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'''Goodfellas''' (also spelled '''GoodFellas''') is a 1990 film directed by Martin Scorsese, based on the book ''Wiseguy'' by Nicholas Pileggi, the true story of mob informer Henry Hill.
The film stars Ray Liotta as Henry Hill, Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway (based on Jimmy Burke), Joe Pesci, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the sociopath Tommy DeVito (based on Tommy DeSimone), Lorraine Bracco as Hill's wife (Karen Hill), and Paul Sorvino as Paulie Cicero (based on Paul Vario).
Plot
Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) admits, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." As a boy, Henry idolized the Lucchese crime family gangsters in his blue-collar, predominantly Italian neighborhood in East New York, Brooklyn, and in 1955 quit school and went to work for them. The local mob capo, Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino) (based on the actual Lucchese mobster Paul Vario) and Cicero's close associate Jimmy Conway (De Niro) (based on Jimmy Burke) help cultivate Henry's criminal career.
As adults, Henry and his associate Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci in his Academy Award-winning performance) conspire with Conway to steal some of the billions of dollars of cargo passing through Idlewild Airport (now known as JFK International Airport). They help out in a key heist, stealing over half a million dollars from the Air France cargo terminal. The robbery helps Henry gain more of Cicero's trust. However, because Henry is half-Irish, he knows he can never become a "made man," a full member of the crime family. Nor can Jimmy Conway, who is also Irish.
Henry's friends become increasingly daring and dangerous. Conway loves hijacking trucks, and Tommy has an explosive temper and a psychotic need to prove himself through violence. At one point, he humiliates an innocent and unarmed young waiter "Spider" (played by an unknown Michael Imperioli), asking Spider to dance à la ''The Oklahoma Kid'' then shooting him in the foot. Later, when Spider stands up to Tommy, Tommy suddenly draws his gun and shoots Spider in the chest, killing him instantly.
Henry also meets and falls in love with Karen (Lorraine Bracco), a no-nonsense young Jewish woman; they go to the Copacabana club two to three times a week (the film depicts this in a famous steadicam shot). Karen feels uneasy with her boyfriend's career, but is also "turned on" by it. Henry and Karen eventually marry.
In June 1970, Tommy (aided by Jimmy Conway) brutally murders Billy Batts (Frank Vincent), a made man in the competing Gambino crime family; a major offense that could get them all killed by the Gambinos if discovered. Henry, Conway and DeVito bury Batts' corpse in an abandoned field (a flash-forward of this scene opens the film). When they discover six months later that the land has been sold, they are forced to exhume, move, and rebury the badly decomposed body.
Henry's marriage deteriorates when Karen finds he has a mistress, Janice Rossi (played by the late Gina Mastrogiacomo). Karen confronts a sleeping Henry with a gun as he wakes up. As soon as she lowers the gun, Henry subdues her and screams that he has enough on his mind having to worry about being whacked on the street without waking up with a gun in the face.
After dangling a debt-ridden Florida gambler over a lion cage at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, Henry and Jimmy are caught and sent to prison for four years. There, Henry deals drugs to keep afloat and to support his family, and, when he returns to them, he has a lucrative drug connection in Pittsburgh. Cicero warns Henry against dealing drugs, since mob bosses can get hefty prison sentences if their men are running drugs behind their back.
Henry ignores Cicero and involves Tommy and Jimmy as well as his wife, and new mistress (Debi Mazar) in an elaborate smuggling operation. About the same time, December 1978, Jimmy Conway and friends plan and carry out a record $6,000,000 heist from the Lufthansa cargo terminal at JFK airport. Soon after the heist, Jimmy grows paranoid when some of his associates foolishly flaunt their gains in plain sight, possibly drawing police attention, and begins having them killed off. Worse, after promising to welcome Tommy into the Lucchese family as a "made man," the elder members of the family instead kill him as retaliation for Batts' death.
