28 years ago, Amy Fisher shot Mary Jo Buttafuco.

I was in third grade when this happened. I ever so slightly remember adults discussing it.

I remember !! Me and my parents watched the Drew Barrymore version of the movie. Gosh, remember when Drew played nothing but skanks??

We laughed. We cried. It was a cluster fuck of epic proportions.

The Long Island Lolita

And such unattractive people. I remember thinking who’d want to fuck any of them?

If you'd asked me I would have said this happened in the mid 1980s, not the early 1990s.

Did Mary Jo Buttafuco ever get the bullet removed from her neck?

I remember dressing up as her for Halloween that year, using this picture as my inspiration, but with tighter jeans and fake hip saddlebags.

[quote] If you'd asked me I would have said this happened in the mid 1980s, not the early 1990s.

Probably due to the hopelessly dated haircuts and fashions (mullets, cheap hair dyes, acid washed jeans) of the sorry list of characters involved.

Now these folks are what I envision when I think of NYers.

Didn't Joey Buttafuco end up doing a few porn films himself?

Yes, Joey did at least one. NSFH at link.

It's Buttafuoco. With an extra O.

Jan Hooks did a hilarious sketch on "The House of Buttafuoooooooco" on SNL. I miss her.

She was underaged and prostituted. A child who attempted to kill MJB but the portrayal of AF as a vixen, Long Island Lolita, is a great shame.

Unfortunately, I remember this. Thank the lord the internet didn't exist at the time.

There were no fewer than three, count 'em, THREE, TV movies that aired in the same week! ABC, NBC, and CBS all scrambled to be to the first out of the gate with different versions of the white trash saga. One network bought Joey's story, one bought Mary Jo's, and one bought Amy's. So naturally, each movie made its respective person out to be a living saint. Joey was a loving husband and father who was seduced by an evil Lolita; Mary Jo was a loving wife and mother whose life was forever shattered in a night of passion and violence; Amy was an innocent flower who was virtually raped by brutish Joey and driven mad by her awakened need for him.

It was a heady time, indeed.

Mary Jo Buttafuco. The perfect name for a woman in her situation.

She reminded me so much of Mariah Carey. I never understood why she was cast in one of the TV movies.

One question I've always had. Where were Amy's parents while she was supposedly call girling? Was that ever explained?

OP remembers this because someone in the Saved By the Bell thread just reminded him of Molly Shannon's monologue from SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.

Please F&F the Redundant Thread Thief who turns every noun mentioned in a prior thread into a new thread when he's not attention-milling every irrelevant, pop cultural moment in history.

OP = DATALOUNGE POLLUTION

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

This ridiculous story got a TON of media coverage in the early 90s. IIRC correctly it was the first time that the real culture of Long Island got a national spotlight and the nation was horrified at how unbelievably trashy Long Island was. The image of Long Island as nothing but rich people and "The Great Gatsby" was gone forever in the public's consciousness.

I remember the cheesy one with that Milano girl

R6 I think it's still in because they can't risk taking it out without severe nerve damage. I remember seeing she always sets off metal detectors and has to give TSA a certificate from her doctor saying that she has a bullet in her. That's kind of sad.

I remember how ugly they all were.

Was it the name "Buttafuco" that made this scandal catch on?

Isn't the bullet in her face, not her neck?

Joey Buttafuoco lives in Chatsworth, California now, I believe.

Yes, r26. First Amy clubbed Mary Jo's skull with the gun and then shot her in the temple. Mary Jo is still deaf in one ear and suffers from facial paralysis. Later surgeries partially relieved some of the worst of her symptoms but the bullet is still there.

"Now these folks are what I envision when I think of NYers."

No, that would be LONG ISLANDERS. Read R21. Though, R21, no one, including my elderly Manhattanite parents ever thought of people from Long Island as rich Great Gatsby types. There are pockets of rich, wealthy towns, the Hamptons and so forth, but the MAJORITY of Long Island has been trashy since the beginning of time. Baldwin, Levittown, Roosevelt... stay away.

[quote] First Amy clubbed Mary Jo's skull with the gun and then shot her in the temple.

