Goodfellas
Encyclopedia
Goodfellas is a 1990 American
crime film
directed by Martin Scorsese
. It is a film adaptation
of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy
by Nicholas Pileggi
, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese. The film follows the rise and fall of Lucchese crime family
associates Henry Hill and his friends over a period from 1955 to 1980.
Scorsese originally intended to direct Goodfellas before The Last Temptation of Christ
, but when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he postponed what was then known as Wise Guy. The title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a TV series
and for Brian De Palma
's 1986 comedy Wise Guys
, so Pileggi and Scorsese changed the name of their film to Goodfellas. To prepare for their roles in the film, Robert De Niro
, Joe Pesci
, and Ray Liotta
often spoke with Pileggi, who shared research material left over from writing the book. According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines he liked best, and put them into a revised script the cast worked from during principal photography.
Goodfellas performed well at the box office, grossing $46.8 million domestically, well above its $25 million budget. It also received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture
and Best Director, and won one for Pesci in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role
category. Scorsese's film won five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts
, including Best Film
. The film was named Best Film of the year by various film critics groups. Goodfellas is often considered one of the greatest films ever, both in the crime genre and in general, and was deemed "culturally significant" and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry
by the United States Library of Congress
. Scorsese followed this film up with two more films about organized crime: 1995's Casino
and 2006's The Departed
.
gangsters in his blue-collar, predominantly Italian-American neighborhood in East New York, Brooklyn
in 1955. Wanting to be part of something significant, Henry quits school and goes to work for them. His Irish-American father, knowing the true nature of the Mafia
, tries to stop Henry after learning of his truancy, but the gangsters threaten the local postal carrier with dire consequences should he deliver any more letters from the school to Henry's house. Henry is able to make a living for himself, and learns the two most important lessons in life: "Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut," the advice given to him after being acquitted of criminal charges early in his career.
Henry is taken under the wing of the local mob capo
, Paul "Paulie" Cicero (Paul Sorvino
) and his associates, Jimmy "The Gent" Conway (Robert De Niro
), who loves hijacking trucks, and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci
), an aggressive armed robber with a hair-trigger temper. In late 1967 they commit the Air France Robbery
, marking Henry's debut into the big time. Enjoying the perks of their criminal life, they spend most of their nights at the Copacabana
with countless women. Henry meets and later marries Karen (Lorraine Bracco
), a Jewish girl from the Five Towns
. Karen is initially troubled by Henry's criminal activities, but is soon seduced by his glamorous lifestyle. When a neighbor assaults her for refusing his advances, Henry pistol-whips
him in front of her. She feels aroused by the act, especially when Henry gives her the gun and tells her to hide it.
On June 11, 1970, Tommy (with Jimmy's help) brutally beats Billy Batts (Frank Vincent
), a mobster with the Gambino crime family
, for insulting him about being a shoeshine boy in his younger days. However, Batts was a made man
, meaning that he could not be touched without the consent of his Gambino family bosses. Realizing that this was an offense that could get them all killed, Jimmy, Henry, and Tommy need to cover up the murder. They transport the body in the trunk of Henry's car and bury it upstate. Six months later Jimmy learns that the burial site will be developed, forcing them to exhume the decomposing corpse and move it.
Henry begins to see a mistress named Janice Rossi (Gina Mastrogiacomo
), setting her up in an apartment. When Karen finds out, she goes to Janice's apartment building to confront her, but is not let in past the front door. She then confronts Henry, points a revolver at his face, and threatens to kill both of them, demanding to know if he loves Janice. Karen cannot bring herself to kill him and an enraged Henry threatens Karen with the gun and says he has bigger concerns, like being murdered on the streets. Henry goes to live in the apartment with Janice. Paulie soon directs him to return to Karen after completing a job for him; Henry and Jimmy are sent to collect from an indebted gambler in Florida, which they succeed at after beating him. However most of the crew are arrested after being turned in by the gambler's sister, a typist for the FBI
.
In prison, Henry sells drugs to support his family on the outside. Soon after he is released in 1978, the crew commits the Lufthansa heist
at John F. Kennedy International Airport
. Despite Paulie's warning to stop, Henry further establishes himself in the drug trade, convincing Tommy and Jimmy to join him. Jimmy has the other participants in the Lufthansa robbery killed after they ignore his command to not immediately buy expensive things with their share of the stolen money. Then Tommy is killed for the murder of Billy Batts, having been fooled into thinking that he is going to be made
.
By 1980, Henry is a nervous wreck from cocaine
use and insomnia
, as he tries to organize a drug deal with his associates in Pittsburgh. However, he is caught by narcotics agents and sent to jail. On his release, Karen tells him that she flushed $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet to prevent the FBI agents from finding it during their raid, leaving Henry and his family virtually penniless. Feeling Henry betrayed him by dealing drugs, Paulie gives Henry $3,200 and ends his association with him. Henry decides to enroll in the Witness Protection Program after realizing that Jimmy intends to have him killed. Forced out of his gangster life, he now has to face living in the real world: "I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."
