GoodFellas!
GoodFellas
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The film stars Ray Liotta as Henry Hill, Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway, Joe Pesci, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the psychotic Tommy DeVito (based on Tommy DeSimone), Lorraine Bracco as Hill's wife, Karen and Paul Sorvino as Paulie Cicero.
GoodFellas Plot
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Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
In the film, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) becomes involved in the mafia at a young age: as he says in the beginning of the film;
"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 New York City neighborhood in East New York, Brooklyn, and in 1955 quit school and went to work for them at a local cab stand.
The local Lucchese 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 actual associate, Jimmy Burke) help cultivate the boy's developing criminal career.
From left to right: Ray Liotta as Henry Hill, Robert De Niro as Jimmy "The Gent" Conway, Paul Sorvino as Paul Cicero and Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito. Photo credit: Dirck Halstead.As adults, Henry and his associate Tommy (played by Joe Pesci in a widely acclaimed and Academy Award-winning performance) conspire with Conway to steal some of the billions of dollars of cargo passing through Idlewild Airport (later JFK). They help out in a key moneymaking heist, stealing over half a million dollars from the Air France cargo terminal in 1967 and paying Cicero his percentage of the take as per the mafia's code of tribute.
Henry also meets and falls in love with Karen (Lorraine Bracco), a young woman whose zest and personality interest him deeply. The next night, he stands her up, only to be confronted by an angry Karen and, as a result, becomes interested in her no-nonsense attitude. This results in him taking her to the Copacabana club (mostly known for the famous steadicam shot that flows through the bowels of the club and onto the main floor) two to three times a week.
There is conflict between the families because Karen's parents are Jewish and Hill is half-Irish and half-Italian. Because of Hill & Conway's own Irish ancestry, they partly remain as outsiders within the mob and can never be actual "made men" full members of an Italian crime family. In a key scene, after Henry and Jimmy threaten a competitor out of business, Henry discovers that a neighbor tried to rape Karen. Henry then takes Karen home, and while she waits in her doorway, Henry proceeds to assault and beat the alleged attacker in broad daylight, using the handle of a small revolver which he then asks Karen to hide. She remarks in a voiceover that she agreed to hide the weapon and, despite her feeling that something was not right, her boyfriend's actions fascinate and "turn her on." Despite their religious backgrounds, Henry pretends to be half-Jewish ('just the good half' as he says to Karen's mother) and eventually marries her.
As the years go by and Henry earns Cicero's trust, his friends become more daring (and therefore dangerous) Conway's love of truck hijacking and grand theft is bad enough, but DeVito is nearly psychotic in his need to prove himself through violence, with an explosively quick temper to boot.
In June 1970, Tommy (with the help of 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 place Batts's bloody corpse in the trunk of Henry's car, stop by DeVito's mother's house to pick up a shovel and a knife, finish killing Batts upstate (this scene opens the film), and bury him in an abandoned plot of rural land. They discover six months later that the land has been sold to a real estate developer and the (badly decomposed) body must be exhumed, moved, and reburied. The scene serves as an example of the movie's black humor; Tommy, Jimmy and Henry go to dig up the body, a scene shot mostly in silhouette bathed in the red light from the car's tail lights; while Henry reacts badly to the excavation of the corpse, eventually vomiting, both Jimmy and Tommy remain nonchalant even joking about it; the exhumation is just business to them.
During this time, Henry's marriage deteriorates when Karen finds he has a Mistress, Janice Rossi (played by the late Gina Mastrogiacomo). Karen tracks Rossi down at her apartment and threatens her so violently that even Cicero has to mediate. In one of the most famous scenes of the film, Karen confronts a sleeping Henry with a gun as he wakes up. She angrily demands an explanation from him and asks if he loves her, to which he says "there's nobody but only you, Karen." As soon as she lowers the gun, Henry beats her up 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. Karen declares in a voiceover, "But I couldn't hurt him. How could I hurt him? I couldn't even bring myself to leave him. Why should I let her win? Why should I lose? The truth was, no matter how he hurt me, I still felt very attracted to him."
Tommy's violent temper also reaches a crest at another point during a card game when he humiliates an innocent and unarmed young man, "Spider" (played by a young, then-unknown Michael Imperioli), solely for misunderstanding him and not bringing him a drink (Cutty and Water). After a brief quarrel, Tommy demands that Spider dance for him a la The Oklahoma Kid and thoughtlessly shoots the bartender in the foot, much to Henry's (and Jimmy's) annoyance. Later on, when Spider is again serving drinks at another card game, Tommy starts to Bully him about his foot bandage, ultimately driving Spider to hesitantly say; "Why don't you go fuck yourself, Tommy?". Although Jimmy and the other card players compliment Spider's bravery, Tommy, angered by the laughter from his friends and feeling humiliated in front of them from Spider's wise comment, once again gets his gun out (this time an M1911) and shoots Spider multiple times, this time in the chest, killing him instantly, much to Jimmy's anger and frustration. Henry looks on in disgust as the child-like Tommy gets his discipline from Jimmy.