Where did you hear that? That was Amy’s original excuse, that she hit her with the gun and it went off. That’s not what any medical evidence, nor Amy’s admission in later years, revealed.

[quote] I was in third grade when this happened. I ever so slightly remember adults discussing it.

I remember adults discussing atomic annihilation when I was in third grade during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Another link in How America Got to This Place,

Jack Scalia as Buttafuoco was hot

[quote] Baldwin, Levittown, Roosevelt... stay away.

Roosevelt is African American. It has nothing to do with trashy white people.

[quote] Jack Scalia as Buttafuoco was hot

Joey Buttafuoco as Joey Buttafuoco certainly was not. It boggles the mind that a teenage girl shot a woman in the face over him.

Of the 3 TV movies which do you think was the most accurate? Yes Amy Fisher was underage but it's never been uncommon for married men with children to have affairs with girls often younger than their own children.

Was Joey supplying Amy with coke and was either selling it?

The only satisfying film version would have been directed by John Waters with Divine in a tour de force playing all three of the leads.

A poster upthread commented that Buttafuco 'awakened' Amy sexually. I think that was it. She had never been 'awakened sexually' before. Joey knew the buttons to push...er, suck.

You're young, R33.

Damn it was on the news and in the tabloids my monreal so much that I knew all about it and I was 9.

r29 I was talking about Long Island's perception to the rest of the country. Of course people in the NY Metro area knew that LI was mostly trash, but flyover types were never really exposed to the REAL Long Islanders until this story came along.

People were shocked by a pretty teen girl trying to murder someone. This was years before school shootings and children killing people was rare. When it was a white child from a middle class home, the media went crazy. The Shanda Sharer murder happen around the same time and got a lot of press too for the same reason.

I couldn't find a clip on Youtube and I can't seem to post links to anything lately (what's up with that?) but I loved the SNL skit Aaron Spelling's Amy Fisher 10516 with Danny Devito as Joey Buttafuco and Melanie Mutsell as Tori Spelling playing Amy Fisher

I get it, R40. I also get R33. Roosevelt USED to be populated with white trash, the kind of nuevo white suburbanites who defined the term Long Island trash at the beginning.

[quote]IIRC correctly it was the first time that the real culture of Long Island got a national spotlight and the nation was horrified at how unbelievably trashy Long Island was.

No people knew before then. The guido culture came out of Long Island: gold chains around the neck and the mullet haircut.

I remember wanting Joey Buttafuoco deep inside me. That guido animal was raw sex.

I lived on Long Island at the time.

My dad knew Buutafuco from the car parts business.

A friend of a friend adopted Amy Fisher's dog when she had to give it up (I think from North Shore Animal League)

and the week before my cousin sat with Buttafuco at a wedding and got his business card

What was the really story? Why did amy shoot the wife? Was amy really a teen prostitute?

I love OP's heading! There something poetic about it.

I remember she was sent to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for women. Sad for such a young girl.

R43 Roosevelt was never known for ANYTHING white. Howard Stern grew up there and tells the horrors of growing up in an all black neighborhood. And it still pretty much is mostly all black. I don't know where you're getting you're info from. And, as said above by R33, Baldwin is also (the same) shit. Levittown however, is mostly, and known for white trash, also known as Levittrash. Getting back on course, the Fisher and the Buttafucco families were no where near any of those horrid towns. Amy grew up upper-middle class.

Why couldn’t that crazy teen whore find a better looking sugar daddy?

[quote] That guido animal was raw sex.

She could have at least have chosen a hot guido. Being young, promiscuous, with big tits and decently attractive (to straight guys at least) she probably could have had her pick of the litter. And she chose [italic]him[/italic] to commit attempted murder for?

Was he rich, did he have a huge dick? This was before my time so looking at his photos is startling. She shot someone for THAT?

He had a big thick throbbing cock and tongue. He would make a girl’s pussy wetter than the long island sound.

You haven't seen any Buttafuco porn, R54.

I knew two people from Shirley, Long Island years ago. They were two of the trashiest people ever.

Weren't several members of the original Jersey Shore cast actually from Lawn Guyland?