Titles explain that Henry was subsequently arrested on drug charges in Seattle, Washington
but has been clean since 1987. Paul Cicero died in Fort Worth Federal Prison
of respiratory illness in 1988 at 73. Jimmy, as of 1990, was serving a 20-year-to-life sentence in a New York State prison.
's book Wiseguy. Martin Scorsese never intended to make another mob film until he read a review of the book which inspired him to read it while working on the set of Color of Money in 1986. He had always been fascinated by the Mob lifestyle and was drawn to Pileggi's book because it was the most honest portrayal of gangsters he had ever read. After he read Pileggi's book, the filmmaker knew what approach he wanted to take: "To begin Goodfellas like a gunshot and have it get faster from there, almost like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer. I think it's the only way you can really sense the exhilaration of the lifestyle, and to get a sense of why a lot of people are attracted to it." 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 originally intended to direct the film before The Last Temptation of Christ
, but when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he decided to postpone Wise Guy. 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". He saw Goodfellas as the third film in an unplanned trilogy of films that examined the lives of Italian-Americans "from slightly different angles". He has often described the film as "a mob home movie" that is about money because "that's what they're really in business for".
and use "all the basic tricks of the New Wave
from around 1961". Several of the names of the characters were also changed such as Tommy "Two Gunn" DeSimone becoming Tommy DeVito; Paul Vario becoming Paulie Cicero and Jimmy "The Gent" Burke becoming Jimmy Conway. Since the title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a TV series
and for Brian De Palma
's 1986 comedy Wise Guys
, Pileggi and Scorsese decided to change the name of their film to Goodfellas.
's Something Wild and Scorsese was surprised by "his explosive energy" in that film. The actor had read Pileggi's book when it came out and was fascinated by it. A couple of years afterwards, his agent told him that Scorsese was going to direct a film version. In 1988, Liotta met the director over a period of a couple of months and auditioned for the film. The actor campaigned aggressively for a role in the film but the studio wanted a well-known actor. "I think they would've rather had Eddie Murphy
than me", the actor remembers.
To prepare for the role, De Niro consulted with Pileggi who had research material that had been discarded while writing the book. De Niro often called Hill several times a day to ask how Burke walked, held his cigarette, and so on. Driving to and from the set, Liotta listened to FBI audio cassette tapes of Hill, so he could practice speaking like his real-life counterpart. To research her role, Lorraine Bracco tried to get close to a mob wife but was unable to because they exist in a very tight-knit community. She decided not to meet the real Karen because she "thought it would be better if the creation came from me. I used her life with her parents as an emotional guideline for the role". Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character but found it challenging finding "that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened".
, New York
, New Jersey
, and parts of Long Island
during the spring and summer of 1989, with a budget of $25 million. Scorsese broke the film down into sequences and storyboard
ed 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 [Henry's] 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." He claims that the film's style comes from the first two or three minutes of Jules and Jim
: extensive narration, quick edits, freeze frame
s, and multiple locale switches. It was this reckless attitude towards convention that mirrored the attitude of many of the gangsters in the film. Scorsese remarked, "So if you do the movie, you say, 'I don't care if there's too much narration. Too many quick cuts? — That's too bad.' It's that kind of really punk attitude we're trying to show". He adopted a frenetic style in order to almost overwhelm the audience with images and information. He also put a lot of detail in every frame because the gangster life is so rich. The use of freeze frames was done because Scorsese wanted images that would stop "because a point was being reached" in Henry's life.
Joe Pesci did not judge his character but found the scene where he kills Spider for talking back to his character hard to do because he had trouble justifying the action until he forced himself to feel the way Tommy did. Lorraine Bracco found the shoot to be an emotionally difficult one because it was such a male-dominated cast and realized that if she did not make her "work important, it would probably end up on the cutting room floor". When it came to the relationship between Henry and Karen, Bracco saw no difference between an abused wife and her character.
According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese let the actors do whatever they wanted. He made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines that the actors came up with that he liked best, and put them into a revised script that the cast worked from during principal photography. For example, the scene where Tommy tells a story and Henry is responding to him — the "what's so funny about me" scene — is based on an actual event that happened to Pesci. It was worked on in rehearsals where he and Liotta improvised and Scorsese recorded 4-5 takes, rewrote their dialogue and inserted it into the script. The cast did not meet Henry Hill during the film's shoot until a few weeks before it premiered. Liotta met him in an undisclosed city. Hill had seen the film and told the actor that he loved it.