In an extended, virtuoso sequence titled "Sunday, May 11th, 1980," all of the different paths of Henry's complicated Mafia career collide. He must coordinate a major cocaine shipment; cook a meal for his family; pick up his brother at the hospital; deliver guns; placate his mistress, who processes the cocaine he sells; cope with his clueless babysitter/drug courier; avoid federal authorities who, unknown to him, have had him under surveillance for several months; and satisfy his sleazy customers, all the while a nervous wreck from lack of sleep and snorting too much coke. Henry and his courier are arrested by police as he backs out of his driveway. Karen bails her husband out of jail, after destroying all of the cocaine that was hidden in the house. Henry and his family are left penniless.
After Henry's drug arrest, Cicero and the rest of the mob abandon him. Convinced that he and his family are marked for death, Henry decides to become an informant for the FBI. He and his family enter the federal Witness Protection Program, disappearing into anonymity to save their lives, but not before he testifies against Paulie and Jimmy in court. He is now an "average nobody"; "I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook." The movie's quick final shot is of Tommy firing a pistol directly into the camera, a tribute to the final shot of ''The Great Train Robbery''.
The film closes with a few title cards what became of Hill, Paul Cicero (Vario) and Jimmy Conway (Burke). Henry's marriage to Karen ended in separation with her getting custody of their children, and Cicero and Conway will practically spend the rest of their lives in prison. Cicero died in 1988. Conway's title card explains that he was eligible for parole in 2004, though he died in prison in 1996.
Cast
Production
Screenplay
The film is based on New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi's book ''Wiseguy''. Martin Scorsese read a review of the book and this inspired him to read it. Made Men Kathleen Murphy According to Pileggi, Scorsese cold-called the writer and told him "I've been waiting for this book my entire life." To which Pileggi replied "I've been waiting for this phone call my entire life." Martin Scorsese: A Journey Mary Pat Kelly Scorsese and Pileggi collaborated on the screenplay and over the course of the 12 drafts it took to reach the ideal script, the reporter realized that "the visual styling had to be completely redone...So we decided to share credit."
Scorsese originally intended to direct the film before ''The Last Temptation of Christ'', but when funds materialized to make ''Last Temptation'', Scorsese decided to postpone ''Wise Guy'' (working title). He was drawn to the documentary aspects of Pileggi's book. "The book ''Wise Guys'' gives you a sense of the day-to-day life, the tedium - how they work, how they take over certain nightclubs, and for what reasons. It shows how it's done."
Casting
Al Pacino was offered the role of Jimmy Conway, but he turned it down due to fears of typecasting. Ironically, he ended up playing Big Boy Caprice, another mobster, in ''Dick Tracy'' the same year. He admits he regrets this decision. William L. Petersen was offered the role of Henry Hill, but he turned it down. Ray Liotta was offered the role of Harvey Dent in ''Batman'', but he turned it down to star in this film. According to Scorsese and Liotta, the real Henry Hill has a cameo as a chef in the three-minute non-stop tracking shot of Henry and Karen going through the Copacabana's kitchen facilities. When Robert De Niro's character starts crying after he learns that Tommy has been killed, the man on the other line who tells him is Scorsese's father, Charles. In addition, Charles is the cellmate who puts "too many onions in the [tomato] sauce" during Henry's jail stint. In one of the last scenes in the movie, the Hills' real-life U.S. Attorney, Edward McDonald, is shown advising Karen to join Henry in the Witness Protection Program. He re-enacted what he told them in real life on the screen.
In preparation for their roles, De Niro, Pesci and Liotta met with the real Henry Hill to discuss the story, the characters, what they sounded like, and what real life gangsters Jimmy Burke and Tommy DeSimone were really like. De Niro often called Hill several times a day to ask how Burke walked, held his cigarette, etc. Rap Star 50 Cent Joins Movie Mobsters Buck Wolf ''GoodFellas: Special Edition DVD (1990) Stella Papamichael Driving to and from the set, Liotta listened to FBI audio cassette tapes of Hill, so that he could practice speaking like his real-life counterpart.
Filming
The film was shot in 1989 in New York City.