Yes, R56, Shirley is trash.

Amy Fisher wrote an early autobiography: "My Story." I read it and I was still not sympathetic to her. IMO, she's somewhat sociopathic. Mary Jo says she has forgiven Amy Fisher and wanted to meet with AF. AF refused to meet with Mary Jo, who she shot in the face.

Joey Butafuoco looked like John Belushi to me. I don't know what the attraction was, for AF.

Wow, she is older than me for a few years, I thought I knew everything about life when this happend. So clueless.

People knew Long Island was trash since Amityville Horror came out. Please! You have flies in your house because you left the goddamned door open.

I can't believe Mary Jo took him back after all of that!

It’s like I never got shot by that crazy teenage bitch.

I was her age and I was completely fascinated by the whole story. Watched all the movies, bought her book. I felt some empathy for her as I was a bit of a lost soul myself. I think she was distant from her parents, an only child, looking for attention from a "daddy" type and some thrill of being a bad girl with the prostitution. She was seeing another older muscle head guy (girl has a type!) after her arrest who sold her out by secretly taping their conversations.

I tried to watch some of her porn and it was just dreadful! Nothing sexy about her at all. I believe she must have had some abuse in her past to turn out the way she did. I don't know what else she could have done with her life given her infamy...but it's a pity that porn was the inevitable career path she took, and she couldn't even get that right.

Oh gawd.

Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco eventually reunited for the first time at the 2006 Lingerie Bowl for the coin toss.

Mary Jo was a really dumb frau.

She really was @R66 She’s more angry at amy than her husband

Daughter Jessica looks like Joey with a blonde wig.

Young love...Amy was around three-years-old when this photo was taken

Which one is Amy, r69?

She’s off camera Rose.

Better times for Joey & Mary Jo Buttafuoco. Joe was a piece of shit and I believe he did ask Amy to kill MJ. However, what kind of psychopath, young or old, actually knocks on someone's door and then shoots her in the face?

This story and others as salacious coincided with the rise of entertainment news shows (A Current Affair) and exploitative talk shows (Geraldo, Sally Jesse Raphael). This is why Amy, Joey and Mary Jo live on. The nexus of when this country started to really go to shit.

Wow- i remember the morning the story broke and seeing it in the NY Daily News when I brought the paper in before school. Like Amy, I was a high school senior and the story just blew me away. I couldn’t imagine wanting to fuck a guy that old. It all happened right over the bridge and when I went to college that fall, all the Long Island kids had an Any or Joey story. This story was red hot that year. Now I feel really old realizing that Joey was ten years younger then than I am now. Like I needed any more reason to be depressed...

[quote]She’s more angry at amy than her husband

I mean, Amy DID shoot her in the fucking neck, while her husband did not.

And for everyone asking, yes, it was in the neck. It's in the People Magazine link above and in about a million other articles. You can even see a photo of the injury if you do a search: she was shot near the right ear and it went straight in and lodged near near the spine and neck bones. That trajectory proved Amy was lying when she said the gun went off accidentally.

Amy Fisher, Lorena Bobbitt, OJ Simpson, Mary Kay Letourneau and Patsy Ramsey among others! The 90's was truly a decade full of shocking and sensational true crime cases.

Mary Jo must be some sort of medical anomaly to have an ear in her neck....

The bullet isn't right inside the hole, it traveled into her head to her neck. You know, the bottom part of the back of the head?

Jesus, just look it up, dumbshit.

Hollywood magic turned Joey into a hot daddy.

No ever talks about how Joey repeatedly shot loads at Amy’s neck, ears, face, and kinda legal tities. She’s the true victim here. The loads she had to take left her damaged and barely able to keep her balance in order to walk.

Mary Jo got a makeover and interviewed by Oprah. Amy got a pearl necklace that disappeared in the shower and still deals with a vaginal discharge problem......

You're nasty and wicked, r80. Come sit next to me.

The best summary of this trashy saga came from Mary Jo. It was posted on her homepage years ago.