The long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub came about because of a practical problem: the filmmakers could not get permission to go in the short way and this forced them to go round the back. Scorsese decided to film the sequence in one unbroken shot in order to symbolize that Henry's entire life was ahead of him, commenting, "It's his seduction of her [Karen] and it's also the lifestyle seducing him." This sequence was shot eight times. Henry's last day as a wiseguy was the hardest part of the film for Scorsese to shoot because he wanted to properly show Henry's state of anxiety, paranoia and racing thoughts caused by cocaine
and amphetamines intoxication, which is difficult for an actor (who had never been under their influence) to accurately portray. Scorsese explains to movie critic Mark Cousins
in an interview the reason for the Joe Pesci shooting at the screen shot at the end of the film, "well that's a reference right to the end of The Great Train Robbery, thats the way that ends, that film, and basically the plot of this picture is very similar to The Great Train Robbery. It hasn't changed, 90 years later, it's the same story, the gun shots will always be there, he's always going to look behind his back, he's gotta have eyes behind his back, because they're gonna get him someday." The director ended the film with Henry regretting that he is no longer a wiseguy and Scorsese said, "I think the audience should get angry at him and I would hope they do — and maybe with the system which allows this."
. With a budget of $25 million, Goodfellas was Scorsese's most expensive film to date but still only a medium budget by Hollywood standards. It was also the first time he was obliged by Warner Bros. to preview the film. It was shown twice in California and a lot of audiences were "agitated" by Henry's last day as a wise guy sequence and Scorsese argued that that was the point of the scene. Scorsese and the film's editor, Thelma Schoonmaker
, made this sequence faster with more jump cuts to convey Henry's drug-addled point of view. In the first test screening there were 40 walkouts in the first ten minutes. One of the favorite scenes for test audiences was the one where Tommy tells the story and Henry is responding to him—the "what's so funny about me" scene.
" playing on the set while shooting the scene where the dead bodies are discovered in the car, dumpster, and the meat-truck. Sometimes, the lyrics of songs were put between lines of dialogue to comment on the action. Some of the music Scorsese had written into the script while other songs he discovered during the editing phase.
where Scorsese received the Silver Lion award for Best Director. It was given a wide release in North America on September 21, 1990 in 1,070 theaters with an opening weekend gross of US$
6.3 million. It went on to make $46.8 million domestically, well above its $25 million budget.
and a 89 metascore at Metacritic
. In his review for The New York Times
, Vincent Canby
wrote, "More than any earlier Scorsese film, Goodfellas is memorable for the ensemble nature of the performances… The movie has been beautifully cast from the leading roles to the bits. There is flash also in some of Mr. Scorsese's directorial choices, including freeze frames, fast-cutting and the occasional long tracking shot. None of it is superfluous". USA Today
gave the film four out of four stars and called it, "great cinema — and also a whopping good time". David Ansen
, in his review for Newsweek
magazine, wrote "Every crisp minute of this long, teeming movie vibrates with outlaw energy". Rex Reed
said "Big, Rich, Powerful and Explosive. One of Scorsese's best films! Goodfellas is great entertainment." In his review for Time
, Richard Corliss wrote, "So it is Scorsese's triumph that GoodFellas offers the fastest, sharpest 2½-hr. ride in recent film history".
's "100 Years, 100 Movies
" list and moved up to #92 on its AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) from 2007. In June 2008, the AFI put Goodfellas at #2 on their AFI's 10 Top 10
—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Goodfellas was acknowledged as the second best in the gangster film genre (after The Godfather
). In 2000, the United States Library of Congress
deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
.
Roger Ebert
, a friend and supporter of Scorsese, named Goodfellas the "best mob movie ever" and placed it among the best films of the 1990s. In December 2002, a UK film critics poll in Sight and Sound ranked the film #4 on their list of the 10 Best Films of the Last 25 Years. Time
included Goodfellas in their list of Time's All-TIME 100 Movies. Channel 4
placed Goodfellas at #10 in their 2002 poll The 100 Greatest Films . Empire
listed Goodfellas at #6 on their "500 Greatest Movies Of All Time". Total Film
voted Goodfellas #1 as the greatest film of all time.
Premiere
listed Joe Pesci's 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." Empire
ranked Tommy DeVito #59 in their "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll.
Goodfellas inspired director David Chase
to make the HBO television series The Sopranos
. Chase said "Goodfellas is the Koran for me." He also told Peter Bogdanovich
: "Goodfellas is a very important movie to me and Goodfellas really plowed that...I found that movie very funny and brutal and it felt very real. And yet that was the first mob movie that Scorsese ever dealt with a mob crew....as opposed to say The Godfather...which there's something operatic about it, classical, even the clothing and the cars. You know I mean I always think about Goodfellas when they go to their mother's house that night when they're eating, you know when she brings out her painting, that stuff is great. I mean The Sopranos learned a lot from that."
July 24, 2010 marked the twentieth anniversary of the film's release. This milestone was celebrated with Henry Hill's hosting a private screening for a select group of invitees at the Museum of the American Gangster
, in New York City.
