Double the Ray Liotta, double the fun.
The Jersey actor may not have made it onto “The Sopranos” before the show ended in 2007, but his big “reveal” in prequel film “The Many Saints of Newark” granted him more screen time in a story that is absolutely stuffed with characters.
Before continuing, here’s a **spoiler warning** because, as Liotta says, “We know where you live!”
The actor, a Newark native, grew up in Union as the adoptive son of parents who were active in local politics. Liotta, iconic in the Mafia movie canon for playing Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s “GoodFellas,” was also nearly recruited for “The Sopranos.” Series creator David Chase, who co-wrote and produced the film, tried to cast Liotta as Ralphie Cipharetto in the original series, but it didn’t work out.
Now he gets a double billing.
When Liotta first shows up in “The Many Saints of Newark” in 1967, he is “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti, a successful member of the DiMeo crime family and father of Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), future father to Christopher Moltisanti from the series. Dickie, in turn, is a father figure to a young Tony Soprano, played in his teen years by James Gandolfini’s son Michael Gandolfini.
Hollywood Dick enters the story as a brash, loud guy who shows off Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi), his new young wife from Italy. We soon learn he is an abuser who used to throw Dickie’s mother down the stairs and has no qualms about doing the same to Giuseppina.
However, relatively early in the film — released Oct. 1 in theaters and on HBO Max, where it will be available through Oct. 31 — we see that Hollywood Dick doesn’t stick around for long.
Joey "CoCo" Diaz as Buddha, Liotta as “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti and John Borras as Bishop in the "Sopranos" prequel.Barry Wetcher | Warner Bros.
As Hollywood abruptly exits the earthly stage (*ahem*), it could be easy to assume that Liotta wouldn’t be seen again in the film (apart from maybe some kind of flashback). But lo and behold, there he is again, playing Hollywood’s twin brother, Sal.
Dickie Moltisanti visits his “Uncle Sally” in prison after Hollywood dies. Sally, a seemingly reformed criminal who openly admits to murdering a made man, serves as a kind of guide for Dickie — or at least, that’s what he’s looking for, some kind of guidance or absolution.
Despite his history as a killer, Sally stands apart as a transformed, almost Zen member of the crime family — “just a very, very evolved person,” Liotta, 66, tells NJ Advance Media.
“This really smooth other guy who just really had his sh-t together probably more than anyone,” he says.
When Dickie tells Sally he wants to do a “good deed” in visiting him — he’s been doing a fair amount of bad — something his father had forbidden, Sally requests a jazz record.
“I like the fact that I was asking for real jazz, like Miles Davis,” Liotta says (specifically “Birth of the Cool”).
Dickie seems to want to even the scales on all of the terrible things he is doing, namely homicide. But Sally can see straight through him.
“I say he’s gonna get what’s coming,” Liotta says.
Alessandro Nivola says his character’s visits to Sally throughout the film are an attempt for him to work through his guilt and pain.
“The visits to Uncle Sally, he’s almost like his confessor,” Nivola, 49, tells NJ Advance Media. “And he has some compulsive need to keep going there. I think he wants to confess, but all he does is lie every time he goes. But Uncle Sally knows everything. Almost supernaturally he knows.”
Billy Magnussen as Paulie Walnuts, Jon Bernthal as Johnny Soprano, Corey Stoll as Junior Soprano (in back), John Magaro as Silvio Dante, Liotta as “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti and Nivola as Dickie Moltisanti.Barry Wetcher | Warner Bros.
Sally’s advice to Dickie?
“Pain comes from always wanting things,” he says. “It’s the wanting.”
Liotta appreciated the chance to deliver such lines and act as a sage figure in the mob movie — a far cry from Hollywood Dick’s impetuous gangster persona.
“I just love being that still and that philosophical,” he says. “I really was able to have my cake and eat it too.”
The advice from Sally that shapes the trajectory of the film the most arrives when he tells Dickie to stay away from Tony.
“By the end, I think he just is so horrified by himself that that’s why he doesn’t want to come anywhere near Tony because he feels like everything that he touches dies,” Nivola says. “That it’s some force that’s out of his control because his violent outbursts are something that just feel almost like another person to him and he can’t control it. And it tears him apart. And he knows that he’s the architect of his own destruction.”
“The Many Saints of Newark” is on HBO Max and in theaters. Read our interviews with David Chase and “The Many Saints of Newark” cast here.
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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter
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