Trivia / Gangs of New York

• Career Resurrection: Daniel Day-Lewis had virtually retired from acting until Scorsese convinced him to return for One Last Job. His iconic performance as Bill the Butcher and his second collaboration with his favorite director^note Lewis always cited Taxi Driver as the film that inspired him to become an actor revived his passion for his craft, and Lewis went on to a second stretch of his career between this and Phantom Thread (which led to his second retirement) during which he won two more Best Actor Oscars, establishing himself as the greatest film actor of his generation, and putting him in the pantheon with Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro. This was also the case for Leonardo DiCaprio who starred in this film and Catch Me If You Can which came out in 2002, and while he got better notices for the latter film, Gangs started his collaboration with Scorsese leading to future triumphs like The Departed and The Wolf of Wall Street.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Martin Scorsese originally wanted Liam Neeson to play Monk McGinn. Neeson asked to play Priest Vallon instead.
• Executive Meddling: Prevented the film from being released after 9/11, resulting in some very awkward cuts and disjointed segments. However, Scorsese himself said that the reports of conflict between him and Harvey Weinstein were highly exaggerated, and the various cuts were made out of a combination of concerns over production costs and running time. The fact that they collaborated again soon after with the very successful and similarly epic Biopic The Aviator should be seen as proof that there was no bad blood between them. Scorsese's only pushback was refusing to edit out the World Trade Center, arguing that a movie about the people who built America shouldn't end with a reminder of the people who destroyed it.
• Fake American / Fake Irish: Probably best stated by Saturday Night Live:
  "Gangs of New York. The story of the Irish Immigrant experience, as told by an Italian, an Englishman and a Cuban." ^note Daniel Day-Lewis was born and grew up in London but is of Irish ancestry and has dual British and Irish citizenship.
• Inspiration for the Work: Martin Scorsese got the idea in 1970 when he came across Herbert Asbury's book The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld while he was house-sitting and saw the potential for an American epic about the battle for the modern American democracy. While growing up in New York in The '50s, he noticed there were parts of his neighborhood that were much older than the rest, including tombstones from the 1810s in Old St. Patrick's Cathedral, cobblestone streets and small basements located under more recent large buildings; this sparked Scorsese's curiosity about the history of the area:
  I gradually realized that the Italian-Americans weren't the first ones there, that other people had been there before us. As I began to understand this, it fascinated me. I kept wondering, how did New York look? What were the people like? How did they walk, eat, work, dress?
• Irony as She Is Cast: Bill the Butcher, a hyper-nationalistic American "nativist" who is pretty open about his hatred for both the Irish and the British, is played by Daniel Day-Lewis, an English-born actor of Irish ancestry and dual citizenship.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: A mild case; this was a dream project that Scorsese had wanted to make for twenty years, and his passion for the film is evident in beyond-the-scenes materials. Critics (such as Roger Ebert) reacted positively to the picture, but did not consider it to be anywhere near the same league as Goodfellas.
• Method Acting: Daniel Day-Lewis stayed in character all the time, even keeping Bill's accent. One day, after the day's filming was finished, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese talked him into going out to eat with them. He refused to break character, and the waitress was afraid to go near him. The guy even refused to take medicine when he got sick because flu medicine hadn't been invented at the time. He ad-libbed tapping his eye with the knife.
• On-Set Injury: Leonardo DiCaprio accidentally broke Daniel Day-Lewis' nose while filming a fight scene.
• Playing Against Type: Liam Neeson (an Irishman) actually plays an Irishman for once.
• Production Posse: This was the first collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio.
• Release Date Change: The movie was originally planned for release around Christmas 2001. In June 2001, trailers and posters in theaters said "Christmas 2001" and "December." The film was pulled off the release schedule at the last moment, and released unchanged for Christmas 2002.
• Saved from Development Hell: The film was planned since The '70s before finally entering production in the late 90s, releasing in 2002. A good deal of the DVD Commentary on the film is devoted to explaining the arduous process. Scorsese's initial plans were considerably radical and ambitious. In the seventies, he planned to make it a collaboration with The Clash, making it a punk musical starring Malcolm McDowell and Robert De Niro. In the nineties, he considered making it a trilogy. He also stated that it was his hope that the film launch a new genre, a 19th Century Urban Western, with many films set in nascent conurbations, but it didn't quite take off as he expected.
• Throw It In!: A lot of Daniel Day-Lewis' best moments as Bill the Butcher weren't in the script but were ad-libbed, such as the part where he taps his glass eye with a knife, and when he says "Woopsy daisy!" after destroying Jenny's locket during his knife act.
• What Could Have Been:
  • When the film was first conceived in 1978, Martin Scorsese originally planned to cast Malcolm McDowell as Amsterdam Vallon and Robert De Niro as Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting. Then it was going to star Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, but it fell apart after Belushi died. A cast reshuffle had Mel Gibson as Amsterdam Vallon and Willem Dafoe as The Butcher. Eventually, Leonardo DiCaprio was cast as Amsterdam Vallon and Daniel Day-Lewis was cast as The Butcher.
  • Robert De Niro was cast in the role of The Butcher, but he dropped out when he learned he'd have to spend six months in Europe filming. Tom Hanks was also offered the role. He loved the script, but had to turn down the part due to his work in Road to Perdition.
  • Sarah Michelle Gellar was originally cast as Jenny. She backed out because of scheduling complications with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Other candidates were Christina Applegate, Kate Beckinsale, Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Heather Graham, Bryce Dallas Howard, Alyssa Milano, Natalie Portman, Christina Ricci and Winona Ryder.
  • Adrien Brody and Tobey Maguire were considered for the role of Johnny Sirocco.
  • Pete Postlethwaite was sought after for a role but turned it down as he was offered reduced wages.
  • Elmer Bernstein was originally assigned to provide a musical score. Scorsese ultimately rejected Bernstein's score and decided to take a more anachronistic approach to the music.
  • Happy Jack was originally supposed to have a face paralysis on one side of his face that made it impossible for him to smile. In the final film one can suppose he got the name from his Glasgow Smile.
  • The initial concept for Gangs of New York was also quite different from the film, indeed Scorsese stated that he always wanted to make a film about the period and setting but it wasn't always certain that the final film was the intended story, noting that he also planned a trilogy or a sequel that would lead to the construction of the Statue of Liberty.
  • After September 11th, Scorsese considered removing the World Trade Center at the end of the final montage, but didn't go through with it as the tone of the sequence was about the city being built, and ending on part of it being destroyed would wreck the meaning.

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