American Film Institute
Lists
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
crime film
Crime film
Crime films are films which focus on the lives of criminals. The stylistic approach to a crime film varies from realistic portrayals of real-life criminal figures, to the far-fetched evil doings of imaginary arch-villains. Criminal acts are almost always glorified in these movies.- Plays and films...
directed by Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
. It is a film adaptation
Film adaptation
Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...
of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy
Wiseguy (book)
Wiseguy is a 1986 non-fiction book by crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi that chronicles the story of Mafia mobster-turned-informant Henry Hill...
by Nicholas Pileggi
Nicholas Pileggi
Nicholas Pileggi is an Italian-American author and screenwriter.-Career:Pileggi is best known for writing the book Wiseguy, which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas, and for writing the book and screenplay Casino. The movie versions of both were co-written and directed by Martin Scorsese...
, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese. The film follows the rise and fall of Lucchese crime family
Lucchese crime family
The Lucchese crime family is one of the "Five Families" that dominates organized crime activities in New York City, United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the Mafia . The family originated in the early 1920s with Gaetano "Tommy" Reina serving as boss up until his murder...
associates Henry Hill and his friends over a period from 1955 to 1980.
Scorsese originally intended to direct Goodfellas before The Last Temptation of Christ
The Last Temptation of Christ (film)
The Last Temptation of Christ is a 1988 drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the controversial 1953 novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis. It stars Willem Dafoe as Jesus Christ, Harvey Keitel as Judas Iscariot, Barbara Hershey as Mary Magdalene, David Bowie as...
, but when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he postponed what was then known as Wise Guy. The title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a TV series
Wiseguy
Wiseguy is an American crime drama series that aired on CBS from September 16, 1987 to December 8, 1990 for a total of four seasons. Starring Ken Wahl, the series was produced by Stephen J...
and for Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...
's 1986 comedy Wise Guys
Wise Guys (film)
Wise Guys is a 1986 feature film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo. A comedy revolving around two small-time mobsters from Newark, New Jersey, it also features Harvey Keitel, Lou Albano, Dan Hedaya, and Frank Vincent....
, so Pileggi and Scorsese changed the name of their film to Goodfellas. To prepare for their roles in the film, Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
, Joe Pesci
Joe Pesci
Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks...
, and Ray Liotta
Ray Liotta
[File:Ray Liotta is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of Henry Hill in the crime-drama Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese and his role as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams...
often spoke with Pileggi, who shared research material left over from writing the book. According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines he liked best, and put them into a revised script the cast worked from during principal photography.
Goodfellas performed well at the box office, grossing $46.8 million domestically, well above its $25 million budget. It also received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
and Best Director, and won one for Pesci in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
category. Scorsese's film won five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
, including Best Film
BAFTA Award for Best Film
This page lists the winners and nominees for the BAFTA Award for Best Film, BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language and Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film for each year, in addition to the retired earlier versions of those awards...
. The film was named Best Film of the year by various film critics groups. Goodfellas is often considered one of the greatest films ever, both in the crime genre and in general, and was deemed "culturally significant" and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the United States Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. Scorsese followed this film up with two more films about organized crime: 1995's Casino
Casino (film)
Casino is a 1995 crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese...
and 2006's The Departed
The Departed
The Departed is a 2006 American crime thriller film, fashioned as a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs. The film was directed by Martin Scorsese and written by William Monahan...
.
Plot
Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) admits, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster," referring to his idolizing the Lucchese crime familyLucchese crime family
The Lucchese crime family is one of the "Five Families" that dominates organized crime activities in New York City, United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the Mafia . The family originated in the early 1920s with Gaetano "Tommy" Reina serving as boss up until his murder...
gangsters in his blue-collar, predominantly Italian-American neighborhood in East New York, Brooklyn
East New York, Brooklyn
East New York is a residential neighborhood located in the Eastern section of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, United States. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 5...
in 1955. Wanting to be part of something significant, Henry quits school and goes to work for them. His Irish-American father, knowing the true nature of the Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
, tries to stop Henry after learning of his truancy, but the gangsters threaten the local postal carrier with dire consequences should he deliver any more letters from the school to Henry's house. Henry is able to make a living for himself, and learns the two most important lessons in life: "Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut," the advice given to him after being acquitted of criminal charges early in his career.
Henry is taken under the wing of the local mob capo
Caporegime
A caporegime or capodecina, usually shortened to just a capo, is a term used in the Mafia for a high ranking made member of a crime family who heads a "crew" of soldiers and has major social status and influence in the organization...
, Paul "Paulie" Cicero (Paul Sorvino
Paul Sorvino
Paul Anthony Sorvino is an American actor. He often portrays authority figures on both sides of the law, and is possibly best known for his roles as Paulie Cicero, a portrayal of Paul Vario in the film Goodfellas and Sgt. Phil Cerreta on the police procedural and legal drama television series Law...
) and his associates, Jimmy "The Gent" Conway (Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
), who loves hijacking trucks, and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci
Joe Pesci
Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks...
), an aggressive armed robber with a hair-trigger temper. In late 1967 they commit the Air France Robbery
Air France Robbery (1967)
In 1967, $420,000 in cash was stolen from the Air France cargo terminal at New York City's JFK International Airport. While there were a large number of cargo thefts at JFK airport in 1967, this was the largest cash robbery that had taken place at the time. It was carried out by Henry Hill,...