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 when it turns out the man's sister works as a typist for the FBI. 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. Although Paul Cicero tolerated Henry's prison drug deals, he sternly warns him not to deal drugs on the outside and to identify those who do, as he warns Henry about a mob boss who got a 20-year sentence for one of his men running drugs behind his back and puts Henry on notice that he isn't going to let that happen to him.
Henry ultimately ignores Paul and involves Tommy and Jimmy (as well as his wife, and new Mistress (Debi Mazar), and babysitter) in an elaborate smuggling operation. About the same time, in 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 disgusted and paranoid when some of his associates foolishly flaunt their gains in plain sight, possibly drawing police attention, and begins having them gradually eliminated. Soon, many of the mobsters turn up dead. 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. Conway is crushed by the news that Tommy is dead. Henry reports that Tommy is shot in the face "so his mother couldn't have an open coffin at the Funeral."
In an extended, virtuoso sequence titled "Sunday, May 11th, 1980," all of the different paths of Henry's complicated criminal career catastrophically collide. He must coordinate a major cocaine shipment; cook a meal for his wife, children and paraplegic younger brother; placate his drug-addled, emotionally unstable Mistress; cope with his clueless, superstitious 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 of the product he deals. This sequence features a medley of popular songs such as The Rolling Stones' "Monkey Man", George Harrison's "What Is Life", Muddy Waters's "Mannish Boy (I'm A Man)", The Who's "Magic Bus" and Harry Nilsson's "Jump Into the Fire" forming the soundtrack. With around four different songs playing and cutting into each other in this last sequence, it shows how Henry's mental process is scattered, and he is unable to think straight. After serving dinner, he and his courier plan to fly out to Florida, but they are arrested by police as he is backing out the driveway. This arrest is instigated by Henry's courier, whom Henry sternly warned earlier on the phone, to not call their drug contact on his home phone since the authorities are monitoring all incoming and outgoing phone calls (which she invariably does call). Karen is later able to bail him out, only after her parents mortgage their house to help her out. A devastating blow comes later to Henry when he realizes Karen disposed of the hidden cocaine stash in the toilet, which is the money Henry planned on using as a backup to keep his family afloat. Henry and Karen are brought to tears after this revelation.
After Henry's drug arrest, Cicero abandons him (after giving him $3,200), and the rest of his mob cohorts quickly follow suit. Convinced he and his family are marked for death, Henry acts swiftly and decisively, acting as an informant on his former criminal cohorts to the FBI, sending them away for long prison terms. 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"; as he laments in the film's closing line, "I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook." A moment after Henry's voiceover finishes we see a quick shot of Tommy firing a pistol directly into the camera much like the final shot of The Great Train Robbery.
The film closes with a few title cards before the closing credits explaining what became of Hill, Paul Cicero (Vario) and Jimmy Conway (Burke). Henry's marriage to Karen has finally 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.
GoodFellas Historical accuracy
Spoiler warning Plot and or ending details follow
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 agent, Edward MacDonald, that explained it to them.Kathy Burke, the daughter of Jimmy Burke (called Jimmy Conway in GoodFellas) attempted to force the production company to pay $100,000 for the use of the name Burke, so they used Conway (his birth name) instead.
In an early scene, you can see the wiseguys at the cab stand wearing yellow sweaters, and trying on various yellow sweaters. Scorsese doesn't 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.
The first part of the film shows young Henry being arrested for possessing and selling stolen cigarettes at a factory. In Wiseguy, Hill claims to have been arrested at the age of 13 for using a stolen credit card to buy tires. The trial, where he told nothing, and the following scene, he says, actually did happen.
Paul is shown to have a brother, Vito aka "Tuddy," as his associate and enforcer. In reality, Paul Vario had three brothers: Tommy, Vito (a.k.a. Tuddy) and Salvatore.
Henry is shown to have met his wife Karen on a double date with Tommy De Vito (Pesci's character) and his girlfriend. In real life, it was with another mobster friend, Lenny Vario (one of Paul Vario's sons).
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.
Paul Vario (Paul Cicero) was known to be ruthless and violent at times. Although not shown in the film, he actually attacked a barmaid who had revealed to his wife that they were having an affair. However, his more gentle side was shown in the film as being a mentor and friend to Henry, before the latter deals behind his back in drug smuggling.
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.
Although he was calm and collected most of the time, Jimmy was actually a more violent man than depicted in the film. He killed the children of his victims at some points, and he was known to Murder enemy mobsters without a hint of conscience, although he was not nearly as psychopathic as Tommy DeSimone.