"Anyway, she had an affair with my ex-husband, came to my house, shot me in the head, went to jail, got out of jail, got married, had 3 kids, made a porno tape and has decided for now that her life ambition is to be a stripper and pole dancer----------so far. My ex-husband, Joey, denied the affair, admitted the affair, went to jail, got out of jail, got caught soliciting a prostitute, went back to jail, got out of jail, got divorced (from me) plead guilty to insurance fraud in California, went back to jail, got out of jail, got remarried (I won't even go there!) violated probation and went back to jail, got out and made a porno tape-----------so far."

R41, R51 Except she wasn't pretty at all. Just an ugly skank, even by Long Island standards.

There's real Joey Buttafuco porn out there. He's with a hooker who filmed it. Look on one of the free mega sites. lol

I can't believe that Joey Buttafuco was only in his mid-thirties when this happened. He looked 50.

[quote]There's real Joey Buttafuco porn out there. He's with a hooker who filmed it. Look on one of the free mega sites. lol

Or you could just follow the link at r11.

OP, why are you dredging up the trash? Is there nothing/no-one more edifying to talk about?

R76, were we chopped liver?

[quote] Wow, she is older than me for a few years,

No, she’ll always be older than you. That’s how age works.

Is Amy Jewish?

According to r78, if someone shoots you from the top of your head and the bullet travels down to your heart, you weren’t shot in the head, you were shot in the heart, like Bon Jovi.

Is Joey cut or uncut? How hung?

Like the above poster, I was the same age as Amy Fisher and I couldn't believe that somebody my age would want to have sex with Joey Buttafuoco. He looked SO old to me at the time. I'm kind of shocked that he was only in his thirties because back then he might as well have been a senior citizen to my teenaged eyes.

[Quote]kinda legal tities.

Joey pleaded guilty to statutory rape and spent four months in jail, so not legal titties.

I was in my late 20s when this happened and he looked old to me as well. Mind you I had dated men who were around his age. He did look old for his age with the graying hair and premature paunch. He also had a fat face that aged him.

[quote] I'm kind of shocked that he was only in his thirties because back then he might as well have been a senior citizen to my teenaged eyes.

Of course someone who was probably twice your age would look old to you. To most of us.

R93 is sort of right, though. Joey looked BAD for his age. He was 36 in 1992 but looked closer to what 56 looks like now. Mary Jo looked freaking old too. They were both rough-looking.

WOW that was what 36 looked like in the early 90s! Crazy.

One of the most fascinating things about when this story dominated the news was how awful Mary Jo was for the first year or so on the news whenever she was interviewed. she was completely the victim in all this, but no one felt sorry for her because she was such an annoying assxhole on TV and she kept talking about how much she still supported Joey and how it was all Amy Fisher's fault entirely--it was like she had Stockholm Syndrome, and was abrasive and demanding about it. Only after some time had come by did she finally (inevitably) turn on him.

That's why Jan Hooks's impression of Mary Jo on SNL was so funny. Until she did it, no one dared mention how irritating Mary Jo was being, because everyone also felt bad she had been shot in the face.

Mary Jo was very "Long Island" i.e. a very rough, abrasive, shrewish woman who it was impossible to feel sympathy for. LI is FULL of women like this. Think Rosie O'Donnell.

Jan Hooks was a legend. She was one of the best comedic actresses of all time.

Joey had enormous arms from weight lifting (which is why they could get away with Jack Scalia playing him), but also a barrel chest and chicken legs. he was not physically attractive in photos, but supposedly he was very charismatic interpersonally. He was such an asshole, and was a national joke--I remember when Vice President Gore was a guest on David Letterman, and said his secret service code name was "Buttafuoco." (Letterman was fascinated with what a horrible name that was in those days, since of course it looks like "buttfucker" and also because Letterman, like many Midwesterners from back then, thinks all names that are not Northern European are hilariously strange: "Uma, meet Oprah...").

Gilooley.

Jan Hooks as Mary Jo for "Unbelievable New Breakthroughs" with Ron Popeil (Danny De Vito).

"HOLY JEEZ! It's like I never got shot by no crazy teenage bitch!"

Amy and Joey were horrible, trashy people who deserved each other. MaryJo had her dignity and tried to hold on to it. She did, for the most part. I wish her well.