, marking Henry's debut into the big time. Enjoying the perks of their criminal life, they spend most of their nights at the Copacabana
Copacabana (nightclub)
The Copacabana is a famous New York City nightclub. Many entertainers, among them Danny Thomas, Pat Cooper and the comedy team of Martin and Lewis, made their debuts at the Copacabana. The 1978 Barry Manilow song "Copacabana" is named after, and is about the nightclub. Part of the 2003 Yerba...
with countless women. Henry meets and later marries Karen (Lorraine Bracco
Lorraine Bracco
Lorraine Bracco is an American actress. She is best known for her TV roles as Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO series, The Sopranos, and Angela Rizzoli on the TNT series, Rizzoli & Isles...
), a Jewish girl from the Five Towns
Five Towns
The Five Towns is an informal grouping of villages and hamlets in Nassau County, New York, United States on the South Shore of western Long Island adjoining the border with Queens County in New York City. Despite the name, none of the communities is a town...
. Karen is initially troubled by Henry's criminal activities, but is soon seduced by his glamorous lifestyle. When a neighbor assaults her for refusing his advances, Henry pistol-whips
Pistol-whipping
Pistol-whipping is the act of using a handgun as a blunt weapon, wielding it as if it were a club or blackjack. "Pistol-whipping" and "to pistol-whip" were reported as "new words" of American speech in 1955, with cited usages from 1940s...
him in front of her. She feels aroused by the act, especially when Henry gives her the gun and tells her to hide it.
On June 11, 1970, Tommy (with Jimmy's help) brutally beats Billy Batts (Frank Vincent
Frank Vincent
Frank Vincent is an American actor, musician, author and entrepreneur. He is a favorite performer of director Martin Scorsese, having played important roles in three of Scorsese's most acclaimed films: Raging Bull , Goodfellas and Casino . He often plays a gangster and works both in features and...
), a mobster with the Gambino crime family
Gambino crime family
The Gambino crime family is one of the "Five Families" that dominates organized crime activities in New York City, United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the Mafia . The group is named after Carlo Gambino, boss of the family at the time of the McClellan hearings in 1963...
, for insulting him about being a shoeshine boy in his younger days. However, Batts was a made man
Made man
A made man, also known as a Mafioso , made guy, man of honor, or uomo d'onore , is someone who has been officially inducted into the Sicilian or American Mafia . They may also be referred to by some as a goodfella or wiseguy...
, meaning that he could not be touched without the consent of his Gambino family bosses. Realizing that this was an offense that could get them all killed, Jimmy, Henry, and Tommy need to cover up the murder. They transport the body in the trunk of Henry's car and bury it upstate. Six months later Jimmy learns that the burial site will be developed, forcing them to exhume the decomposing corpse and move it.
Henry begins to see a mistress named Janice Rossi (Gina Mastrogiacomo
Gina Mastrogiacomo
Gina Mastrogiacomo was an Italian-American actress born in Great Neck, New York. She moved to New York City when she was 18 years old...
), setting her up in an apartment. When Karen finds out, she goes to Janice's apartment building to confront her, but is not let in past the front door. She then confronts Henry, points a revolver at his face, and threatens to kill both of them, demanding to know if he loves Janice. Karen cannot bring herself to kill him and an enraged Henry threatens Karen with the gun and says he has bigger concerns, like being murdered on the streets. Henry goes to live in the apartment with Janice. Paulie soon directs him to return to Karen after completing a job for him; Henry and Jimmy are sent to collect from an indebted gambler in Florida, which they succeed at after beating him. However most of the crew are arrested after being turned in by the gambler's sister, a typist for the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
.
In prison, Henry sells drugs to support his family on the outside. Soon after he is released in 1978, the crew commits the Lufthansa heist
Lufthansa heist
The Lufthansa heist was a robbery at John F. Kennedy International Airport on December 11, 1978. An estimated $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewels were stolen, at the time making it the largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil...
at John F. Kennedy International Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport is an international airport located in the borough of Queens in New York City, about southeast of Lower Manhattan. It is the busiest international air passenger gateway to the United States, handling more international traffic than any other airport in North...
. Despite Paulie's warning to stop, Henry further establishes himself in the drug trade, convincing Tommy and Jimmy to join him. Jimmy has the other participants in the Lufthansa robbery killed after they ignore his command to not immediately buy expensive things with their share of the stolen money. Then Tommy is killed for the murder of Billy Batts, having been fooled into thinking that he is going to be made
Made man
A made man, also known as a Mafioso , made guy, man of honor, or uomo d'onore , is someone who has been officially inducted into the Sicilian or American Mafia . They may also be referred to by some as a goodfella or wiseguy...
.
By 1980, Henry is a nervous wreck from cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
use and insomnia
Insomnia
Insomnia is most often defined by an individual's report of sleeping difficulties. While the term is sometimes used in sleep literature to describe a disorder demonstrated by polysomnographic evidence of disturbed sleep, insomnia is often defined as a positive response to either of two questions:...
