Sharon Stone says a lot of her co-stars were misogynistic—but not Robert De Niro or Joe Pesci
Sharon Stone's experience with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in Martin Scorsese's 1995 flick Casinosounded pretty positive
Aux News Sharon Stone
An unfortunate side effect of being a woman in the world, is the current run-ins with misogynistic men who infantilize, dehumanize, and generally scorn women as they walk through the world. Basic Instinct’s Sharon Stone is no stranger to this experience and says she worked with plenty of misogynistic co-stars during her days as a leading lady. However, she exempts her Casino co-stars Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci from this characterization.
“I’ve worked with some of the biggest stars in the business, who will literally talk through my close-up, telling me what they think I should do,” Stone tells Variety. “They’re so misogynistic—now, that is not Robert De Niro. That is not Joe Pesci, that is not those guys. But I have worked with some really big stars who will literally talk out loud through my close-up, telling me what to do.”
She continues, “They just will not listen to me, and will not allow me to affect their performance with my performance. That’s not great acting. I mean, I get that you’re great and everybody thinks you’re wonderful. But listening, being present for those fractured moments, is really the human experience.”
Stone starred opposite De Niro and Pesci in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 film Casino, where she plays Ginger McKenna, a gorgeous yet erratic hustler who catches the eye of both De Niro and Pesci’s characters. For much of her career, much of the roles offered to Stone involved playing the psychosexual femme fatale.
“I don’t get called upon to play these parts—I get called upon to take off my clothes and play these crazy sociopathic characters because I played one [in multiple past films],” Stone says. “I don’t get called upon to play thoughtful, sensitive characters. I’m a painter—I have two shows coming up—and I’m a songwriter, I’ve had three number ones in other countries. But I’m never going to get Basic Instinct off of my head. I came into this world looking like a Barbie, so it’s complicated for people to allow me the opportunity to be anything else.”
Back in 2009, Stone talked about working with Scorsese and De Niro in the years after her Basic Instinct fame, and how the role of Ginger came up for her at the right place and the right time.
“Finally I got together with Marty and Bob and they were like, ‘Give it all to us, baby, just let her rip if you’ve got it, we want it, let’s see what you can do,’” Stone told The Guardian. “I got up to bat with my dream people, the one actor that all my career I strived to work with, that was the apex for me, and then Marty, to get the pat on your back from your peers is always pretty great. You know, you don’t get a lot of that.”
Stone most recently joined singer Sam Smith on SNL for a performance of their single “Gloria.”
184 Comments
Casino is much better than people think.
As a big Don Rickles fan, I’ve been wanting to watch it for awhile. But it’s sadly not on any streaming service.
Ah, shit. I feel like I last caught it on Tubi or something.
It’s 3.99 on Amazon Prime Video
I think you can rent it on Amazon. It’s a great movie. It used to show up on one of the TNT type channels back in the cable days. One of those instances where a quarter of the movie is missing due to content, yet the runtime is still 2/3 longer because of all the commercials, and I’d still get sucked in. I finally bought a physical copy.
Getting caught up in it on basic cable is a guaranteed way to lose five hours of your day.
It’s on iTunes and Apple TV. I purchased it from Amazon Prime and it still shows up for me there with options to repurchase if I were so inclined. It also seems to be on Peacock and Showtime, though it was recently removed from Hulu and less recently from Netflix.
You can rent it for like $3 on Amazon Video.
You can have my DVD of it after you pry it from my cold dead hands
Challenge accepted.
Netflix DVDs I tells ya…
Use a VPN – it’s on Canada’s Netflix for the next 5 days.
I am watching it for free 1st October at my local cinema – I’m a member so get to watch free films.
Get a $2 HDX copy on Vudu using D2D.
Yeah, it seems to bounce around Peacock, Hulu, and Netflix a lot, so keep an eye out!
Indeed it is, and features one of the most brutal beatings ever committed to a Hollywood film. To this day I have difficulty watching it with the sound on.
Which is why this comment from Sharon Stone in the article stood out to me:“I got up to bat with my dream people”Ooff…
And she’s still breathing!!
