Gangs of New York/Trivia

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• Development Hell: Scorsese first started trying to get the movie made in 1978.
• Doing It for the Art: They actually built what was essentially a full scale complete replica of the Five Points in Italy just to film the movie. All of the costumes and props were painstakingly created to be historically accurate too. According to one of the extras on the DVD, George Lucas visited the set and complained to Scorsese that it could all be easily done on computers for much cheaper. But Scorcese, of course, was doing it for the art.
  • Also noteworthy is how insanely in-character Day-lewis got for Bill the Butcher, right down to learning an extinct accent for the part. The guy even refused to take medicine when he got sick because flu medicine hadn't been invented at the time. But then again, its Daniel Day-Lewis. He ad-libbed tapping his eye with the knife. This trope should be renamed "Daniel Day-Lewis Is A Badass," for God's sake.
• Executive Meddling: Prevented the film from being released after 9-11 and caused it to be cut down quite a bit, causing disjointed segments (Scorsese doesn't believe in "Director's Cuts").
  • 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.
• 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."

• Playing Against Type: Liam Neeson (an Irishman) actually plays an Irishman for once.
• 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 Dan Aykroyd as Amsterdam Vallon and John Belushi as Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting. The project 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.
  • 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.