Day 89: Everything Coming Up Vinny

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Lately, Gary has been watching My Cousin Vinny. Like, more than once. I guess it’s been in regular rotation on one of the TV networks lately, and, I don’t know, he just likes it.

Finding Your Roots

Honestly, I think Gary likes most movies about Italian Americans. As I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite shows is Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and recently I saw an episode featuring Marisa Tomei. Her parents both have roots in Italy and she grew up in Brooklyn, but she said it grated on her mother’s nerves to even hear her tough-talk like Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny.

Mona Lisa Vito and that Expert Testimony

I saw the movie when it came out, a few months before I started law school. I watched some of it again, thirty years and lots of litigation later, and actually, I thought Joe Pesci’s lawyering in the courtroom scenes was pretty good. You can get away with a little theatrics in a jury trial, so even his abrasive style wasn’t all Hollywood license.

The scene I watched with Gary was the one where Mona testifies that the defendants’ car couldn’t have made the tire tracks in the photograph.

That scene is awesome and no doubt clinched the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Tomei. But honestly, when I saw this movie pre-law school, I assumed this could never happen.

Watching it again now, I thought, actually, maybe it could. The prosecution would probably ask for a recess since this testimony was a surprise, but as far as her expertise and testimony, it wasn’t that big a stretch! She did have extensive experience in automotive mechanics, she did limit her testimony to her technical knowledge and her opinion of the prosecution’s evidence based on that knowledge. Here’s an Illinois state prosecutor coming to the same conclusion.

Lessons from Vinny

I thought that was it for My Cousin Vinny for a while. But today, as I was preparing to teach a clinic class about oral advocacy, I looked up some of our book’s example videos — from My Cousin Vinny. And they were awesome.

In class, we’ll be re-watching a scene to see the techniques Vinny uses in his devastating cross-examination about grits ( showing that the witness’s testimony is inconsistent with facts we know from the real world — the time it takes to cook grits — and using that to challenge the wittness’s memory or veracity).

We’ll also watch the scene where he shows a witness photographs (of his dirty window, rusty screen, and tree-filled yard) to show how to use exhibits as an oral advocate (here, as proof in support of an impeachment theory).

Yellow Volkswagens

I don’t know if this My Cousin Vinny constellation is just a coincidence or what. You, like how someone mentions yellow Volkswagens and suddenly you see yellow Volkswagens everywhere.

Or maybe there’s some mystical significance to the recurring Vinny theme? (Just to be safe, maybe I’ll suggest to all my cousins not to drive a 1964 Buick Skylark in metallic mint green.)