Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

‘My Cousin Vinny’ director thinks Giuliani could learn a lesson from his movie

Rudy Giuliani, the surprise star of “Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm” and Donald Trump’s personal attorney, alluded to another comedy classic at his already-infamous news conference.

Shortly before hair dye streamed down his face, and he, predictably, implicated George Soros in helping orchestrate large-scale voter fraud, Giuliani asked the gaggle in attendance if they had seen the 1992 comedy “My Cousin Vinny.”

“It’s one of my favorite law movies, because he comes from Brooklyn,” the cinephile ex-mayor said. The Forward has learned the director of that film believes Rudy has not absorbed its legal lessons in his pursuit of an unfounded lawsuit against several battleground states.

When Rudy mentioned the movie, he wasn’t just breaking the ice. He was using the comedy, about Vincent Gambini, a lawyer who winds up defending his falsely-accused cousin in an Alabama murder trial, to illustrate a point.

Giuliani alluded to a scene where Gambini crosses to the back of the courtroom to prove that a witness — with very thick glasses — couldn’t have seen beyond a reasonable doubt the murder that occurred at the Sack-O-Suds grocery store. Aping Joe Pesci (terribly), Giuliani held up his fingers and asked, “How many fingers do I got up?”

He then claimed that Republican poll watchers couldn’t do their jobs because they were further away from the ballot-counting than “‘My Cousin Vinny’ was from the witness.”

Now, to be fair to Giuliani, he’s not the only lawyer to reference “My Cousin Vinny” in an argument. It’s considered one of the most accurate legal films ever made and is a staple of law school classrooms. Helping its fidelity is the fact that director Jonathan Lynn, profiled in the Forward in 2013, has a law degree from Cambridge.

I reached out to Lynn to see if he thought Giuliani might himself have taken some lessons from the film, which arrived in theaters sometime after Rudy’s celebrated prosecution of organized crime, but before his second (and first successful) run for mayor.

“I don’t think Rudy has learned anything from Vinny,” Lynn said in an email. “Vinny may have been argumentative and belligerent but he was searching for the truth. Rudy, not so much.”

But asked how he feels knowing Rudy’s a fan, Lynn was quite chuffed.

“It’s a very special compliment coming from Rudy Giuliani, currently giving the Comedy Performance of the Year.”

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.