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 ending shows Henry ratting on all his friends, effectively putting them behind bars. However, in real life, another mobster had been caught drug smuggling, and he had testified against the family, already giving the FBI the go-ahead to move against them. Despite this inaccuracy, Hill's testimony did help wipe out the majority of the Lucchese crime family.
The Frank Sivero character who plays Frank Carbone is a pun on the name of Steve Carbone. Steve Carbone, an ex-high school English teacher was the FBI supervisor who overlooked the Lufthansa heist case. He had warned the suspects Robert Manri, Angelo Sepe and Paolo LiCastri to testify and protect themselves, they subsequently did not listen and the two were Murdered shortly after. Steve Carbone later personally interrogated Henry Hill about his life and his business partners, which he later testified against (the ones that were still alive).
Among the film's goofs is an anachronism regarding a brief shot of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet on final approach, while the caption "Idlewild Airport, 1963" is displayed. Idlewild was, at that time, the name of what is now John F. Kennedy International Airport, and the film correctly represents this. However, the 747 made its maiden flight in February 1969, six years later, and in fact the aircraft was not even an idea until 1966, three years after the scene depicted in the film. Also, the next scene of Henry and Tommy leaning on a car is inaccurate because the car is a 1965 Chevrolet Impala, after saying the current year was 1963
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.
GoodFellas Production
GoodFellas Screenplay
The film is based on New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy, which Martin Scorsese read before its publication. 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." Scorsese and Pileggi collaborated on the screenplay, although much of the film's eventual dialogue would be improvised by the actors.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 Wiseguy (now called GoodFellas), due to a recent film and television show of the same name.
GoodFellas 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. 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 Martin Scorsese and Ray 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 Martin Scorsese's father, Charles Scorsese. 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. Driving to and from the set, Ray Liotta listened to FBI audio cassette tapes of Henry Hill, so that he could practice speaking like his real-life counterpart
GoodFellas Filming
The film was shot in 1989 in New York City.The long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub had to be shot many times because Henny Youngman kept forgetting his lines.
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.
GoodFellas 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.GoodFellas Awards and recognition
GoodFellas Academy Awards
GoodFellas Award Person
Best Actor in a Supporting Role Joe PesciNominated:
Best Actress in a Supporting Role Lorraine Bracco
Best Picture Irwin Winkler
Best Director Martin Scorsese
Best Film Editing Thelma Schoonmaker
Best Adapted Screenplay Martin Scorsese
Nicholas Pileggi
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."
Scorsese's loss of the Best Director Oscar to Kevin Costner was bemoaned by many as a repeat of the injustice Scorsese suffered in 1980, when he lost the Oscar for directing Raging Bull to Robert Redford. Scorsese has remained philosophical about his Oscar losses, saying "we're lucky we even get to make movies anymore." (Scorsese finally won the Best Director Oscar in 2007 for The Departed.)
GoodFellas Others
The film was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Drama and won the BAFTA Award for Best Film.GoodFellas Acclaim
The film is #94 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 98% on Rottentomatoes. They consider it the third in his trifecta (Scorsese's earlier films Taxi Driver and Raging Bull were considered masterpieces of their respective decades, with GoodFellas a masterpiece of the nineties.
Ray Liotta was suggested for an Oscar Nomination, but not taken up, much to the dismay of some fans and even Martin Scorsese.
GoodFellas Influence
GoodFellas may be a major inspiration for the popular HBO series "The Sopranos", which also chronicles the life of a "working class" gangster. The presence of Lorraine Bracco as Tony Soprano's therapist and Michael Imperioli as Christopher Moltisanti further solidify the connection. Other actors who have had regular roles on The Sopranos and who also made appearances in GoodFellas include Tony Darrow, Tony Lip, Tony Sirico, Vincent Pastore and Frank Vincent, Anthony Caso, Tobin Bell, Gene Canfield, Nicole Burdette, Gaetano LoGiudice, Vito Antuofermo, Chuck Low, Frank Adonis, Suzanne Shepherd, Nancy Cassaro, Frank Pellegrino, Marianne Leone, Paul Herman, Frank Albanese, Anthony Alessandro, Victor Colicchio and John "Cha Cha" Ciarcia.)The famous tracking shot which circles the Copacabana nightclub is regarded by film aficionados as one of the best camera shots of all time, on par with the opening shot of Touch of Evil. Homages have been made to this shot in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights and Doug Liman's Swingers. It also shares an influenced scene twice in Shaun of the Dead, in which the characters talk about it being the best shot in any film. Also, another lengthy tracking shot earlier in the film moves around another nightclub, accompanied by Henry's voiceover that identifies the members of the gang. One of the gang even appears in the mirror behind the bar.