“Frankie, leave the kid alone. He’s still breathin’…”
How did I not notice until now that the same actor who plays Frankie also played Billy Batts in Goodfellas? Cosmic revenge…
And we mustn’t forget this. The fact that Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent were great friends and a Vaudeville comedy duo makes this all the more amusing.
Holy crap, how deep does this go? Did their comedy routine consist of the two of them cursing and beating each other to a bloody pulp?
They were fightin’ in the womb, those two!
until he ended his working life (for the Mob) getting his head rolled over by an SUV as Phil Leotardo on SOPRANOS. Where he interacted with Spider/Christopher as well.The ties thru all of those movies/projects are awesome to follow-
Paulie Walnuts (Sirico) got his start as a speaking glorified extra in- GOODFELLAS as well. Where he met 14 yr old Christopher/Michael Imperioli.
Reading through the comments reminds me that at first I said to myself, yup great film that I happened to catch on cable some years back (I have never seen Goodfellas, and Casino happened to be on my tv so I let it run from start to finish), but also that there were 2 scenes that would be hard to rewatch today, but as noted in the comments here there are actually three scenes.
The man interrogated in a vice scene, the hammer to hands of the card cheat scene, and the Pesci going to town with a pen on that poor schmuck (he may have been an arrogant schmuck, but no one deserves the bloody beat down he received). I would probably look away if I did a rewatch as I know what is coming.
I thought it was well received by critics at the time, but it sounds like the general public did not come to love Casino at its time of release, but yes, a very watchable film with some phenomenal acting.
Also, this is the movie that has the line that when digging a hole out in the the desert that you should dig two holes. Okay, I looked up the quote and it boils down to dig a hole ahead of arriving with the body to bury, because it is time and labor intensive, and dig another in case another mob guy also shows up needing to bury a body.
Of course, I thought the quote was to dig two holes ahead of time, one for the body you want to bury, and one for you just in case you have the tables turned on you and end up with a gun on you and are forced to dig your own grave, so at least if the second hole is already dug you do not have to go through some hard labor with a gun on you as you dig your own grave.
Do people think it’s not good?
It has since been reappraised, but when it first hit it was basically seen as “Goodfellas 2,” due to the fact that it was the follow-up to Goodfellas, and was also an adaptation of a Nicholas Pileggi book.
If I remember correctly, Scorsese was interviewed in Les Cahiers du cinéma for the release of Casino by Bill Krohn. Krohn pointed out the similarities between Goodfellas and Casino, and told Scorsese, jokingly, that it was the El Dorado to his Rio Bravo, and that he would now be waiting for his Rio Lobo.But what would be Scorsese’s Rio Lobo? The Wolf of Wall Street (first person narration, with the lead even talking at the camera, rise and fall structure) or The Irishman (mob film, De Niro and Pesci reunion)?
I would put the Irishman together with Casino and Goodfellas. All three are true crime/real life, detailed organized crime stories. Two of the three (I’ve read the Pileggi books for Casino and Goodfellas. Never read a Hoffa history), interestingly, are good case studies for how to translate well written, highly detailed books into film, what you get as a result when you do so, how those two genres are different, what different purposes they serve, etc.
I don’t think you’re right about that. Like, at all
My enduring memory of Casino is David Spade’s SNL joke: “Casino. Ca-seen it. I liked it better when it was called Goodfellas.”That said… this has been one I have been meaning to see for awhile and for whatever reason, just never did.
That joke is so wrong because anyone who’s seen both movies won’t confuse the both. That weasel David Spade should think about that “joke” when he’s in Adam Sandler’s next money grab.
If I recall, Casino’s initial reviews went something like “Good, but we’ve seen this before”.
I think Scorsese himself acknowledges and accepts this based on Rothstein’s (De Niro’s) narration at the very end:“But in the end, I wound up right back where I started. I could still
pick winners, and I could still make money for all kinds of people back
home. And why mess up a good thing? And that’s that.”That always struck me as Scorsese talking about himself.
Scorsese did wind up pushing himself quite a bit in later films. I think the criticism of Casino as a Goodfellas remix really got to him. His following four movies were Kundun, Bringing Out the Dead, Gangs of New York and The Aviator, all of which are stylistically very different from each other and from his earlier work. He didn’t make another crime film until The Departed, and didn’t attempt another excess-and-decline story until Wolf of Wall Street (by which point I don’t think he cared about the Goodfellas comparisons anymore).