Scorsese broke the film down into sequences and storyboarded everything because of the complicated style throughout. According to the filmmaker, he "wanted lots of movement and I wanted it to be throughout the whole picture, and I wanted the style to kind of break down by the end, so that by his [Henry] last day as a wiseguy, it's as if the whole picture would be out of control, give the impression he's just going to spin off the edge and fly out."
The long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub was shot eight times, a few times because Henny Youngman kept forgetting his lines.[3]
The scene where Paulie slaps Henry as a warning not to be dealing behind the family's back was added by Paul Sorvino, hence Liotta's expression. The shocked look on his face is actually real; as he had not expected this, and Scorsese kept it in the final cut because he liked Liotta's reaction.
Most of the dialogue, especially Pesci's, was ad-libbed by the actors, with the urging of De Niro. The entire 'hoof' scene with Tommy's mother (Martin Scorsese's mother Catherine), after killing Billy Batts was completely improvised. According to ''Maxim'' magazine, Pesci wrote and directed the "You think I'm funny?" scene at Scorsese's request.
Distribution
The studio was initially nervous about the film due to its strong violence and language. The film reportedly received the worst preview response in the studio's history. Scorsese has said that "the numbers were so low it was funny." Despite this unnerving initial reception, Scorsese's film was released without alteration and the extremely positive critical response to it cemented Scorsese's reputation as America's foremost filmmaker. The film has been seen by many critics as a comeback film for the director after a difficult decade in the blockbuster obsessed Hollywood of the 1980s.
Awards and recognition
Academy Awards
When Joe Pesci won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, his entire speech was "This is an honor and a privilege, thank you." It is the third shortest Oscar-acceptance speech, after William Holden's, who simply said "Thank you" upon winning for ''Stalag 17'', and Alfred Hitchcock's, who merely said "Thanks," when he received an honorary Oscar. Later, Pesci admitted that he didn't say more, because "I really didn't think I was going to win." [4]
Scorsese's loss of the Best Director Oscar to Kevin Costner (who won for directing ''Dances with Wolves'') was bemoaned by many as a repeat of 1981, when he lost the Oscar for directing ''Raging Bull'' to Robert Redford who won the award for his directorial debut, ''Ordinary People''. Scorsese remained philosophical about his Oscar losses, saying "We're lucky we even get to make movies anymore." He finally won the Best Director Oscar in 2007 for ''The Departed''.
Others
The film was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Drama and won the BAFTA Award for Best Film.
Acclaim
The film is #92 on the American Film Institute's list of 100 Years, 100 Movies and is consistently in the top 20 on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films. In 2000 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2005 Total Film, named GoodFellas as the greatest film of all time.
Roger Ebert, a friend and supporter of Scorsese, named ''GoodFellas'' the "best mob movie ever" and placed it among the best films of the nineties. Ebert is not alone in his praise; many critics consider it a seminal film of the nineties, with a scored of 96% on Rottentomatoes[5]. They consider it the third in his quadfecta (Scorsese's earlier films ''Taxi Driver'' and ''Raging Bull'' were considered masterpieces of their respective decades, with ''GoodFellas'' a masterpiece of the nineties, and then ''The Departed'' as his masterpiece of the 00's.
Ray Liotta was suggested for an Oscar Nomination, but not taken up, much to the dismay of some fans and even Martin Scorsese.
Premiere Magazine listed Tommy Devito as #96 on its list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time, calling him "perhaps the single most irredeemable character ever put on film."
Soundtrack
Track listing
#"Rags to Riches" - Tony Bennett
#"Sincerely" - The Moonglows
#"Speedo" - The Cadillacs
#"Stardust" - Billy Ward and His Dominoes
#"Look in My Eyes" - The Chantels
#"Life Is But a Dream" - The Harptones
#"Remember (Walkin' in the Sand)" - Shangri-Las
#"Baby I Love You" - Aretha Franklin
#"Beyond the Sea" - Bobby Darin
#"Sunshine of Your Love" - Cream
#"Mannish Boy" - Muddy Waters
#"Layla (Piano Exit)" - Derek and the Dominos
Other songs
In chronological order:[6]:
★ "Rags to Riches" by Tony Bennett - Opening credits, opening narration.
