Needs to be seen to be believed; in one word: perfection. Every frame, every voice-over, every song - it all comes together at the exact right moment to create the perfect film experience. This film makes you really understand and feel what makes the American mafia so compelling; in the eyes of a kid, who was unfortunate enough to grow up in a tough neighborhood, those gangsters are rock stars.
Live fast, die young - but when you die, it ain't gonna be of a glamorous suicide or drug overdose - the ending will be brutal, ugly and sad. And it may very well be one of your best friends that will blow your brains out. I'll never get tired of watching Goodfellas; the entertainment value of this film is just amazing.
Martin Scorsese chose the songs for Goodfellas only if they commented on the scene or the characters 'in an oblique way'. The only rule he adhered to with the soundtrack was to only use music which could have been heard at that time. For example, if a scene took place in the 1970s, he could use any song that was current or older.
It doesn't happen very often that every person involved in the process of making a film is at the peak of his/her game. And rarely do art and entertainment come together the way they did here. Storytelling with impeccable pacing, this is what it's like when a master composer conducts his masterpiece. All hail the king; the most versatile and talented filmmaker of his generation: Martin Scorsese.
My vote: 10 out of 10 Favorite films: IMDb.com/list/mkjOKvqlSBs/ Lesser-Known Masterpieces: imdb.com/list/ls070242495/ Favorite Low-Budget and B-Movies: imdb.com/list/ls054808375/ Favorite TV-Shows reviewed: imdb.com/list/ls075552387/.
YouTube By all accounts, Lucchese crime family associate Thomas DeSimone, portrayed by Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito in the film, was every bit as ruthless, explosively-tempered, and murderous as his onscreen counterpart. Still, there were some between the real life DeSimone and Pesci’s character. First, DeSimone—who stood 6-feet 2-inches tall and weighed 225 pounds—hardly would have suffered from the Napoleonic complex implied by the 5-foot 4-inch Pesci's performance. Also, Pesci was in his late forties when he took on the role, while DeSimone met his violent end at 28 years of age. The movie’s famously huge “f.k” count was mostly improvised. Among the many things Goodfellas has become famous for over the past quarter-century is its liberal use of the word “f.k.” In all, the expletive and its many colorful derivatives, making it the f-bomb laden film ever released.
The script only called for the word to be used, but much of the dialogue was improvised during shooting, where the expletives piled up. Roughly half of them ended up being spoken by Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito. Two other Scorsese films outrank Goodfellas when it comes to this specific profanity: the word is dropped 422 times in Casino and a whopping 506 times in The Wolf of Wall Street.
It took a while for Goodfellas to be considered a classic, but Roger Ebert was an early adopter. Getty Images Goodfellas was met with very positive reviews and scored some major award nominations, but it took a few years to catch on as a critical classic. However, when it came to calling Goodfellas an all-time great, writing 'no finer film has ever been made about organized crime—not even The Godfather' all the way back in 1990. In 2000, Ebert rated Goodfellas as the, behind only Steve James's inner-city basketball documentary Hoop Dreams and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction., Ebert handed perfect four-star reviews to 12 of the 23 non-documentary Scorsese features he reviewed— Goodfellas included, of course. The famous “funny how?” scene wasn’t in the script. The most famous (and certainly the most quoted) scene in Goodfellas comes at the beginning, when Pesci's Tommy DeVito jokingly-yet-uncomfortably accosts Henry Hill for calling him 'funny.' In addition to being the driving force behind the scene on screen, Pesci is also responsible for.
While working in a restaurant, a young Pesci apparently told a mobster that he was funny—a compliment that was met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. Pesci relayed the anecdote to Scorsese, who decided to include it in the film.