The juxtapostion of the final scene with the old mob casinos being razed for the flashy tourist trap places is 100% Marty subtext about directors of the auteur era no longer having that complete freedom. Might be my favorite Marty ending sequence. The opera music swelling over the giant MGM Grand lion head never fails to kill me.
Its….good. But not great. The first half-ish is a solid Goodfellas followup, but when the narrative shifts to oily James Woods chasing around Ginger, it gets tedious.
When it came out people unfavorably compared it to Goodfellas. As if the existence of Goodfellas negated the need for any new gangster movies to be made.
It is, but cannot re-watch due to one particular scene in which Pesci is too good.
Casino is much better than people think.It’s true. If it didn’t come out right after “Goodfellas”, I think more people would rate it higher. Once you put out your “Sgt Pepper” or “Spirited Away”, it’s really hard to get people to meet people’s expectations after that – no matter how great the work is.
What would be Scorsese’s masterpiece? With a filmography that includes Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and The Wolf of Wall Street, how could you pick?
I just watched it for the first time a few months ago. Is Casino kinda just doing Goodfellas again, in a different mob life milieu? Yeah, more or less.
…But you know what movie kicks ass? Goodfellas! And Marty did it again, it’s called Casino this time, and it’s about the mob running Vegas in the ’70s! It’s awesome! Joe Bob Briggs is in it!
I don’t know if I have ever heard anyone talk bad about it?
My favorite scene is when Nicky assassinates Anna Scott.
1) Because fuck Karens and |
2) I could have sworn he would have shot himself in the arm. LOL!
That would depend on how hard her head was. Maybe the bullet would have gotten stuck in it.
That’s great – except that human anatomy dictates that it’s *not* actually in the way of the bullet.
Didn’t the mob usually use small caliber bullets that didn’t cause exit wounds?
Now, years later I can see it, but compared to Heat that winter, it seemed lacking.
Casino > Goodfellas. Yeah, I said it.
It’s ok. Scorsese has more or less been remaking Mean Streets his entire career.
any movie that uses DEVO more than once is ok by me
The use of their version of Satisfaction after the Rolling Stones version is so great. It really shows the fucked up world the built for themselves.
Casino’s great, but just a bit overlong, I think.
Casino is much better than people think.
Absolutely. I quite enjoy getting into arguments with friends who think Goodfellas is the best movie in the world – or at least better than Casino.
It’s possible that if Goodfellas had Don Rickles in it and Casino didn’t instead, I might feel differently. I mean the whole movie is great but holy hell, Rickles was so damn good in it.
8.2 IMDB, 79% RT, 91% Google users liked it… I’m not sure that’s an accurate statement. How much better do you think people should think it is?
See downthread. It was kind of overlooked in its day, but was more appreciated afterward.
Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars (out of 4) in his original review and lavished it with praise
There are people that don’t thinknit is great?
It’s a really good movie, but it’s a hard watch if you aren’t ready for it.
Aside from the obvious “baseball” scene, which is enough all by itself, it can be kinda tough to watch a group of people systematically destroy themselves and their lives and everyone around them. Usually violently.Nowdays you only see that kind of wanton self-destruction on the worst “reality” trash TV shows….
It’s honestly my favorite of all those gangster movies.
I actually sometimes get confused what scenes are from Goodfellas and which from Casino. I think Goodfellas still has more good scenes but Casino has its moments too.
i watched it last night! It’s one of my favorites which has STILL held up well.
Possible hot take, but I like Casino better than Goodfellas, and a lot of that is because of Stone’s performance. It’s one of the movies I will reach for to play in the background while I clean or do art.(Not that I don’t also like Goodfellas.)
I think it would only be a hot take if you claimed Casino was better, not just that you like it more.
Are there people who don’t think it’s good? It’s a straight up classic and Stone’s performance is one of my favorite top 5 performances of all time. Incredible.
It took me some time, but I love it now and will put it on often. The first hour in particular that covers the ins and outs of running a casino and the skims is brilliant and fascinating.
