Unsung Side Characters: Scorsese Series #1: L.Q. Jones as County Commissioner Pat Webb in “Casino” (1995)
In a world of card players, the very look on L.Q. Jones’ lined face tells you something quite clear: that he is not going to tell you everything. It’s an incredible face, and an incredible look that typically inhabits it. It’s irritating, his face. It’s a face that says — and not only in this role — “you are going to your doom of your own stupid accord and I know it but I won’t deign to lower myself to tell you more.” The effect is rather bone-chilling, the more you focus on it, and his goofy doggone mud-thick Texas drawl only heightens it in a Deliverance kind of way.
Though withholding, L.Q. Jones’ poker face appears completely open. Robert De Niro’s countenance — Jones’ sparring partner in the scene — is by contrast utterly closed, calculating, pursed.
L.Q. Jones (who died this year) has only one main scene in Casino, though he has a couple other offhand appearances, and this brevity heightens rather than reduces his power in the film. He seems to have been unearthed from some uncanny nightmare, not wholly unlike the foreboding Cowboy in David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. — an authority figure dredged from the soup of your unconscious, now incarnate and sitting cleanly in your office.
To highlight the point, it’s the same look Jones has in the David Mamet-scripted The Edge, where he plays something of the same character, the experienced local who knows of the doom — in that case: rugged Alaskan wilderness and a very hungry grizzly bear.
In these roles Jones is very unfriendly without being at all unpleasant. If you have yet to go to your doom, or you have somehow survived your doom, Jones’ look will change very little. He is merely recording, observing, which gives him this otherworldly, devilishly immortal quality. Moreover, how old is L.Q. Jones? He’s like Harry Dean Stanton: anywhere from 50 to 90.
The bulk of Jones’ earlier career consists of him populating American Westerns. And, commensurate with the gravitas of the genre, you can put L.Q. Jones on camera and there’s very little need to write good dialogue, though he indeed has it in Casino. Fascinatingly, the Westernisms used by Webb may be a result of Jones himself. According to a YouTube video, Scorsese let Jones alter the script to apply the appropriately Western dialogue that the scene needed. A great director will take improvement from any quarter.
The scene pits Jones’ Las Vegas County Commissioner Pat Webb against De Niro’s mob-appointed Casino boss Sam “Ace” Rothstein, the film’s protagonist.
It’s really one of the most perfectly executed face-off conversations ever put on camera. The polar opposite of the many blustery, menacing Joe Pesci shakedowns. Structurally it takes place nearly at the film’s midpoint and fits like the clean nucleus of the entire film. That the audience after one and perhaps even more viewings might not process the importance of the scene within the whole tapestry of the film is even more brilliant. Scorsese has the shrewd control to construct the confrontation utterly without fanfare: there’s no music; no buildup whatsoever as to the scene’s importance, and no announcement when it finishes that it meant so much. The fact that essentially the pivotal antagonist one layer beyond the whole mafia whirligig is an urban cowboy who’s hardly even in the film, is a sublimely audacious irony.
The scene opens with a pleasing bit of light comedy, as we see that Rothstein has been working pantsless, in order to keep a perfect crease in his slacks. He goes to his office closet, takes his slacks off the hanger, puts them on, bids Webb inside, and Scorsese’s camera goes low, showing off the flawless crease in Webb’s own flared dungarees as the two men have a kind of crease-off.
Rothstein isn’t untense (he pours himself a shot of stomach settler before the meeting and his shirt’s the same hospital turquoise color as the bottle). But while being respectful enough, he still ostensibly treats it like it’s just one of the million meetings he has each day. This internally enrages Webb (who keeps his ten-gallon hat on throughout the meeting) though he remains as unflappable as a rawhide saddlebag.
It’s simultaneously one of the least violent and, dare I say, most violent scenes in the picture. It’s certainly one of the quietest. It’s violence is of the psychological nature Scorsese has discussed in reference to his Age of Innocence. That film contained uncharacteristically no physical violence, but was perversely, per Scorsese, his most violent for the emotional damage given and endured. Starkness is violence, and the scene with De Niro and Jones is nothing if not stark.
The odd thing is that even though he’s set up to be unlikeable, I think in the scene the audience identifies more with Jones’ Webb than De Niro’s Rothstein. We’ve all been Webb at some point: compromising our initial ask, using our firmest resolve to beg a favor against what seems to be an implacable gatekeeper. Webb wants to have his hapless, previously fired brother-in-law, Don, reinstated at the casino. De Niro asserts Don’s incompetentness and Webb hardly disagrees:
Webb: (Chuckling) You have got me there. Old Don is as useless as tits on a boar.
He then suggests:
Webb: Well, isn’t there some position, farther down the trough?
But Rothstein remains unmoved:
Rothstein: I’m sorry, I can’t do anything, he’s too incompetent and the bottom line is he can’t be trusted.
Webb finally lays down his cards, a warhead delivered on a cushion:
Webb: Your people never will understand the way it works out here. You’re all just our guests, but you act like you’re home. Let me tell something, pardner, you ain’t home, but that’s where we’re gonna send you if it harelips the guv’ner. Thank you for your time.
Rothstein: No problem. Sorry.
Webb: You bet.
Here is a simplified translation of that last exchange:
Webb: I’m going to rip you to shreds. Thanks for nothing.
Rothstein: We’ll see. I can’t wait till you exit my office.
It’s important to note that Webb emits a chuckle in the scene, and Rothstein does nothing of the sort. The implacability of Rothstein — who sits before a large “NO” placard with his hands formed into a tense tepee for nearly the entire scene — to cede one inch of territory and give the commissioner’s brother-in-law some menial position, causes Webb to bring the legal heat down on Rothstein. He is later denied his gaming license, a big blow for someone already operating in a legally grey area. In addition, there’s increased public attention on Rothstein, all for this seemingly incommensurate offense borne of too much caution. It’s a tragic irony of a biblical nature and a life lesson in learning how to give a little bit. This is the classic Western saloon confrontation, transplanted to a neon high-rise. We can feel Scorsese’s justifiable wink behind the camera as he enjoys the hall of reference.
If to Rothstein the world is a big casino, to Webb the world is a big ranch. Which is sort of the point of this whole encounter. A casino was built on top of the range, and at a historic level, Webb and his forebears are very upset. Let’s not then speculate on what would happen if a Native American walked in and planted a curse on them both. Taken one level further, perhaps the confrontation — of the “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us” variety — ultimately stands for the replacement of the American Western film with the American crime/mafia film.
“Point the dirty end of the stick.” “Farther down the trough.” “Tits on a boar.”
Within the electric edifice of Vegas, Webb’s remote metaphors strike like an oil drill. There’s an uncanny violence to the rustic imagery inside the sterile, buffed, air conditioned geometry of De Niro’s office. For some reason I’m reminded of Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, bringing a deadly cow gun into clean city buildings. The juxtaposition is itself harsh, chilling. And though the upshot of the conversation is tension-filled, the scene is also oddly relaxing. It’s the dignity of L.Q. Jones. Vegas may have taken over, but nothing can make L.Q. Jones move fast. Not even the mob.
