The Joe Spinell Story (2001 Video)

William Lustig: Self

Photos 

Quotes 

• William Lustig : Joe Spinell was an actor who worked constantly. He was pretty much in demand by every A-list and B-list director on the east coast and west coast. He would take a role, large or small. He just loved to work. Joe loved movies, loved being on a set, loved acting... that was his life.

• William Lustig : The drinking and the drugs with Joe escalated after we finished Maniac. He was really getting bad after that, both personally and professionally. I think the financial success of Maniac might have facilitated some of his behavior. He owned a sizeable portion of the film, and profits were coming in within six months after the release, and the distributors then gave him his share of the money, which Joe took and went out and did stuff that he might not have done.

• William Lustig : Joe never approached a role as a "small role". He in a very naturalistic manner would try to make any role he landed memorable.

• [on the death of Joe Spinell's mother in 1987] 

  William Lustig : Shortly after Joe's mother passed away, I saw even a further decline in Joe. He became someone who... I didn't even want to be around anymore. Because he was just so out of it.

  [cut to William James Kennedy] 

  William James Kennedy : I stayed with Joe in his apartment for a few months after his mother died. Every time we'd walk into the apartment after we were out for the day or night or whatever, Joe would say out loud into the apartment, "Hi Ma, were home."

  [cut to Luke Walter] 

  Luke Walter : When she passed on, it really did affect him. I mean it really, really did. Joe and I were sort of away from each other at that point in time. I made an effort to reconsile. I showed up at the funeral and payed my respects. Joe thanked me and everyone for attending and lending him emotional support. But... I don't think I ever saw Joe happy again after that.

  [cut to Jason Miller] 

  Jason Miller : With Joe being a Mama's Boy all his life and to have her die... it's something I belive that Joe could never cure himself of the pain over his mother dying.

  [cut to Grace Raimo] 

  Grace Raimo : Joey's health got worse after our mother died. I lived only a block away with my husband and after that really more or less took care of him. It was really tough for me. First as a teenager dealing with my very sick father, and now with my younger brother Joe... with almost the exact same health problems.

• [on Joe Spinell's last days] 

  William Lustig : I hadn't seen Joe for some time when, out of the blue, I called him up at his apartment a day or two after he arrived back from Mobile, Alabama after filming a movie down there and asked if he would like to have dinner with me at the Mayfair Hotel on Central Park West for old time sake. He showed up at the hotel restaurant very well dressed in a suit and tie... but he did not look at all well. He was with this woman... a kinda elderly woman from his neighborhood in Sunnyside, Queens. While we were talking over dinner, Joe asked the woman to sing and she began to sing some Italian folk song and Joe rested his head against her shoulder and began to cry. Now I'm looking at this and thinking to myself, "oh my God, this is awful". I realized that Joe was a man who could never get over the loss of his mother... ever. Just after I had seen Joe, I flew to Los Angeles where I began work on a movie called Relentless. The very last time I ever spoke to Joe was a day or two later when I called him again where I told him more about the movie I was making and I invited him to come to Los Angeles. I would fly him out, put him up in a hotel for a week so he could act in a scene in the movie and for the first time ever... Joe turned me down. He said, "I can't do it, Bill. I just can't. I lost my false teeth a few days ago. I don't look good. I'm sorry". He hung up a minute later and that was that.

• [on Joe's death] 

  William Lustig : There's a funny story that I'm sure Joe is laughing about in Heaven. One of the things that Joe kept was the fake severed head from the ending of 'Maniac'. He kept it in his living room on top of his television set. Joe was a hemophiliac. When Joe died, he died from somehow bleeding to death. Nobody knows all the details but from what I heard, he was alone in his apartment on that morning, he was drunk, high or whatever, he somehow cut himself and instead of biding his wound, he wondered around the apartment, fell asleep on his couch, and bled to death. So there was this massive amount of blood all over the living room. When the police showed up later that day, they find all this blood all over the living room floor and they see this fake severed head on top of the large TV set. They thought it was a real head so they freaked out! Looking down from Heaven, I'm sure that Joe found it funny because that was his kind of humor.

