Hoffa

The only significant makeup Jack Nicholson had to wear to become Jimmy Hoffa was a fake nose and a set of false upper teeth, as seen in behind-the-scenes footage on the DVD.

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Jack Nicholson's daughter plays the young nun in the hospital scene where Billy Flynn is dying from his burns. According to Danny DeVito on the DVD commentary, Nicholson had asked him to give his daughter a small role. DeVito initially suggested she play the prostitute in the hotel room in a later scene, and Nicholson raised his trademark eyebrow. DeVito, of course, softened because he was joking and cast her as the nun.

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The character of Jimmy Hoffa is one of Jack Nicholson's favorite film roles.

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At the time this film was released, seventeen years had passed since Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance and ten years since he had been declared "legally dead" (when authorities stopped actively searching for him).

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When the verdict in Rodney King's beating trial was announced, filming was taking place at the old Ambassador Hotel. That evening riots broke out in Los Angeles, but filming continued until late at night. The next morning things in Los Angeles appeared relatively calm, so filming continued as planned. By two in the afternoon, however, the riots had intensified so much that the City of Los Angeles revoked the production's filming permit. Cast, crew and hundreds of extras made their first screening to get home amid columns of smoke, gunfire and gridlocked freeways. About three weeks later, the cast, crew and extras returned to the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard to complete filming of the scenes that had been interrupted.

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According to Danny DeVito on the DVD commentary, his young son was on set the day the scene was shot in which Hoffa yells at D'Allesandro about taking control of the union back from Fitzimmons. The tirade included the line "I'm gonna do what I gotta do!" According to DeVito, months later, when he asked his son to do something (such as clean his room, take out the trash, do his homework, etc.), his son would imitate Jack Nicholson and say, "Dad… I'm gonna do what I gotta do!"

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It was the first feature film from Danny DeVito and his wife Rhea Perlman's production company, "Jersey Films."

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As with most widescreen films blown up to 70 mm, rather than simply being cropped to 2.20:1, it is one of the few films with 70 mm prints that preserve the film's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio (letterboxed within the 70 mm 2.20:1 frame).

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The trailer for this film was narrated by Alec Baldwin.

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In this film, the diner where Jimmy Hoffa waits for his meeting and where he ultimately disappears is depicted as a truck-stop café in the middle of the country briefly referred to as "the Roadhouse." In real life, the restaurant where Hoffa disappeared was called the Machus Red Fox Café and was located in a Detroit suburb.

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In this film, Jimmy Hoffa (Jack Nicholson), Bobby Ciaro (Danny DeVito) and Carol D'Allesandro (Armand Assante) meet in the woods. The scene begins with Bobby sitting in a wooden railcar and placing an empty beer bottle on a post before coming down to meet Hoffa. In a following scene that was cut, Bobby gave D'Allesandro a shotgun. D'Allesandro then tried to knock the beer bottle off the post and failed. Hoffa then knocks the bottle off in one throw, leaving D'Allesandro behind.

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Jimmy Hoffa's death in this film is probably far more dramatic than what actually happened in real life. According to historians and FBI investigators, Hoffa was waiting in his car with his driver and Teamster Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien. A car pulled up, probably used by the Mafia bosses he was to meet, or more likely by Mafia assassins. Hoffa then got out and walked to the arriving car. The car, registered in the name of one of the Mafia bosses he was supposed to meet, was later seized, and the FBI found small droplets of Hoffa's blood and hair in it, leading them to believe that he may have realized what was about to happen as he got into the car and was knocked unconscious and loaded into it, after which it quietly drove away. Although they cannot prove it, the FBI believes O'Brien helped the Mafia trap Hoffa and led him to his death. As for what happened to Hoffa's body, the theories are too varied to address here.

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The word "fuck" and its various permutations are said one hundred fifty-three times.

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This is one of two 1992 releases featuring Jack Nicholson and J. T. Walsh; Walsh's other film that year was A Few Good Men (1992).

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Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito played The Joker and The Penguin, respectively, in Tim Burton's "Batman" films. Burton appears in this film as a corpse.

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The film was originally intended for director Oliver Stone and then for Barry Levinson.

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There are three scenes in this film concerning Frank Fitzsimmons and his love of golf. The first is in the dressing room of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, where Hoffa talks with Jerry Vale (Bruno Kirby). The scene opens with Fitz's practice of putting into a shot glass. The second is Bobby coming to see Fitz on the golf course and demanding that he get Hoffa out of prison. The third is the death of Fitz's driver when a bomb planted in the car explodes as he loads Fitz's golf bag into the trunk. All these scenes refer to the fact that Fitzsimmons was an avid golfer who had a bad reputation among the Teamsters for spending more time playing golf than working as President of the Teamsters Union.