Scorsese didn't include the scene in the shooting script so that Pesci and Liotta’s interactions would elicit genuinely surprised reactions from the supporting cast. Both of Martin Scorsese’s parents have cameos. YouTube Most fans of the film know that it’s Martin Scorsese's mother Catherine who in the infamous dinner scene following Billy Batts’s murder, but the family connections hardly stop there. Tommy’s mother’s painting of two dogs sitting in front of an old man ('One's going east, and the other one is going west. ) was actually painted by co-writer Nicholas Pileggi’s. Scorsese's father, Charles, as Henry’s prison compadre who puts way too many onions in the gravy.
Henry Hill’s life as an “average schnook” never really took. Originally, the real Henry Hill went to live the rest of his life as an “average schnook” in Omaha, but Hill and the Witness Protection Program weren’t exactly a match made in heaven. Hill never settled into the lifestyle U.S. Marshals had so kindly provided following his flip in 1980, and, contacting past criminal connections and goomars, and getting arrested on drug charges. Around the time Goodfellas was released, Hill for his uncooperative behavior and was left to fend for himself.
Once again, he was hardly able to lay low, showing up at Goodfellas-related events, releasing a cookbook, selling art on eBay, and frequently calling into The Howard Stern Show before dying from heart problems in 2012. Only five murders take place on screen. YouTube Despite its reputation as a violent movie, the number of on-screen deaths actually portrayed in Goodfellas is a surprisingly tame five (Spider, Billy Batts, Stacks Edwards, Morrie, and Tommy), or 10 if you include the results of Jimmy Conway’s handiwork following the Lufthansa heist. Of course, it’s worth mentioning that violence, and the threat of violence, is a constant presence throughout the film. Still, a body count of 214 in John Woo’s Bullet in the Head, released in the same year, or 255 in Saving Private Ryan, or even, Goodfellas isn’t terribly bloody. According to the real Henry Hill, crime pays much better than Hollywood. Hill was (not including additional money he made off of the fame resulting from the film’s huge and sustained popularity).
But according to Hill, that’s chump change compared to wiseguy money he was making back in his gangster days, which ranged from $15,000 to $40,000 a week. However, the massive sums from his glory days hardly left him a rich man—he claims he blew almost all of his mob money on partying and a “degenerate” gambling problem. Frank Vincent and Joe Pesci have a long history beyond the “shine box” scene—both on and off screen.
Before whacking Frank Vincent as Batts during the most disappointing “welcome home” party in human history, Pesci gave Vincent a proper beatdown in Raging Bull. Vincent would eventually have his revenge, brutally whacking Pesci’s character in Casino. Off screen, however, the, having started their entertainment careers as bandmates and equal halves of a comedy duo in the late 1960s. But it was their appearances in the low-budget 1976 Mafia film which got the duo and, ultimately, Martin Scorsese. Some of the real criminals portrayed were actually toned down for the film. According to Hill, despite combining characters and slightly altering plot points and timelines, Goodfellas was.
Perhaps some of that remaining five percent has to do with the on-screen portrayals of Paul Vario, the one-time head of the Lucchese crime family, and Jimmy Burke, architect of the Lufthansa heist. Vario (Paul Cicero in the film) was far from the relatively coolheaded powerbroker Paul Sorvino portrayed. Called Vario, 'one of the most violent and dangerous career criminals in the city of New York.” And while Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Conway comes across as cunning and conniving with a brutal streak, the real Jimmy “The Gent” Burke was, a “homicidal maniac,” brutally violent and responsible for at least 50 to 60 murders. One Goodfellas actor claims The Simpsons ripped him off to the tune of $250 million. Like almost every other film or TV show to portray the Mafia after 1990, The Simpsons's writers, producers, and animators probably took some cues from Goodfellas when constructing their very own mob crew. However, for one Goodfellas actor, the similarities were too close for comfort. In October of 2014, Frank Sivero—who played the ill-fated Frankie Carbone—filed against the The Simpsons for appropriating his looks and mannerisms when creating a little-seen Springfield mob associate named Louie., The Simpsons writers lifted his likeness while living next door to him in Sherman Oaks in 1989, the year before Goodfellas’s release.
