Joey's his friend, his manager, his confidante. In Reel Life: Jake is very close to his brother, Joey (Joe Pesci). As Red Smith wrote in 1980, "Just the sound effects of the punches would dislodge the foundations of most fight arenas." The sounds of the punches, though, are pure Hollywood - produced by the squashing of melons and tomatoes. In Real Life: La Motta was renowned for, among other things, his ability to stay on his feet even when taking a brutal beating. In Reel Life: During his fight against Reeves, La Motta's absorbing a lot of loud, brutal punches, but he doesn't go down, even though he loses the fight. Joe Pesci, right, played La Motta's brother, but the character was a composite of Joe La Motta and Jake's friend Pete Petrella. In Real Life: The fight against Reeves, a good light-heavyweight, was La Motta's first big bout - the first time he fought more than six rounds. In Reel Life: La Motta's first bout in the movie is against Jimmy Reeves. "His breathing was like mine when I have an asthma attack," he said. Your legs scrape together." Scorsese was concerned about De Niro after his weight gain. "I began to realize what a fat man goes through," said De Niro. Then, during a four-month break in filming, he ate his way from 160 to 215 pounds, loading up at some of the best restaurants in France. In Real Life: De Niro prepared to play the young La Motta by dieting and working out. Then the movie cuts to 1941, and a lean and mean La Motta is shown dancing around the ring. In Reel Life: It's 1964, and an overweight La Motta is shown in a dressing room, rehearsing a nightclub monologue. "Not a good movie, either, jerky, with gaps in it, a string of poorly lit sequences, some of them with no beginning and some with no end. "Sometimes, at night, when I think back, I feel like I'm looking at an old black-and-white movie of myself," La Motta wrote near the start of his book. In Real Life: Scorsese seems to have lifted the film's distinctive look and feel directly from La Motta's autobiography. In Reel Life: La Motta's life is black-and-white, episodic, sometimes confusing, dark and doesn't have much of a soundtrack. It's not the way I am now, but the way I was then." After the film came out, La Motta said, "When I saw the film I was upset. La Motta's involvement in this less-than-flattering portrait may be puzzling to some, but in his autobiography he doesn't spare himself, either. In Real Life: The film is based on La Motta's 1970 autobiography, also entitled "Raging Bull." La Motta coached and sparred with Robert De Niro (who plays La Motta in the film). In Reel Life: Jake La Motta is listed as a "consultant" in the opening credits. But just how true is the story? You decide. "Raging Bull" was also nominated for best picture, but lost out to "Ordinary People."ĭirector Martin Scorsese's brutal depiction of La Motta's life in and out of the ring pounds home the aura of realism with every blow. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1980, and took home two - Robert De Niro won best actor, and Thelma Schoonmaker won for best film editing. "Raging Bull," the gritty biopic about the life of former middleweight boxing champion Jake La Motta, was considered by many to be the best movie of the 1980s.
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