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.