Stone deserved to be treated with respect on set, and it sounds like she often wasn’t. But I’m not convinced by her complaint that, “I came into this world looking like a Barbie, so it’s complicated for people to allow me the opportunity to be anything else.” Stone got a lot of opportunities because of her looks, and not solely in trashy movies. Hell, her role in Casino depends on the actress being stunning. There are many actresses as least as talented as Stone in convincingly playing a role, and who would dream of having the career success she has, who are not drop dead gorgeous. I doubt she’d like to trade places with them.A certain degree of type-casting also isn’t something only bombshells go through. True, Stone hasn’t been cast as a lot of “thoughtful, sensitive characters.” Neither has Joe Pesci who (like Stone) seems to be a much more thoughtful, grounded person than his film roles would suggest.
All Joe wants to play these days is the bombshell.
Pesci: “You think I’m sexy? Sexy how? Sexy like a bombshell? Do I arouse you?”
I’m happy to say I read that in Joe Pesci’s voice.
You can’t control it. The Pesci voice just happens.
This is one of the three strangest erections I’ve ever had
your erection threshold is, dare i say it, low …
I just mean you’re sexy Joe!
I love you.
I wanted to like this but I did not want to be the 70th person to do so.
God
I think she just means that it’s possible for men to be conventionally handsome and also taken seriously as artists, which is true. There is a catch-22 for women that 95% you have to be hot to even get on camera, but once you’re there, you’re not taken seriously for your creative input in a way that doesn’t seem to penalize men to the same degree. It’s fine and even necessary to point out that disparity.
I do agree that it can occasionally tip into “curse these good looks of mine, a true milestone around my neck” which is more of a humblebrag and not particularly believable. Gain twenty pounds and stop wearing makeup and the problem would instantly fix itself if that were the main issue.
I’m not convinced by her complaint that, “I came into this world looking like a Barbie, so it’s complicated for people to allow me the opportunity to be anything else.” Stone got a lot of opportunities because of her looks, and not solely in trashy movies.I don’t think she’s denying that, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be bothered by the typecasting. She definitely has been typecast, in large part due to the same attributes that got her those early roles in the first place, such as her appearance.
Joe Pesci: I make you feel respected as a person? I’m here to fuckin’ respect women? Waddya mean “not misogynist”? Not misogynist how? How am I not a misogynist?Sharon Stone: I don’t know, just … you know, how you treat a woman. What?Joe Pesci: No, no I don’t know.Sharon Stone: You said it. How do I know?Joe Pesci: You said I’m not misogynist. How the fuck am I not misogynist? What the fuck is so not misogynist about me? Tell me. Tell me what’s not misogynist.Sharon Stone: Get the fuck outta here, Joe.
hey fuck you
Sharon Stone is such a great actress. I bet Arnold was an asshole to her but Total Recall is great and she is a big reason why. She is so sexy and charming in that movie. I’m glad to hear she was treated well on Casino. That movie is awesome and I bet it was really hard for Sharon to take on that roll. She nails it.
hey fuck you
Didn’t Pesci put out an album back in the day?
A few! He started out as a singer, and he released an album in the late 60s under the name Joe Ritchie. Then, in the late 90s, he released an album in character as Cousin Vinny. And he just released another album about three years ago
Pretty cool historical detail that he introduced Bob Gaudio and the proto-Four Seasons.
Do you mean the Four Seasons before Frankie Valli?
Wasn’t he always on the group?
I hope so! He’s the greatest!
That Cousin Vinny album has some really fucked up lyrics about the character Marisa Tomei played in the film. In the movie he could be rude to her, but in the song he really says some vile things about her. Weird tone.
Yeah, that sounds creepy
Two, I think.
Was Jagged Little Pill his album?
Are you alleging that Alanis went down on him in a theater?
You oughta know.
No, that was a different singer.You guessed it – Frank Stallone.
Ey! Was you thinkin’ of me when ya fucked ‘er?
I had an album of his that was done in-character as his character from My Cousin Vinny. It’s called Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just for You. It’s terrible, obviously, but a couple of the songs are kind of funny. I remember “Take Your Love and Shove It (up your big fat ass)“ being a highlight. Especially the music break where he keeps talking to the musicians. “Let me hear that tinkling piano! Yeah, now that’s fucking tinkling!”