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The courtroom scenes were shot in the meeting room of the Wayne County Commission (Detroit, Michigan), and most of the extras were Commission members, their staff and county employees.

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This is the only film Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito made together in which Nicholson was directed by DeVito. Conversely, Nicholson directed DeVito in Goin' South (1978). Nicholson and DeVito first appeared together in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).

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1992 was a year with a unifying theme for Steve Witting: being attacked and driven off screen by characters played by Danny DeVito. First, in this film he appears in a single scene as a representative of the federal government investigating in Jimmy Hoffa's office, where he is immediately shoved out by DeVito's Bobby Ciaro. Later that year, in his only other film, he had the unfortunate privilege of a somewhat meatier role in a more memorable scene in Batman Returns (1992), in which his nose is nearly bitten off by DeVito's Penguin.

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Frank Whaley plays the hitman who shoots Jimmy Hoffa. In Ironweed (1987), Whaley played the younger version of Jack Nicholson's character, Francis Phelan.

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This is the second film in which Frank Whaley plays the alleged assassin of a famous figure. He also played the "Oswald Imposter" in JFK (1991).

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The film's cast includes one Oscar winner, Jack Nicholson, and three Oscar nominees: Danny DeVito, John C. Reilly and Tim Burton.

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It was included on the American Film Institute's 2005 list of 250 films nominated for AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores.

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Although stories usually focus on how Jimmy Hoffa courted organized crime within the Teamsters union, organized crime actually began to take root during the tenure of one of his predecessors, Daniel J. Tobin. Before Tobin, the founding president was Cornelius P. Shea. Shea was notorious for corruption and was connected to the Chicago Outfit presided over by Giacomo "Big Jim" Colosimo. Shea ultimately lost his bid for re-election as president of the Teamsters union to Tobin. Although historians are in broad agreement that Tobin was an honest leader and he was never personally accused of corruption, Tobin tended to turn a blind eye to gangsters and racketeers seizing control of key IBT locals in New York, Chicago and other cities.

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J. T. Walsh and Nicholas Pryor had previously appeared in Blood Feud (1983), a television film dramatizing the feud between Jimmy Hoffa (played by Robert Blake) and Robert F. Kennedy (Cotter Smith).

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Robert Prosky, who plays Billy Flynn, played the role of Shelly Levene in David Mamet's play "Glengarry Glen Ross" shortly before Prosky began working on the series Hill Street Blues (1981).

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It is one of two films written by David Mamet in which actor Robert Prosky appeared. The films are Hoffa (1992) and Things Change (1988). Prosky also appeared in A Wasted Weekend (1987), an episode written by Mamet.

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In 1976, a year after Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance, a reform group was formed from the ranks of grassroots members: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) within the IBT. TDU was founded to address, to some degree, corruption within the union, including the misuse of pension funds and collusion between union officials and employers. TDU also fought for grassroots members to vote directly for union officers and against the imposition of contracts that did not reflect the will of the union's members.

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It is one of six films starring Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito; the other five are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Goin' South (1978), Terms of Endearment (1983), Mars Attacks! (1996) and I'm Still Here (2010).

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Before Frank Fitzsimmons's car is blown up by a bomb planted in the vehicle, you can see a poster for A Clockwork Orange (1971) on the brick wall in the background.

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This film marks the fifth and final time Jack Nicholson and John P. Ryan appeared together in a film. Their previous collaborations were Five Easy Pieces (1970), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Missouri Breaks (1976) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981).

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The original screenplay was written by Robin Moore.

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It is one of three theatrical films starring both J. T. Walsh and Robert Prosky. The films are Hoffa (1992), Things Change (1988) and Miracle on 34th Street (1994).

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Jimmy Hoffa has an on-screen predecessor; 14 years earlier, Sylvester Stallone played a character loosely based on Hoffa's life, Johnny Kovak, in Norman Jewison's F. I. S. T. (1978).

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Richard Schiff and Danny DeVito later appeared together in the film What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001).

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J. T. Walsh and Bruno Kirby had previously appeared together in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) and Tin Men (1987). Danny DeVito also appeared in the second film.

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Hoffa is one of three films Jack Nicholson starred in during 1992, alongside A Few Good Men (1992) and Man Trouble (1992).

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Frank Whaley and Bruno Kirby had previously appeared together in The Freshman (1990).

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Frank Whaley and Paul Guilfoyle later appeared in Cafe Society (1995).

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J. T. Walsh and Paul Guilfoyle later appeared in The Negotiator (1998).

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Jack Nicholson and John P. Ryan had previously appeared together in Five Easy Pieces (1970) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). Of the three films, Hoffa (1992) is the only one not directed by Bob Rafelson.

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