HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO OWN JOEY PANTS’ PANTS, PLUS BOOTS, SCRIPTS, PROPS AND MORE FROM THE MATRIX, BAD BOYS AND THE SOPRANOS
By Robert Wilonsky
This month, Heritage will present the first auction that lets you step into Emmy Award-winning actor Joe Pantoliano’s shoes – boots, actually, the same pair he had custom-made before his Cypher slipped into The Matrix and sold out Morpheus for a bite of steak and a little dough. There’s certainly no doubt to whom these once belonged. Look only at the bootstraps: “PANTS,” they say, as in Joey Pants, the moniker by which the actor’s been known since he was a little kid in Hoboken and no one could pronounce Pantoliano.
The custom boots Pantoliano wore in his role as Cypher in 1999’s ‘The Matrix’
Pantoliano in ‘The Matrix’
“The Wachowskis really liked the boots when I went to my first fitting in Australia in 1998,” Pantoliano says of the intricately tooled leather-and-suede Falconhead-made boots that also bear the black-ink markings “Cypher #1” and “FH-198.” Pantoliano moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s and was enamored of the boots and suits made by Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors for Hollywood’s famous and fabulous singers and actors. When he could afford it, he got his boots custom-made by Falconhead, joining the likes of John Wayne, Jimmy Dean, Gene Autry and his other big-screen idols outfitted in hot-damn western wear.
“I just got them,” Pantoliano says of those boots, “and I wanted to wear them.”
Now you can, too, as the boots are among the more than two dozen items Pantoliano is offering in Heritage’s July 25-26 Hollywood/Entertainment Signature® Auction. They’re being offered alongside signed scripts, iconic costumes and treasured props and keepsakes from a storied career that spans six decades and includes such milestone moments as the Bad Boys franchise, The Fugitive and its sequel U.S. Marshals, Bound, Daredevil, The Goonies and a guest turn on The Simpsons. And, of course, he spent a few seasons on a particular HBO series that made the world fall in love with a murderous mobster in therapy.
Pantoliano’s chairback, script and art from 2003’s ‘Daredevil’
From several of his films and The Sopranos, Pantoliano offers something special – somethings, on occasion, like the chairback from Daredevil that welcomed him to the Marvel Universe alongside the shooting draft script, a portfolio containing color prints from the production and other keepsakes from his stint with the Man Without Fear. And his two-episode turn as mobster Dante Calabresi Sr. earned him a personalized Simpsons guest jacket that serves as one of this event’s centerpieces.
“My objective was to be as different as possible so I could get the next job,” Pantoliano says of his vast and varied filmography. “I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. I’ve gotten incredibly lucky, even now, working on projects that are still challenging and fun. It’s the greatest job if you can get it.”
The guest star crew jacket from ‘The Simpsons’ presented to Pantoliano for his voicing of Dante Calabresi Sr.
For years, most of this material had remained in boxes stashed out of sight – keepsakes from a career that began on the stage when Pantoliano was cast in 1974 as Billy Bibbit in a touring production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, his heavily annotated script from which appears in this event. As his career took off in the early 1980s, with roles ranging from the small-screen M*A*S*H to Guido the Killer Pimp in Risky Business and Francis Fratelli in The Goonies (from which this personalized chairback hails), Pantoliano stashed away the mementos and memories he’s finally prepared to share.
“When people ask about provenance – where do these things come from? – this is the best source you can have,” says Heritage Executive Vice President Joe Maddalena. “Joe’s a cultural icon, one of the most beloved members of The Sopranos cast and in movies we all remember. All of this material comes from him. This is as good as it gets. This is the gold standard.”
That includes Joey Pants’ pants, of course – and the jacket that goes with them: This special event features the two-piece black suit Pantoliano wore when Hugo Weaving’s Agent Smith made Cypher an offer he couldn’t refuse: betrayal of his friends in exchange for fame, money, influence (“like an actor”) and a tasty slab of meat with a glass of wine with which to choke it down. Because, after all, “Ignorance is bliss.”
Advance poster for ‘The Matrix’ signed by Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski and Pantoliano
Pantoliano’s annotated script for ‘The Matrix’ features signatures and inscriptions from several of his cast mates.
There are several significant Matrix items in this auction, including Pantoliano’s annotated script signed by the cast (including Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss) accompanied by a spiral notebook full of candid on-set photos. There’s also a copy of the special effects storyboard bible signed by storyboard artist Steve Skroce and conceptual designer Geofrey Darrow, as well as Cypher’s sunglasses, which he wears on this cast-and-crew-signed advance poster – and were Pantoliano’s. “I bought them at an LA Eyeworks. They were my prescription. I needed ’em to see!” He laughs.