I want to hear this.
Album? What do you mean, album? Like a plastic disc, with singing on it, that kind of album? Am I a fucking canary? Am I here to fucking sing for you, like a fucking bird? No, you said album, you must mean I’m a fuckin’ little songbird. Where the fuck do you get off saying that I put out a fucking ALBUM, you FUCK?
Nah, I was…just…sayin’…you…put out an album…
Here ya go, bad video quality..but nevertheless.
This MAY be the best thing I’ve ever seen, in my life. I’m 45, I know a lot of stuff about a lot of things, mostly useless and pop culture, and I have NEVER heard or seen this video or song before. The fact that Joe Pesci could have been blasting in my car for the last 20 years makes me regret many lost years now.
He was in the Rascals before they got a record deal.
Let me guess…Was one of them Dustin Hoffman?
That’s Mr. Magorium to you.
Mr. Magorium’s Angry Opprobrium
“Two copies.”
He’s super short. I know because I saw him on the street in Manhattan once and I am super short so I know when someone is super short.Completely irrelevant, but I have so few opportunities to tell this story.I can say that he was not misogynistic toward me, but also he likely didn’t register my presence at all in the 0.1 second it took us to pass.
Misogynistic in 1/10 of a second!
Was he walking there?
I’ve seen you around these parts for years and I just have to ask: WHAT DOES YOUR USERNAME MEAN??
Well, two things:1) I inexplicably thought when I signed up that usernames couldn’t have spaces between the words, so it might be easier to read if it did – “I got lick foot again.”2) It’s from an episode of ‘Bob’s Burgers’ where Bob and Linda are trying to spice up their relationship by playing with erotic dice that have suggestions written on them. Bob rolls and the dice read “lick” and “foot”, prompting him to say, “Ugh, I got lick foot again!”
All these years and it was a Bob’s Burgers reference hahahaha
I thought ‘lick foot’ was a fictional medical condition, like athlete’s foot. And the name would refer to repeatedly contracting it.
Yeah, it definitely sounded like something like that.
Thanks for the explanation! I love Bob’s Burgers, but I don’t remember that line/scene/episode.
And Stallone.
What, in that teacup bomber movie?
Yeah.
I could see Hoffman going either way. James Woods on the other hand seems like he definitely would have been one of them.
His reputation seems confirmed. Hell, his character in the movie Chef is basically him.
Wasn’t Chef just Jon Favreau playing himself except as a chef and not a director? Not sure how Hoffman fits in there.Wait a minute, I’m sorry. I completely forgot he was actually in the movie. It’s not a very memorable movie!
Sphere caused a lot of harm to everyone.
Schwarzenegger?
Sharon Stone is also a well known batshit insane person. So…not sure anything she says should carry much weight.
hey fuck you
I suppose it’s easier now to just list off the famous actors who weren’t misogynistic pigs than the ones that were
Provided you follow the clearly questionable practice of believing every accusation you ever hear
She’ll always be Beth from ‘Sphere’ to me 🙂
She will always be Arnold’s fake wife in Total Recall to me.
Possibly one of the funniest moments of that film was this…And, of course, the inevitable girl fight…
Gotta love her ability to rumble in a power suit.
Such a pity she wasn’t in heels. That would have been chef-kiss-worthy.
That would have made the movie completely unbelievable.
The fact that my 5th grade teacher looked and dressed like the Lori character in a suit…did things to me during these crucial years of development.
I like how Arnie just watches them fight for a bit before getting involved.
I’ve been a fan of that book since I was a kid but didn’t like the movie. I was excited when HBO announced a few years ago that they were making a show based on the book and looked forward to being a hipster about it and telling people I liked Sphere before it was cool, but now that Westworld’s been canceled I guess that’s never gonna happen.
Sharon Stone’s experience with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 flick Casinosounded pretty positiveThere needs to be a space between Casino and sounded.
Every time I watch The Specialist, I think *that poor woman*. There’s no way that wasn’t an uncomfortable shoot.
Dear god, why have you seen “The Specialist” more than once??
