'My Cousin Vinny' director responds to Rudy Giuliani after Trump attorney references film
Watch: Rudy Giuliani references My Cousin Vinny as he claims election fraud
My Cousin Vinny director Jonathan Lynn has joked that it was “generous” for Rudy Giuliani to reference the movie during a recent press conference.
Donald Trump’s personal attorney said the 1992 comedy is “one of my favourite law movies” before referencing a specific scene.
“I regard Giuliani's praise of My Cousin Vinny as generous from the man who is currently giving the Comedy Performance of the Year," Lynn told The Hollywood Reporter.
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Giuliani brought up the Oscar-winning movie during a press conference in which he continued to claim, without evidence, that the presidential election was stolen from incumbent Donald Trump.
Giuliani evoked a scene in which a witness is unable to identify how many fingers Vinny (Joe Pesci) is holding up because she is too far away, applying it to unsubstantiated claims that Republican poll watchers were not able to properly observe counts.
He stated that observers “were further away than My Cousin Vinny was from the witness”, adding that they “couldn’t see a thing”.
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Giuliani’s choice to nod to cinema during a discussion of such an important issue quickly attracted laughter and amazement on social media.
Of course, there were references to the attorney’s own recent brush with Hollywood as one of the key targets of Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
I do love the fact that Giuliani refers to Pesci's character as My Cousin Vinny as if that's his full legal name, the way Homer Simpson insists on calling John McClane "Die Hard".
— Norm Wilner (@normwilner) November 19, 2020
Yes... Rudy Giuliani just referenced “My Cousin Vinny” in an effort to overturn an election.
But somehow, the fact that as a New Yorker, he can’t do a New York accent is more shocking.— John Henson (@John_Henson) November 19, 2020
Fun facts: Giuliani is equally ignorant about election law as he is the movie My Cousin Vinny.
1. Mrs. Riley: 50 feet away. Election observers much closer
2. She said "four," not "three" fingers Vinny was holding up pic.twitter.com/Xjq5RQKVif— America's Debate Coach™ (@AmericaDebate) November 19, 2020
Rudy Giuliani just tried to use a scene from my cousin Vinny as evidence. If we are going to use movies as evidence, I recommend we start with the new Borat.
— Steve Hofstetter (@SteveHofstetter) November 19, 2020
Giuliani’s appearance in the Borat sequel has quickly become infamous, with the Trump ally appearing to put his hand down his trousers while in a hotel room with actor Maria Bakalova — whom he believed to be a teenage girl.
He has claimed he was simply tucking in his shirt and that nothing inappropriate was ever going to happen.
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Bakalova herself has invited viewers to interpret the scene in their own way, though she did state that movies like Borat work by “showing people’s true colours”.
She added: “I saw everything that you saw. If you saw the movie, that’s our message.
“We want everybody to see the movie and judge for themselves. We can see what he’s doing in the mirror.”
Watch: Borat supports Giuliani after movie prank