When screenwriter Dale Launer first came up with the idea for My Cousin Vinny, he drew inspiration for the film’s titular character from stand-up legend Sam Kinison. As Launer explained to Rolling Stone in 2022, Kinison “was great with hecklers, since he would just humiliate them. I thought it would be fun if the guy who plays the lawyer is actually a smart guy, but for certain reasons, it took him a number of times to pass the bar. And if he was in the courtroom and just took apart witnesses.” Whether Kinison was ever considered for the role is unclear, but the studio had another stand-up comic in mind for the lead.
In the original screenplay, Vinny (as played by Joe Pesci in the final film) was a heavyweight boxer, standing 6’4″ and weighing 220 pounds. As a result, Andrew Dice Clay, who was feuding with Kinison at the time, was an early candidate for the part. Clay had a deal with 20th Century Fox at the time, so there couldn’t have been a more perfect choice in their eyes. Ultimately, he only did one movie for the studio: 1990’s The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, a critical and commercial failure.
“The studio vice president had been dating Andrew Dice Clay’s manager. [The VP] met Dice and he said something horrible to her,” Launer said. “She said to me, ‘Can we take him off this list?’ I said, ‘F–k it.’ That was it. I think he would have been good in the movie.” Reflecting on the missed opportunity in 2014, Clay said, “Anytime it’s on, I say to my kids, ‘Isn’t it amazing that I was supposed to do that movie?’ If I wasn’t going to do it, to have Joe Pesci play the role was incredible. I don’t get mad at that stuff. That’s show business.”
It didn’t just get passed over to Pesci after Clay was dropped, though. A long line of other actors was considered in between, including Danny DeVito, Peter Falk, Robert De Niro, and Jim Belushi. None of those actors was right in director Jonathan Lynn’s mind, except De Niro. As far as Lynn was concerned, “It needed a real Italian American.” Ben Stiller and Will Smith were also considered for the roles of Bill and Stan, but the filmmakers felt that a Jewish man and a Black man being unjustly arrested in the deep South would be too intrusive to the film’s central thesis.
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