Louie debuted on the show during the 1991 episode “Bart the Murderer,” and as of this year had appeared in 21 Simpsons episodes in total. Henry Hill was just as surprised as you are that he never got whacked.
Hill’s testimony against some of the most ruthless and powerful Lucchese crime family associates led to roughly 50 convictions. And as Hill learned in the very beginning of his career (and the movie), rule number one in the wiseguy world is “never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.” So why was Hill able to live to be a (relatively) old man and die of natural causes, instead of ultimately meeting a violent end like so many of his past associates? According to Hill, he had absolutely no idea. In 2010, he, 'It's surreal, totally surreal, to be here. I never thought I'd reach this wonderful age,” and hypothesized he was still standing simply because 'there's nobody from my era alive today.” Following his death in 2012, hypothesized that bureaucratic disorganization in the organized crime world or fame might have kept Hill standing.
The film could have starred Tom Cruise and Madonna as Henry and Karen Hill. Getty Images Seriously. Tom Cruise “was discussed,” and according to producer Barbara De Fina, Madonna was “in the mix” to the extent that Scorsese scouted her at a performance of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow on Broadway. However, Scorsese after seeing him in Jonathan Demme’s 1986 film Something Wild.
Liotta eventually convinced Winkler, who was skeptical of his acting chops, that he was right for the role after a chance meeting in a restaurant. Scorsese liked Lorraine Bracco largely due to how well she related to Karen, having grown up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. During filming, the lines between the movie and the mob world were occasionally blurred. Louis Eppolito, a police detective who had a bit part as a wiseguy in Goodfellas, for carrying out hits for the Lucchese crime family, which is, of course, the family chronicled in the movie. Screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, there was an open call for real wiseguys, and Scorsese “must have hired like half a dozen guys, maybe more, out of the joint.” And Tony Sirico, who had a bit part as a wiseguy in Goodfellas but is best known for playing Paulie Gualtieri on The Sopranos, had a longer crime resume (28 arrests) than acting resume (27 credits) when the movie was released in 1990.
Goodfellas bit player Tony Lip is the only actor to also appear in both The Godfather and The Sopranos. Speaking of The Sopranos: Between Tony Sirico, Lorraine Bracco, Frank Vincent, Michael Imperioli, and many, many more, the show shares a huge number of cast members with Goodfellas. However, the only actor confirmed to have appeared in the holy trinity of Mafia pop culture—the original The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos—, best known for his portrayal of New York crime boss Carmine Lupertazzi on The Sopranos. Goodfellas only went home with one Academy Award, and the winner was taken entirely by surprise. Getty Images While met with extremely enthusiastic reviews, Goodfellas was overshadowed by Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves at the 1991 Academy Awards. The film was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, but only took home the Best Supporting Actor trophy for Joe Pesci’s portrayal of Tommy DeVito. Pesci was up against two other mobster portrayals: Al Pacino’s Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy and Andy Garcia’s Vincent Mancini in The Godfather: Part III.
Pesci spoke upon accepting the award (“It’s my privilege. Thank you.”), thus delivering one of the shortest Oscar acceptance speeches ever. According to Pesci, the speech was so brief simply because. The 1978 Lufthansa Heist case is still an open investigation.
As Goodfellas makes clear, many of the mobsters involved with the $6 million 1978 Lufthansa heist—at the time the largest cash robbery in American history—were taken out by a paranoid and greedy Jimmy Burke, while more still were put in jail by Hill’s testimony on unrelated charges. But as of 2014, the Lufthansa heist case was still an active case, as evidenced by Vincent Asaro (who was 78 years old at the time) on cooperating witness testimony. Authorities claim that Asaro served as lookout and helped the getaway. And in a tie to the movie, Asaro is believed to have taken Spider to get stitched up after he was shot.