Some women were furious with Mary Jo for staying with Joey. Yet, it was her choice. She divorced him years later. She looks lovely these days. I’m not sure when the pic was taken, though.

I remember - it was EVERYWHERE all the time - particularly in NY media. That story led the papers for months and months.

[quote] Some women were furious with Mary Jo for staying with Joey. Yet, it was her choice.

It certainly was her choice, but the problem was more that she would abrasively and aggressively defend him on TV as if it were not obvious to everyone he was in part responsible for the attack on her.

Poorer people from the American NE Corridor (especially poorer Italian-American and Irish-American people) act in that way because that's how they're raised, and they often don't understand that they come across as incredibly annoying to people not from that part of the world. They have to be tough and demanding to survive there, and get what they want, but they come across as trashy and rude. That was part of the appeal of the Amy Fisher story, and also part of the appeal of TV shows like "The Sopranos" and "Jersey Shore"--people are amazed at how obnoxious they are.

Yes, now I remember. Mary Jo was, initially, blaming everything on Amy Fisher. MJ was in complete denial that Joey was partly to blame. MY was a shooting victim, but she was also loud, abrasive, obnoxious, etc. I was unable to sympathize very much with MJ. IMO, in the end, if MJ was the one to leave Joey, it was because Joey gave her no choice. MJ clung desperately and futilely to Joey, it seemed.

*MJ* was a shooting victim, but she was also loud, abrasive, obnoxious, etc.

Give Mary Jo a break

R103, meet R63

Amy got some hot cock through out her porn career.

r111 nobody needs a fucking thread hall monitor.

SNL did a skit about a BET version of the Buttafuco affair, wish I could find it.

SNL did a skit about a BET version of the Buttafuco affair, wish I could find it.

SNL did a skit about a BET version of the Buttafuco affair, wish I could find it.

Triple poster is back

Mary Jo SO reminds me of Carmela Soprano and Joey Buttafuco is Tony Soprano.

Amy & the Buttafuocos ushered in the era of trash talk tv & reality tv. There used to be newsy-daytime talk shows & they’d talk earnestly about racism, homeless people, the problems of Vietnam vets, how to handle landlord tenant disputes & report pollution in residential neighborhoods like Love Canal.

Overnight all of those shows became the Amy/Joey/Mary Joe show. Maury Povitch switched from doing race baiting shows about Howard Beach to rock ‘em, sock ‘em relationship shows & who’s my baby daddy?it changed everything. Trash tv had arrived, fully sprung from the bullet wound in Mary Jo Buttafuoco’s head,

Did they do anal?

True r119. Trash tv talk shows dominated the rest of the 90s and into the 2000s. It was all such crap.

[quote]Is Amy Jewish?

Yes. Wikipedia says that her mom was Jewish.

Amy Fisher was half italian and half jewish.

Everyone walked around for weeks twisting their mouths all over their faces imitating Mary Jo.

Dateline 2012 — Mary Jo Buttafuoco weds in Vegas

All that surgery Mary Jo had & she couldnt talk a dr into fixing that prizefighter schnozz & lantern jaw?

Are most people from LI ugly or something?

I don't think we ever heard of this outside the US, though I suppose I wouldn't have been old enough to understand at the time anyway. But years later I saw a clip online of Madonna singing Bad Girl on SNL around that time, which ended with her ripping up a picture of Joey Buttafuoco as a parody of Sinéad with the Pope and I thought: "What was all that about?" Turns out, quite a lot!

R128 It was Madonna desperate for attention as usual.

Let's tell some Mary Jo Buttafuoco jokes. OK I'll go

Why did Mary Jo Buttafuco take her husband back?

Mary Jo looked like Bette Davis after the stroke with the twisted mouth.

Mary Jo looks like a trans in r125's picture. Damn.

Mary Jo looks like a trans in r125's picture. Damn.

Once again R132, R133?

R134 Sometimes the post button gets stuck. That shit has happened to me before.

Except that poor Mary Jo not only sounded thoroughly trans as many "Lawn Guyland" trannies, but she played the Joey victim that enabled. How could such a masculine woman have turned the fates around for itself.