Actually, I got a little confused about the end of the trial. When Joe’s character shows the picture of the tire tracks to Marisa’s character, he says, “Looking at this picture, does the defense’s case hold water?” So, she looks and looks and finally says, “No.”
So, here’s where my confusion comes in: Isn’t Joe Pesci the defense attorney? Why would he ask if the defense’s case holds water? Wouldn’t the proper question be, “Does the prosecution’s case hold water?”
The way he asks the question, he’s asking her to discredit his own case?
Actually, that’s what didn’t ring true for me. Civil Procedure (which I think is a basic required class in most law schools) does teach that that information can be discovered and how much info can be discovered. Or at least the ones at my school did - and it was right there in all the casebooks.
(My teacher was, well, insane and went several steps farther, and decided that jurisdiction wasn’t really an important topic, instead we had to write interrogatories, but that’s another story. Erie means nothing to me.)
Anyway, while he may not have known the way to discover information - he certainly would have known that discovery was a given.
Lenny & Carl, no.
The entire case, he’d been saying that two kids in the same kind of car that the defendants were driving must have done the robbery. He needed her to say that it was two kids in an entirely different kind of car did the robbery. That his first theory of the case didn’t make sense.
Has anybody seen the Marisa Tomei SNL O.J. episode? Also really good.
As a native Alabamian, I loved the fact that the judge was an alumnus of Yale and that the small town prosecutor had a computer; not the Hee-Haw Law of really bad movies and soap operas.
Ironically, I now live near the small town of Monticello, GA (where VINNIE was filmed [and where Trisha Yearwood was born]) and can’t help but hear “win some lose some indeed” whenever I drive past the courthouse.
That’s a movie that could actually do with a sequel. Vinnie is a more seasoned lawyer now, mainly chasing ambulances and working as a mechanic when things get tight. He’s married to Miss Vito (who appears in a mini-skirt in his cheesy TV ads), they have a teenage kid, and Ralph Macchio is accused of murder again, this time in Harlem. The judge is played by Al Sharpton, with a cameo by Clinton.
IAAL, and I love “My Cousin Vinnie”. I thought Fred Gwynne was PERFECT as a southern judge. Even had the mannerisms down pat. I swear, he must have been in some of the same courtrooms I am when he was researching the role. They really did do a good job with the courtroom scenes.
The one thing that drove me nuts in this movie is a mistake they make in virtually every movie where there is a similar scene. When a lawyer goes to a jail or prison to see a client, there are special interview rooms set up for this purpose. A lawyer NEVER goes into a prison or jail cell to confer with a client (or for any other reason, unless the lawyer's under arrest!). It's a small thing, I know, but it drives me nuts. I guess it adds to the drama or something, but it just doesn't happen.
He lived in a tiny town in Virginia (in this house, if you’re interested) so he probably did his field work close to home. He reminded me almost exactly of Alabama’s senator, Howell Heflin. (Until 1992 it was a law in southern politics that the further you advanced the more you had to sound like Foghorn Leghorn; Jimmy Carter’s failure to heed this rule is why he lost his second election.)
There’s a major plot/continuity error in this movie, if you’re interested.
Vinny tells the judge he’s known in New York as Jerry Gallow. The judge finds out Jerry Gallow is dead. Vinny basically says “Oh, of course, you made a mistake, it’s Jerry Callow, with a C”. Flash forward to the end of the movie. It looks like the judge is gonna bust Vinny, but then at the last second he complements him on his record. After than, his girlfriend says she got Judge Malloy to fax the other judge about the distinguished legal career of Jerry Callow.
Except! She wasn’t there when Vinny told the judge “Callow with a C”, and they’re fighting from that point on in the movie. Go back and watch it again. At no time after Vinny says the “with a C” thing does he have a chance to tell her about it. There’s no way she could have known.
I have such a sad, pathetic life to notice shit like this.
Sorry, but yes, you’re off on this one. Vinny’s defense case was based on the proposition that the crime (robbery and murder at a convenience store) was committed, not by the defendants, but by two other young men driving the same model and color of convertible. What the examination of the tire tracks showed was that the perpetrators’ car could not be the same model car as that driven by the defendants.
So, that meant that the existing defense case was wrong – but in a way that actually made it much stronger, because they now had physical evidence indicating that somebody else had to have committed the crime.
Remeber, it was his girlfriend Lise who first pointed out that Jerry Gallow had recently died. There was no need for her to be present when the judge confronted Vinny.
Yeah, but there was still no way for her to know that Vinny had improvised Jerry Callow, unless he told her after he did it, which he didn’t. (Not on-camera anyway.)
So who says all events have to take place on-camera? Either it was discussed off-camera or Lise figured it out for herself. “G” to “C” is certainly the logical way for Vinny to get his ass out of the sling.
But IMO both of those scenarios are unlikely. All Lisa knew about it before they started fighting was that the judge knew Gallo was dead. They “made up” in court, and then won the case. Then they were trying to rush out of there (presumably before the judge found out there was no Jerry Callo). In all that rushing, Vinny would have had to tell Lisa about his “Callo” lie, and then she would have to come up with the idea, call the clerk (assuming she knows the number and what clerk the judge is going to check with), have the clerk make up “Jerry Callo’s” record and fax it to the judge, and have the judge go back to his office and receive it, all before they leave the courthouse. Not very plausible.
As for Lisa figuring it out herself, same thing. She wouldn’t have helped him out while she was still mad at him, and afterwards there wasn’t time. And I do think it’s a pretty big leap that she would come to the same “logical” solution and implement it without checking with Vinny.