, as he tries to organize a drug deal with his associates in Pittsburgh. However, he is caught by narcotics agents and sent to jail. On his release, Karen tells him that she flushed $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet to prevent the FBI agents from finding it during their raid, leaving Henry and his family virtually penniless. Feeling Henry betrayed him by dealing drugs, Paulie gives Henry $3,200 and ends his association with him. Henry decides to enroll in the Witness Protection Program after realizing that Jimmy intends to have him killed. Forced out of his gangster life, he now has to face living in the real world: "I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."
Titles explain that Henry was subsequently arrested on drug charges in Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
but has been clean since 1987. Paul Cicero died in Fort Worth Federal Prison
Federal Correctional Institution, Fort Worth
Federal Correctional Institution Fort Worth, is a low security institution in Fort Worth, Texas housing male offenders.FCI Fort Worth is located in the southeastern corner of Fort Worth...
of respiratory illness in 1988 at 73. Jimmy, as of 1990, was serving a 20-year-to-life sentence in a New York State prison.
Cast
| Actor | Role | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| Ray Liotta Ray Liotta [File:Ray Liotta is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of Henry Hill in the crime-drama Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese and his role as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams... |
Henry Hill | Henry Hill |
| Robert De Niro Robert De Niro Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973... |
Jimmy Conway | Jimmy Burke |
| Joe Pesci Joe Pesci Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks... |
Tommy DeVito | Thomas DeSimone Thomas DeSimone Thomas "Two-Gun Tommy" Anthony DeSimone was an Italian-American gangster and associate of the Lucchese crime family in New York. Also known as "Tommy D" or "Tommy Two-Guns", he was a grandson and nephew of Los Angeles mob bosses Rosario DeSimone and Frank DeSimone... |
| Lorraine Bracco Lorraine Bracco Lorraine Bracco is an American actress. She is best known for her TV roles as Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO series, The Sopranos, and Angela Rizzoli on the TNT series, Rizzoli & Isles... |
Karen Hill | Karen Hill (née NEE NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp... Friedman) |
| Paul Sorvino Paul Sorvino Paul Anthony Sorvino is an American actor. He often portrays authority figures on both sides of the law, and is possibly best known for his roles as Paulie Cicero, a portrayal of Paul Vario in the film Goodfellas and Sgt. Phil Cerreta on the police procedural and legal drama television series Law... |
Paul Cicero | Paul Vario Paul Vario Paul Vario was a caporegime of a crew in the Lucchese crime family. In the 1970s Vario held the position of consigliere in the family but later resigned. In 1980, longtime associate Henry Hill became a government witness and testified against Vario and members of his crew... |
| Frank Sivero Frank Sivero Frank Sivero is a Sicilian-American character actor, perhaps best known for playing the roles of Genco Abbandando in Mario Puzo's and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II and Frankie Carbone in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.Sivero was born Francesco LoGiudice in Siculiana, Sicily, Italy,... |
Frankie Carbone | Angelo Sepe |
| Frank Vincent Frank Vincent Frank Vincent is an American actor, musician, author and entrepreneur. He is a favorite performer of director Martin Scorsese, having played important roles in three of Scorsese's most acclaimed films: Raging Bull , Goodfellas and Casino . He often plays a gangster and works both in features and... |
Billy Batts | William "Billy Batts" Devino William Devino William "Billy Batts" Devino was a New York mobster with the Gambino crime family who was a longtime friend of John Gotti in the 1960s... |
| Tony Darrow Tony Darrow Tony Darrow is an American actor.Darrow was born Anthony Borgese and grew up in the East New York section of Brooklyn. Darrow had plenty of opportunity to observe would be mobsters and their attitudes while growing up in his neighborhood in Brooklyn. As a child, Tony was gifted with a great... |
Sonny Bunz | Angelo McConnach |
| Mike Starr Mike Starr (actor) Michael "Mike" Starr is an American actor. Starr is notable for his large size, standing 6 ft 3 1/2 in , and has typically been typecast as thugs or henchmen.... |
Frenchy | Robert "Frenchy" McMahon |
| Chuck Low Chuck Low Charleston Lewis "Chuck" Low is an American character actor.Born to a Polish mother and German-Jewish father, Low achieved his biggest success as Maurice "Morrie" Kessler in the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas... |
Morrie Kessler | Martin Krugman |
| Frank DiLeo Frank DiLeo Frank Michael DiLeo was an American music industry executive and actor, known for his portrayal of gangster Tuddy Cicero in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. For five years in the late 1980s, and again in 2009, he was Michael Jackson's manager.-Career:Frank DiLeo graduated from Central Catholic High... |
Tuddy Cicero | Vito "Tuddy" Vario |
| Johnny Williams | Johnny Roastbeef | Louis Cafora |
| Samuel L. Jackson Samuel L. Jackson Samuel Leroy Jackson is an American film and television actor and film producer. After becoming involved with the Civil Rights Movement, he moved on to acting in theater at Morehouse College, and then films. He had several small roles such as in the film Goodfellas before meeting his mentor,... |
Parnell "Stacks" Edwards | Parnell Steven "Stacks" Edwards |
| Frank Adonis Frank Adonis Frank Adonis , sometimes credited as Frank Martin, is an American film and television actor.-Selected filmography:*The French Connection as Bidder*Eyes of Laura Mars as Sal Volpe... |
Anthony Stabile | Anthony Stabile |