Particularly special to the actor is the Nebuchadnezzar bulkhead dedication plaque, of which only a few were made. The small handful was presented to some cast and crew members as a thank-you for the film’s success – and cultural impact.
Pantoliano, of course, had worked with the Wachowskis on their first film, 1996’s Bound, which finally received its 4k digitally restored Criterion Collection release in June and has rightfully received yet another round of critical huzzahs in the weeks since. Pantoliano’s meticulous money-laundering Caesar was something of a precursor to his award-winning turn as Ralph Cifaretto, a mobster for whom brutality is the sole solution when betrayed by his girlfriend Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and her lover Corky (Gina Gershon).
Pantoliano’s personal cast- and crew-signed script for the 1996 cult classic ‘Bound’
From that film, Pantoliano offers one of Caesar’s suits and his annotated script signed and inscribed by several castmates and crew members, including Tilly and Gershon.
“I was always proud of being a part of Bound, of the Wachowskis’ early career, their first directorial outing – and how much fun I had on that film,” Pantoliano says. “I loved working with Jennifer and Gina. Jen is such a brilliant actor, so smart, so creative. She makes it look so effortless that I don’t think she gets the credit she deserves.”
For years, all of this material sat in boxes, never seen again until it reappeared in this auction. As the actor became what Vanity Fair recently called a man who’s “almost impossible to miss,” Pantoliano – for whom Hollywood offered salvation at first and success later – realized he had an “accumulation of things that I thought would define me.” But when he and his wife, Nancy, began downsizing in recent years, the actor realized it was time to share those memories with the people who helped define him as an actor: the fans.
“Many of my movie-star friends collected everything, and it’s in warehouses that are hermetically sealed, while my stuff was in my mother’s wedding hope chest,” Pantoliano says with a small laugh. That’s the last place he wanted this material to wind up. He would much rather have it land in the hands of those who helped make him among his generation’s most recognizable, in-demand and adored actors.
“It’s tremendously gratifying that someone would even want this stuff,” says the man called Joey Pants.
This print featuring the ‘Sopranos’ cast was a gift to Pantoliano from the photographer Annie Leibovitz.
This stuff includes 22 scripts representing 11 Sopranos episodes in various shades of rewrites, all of which featured Ralph – “Pine Barrens” and “University” among them, two of The Sopranos Sessions co-author Matt Zoller Seitz’s top three “greatest” episodes during its run. There’s also a print of Annie Leibovitz’s “Hell Hath No Fury” Sopranos family portrait the photographer gifted to Pantoliano, which long hung in his home; one of Ralph’s suits, a crème corduroy Hugo Boss two-piece stained with a little marinara sauce; and several posters signed by the cast for the man who won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2003 for playing one of television’s most beloved and sadistic psychopaths.
A collection of badges and an ID card from Pantoliano’s run in the ‘Bad Boys’ franchise
Pantoliano has played Captain Howard in all four ‘Bad Boys’ movies.
Pantoliano has played his share of good guys, too, which is why, among the treasures of Joey Pants, there are some badges, including those from his charming turn as Deputy U.S. Marshal Cosmo Renfro in Andrew Davis’ 1993 The Fugitive and its sequel U.S. Marshals. There are two more, along with an ID badge, from the franchise that saved Hollywood this summer: the Bad Boys movies, in which Pantoliano’s Captain Howard lost his life in Bad Boys for Life but was so beloved by fans he was resurrected to Ride or Die again this summer.
Some fans know him from those movies, especially younger audiences; others, like maybe their parents, remember him as that guy from The Sopranos or The Matrix or Running Scared, Risky Business, Eddie and the Cruisers. For decades Joey Pants has been “almost impossible to miss,” absolutely; he’s harder still not to remember from somewhere, anywhere, everywhere.
“Celebrity wasn’t anything that I coveted,” Pantoliano says. “I wanted to be a good actor, and I wanted to be in the movies. Celebrity was some kind of empty byproduct that had no real value to me. But the armorist on my latest project recently said, ‘I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you how important The Goonies was to me as a young kid and how it was my go-to movie in my adolescence and into adulthood.’ Hearing that makes me smile.”
ROBERT WILONSKY is a staff writer at Intelligent Collector.