Scorsese played by a specific set of rules when picking the soundtrack. YouTube From Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches” over the opening narration to The Sex Pistols's punk rock take on “My Way” over the closing credits, Scorsese’s use of music is frequently mentioned as one of the many reasons why Goodfellas is a classic. And, of course, Derek and the Dominos’s “Layla (Piano Exit)” after the discovery of Jimmy Conway’s Lufthansa heist carnage is frequently cited as one of the best uses of popular music in movie history.
![Goodfellas music soundtrack Goodfellas music soundtrack](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/d/da/Gone_fishin.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121213024725)
While the genres included run the gamut, Scorsese abided by a when picking songs: They had to at least vaguely comment on the scene or characters, and they had to be chronologically appropriate to the time the scenes were set in. In the shooting script, Billy Batts was whacked in the very first scene. The Goodfellas we now all know and love features Billy Batts living (and dying) to regret his “shine box” remark to Tommy right around the movie’s halfway mark, with just a teaser of Batts getting finished off in a trunk at the beginning. But the actually featured Batts celebrating his ill-fated “welcome home” party in the very first scene, followed by dinner at Tommy’s mother's, before cutting to Liotta narrating the immortal words “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster” and cutting to Hill’s life as a Brooklyn kid. Terrible preview screening numbers had the film team hugely concerned.
YouTube If anyone behind Goodfellas thought it might be a classic in the making, they from the movie’s preview screenings. Pileggi claims that a screening in Orange County, California had roughly 70 walk-outs due to the violent content. According to an executive producer, one screening ended with the film team hiding at a bowling alley due to an angry audience, with one disgruntled moviegoer simply writing “f.k you” on a comment card. Attorney Edward McDonald plays himself. The fed laying out the ins and outs of the witness protection program to Henry and Karen after they get pinched?
![Youtube Youtube](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/38/The_Commitments_poster.png/220px-The_Commitments_poster.png)
Attorney Edward McDonald, reenacting his conversation with the real Henry and Karen after they flipped. For the part after Scorsese scouted his office as a possible filming location, and ultimately won it after a screen test. Like so much of the rest of the script, McDonald’s “Don’t give me the babe-in-the-woods routine, Karen” line was all improv. The first scene shot for the film wasn’t directed by Scorsese. Getty Images As you might know, the business of filming is rarely chronological—directors tend to jump scenes for cost, scheduling, and efficiency reasons. For Goodfellas, the scene that broke shooting ground was the intentionally low-budget Morrie’s Wigs commercial, which plays just before Henry and Jimmy hassle Morrie about a debt near the beginning of the film. To get the feel of the commercial right, Scorsese contacted, who had created his own ultra low-budget ads for his replacement window company, to write and direct the Morrie’s Wigs ad.
The shot of Pesci shooting at the camera is a nod to a milestone 1903 film. Ralph Fiennes has earned Oscar nominations for Schindler's List and The English Patient, but his best-known role might be his performance as He Who Must Not Be Named, otherwise known as, in the film series.
While the introduced Fiennes and his work to a new generation of moviegoers, he recently revealed that he almost said no to the project altogether. We first saw Fiennes as Voldemort in the fourth film in the series, 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and he continued to play the Dark Lord of the Harry Potter universe until the series' conclusion in 2011. Though fans would argue that it was the role Fiennes was born to play, saying 'yes' was not an immediate decision for the celebrated actor. 'The truth is I was actually ignorant about the films and the,' the actor recently while appearing on The Jonathan Ross Show when asked about his relationship to the Potterverse prior to taking on the role. 'I was approached by the production. Mike Newell was directing the film that they wanted me to be in.
The first time Voldemort was going to appear physically.' 'Out of ignorance I just sort of thought, this isn’t for me,' Fiennes continued. 'Quite stupidly I resisted, I was hesitant. I think the clincher was that my sister Martha—who has three children who were then probably about 12, 10, and 8—said, 'What do you mean? You’ve got to do it!'
So then I rewound my thinking.' Potterheads everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to Fiennes's sister—and her kids.