| Catherine Scorsese Catherine Scorsese Catherine Cappa Scorsese was an American actress, and also the mother of director Martin Scorsese.Born in New York City as Catherine Cappa of Italian descent, she began acting when her son Martin Scorsese cast her in his film It's Not Just You, Murray!... |
Tommy DeVito's Mother | Thomas DeSimone's Grandmother |
| Gina Mastrogiacomo Gina Mastrogiacomo Gina Mastrogiacomo was an Italian-American actress born in Great Neck, New York. She moved to New York City when she was 18 years old... |
Janice Rossi | Linda Coppociano |
| Debi Mazar Debi Mazar Deborah "Debi" Mazar is an American actress, perhaps best known for her Jersey Girl-type roles; as sharp-tongued women in independent films; and for her recurring role as press agent Shauna Roberts on the HBO series Entourage.-Early life:... |
Sandy | Megan Cooperman |
| Margo Winkler | Belle Kessler | Fran Krugman |
| Welker White Welker White Welker White is an American actress. She has appeared in feature films, television series and stage theatre.-Filmography:*Cedar Rapids as Diane Krogstad* A Dog Year as Brenda King* I Think I Love My Wife as Mary... |
Lois Byrd | Judy Wicks |
| Julie Garfield | Mickey Conway | Mickey Burke |
| Paul Herman Paul Herman Paul Herman is an American actor. His appearances in movies include Once Upon a Time in America and Analyze That. He also had a recurring role on The Sopranos as "Beansie" Gaeta, as well as another HBO series, Entourage, as Vincent Chase's accountant, Marvin... |
Dealer | Paul Mazzei |
| Detective Ed Deacy Ed Deacy Ed Deacy is a retired New York City police detective, who has had notable singing and acting gigs.Perhaps best known as the one-time "official national anthem singer" for the New York City Police Department, Deacy has sung at Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium, and for presidents including... |
Himself | Himself |
| Christopher Serrone Christopher Serrone Christopher Serrone is an American actor, best known for playing Young Henry Hill in the film Goodfellas in 1990. He also starred in the film Pathfinder.-External links:... |
Henry Hill (Youth) | Henry Hill (Youth) |
| Charles Scorsese Charles Scorsese Luciano Charles Scorsese was an American film actor.Scorsese was born in New York City, the son of Teresa and Francesco Scorsese, Italian/Sicilian immigrants from Polizzi Generosa, a small town near Palermo. He married film actress Catherine Scorsese in 1933. He was the father of Academy Award... |
Vinnie | Thomas Agro Thomas Agro Thomas Agro , also known as "Tommy A", "T.A.", "Tipp", and "Thomas Ambrosiano", was a New York gangster with the Gambino crime family who ran lucrative bookmaking and gambling operations in Florida.-Background:... |
| Michael Vivalo | Nicky Eyes | Himself |
| Michael Imperioli Michael Imperioli James Michael Imperioli , commonly known as Michael Imperioli, is an American actor and television writer. He is perhaps best known for his role as Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2004. He also... |
"Spider" | Michael "Spider" Gianco |
| Frank Pellegrino Frank Pellegrino Frank Pellegrino is an American actor and restaurateur.Born in East Harlem, Pellegrino has often acted in law and gangster-themed film and television productions. He was a member of an early sixties singing group called The Holidaes. There is a rare recording of a song called "Never" that appears... |
Johnny Dio | Johnny Dio |
| Tony Ellis | Bridal Shop Owner | Jerome Asaro |
| Elizabeth Whitcraft Elizabeth Whitcraft Elizabeth Whitcraft is an American actress who played small parts in some notable American films in the 1980s and 1990s. She was often credited as Liza Whitcraft or Liz Whitcraft.... |
Tommy's Girlfriend | Theresa Ferrara Theresa Ferrara Theresa Ferrara an Italian-American born in the Five Towns area of Long Island, New York. She worked with Lucchese crime family associates, and eventually became an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation . Ferrara was a distant relative of New Orleans crime family boss Carlos Marcello... |
| Illeana Douglas Illeana Douglas Illeana Douglas is an American actress, director, screenwriter, and producer.-Background:Douglas is a granddaughter of the actor Melvyn Douglas and his first wife, artist Rosalind Hightower, and has said that her grandfather's performance in Being There, in particular, was influential on her own... |
Tommy's Other Girlfriend | Rosie |
| Anthony Powers | Jimmy Two-Times | Clyde Brooks |
| Assistant U.S. Attorney Ed McDonald | Himself | Himself |
| Tony Lip Tony Lip Tony Lip is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of crime boss Carmine Lupertazzi in the HBO series The Sopranos. He portrayed real-life Bonanno crime family mobster Philip Giaccone in Donnie Brasco.Lip is from Paramus, New Jersey... |
Frankie The Wop | Francesco Manzo Francesco Manzo Frank Manzo, also known as "Francesco Manzo", "Frank Manse", "Frankie the Wop" is a soldier in the Lucchese crime family. Manzo oversaw the crime family's interests in John F. Kennedy Airport.-Biography:... |
| Joseph Bono | Mikey Franzese | Michael Franzese Michael Franzese Michael Franzese , is a former New York mobster with the Colombo crime family who was heavily involved in the gasoline tax rackets in the 1980s... |
| Kevin Corrigan Kevin Corrigan Kevin Fitzgerald Corrigan is an American actor who has appeared mostly in independent films and television since the 1990s.-Life and career:Corrigan was born in The Bronx, New York to an Irish-American father and a Puerto Rican mother... |
Michael Hill | Michael Hill |
Development
Goodfellas is based on New York crime reporter Nicholas PileggiNicholas Pileggi
Nicholas Pileggi is an Italian-American author and screenwriter.-Career:Pileggi is best known for writing the book Wiseguy, which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas, and for writing the book and screenplay Casino. The movie versions of both were co-written and directed by Martin Scorsese...
