I just received an advanced copy of Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto by David Kushner. I’ve never played the game, but I always wondered how the creators landed Ray Liotta for the voice of Vercetti in Vice City.
Writes Kushner,
To inject personality into such a big world, they needed just the right actor—Ray Liotta, whom they’d been obsessed with since Goodfellas.
[Jamie] King hit the phones, hustling with his usual determination and style. It wasn’t easy. King kept getting told that Liotta was looking to change his reputation and do a family film. Finally, he got through to a sympathetic young Hollywood agent. Next thing he knew, they were sitting at Peter Luger’s Steakhouse in Brooklyn with Liotta himself, drinking and laughing and effusing about how much they loved his films. Then suddenly Liotta went cold for no reason, staring them down. “Why the fuck are you laughing?” he snapped.
The guys gulped. Liotta cracked up. “I’m fucking with you!” he said.
“He totally Goodfellaed us!” King said.
Kushner’s previous work, Masters of Doom, was a good read (and which I mentioned in my treatise on Civilization). This is probably as good and worth checking out—that is, if you’re into this sort of thing.
I loved Masters of Doom, but I’m having a hard getting through this one, because the writing is just so bad.
“Later they’d head to their favorite bar, Radio Mexico, as alive and electric as the city outside, to guzzle cervesas and fried cheese balls.”
I guzzle a cervesa. The city crackles with bar-like electricity. I guzzle a cheese ball.
“…the cofounders sauntered past the Pokemon mascots and the furry apes in tracksuits designed by Hanes, the graffiti artist behind the original Tommy Boy record log, and emblazoned with the R* logo.”
One morning I shot an ape in my tracksuit. What he was doing in my tracksuit I’ll never know.