I am not proud to admit it.
And Will Arnett was really weird to her when they filmed Murderville
Elaborate
I think the joke is that Will Arnett is really weird to everyone.
Counterpoint that Will Arnett may not be physically capable of being anything else.
I’m very surprised that our “might-be-Kremlin” troll is praising Sharon Stone, after she came out whole-heartedly supporting Ukraine.
“For much of her career, the roles offered to Stone either involved playing the psychosexual femme fatale.”Or what? Either psychosexual or what? Don’t leave me in suspense!
… “femme fatale that’s psychosexual?”
Isn’t that being just rude?
“They’re so misogynistic—now, that is not Robert De Niro. That is not Joe Pesci, that is not those guys. But I have worked with some really big stars who will literally talk out loud through my close-up, telling me what to do.”I note how she never mentioned this guy.
Hello, Newman.
Ah ah ah, she didn’t say the magic word!
“You leering, bub?”
Glad to know De Nero and Pesci are goodfellas
I’m mad at this pun, but at the same time, I respect it.
Some actors are talking all over your close-up. But Robert? Robert de Niro’s waiting.
That Bananarama’s deep cut.
Scorsese then pulled Stone aside and told her that Marvel movies aren’t cinema.
Glad to hear that about De Niro. He’s the attacker in one of the most upsetting rape scenes I’ve ever seen (“Once Upon A Time In America”) and it could have been a heinous experience for costar Elizabeth McGovern if she was having to do it with an actor who wasn’t considerate and respectful.
Correction…two of the most upsetting rape scenes. In the same movie.
Fuck, that one too. God that movie’s a lot.
James wood is great in it as well
The first one disturbed me more than the second one
Same – at least after that you’re in no doubt he’s a bad man.
“For much of her career, the roles offered to Stone either involved playing the psychosexual femme fatale.”OR……..?!?!?!
FOOL YOU, SAM ROTHSTEIN!it’s going to take a lot for me to see Casino as anything other than a Cable-tv edited space filler, but I will eventually give it a shot, why not? But there is another small reason, which is that nobody makes me understand how far people are from understanding jews like Scorsese. He repeatedly casts italians as jewish characters, and clearly thinks they are “acting jewish” when they are not, and really the portrayals are inaccurate and shitty. Look, Scorsese makes a lot of too-long bad movies. I hope the next one is better than this three hour piece of crap, and I hope it’s 110 minutes. Maybe I’ll turn 50 and think this movie is amazing, but I don’t see that happening. I’m sure he could make a great 90 minute thriller for Blumhouse, maybe he’s a victim of his own success. He’s made a lot of movies that stink, and they were all also 3 hours long.
and i’m in the greys why …?
hey motherfather I’ve had about enough of this flipping stuff
There is not a single one of his movies that “stinks”. He has been self indulgent the past couple of decades and some of his movies could stand to be edited down but he is still a master of the form.
You realize there are Italian Jews, no?
Lol
Does the AV Club employ proofreaders? They should. There’s a blatant unfinished sentence at the end of the fourth paragraph of this article (which is eight paragraphs long). I get it, I clicked on the article and that’s all that matters anymore, but this is just embarrassing from a supposedly professional website.
“Professional website”. Lol.
Good christ is there an editor in the house?
“ For much of her career, the roles offered to Stone either involved playing the psychosexual femme fatale.”
I think we’ve all known the answer to that for quite a while now.
Even Volunteer Proofreader gave up.
Couldn’t they just get a intern to be a copy editor? I am sure there is someone from Vassar or something that just wants a foot in the door.
Who was it that said, “Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with Sharon Stone”?
Other than being uncomfortably anti-vaxx, it does seem like De Niro is a relatively good guy, which is kind of nice to see. Watch someone come at me with receipts, but even his divorces seem to be about normal irreconcilable differences than anything crazy from what I’ve seen.
“Uncomfortably ant-vaxx”. You’re still that gullible and dense after all this time? You poor weak girl you.
You waited almost a year to make this comment? You’re really up on your news.Also, I’m not talking about Covid vaccinations. He’s against all vaccinations and yeah, I think we’re better off for not all getting measles, but you do you.