★ "Can't We Be Sweethearts" by The Cleftones - While young Henry is parking cadillacs.
★ "Hearts of Stone" by Otis Williams and The Charms - When they threaten Henry's mailman.
★ "Sincerely" by The Moonglows - The wiseguy get-together (cookout) at Paulie's home.
★ "Firenze Sogna" by Giuseppe Di Stefano - New suit/shooting victim (aprons.)
★ "Speedo" by The Cadillacs - When Jimmy Conway is first introduced.
★ "Parlami d'amore Mariu" by Giuseppe Di Stefano - When young Henry gets pinched.
★ "Stardust" by Billy Ward and His Dominoes - when they first show the grown-up Henry Hill.
★ "This World We Live in" by Mina - In the bar when the various mobsters are being introduced.
★ "Playboy" by The Marvelettes - Narration, business partners, Henry and Tommy burn the restaurant.
★ "It's Not for Me to Say" by Johnny Mathis - The double date; Karen's introduction.
★ "I Will Follow Him" by Betty Curtis - Karen is stood-up by Henry.
★ "Then He Kissed Me" by The Crystals - When Henry and Karen enter the club from the rear.
★ "Look in My Eyes" by The Chantels - They divide the money from the airport heist.
★ "Roses Are Red" by Bobby Vinton - Henry and Karen at the resort and at the club.
★ "Life Is But a Dream" by The Harptones - Henry and Karen's wedding and reception.
★ "Leader of the Pack" by The Shangri-Las - The hostess party.
★ "Toot, Toot, Tootsie Goodbye" by Al Jolson (clip from ''The Jazz Singer'') - FBI Agents are searching the Hill's house.
★ "Happy Birthday to You"
★ "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" by Dean Martin - Narration, life in the mob/no outsiders.
★ "He's Sure the Boy I Love" by the Crystals - Billy Batts is introduced.
★ "Atlantis" by Donovan - Billy Batts gets beat in the bar.
★ "Pretend You Don't See Her" by Jerry Vale - The night out with the girlfriends.
★ "Remember (Walkin' in the Sand)" by the Shangri-Las - Digging up Billy Batts' body.
★ "Baby I Love You" by Aretha Franklin - When Janice is showing her girlfriends their apartment.
★ "Beyond the Sea" by Bobby Darin - Prison life/dinner
★ "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams" Performed by Tony Bennett - At Paulie's after Henry is paroled.
★ "Gimme Shelter" by The Rolling Stones - When Henry is cutting cocaine at Sandy's place.
★ "Wives and Lovers" by Jack Jones - Karen shows off the new house/furniture.
★ "Monkey Man" by The Rolling Stones - The babysitter (with baby) is introduced.
★ "Frosty the Snow Man" by The Ronettes - Jimmy chews out Johnny Roastbeef for the cadillac.
★ "Christmas" by Darlene Love - After Jimmy chews out Johnny Roastbeef.
★ "Bells of St. Marys" by The Drifters - The execution of Stacks.
★ "Unchained Melody" by Vito and The Salutations - In the bar, "They're going to 'make' him."
★ Danny Boy
★ "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream - Jimmy contemplates killing Morrie.
★ "Layla (Piano Exit)" by Derek and The Dominos - Dead bodies are being discovered and Tommy is executed.
★ "Jump into the Fire" by Harry Nilsson - At the beginning of the helicopter sequence.
★ "Memo from Turner" by The Rolling Stones - After Henry leaves Jimmy's with the silencers.
★ "Magic Bus" by The Who - When Henry almost has the car accident.
★ "Jump into the Fire" by Harry Nilsson - (2nd time played) Henry drives his brother home from the hospital.
★ "Monkey Man" by The Rolling Stones - (2nd time played) Henry drops off the guns at Karen's mother's house.
