20 facts you might not know about Gangs of New York

New York is the center of many of Scorsese’s movies, which is fitting since he is a New York boy through and through. His experience growing up in Little Italy first piqued his interest. He saw tombstones from 1810 around Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral and noticed small basements under big buildings. This started him wondering who had lived in the city beforehand and how New York looked back in the day.

As he was starting his film career, Scorsese got his hand on a copy of the book The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld. Herbert Ashbury wrote it in 1927 when the information was much fresher. This got him thinking about making an American epic out of it.

The director first read The Gangs of New York in 1970, and later that decade, he made the movies Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. This led to him acquiring the rights to the book in 1979. Then, decades passed. It was not until 1999 that he finally found a production company that would help him mount his vision.

One of the stars of Gangs of New York is Leonardo DiCaprio as Amsterdam Vallon. This was the first time Scorsese and DiCaprio worked together, but not the last. Leo basically became the new Robert De Niro for Scorsese.

The film primarily takes place in 1860s New York City, and some real figures from the era are in the movie. P.T. Barnum is in a small role, and Jim Broadbent plays the infamous “Boss” Tweed, the New York political kingpin. Additionally, while Daniel Day-Lewis’ William “Bill the Butcher” Cutting isn’t real, he’s based on William Poole, also known as “Bill the Butcher.”

New York City looks a lot different than it did in 1862. That meant Scorsese couldn’t really shoot in the city to have it look accurate, and the director wanted to be as accurate as possible. Instead, the film was shot in Rome, Italy, where the Cinecitta Studio recreated chunks of mid-century New York.

Vocal coach Tim Monich was put in charge of making sure the accents in the film were accurate. Like, really accurate. The Irish characters were not going to have a generic brogue but instead had distinct, actual dialects from Ireland and England. DiCaprio’s accent was based on Americanized Irish accents of the time. The “Nativist” accents were even trickier since that accent doesn’t really exist anymore. A wax cylinder from 1892 of Walt Whitman reading a poem was crucial to Monich’s work.

The film was basically done shooting in 2001, but it wouldn’t be released until December 2002. Initially, it was said that 9/11 delayed the film, but Scorsese has refuted that. Instead, production company Miramax was heavy-handed in trying to get Scorsese to edit the film, specifically to cut it down.

Tyler Anbinder, a professor at George Washington University, was interviewed about the movie for PBS. He called it quite accurate. Particularly, Anbinder praised the recreation of 19th-century New York. The professor said the visuals “couldn’t have been much better.”

Scorsese took some liberties. For example, William Poole died years before the Draft Riots depicted in the film and is not known to have killed anybody. Hey, they did change the character’s name to William Cutting. However, Anbinder said things weren’t as violent as Scorsese depicted, and there were more female and Chinese immigrants in New York than there really were at the time. On the other hand, Hell-Cat Maggie did really file down her teeth into points and wear brass fingernails. That’s a story worth delving into sometime.

Eventually, Scorsese and Miramax came to a (begrudging) agreement on the theatrical cut of Gangs of New York. Of course, Scorsese isn’t the first director to have a squabble over the cut for a film. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner comes to mind. After the release of that movie, Scott recut it multiple times for different releases. Don’t expect that from Scorsese. According to his longtime collaborator and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese doesn’t believe in director’s cuts.

Gangs of New York ran 167 minutes and was long delayed, but people still wanted to see the new Scorsese movie when it hit theaters. In the end, the film made $193.8 million worldwide. That’s a fine total for an R-rated historical epic, but the movie cost $100 million to make. As such, it turned a profit, but not a massive one.

Then again, you make a Scorsese movie for the critical adoration and Oscars, right? It’s not about the money! Well, on that front, Gangs of New York did deliver. Many critics called it one of the year's top films, and it was also nominated for a whopping 10 Academy Awards. That included Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis.

All those Oscar nominations had to bear some fruit. It’s Scorsese! Day-Lewis is one of the greatest actors of his (or any) generation. Not so much. Although it was nominated for 10 Oscars, the movie won zero of them. The big winner that night was another period piece, the musical Chicago. That night, the “Second City” scored an upset over the “Big Apple."

Cameron Diaz was a big star in 2002, but she may not have been the right fit for the film. When it came to criticism of the movie, many singled out Diaz’s turn as pickpocket Jenny Everdeane as a low point. These days, her Irish accent is considered one of the worst ever committed to celluloid. Hey, they said the same thing about Brad Pitt. Diaz is in good company.

At the end of the movie, Scorsese does a time-lapse of the growth of New York, watching William Cutting and Priest Vallon (Amsterdam’s father)’s graves go untended. As the city modernizes, we see sites like the Brooklyn Bridge and the World Trade Center. When the movie was shooting, the Twin Towers still stood. By the time it came out, that wasn’t the case. There was talk of removing them from the film before its release, but in the end, they decided to keep the Twin Towers in the movie.

Day-Lewis is known as an actor who is incredibly committed to his work as a method actor. Indeed, he spoke with his character’s distinct accent for the entirety of the shoot, and he went beyond that. In a fight scene with DiCaprio, the actor had his nose broken but kept fighting. Additionally, he had a prosthetic glass placed over his eye since Bill the Butcher has a glass eye. In one scene, he manages to tap on the glass without blinking.

Break his nose. Put glass over his eye. Just don’t ask Day-Lewis to let his hair get greasy, apparently. The one thing that drove the actor up the way was Bill’s long, greasy hairdo. As soon as the movie was done, Day-Lewis shaved his head completely.

Day-Lewis seems like a perfect fit for William Cutting, but he wasn’t the first choice. Scorsese said that the role was first offered to, of all people, Tom Hanks. Yes, Hanks could have had the role of Bill the Butcher. Ultimately, he took another serious, violent role in Road to Perdition.

Scorsese has shown up in a few of his films. Gangs of New York is one of them. He plays a man that gets taken by a “Turtledove” scam by Diaz’s Jenny character.