• William Lustig : In 1982 when we did Vigilante, Joe was starting to become unreliable. The drinking and drugs with him had really started to escalate. He was no longer the professional and loyal man I knew from Maniac. Because of his drinking, it was becoming increasingly difficult to get him to show up for work on the set. I remember one morning, he didn't show up at all. So, I had to send Andy Garonni out searching for him... doing detective work. Andy would go around to various bars around Manhattan trying to find out which one he was in, and from there to which random girl he would pick up. Joe's mother was one of the extras for the courtroom scene we were supposed to shoot on that day. When Joe finally did show up with Andy after he found him where ever he had been, she yelled at Joe when he came onto the set in front of me and everyone about him never showing up and getting drunk. She screamed at him something like: "you owe Bill and Andy an apology! You everyone here an apology!" Joe, turning beat red with embarrassment, just replied, "yeah, Ma... all right, Ma... yeah, Ma... I understand... I was wrong..." After it was all over, Joe stood up on a box and apologized to the whole cast and crew.

• William Lustig : While we were filming Maniac, I once told him: "Joe, we'll be lucky if this movie plays in seedy cinemas on 42nd Street and out-of-the-way, rural, run-down Texas drive-ins". He told me: "Bill, you're wrong. What we're making here is a happening."

• William Lustig : Joe did not have a bank account because him and the IRS did not see eye-to-eye about finances. Up until the day he died, Joe would get these residual checks from his first movie role in The Godfather. During the mid 1970s, he would show up at my office downtown with these checks asking, "Bill, do you think when you have time, could you go down to your bank and cash this $16,000 check for me?" Every month I would see this huge residual checks he was getting from The Godfather. Finally one day I asked him, "How did you get this? How come you're getting all this money?" He replied, "Well, I was the second highest paid person on The Godfather". That's when he sat down and told me the story. He was hired by Francis Ford Coppola as a day player. Coppola loved Joe and loved his looks and charisma so much that he kept him on the picture for over six months. Despite that Joe was uncredited with his role, all of the other actors, with the exception of Marlon Brando, were being payed what was known as schedule ad-SAG minimum. A Screen Actor's Guild rep would log Joe in as being on the job every day during the six-month production. So as a result, Joe was ending up receiving residual checks for a few thousand dollars more then most of the other lead actors.

• William Lustig : Joe was married to this porn star named Jean Jennings. In 1976, sometime before Joe married her, one of her adult films came out which was titled 'The Autobiography of a Flea. Joe suggested to me "let's go see the movie." I told him, "Joe, I am not gonna go to watch your girlfriend hump on camera." But Joe just said, "nah, Bill. It's no big deal." So one afternoon, me, Joe and his friend Luke Walter went to a local porno house on 42nd Street to watch the movie. After we paid, we entered the theater. Luke and I sat in one row and Joe sat about seven rows in front of us in the smoking section because he liked to smoke. The movie then came on. Every time that Joe's girlfriend Jean would say something really lame which was meant to be funny, Joe would burst out in this laughter. It was really uncomfortable being there and watching this woman who was dating Joe have sex on camera with various men. I was sweating in my seat and worried and saying to myself, "oh God, oh God, what's gonna happen after this is over?" When the movie finally ended, Luke and I took a quick exit from the theater. In the lobby just by the door, Joe finally caught up with us and in a very calm and causal voice asked us this: "wait, Bill... Luke... I want to ask your opinion on something. Now in that first scene with that guy... did you notice that she just licked the guy's cock? Right? She was not that into it? And in that next scene while she was down on her hands and knees and this big guy, John Holmes, was fucking her from behind... did you notice the look on her face? She did not seem to be enjoying it?" Now I'm standing here and softly laughing and thinking, "oh my God! I can't believe this that Joe doesn't mind talking about this topic!" Now whereas most guys who have dated porn stars would have taken a different approach to all of this, for Joe... he told me shortly afterwords, "I like her so much that I gotta marry her!"