★ "What Is Life" by George Harrison - When Henry and Karen drive to his cocaine connection's motel.
★ "Mannish Boy" by Muddy Waters - When Henry is at Sandy's place mixing the coke.
★ "My Way" by Sid Vicious - End credits.
★ "Layla (Piano Exit)" by Eric Clapton and Derek and The Dominos - (Played again) second song in the end credits.
The film's soundtrack contains two compositions co-written by Eric Clapton: Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" and Derek and the Dominos' "Layla." [7] But, the portion of "Layla" used is not the guitar riff, written by Clapton, but instead the piano coda, written by Dominos' drummer Jim Gordon.
Popular culture references
★ Goodfellas formed the basis for Goodfeathers, a cartoon that was part of Animaniacs. Bobby was a caricature of Robert De Niro (although more like his character in Taxi Driver than Goodfellas); Pesto was a caricature of Joe Pesci (he constantly does the "You think I'm funny?" routine); and Squit, the main character, was a parody of Ray Liotta (he started every cartoon with "As far back as I can remember").
★ Michael Imperioli, who went on to star as Christopher Moltisanti on ''The Sopranos'', did a scene in the episode "The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti" where he enters a bakery in a bad mood and the clerk at the counter is not serving him; he gets angry and shoots the young man in the foot, reminiscent of the scene in which Imperioli's character is shot in the foot by Pesci's. When the clerk begins to complain about being shot in the foot, Imperioli's character replies "It happens", further cementing the reference.
★ ''The Simpsons'' did a parody of ''Goodfellas'' in the episode "The Haw-Hawed Couple". In one scene Nelson takes Bart to the VIP entrance of the cafeteria and gets a table set up for them, the same way Henry took Karen to the restaurant.
★ The video of ''He Who Laughs Last'' by AFI is a parody of ''Goodfellas''. It depicts Davey Havok in the trunk of a car driven by the members of AFI. Nearing the end of the video, the 3 get out of the car, pop the trunk, and stab Davey repeatedly, then shoot him. It plays on the famous line from the movie "As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster" to "As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be in a hardcore band".
★ The video of "Foolish" by R&B artist Ashanti is also a parody of ''Goodfellas''. It has the scene where Henry and Karen go into Copacabana through the kitchen, followed by the famous "What do you do?" "Construction Worker" discourse, as well as the scene where Karen's mother throws Henry out, followed by many other scenes from the movie.
★ In the ''Family Guy'' episode "There's Something About Paulie" there is a parody of the "How am I funny?" Joe Pesci scene. We see them sitting in the restaurant, where Joe Pesci's character says, "How am I funny?" Ray Liotta's character replies, "I dunno, you say funny things." "No I mean am I Rita Rudner funny, George Carlin funny, Spin City funny, how am I funny?" "Rita Rudner funny" (The table agrees) "Oh my god thank you."
★ In the ''Mr. Show with Bob and David'' episode "The Story of Everest", a spoof of ''Goodfellas'' entitled Pallies is shown as "edited for television", meaning that the near-constant barrage of profanities and violence were humorously "censored" out.
★ ''Grand Theft Auto III'' is loosely based on the ''Goodfellas'' and ''The Godfather'' films.
★ A spoof of ''Goodfellas'' can be found in ''Grand Theft Auto Vice City'' towards the rear left corner of the film studio that you purchase during the game. A movie poster identical to the ''Goodfellas'' one can be found reading "Badfellas."
Trivia
★ Robert De Niro's real life lawyer and friend Eddie Hayes appears as his lawyer near the end of the film.
★ In the scene near the end where Henry and Karen are told about the witness protection program, the man explaining it in the movie is the real life Eastern District Organized Crime Strike Force prosecutor Edward MacDonald, who arranged for the real-life Henry Hill to enter the witness protection program.
