorts,” Liotta said. “So, you don’t get like that lost in it in terms of that.”

Liotta also made it clear he has no problem auditioning for a role, and that he is still asked to audition for parts from time to time. You would think an actor in his position wouldn’t have to audition anymore, but even he had to do so for the Brad Pitt movie “Killing Them Softly.” But like the smartest of actors, Liotta clearly sees the process of auditioning as a chance to perform.

RL: It didn’t bother me at all. If that’s what’s gonna take then fine. I don’t mind it all. I always liked it, and if I didn’t get something, I couldn’t wait for the next audition just to say, alright you’ll see! There are a few movies I have to do that for and I don’t care. If I want to be in that movie and if that’s what I have to do that then that’s what you’ve got to do… no matter how stupid it is.

Listening to Ray Liotta at “The Iceman” press day was a reminder of just how much he has accomplished as an actor after several decades in show business. His career continues to have a longevity many would love to have themselves, and while many may still yearn to see him play the bad guy in the next movie he does, Liotta is clearly not limited to playing just those kinds of roles. His range extends far beyond what he did in “Goodfellas” and “Unlawful Entry,” and this is something we should not have to be reminded of.

Michael Shannon on Playing the Notorious Richard Kuklinski in ‘The Iceman’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Michael Shannon in The Iceman

WRITER’S NOTE: This article was originally written back in 2013.

Thanks to his unforgettable performances in “Bug,” “Revolutionary Road,” “The Runaways” and “Take Shelter,” Michael Shannon has long since become one of the best character actors working in movies today. It’s fascinating to watch him go from playing one kind of role to another which is completely different from the last, and his range as an actor has kept him from getting easily typecast in ways most actors cannot help but fall victim to. Now he takes on perhaps his most challenging role yet as the cold-blooded killer Richard Kuklinski in Ariel Vromen’s “The Iceman.”

Based on, yes, a true story, Kuklinski was convicted in 1986 of murdering 100 men for different crime organizations in the New York area. At the same time, the movie shows him to be a loving husband to his wife Deborah Pellicotti (Winona Ryder) and their children. We would later learn of his crimes in more detail in Anthony Bruno’s book “The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer” as well as in James Thebaut’s documentary “The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer.” The documentary is especially interesting to talk about as Kuklinski described his various crimes without a hint of remorse. His only true regret was the irreparable damage he did to his own family, and it is this confession which ends up bringing him to tears.

Shannon was at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, California for “The Iceman” press day, and he took the time to talk with me and several others about his experience making this particular film. He described the role as being very frightening, came to make some discoveries about the character which he didn’t see coming, and he admitted a truth about Kuklinski we are understandably hesitant to say out loud.

Michael Shannon: This is a very intimidating part to play. This character is so far removed from my own personal experience, and to try to play the part with any authenticity was a very daunting challenge. Sometimes I think I’m alone in this regard, but then sometimes I think maybe other people feel the same way and they’re just afraid to say it, but I actually kind of like the guy when I was watching the interviews. I think people are very adamant about, he’s a psycho, he’s a cold-blooded killer, he’s remorseless and so on. The fact of the matter is when you’re watching him in those interviews, he’s been arrested, he’s been caught, he’s not going to kill anybody else, his entire life has been ruined and he’s going to rot in jail until he dies. What good is it going to do him to cry on camera? It’s really none of our business, and in a way we’re all being peeping toms on this guy’s pretty cruddy life at this point. I looked at him as a pretty empathetic figure. If you look at his childhood at least as it’s described in the books that I read, it was absolute torture. He was tortured and it was very sad. So, these poor unfortunate parents created this monster, and he didn’t know how to… He wanted to be something other than he was. He even says it in the interview, he says it in the movie. He says, “This would not be me. This would not be me.” So, for all the people who say that he’s cold-blooded, why would he be saying that then? I found him a very sad, lonely person, and I felt like he deserved some sort of exploration into why he wound up the way he wound up.

Indeed, it’s hard to completely hate Kuklinski as he is presented in “The Iceman” as a devoted family man, and life had dealt him a bad hand which left him little in the way of skills to make a normal career out of. He did have a set of rules he set down for himself which dictated he did not kill women or children, and most of the people he killed were criminals and degenerates who weren’t doing society any favors. At the same time, it was not lost on Shannon or any of us that Kuklinski needed to be arrested and brought to justice for the murders he committed, but to dismiss him as some one-dimensional bad guy is to miss the bigger picture.

MS: This enterprise of making movies about people seems to be in service of trying to understand them, and that’s what I tried to do. He dropped out of school and he had a very low opinion of himself. I don’t think he thought he was a great person, and I think he was fighting lot of demons.

Shannon said he never talked to Kuklinski’s wife or any of the family members in preparation to play him, but this is understandable considering the subject matter. To ask them to participate in the production of “The Iceman” would be like asking them to relive a nightmare they may still be trying to wake up from. In terms of research, Shannon ended up relying on other resources.

MS: I did talk briefly to (Anthony) Bruno, the author who interviewed him. He talked with me for ten minutes and he told me the story of the first time he went to interview him and how just horrifying it was to be in the same room with him. He made the interviewer sit with his back to the door and Kuklinski would sit and look through the window, so Kuklinski knew when there was somebody out there like a guard or whatever and the interviewer didn’t. There was nobody that knew him that wanted to be involved with this I don’t think.

In the end, “The Iceman” is not out to change anyone’s mind about Kuklinski as a person. People have long since made up their minds about this man who murdered so many, but there is no denying Michael Shannon is a fantastic actor who continues to give one great performance after another. As Kuklinski, he allows us to peek inside this man’s twisted psyche to see the human being underneath all the notoriety, and it makes for a truly compelling portrait of a man whose name will forever live in infamy. Up next for Shannon is “Man of Steel” in which he will play Superman’s nemesis, General Zod. Like all of you, I can’t wait to see him in that superhero flick.