Another vote for Con Air. The final stinger for Con Air is just too perfect.
Craps Dealer: “Does the shooter feel lucky?”
Steve Buscemi (as an escaped serial killer): “Yes he does.”
Votes for Reservoir Dogs and Ghost World too.
Another vote for Con Air. When the little girl aks him if he’s sick.
1- Fargo
2- Ghost World
3- (much harder to decide) The Messenger. A tiny but brilliantly acted role.
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Didn’t make my top three, but TL would have been my #4. “Nervy and sly” indeed.
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Definitely agree on GW (one of my other two), as well as people voting for the movie as much as the role (4 votes for less than 60 seconds in Pulp Fiction?!?), but at least it’s good to know Trees has its fans.
Yeah, I’m trying to remember if he’s in more than one scene (when he bumps into Tom) but am coming up empty.
I echo the sentiment that Con Air should have been on the list. It was a shitty movie, but he was good in it.
A little trivia point – Quentin Tarantino has said that Buscemi’s “Buddy Holly” character in Pulp Fiction really is Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs. QT said that he and Buscemi had decided on set that it would be amusing to make him the same character, and that they should subtly play it that way. The back story they came up with was that Mr. Pink survived the shoot-out with the cops at the end of RD, escaped with the loot and was now a fugitive. He was doing Buddy Holly because it was a job where he could wear a disguise. They decided for Buscemi to play it as a really bad Buddy Holly, like Mr. Pink would do.
None of this is actually in the movie, of course, it’s all just in those back ground stories that actors and directors come up with, but I always like to take it as confirmation right from the horse’s mouth that Mr. Pink (the one true “professional” of the bank robbers) got away at the end of RD.
He was very good indeed in Con Air - maybe the best thing about that movie - but of the available options, I voted for Monsters Inc. His sneaky, ambitious, resentful monster was a highlight of that fine Pixar flick.
Haven’t seen many of those movies but I voted anyway for Fargo since I have seen that. He cracks me up every time I watch it.
I’ve told this story before, but my mother was on the set of Fargo while they were filming the scene of Steve Buscemi burying the money along that fence line in the snow (which was real fence line north of Grand Forks, ND, by the way. They really are that long and barren). She was interviewing the Coen brothers for the local paper. Later on she was telling me how she was watching them put fake blood on “some actor.” I was saying, “mom, that wasn’t ‘some actor,’ that was Mr. PINK.” She didn’t care. I still don’t thnk she has any idea how cool it was that she got to stand there talking to Joel Coen while people were putting fake blood on Steve Buscemi right in front of them. It was literally just a day at work for her.
Makes you wonder if Steve remembers your mom… 
I think the humor inherent in that isn’t that Mr. Pink is a terrible Buddy Holly, but that he’s a waiter…and he’s the one who has a huge diatribe about how stupid tipping is. I always wonder, does he respect the people who stiff him on the tips or is he full of righteous indignation at every asshole who walks out without leaving a few bucks on the table?
I voted for The Big Lebowski, Reservoir Dogs, and Ghost World.
5 votes for Pulp Fiction even though Buscemi was onscreen for about 15 seconds?
Man, y’all are just Quentin Tarantino’s bitches. :dubious:
While Pulp/Fargo/Lebowski/Ghost are all great films. They aren’t Steve Buscemi films.
My all time favorite where Steve is the star is Ed and His Dead Mother. A must see for Buscemi fans.
(What, no love for Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead? Airheads? C’mon, he stole every scene in *The Wedding Singer * that he was in.)
“I am the walrus.”
I don’t know how you can call Fargo not a Steve Buscemi film. He is the third principal character, after Marge Gunderson and Jerry Lundegaard.
Con Air would be my #2 vote – a great character in a bad movie.
I’ve also liked him a lot on 30 Rock, but that’s just a couple of cameos as a sleazy P.I.
One more vote for Fargo, though I’ve really liked him in just about everything.
He didn’t kill the girl if that’s what you’re alluding to - there’s a scene of her waving goodbye to the plane after it takes off.
Only 4 votes for Living In Oblivion??? Is it that nobody’s ever HEARD of the movie, or was I the only one who liked it?
It’s a terrific movie, but he’s relatively mellow (for him, at least) in that film. Catherine Keener and Peter Dinklage are the ones that really steal that movie.
Ditto Ghost World, after Thora Birch and Scarlet J. The OP said the the Best Role, not the Best Starring Role (kind of pointless for a character actor).
What, no Mr. Deeds?!
I am not voting, 'cause I haven’t seen half those films. But I am very, very glad that he gets the recognition I’ve always thought he deserves.
I’ve always enjoyed his cameo in Billy Madison.