★ In an early scene, you can see the wiseguys at the cab stand wearing yellow sweaters, and trying on various yellow sweaters. Scorsese does not explain this in the movie, but in ''Wiseguy'', Henry talks of a truck heist where the swag was yellow sweaters and everyone around the cabstand was wearing them.
★ Tommy is portrayed around the same age as Henry (a few years older), whereas he was nearly seven years younger than Hill in real life. In addition, he was actually a tall, mustached, muscular man, in contrast to Pesci. However, as in the film, he did have an extremely violent temper. Also, Tommy is portrayed as being closer to Jimmy than he is to Henry, whereas in real life, Tommy and Henry met at high school and became close friends long before meeting Jimmy.
★ The scene where Henry attacks the man who attempted to rape his wife Karen was part fact and part fiction. Although Hill confirms that he did what he did in the film, Karen actually came to him crying that, at another time, Tommy had also attempted to rape her. Unlike the scene in the film, Henry did angrily confront Tommy (Tommy denied Karen's story), which happened to be one of their last conversations before DeSimone's death in 1979.
★ Many scenes are filmed in neighborhoods pretaining to the film, or were filmed in the respective neighborhoods where the actual events took place. As mafia crime was rampant in such respected districts as Ozone Park, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, and Brooklyn, NY. As depicted in the book Wiseguys. As many mobsters such as Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill regularly frequented.
★ The murder of Billy Batts is depicted with almost complete accuracy in the film. However, according to Hill, Batts was actually buried on the property of a friend of Jimmy's , rather than near the side of a highway. Also, the actual murder took place a couple of weeks after Billy insulted Tommy, and not on the same night, as depicted in the film. Billy Batts had previously been one of the biggest guys in the neighborhood, before being sentenced to a spell in prison. When he was released, Jimmy had taken a lot of his business away, and he wanted it back.
★ Tommy's death was not really a set-up operation, where, in the film, members of the Gambino Family, pretending to be Lucchese associates, say that they will get Tommy "made" and then kill him in revenge for Billy Batts. Jimmy Burke is shown weeping in response to learning of the death via phone booth, which was his real-life reaction to the news, but he did not really learn the truth and grieve until he got back from a Florida errand. In real life, Paul Vario, Tommy's own boss, had a sit-down with the Gambino members and told them that Tommy had murdered Batts and attempted to rape Karen Hill (as mentioned above). Feeling embarrassed about the incident, Vario offered to let the Gambinos kill Tommy in revenge for their loss, which they happily obliged. Hill later said that he didn't find out the truth about Tommy's death and the men behind it until after he had testified in court.
★ The scene in which Frank Carbone was found dead hanging from a hook and frozen stiff in a refrigerated meat truck was in fact based on the real life murder of con man and hustler Richard Eaton. Eaton became very friendly with Jimmy Burke and the Robert's Lounge crew and later persuaded Burke to invest $250,000 in a cocaine deal, promising immense profit. Eaton instead, kept the money for his own use and when Burke finally found out he was scammed, killed Eaton and dumped his body, hogtied and gagged on the floor of an abandoned tractor-trailer in a garbage filled lot in Brooklyn. It was winter at the time, and his frozen body wasn't discovered until days later by children playing there. Detectives found a small address book sewn into the lining of Eaton's clothing with the name, address and telephone number of Jimmy Burke listed in the book. Later on when Henry Hill asked Burke about Eaton's whereabouts, Burke told him "Don't worry about him. I whacked the fucking swindler out." Burke was convicted of Eaton's murder, making it his first and only conviction of murder despite being the prime suspect in many killings.
★ The word "fuck" is used 246 times throughout the movie.
★ For the Layla montage, Martin Scorsese actually played the song on the set of each scene to set the mood of the shot.
References
1. http://goodfellas.martin-scorsese.net/
2. http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/goodfellas.php
3. American Cinematographer. Nov 2004.
4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/netnotes/article/0,,1308896,00.html
5. http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/goodfellas/
6. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/board/flat/46602698?p=1
7. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/soundtrack
External links
★
★
★ ''Goodfellas'' - History vs. Hollywood
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