's book Wiseguy. Martin Scorsese never intended to make another mob film until he read a review of the book which inspired him to read it while working on the set of Color of Money in 1986. He had always been fascinated by the Mob lifestyle and was drawn to Pileggi's book because it was the most honest portrayal of gangsters he had ever read. After he read Pileggi's book, the filmmaker knew what approach he wanted to take: "To begin Goodfellas like a gunshot and have it get faster from there, almost like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer. I think it's the only way you can really sense the exhilaration of the lifestyle, and to get a sense of why a lot of people are attracted to it." 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 originally intended to direct the film before The Last Temptation of Christ
The Last Temptation of Christ (film)
The Last Temptation of Christ is a 1988 drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the controversial 1953 novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis. It stars Willem Dafoe as Jesus Christ, Harvey Keitel as Judas Iscariot, Barbara Hershey as Mary Magdalene, David Bowie as...
, but when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he decided to postpone Wise Guy. 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". He saw Goodfellas as the third film in an unplanned trilogy of films that examined the lives of Italian-Americans "from slightly different angles". He has often described the film as "a mob home movie" that is about money because "that's what they're really in business for".
Screenplay
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". They decided which sections of the book they liked and put them together like building blocks. Scorsese persuaded Pileggi that they did not need to follow a traditional narrative structure. The director wanted to take the gangster film and deal with it episode by episode but start in the middle and move backwards and forwards. Scorsese would compact scenes and realized that if they were kept short, "the impact after about an hour and a half would be terrific". He wanted to do the voiceover like the opening of Jules and JimJules and Jim
Jules and Jim is a 1962 French film directed by François Truffaut based on Henri-Pierre Roché's 1953 semi-autobiographical novel about his relationship with writer Franz Hessel and his wife, Helen Grund....
and use "all the basic tricks of the New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
from around 1961". Several of the names of the characters were also changed such as Tommy "Two Gunn" DeSimone becoming Tommy DeVito; Paul Vario becoming Paulie Cicero and Jimmy "The Gent" Burke becoming Jimmy Conway. Since the title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a TV series
Wiseguy
Wiseguy is an American crime drama series that aired on CBS from September 16, 1987 to December 8, 1990 for a total of four seasons. Starring Ken Wahl, the series was produced by Stephen J...
and for Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...
's 1986 comedy Wise Guys
Wise Guys (film)
Wise Guys is a 1986 feature film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo. A comedy revolving around two small-time mobsters from Newark, New Jersey, it also features Harvey Keitel, Lou Albano, Dan Hedaya, and Frank Vincent....
, Pileggi and Scorsese decided to change the name of their film to Goodfellas.
Casting
Once Robert De Niro agreed to play Conway, Scorsese was able to secure the money needed to make the film. The director cast Ray Liotta after De Niro saw him in Jonathan DemmeJonathan Demme
Robert Jonathan Demme is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, he has also directed the acclaimed movies Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married, the Talking Heads concert movie Stop...
's Something Wild and Scorsese was surprised by "his explosive energy" in that film. The actor had read Pileggi's book when it came out and was fascinated by it. A couple of years afterwards, his agent told him that Scorsese was going to direct a film version. In 1988, Liotta met the director over a period of a couple of months and auditioned for the film. The actor campaigned aggressively for a role in the film but the studio wanted a well-known actor. "I think they would've rather had Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphy
Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician....
than me", the actor remembers.
To prepare for the role, De Niro consulted with Pileggi who had research material that had been discarded while writing the book. De Niro often called Hill several times a day to ask how Burke walked, held his cigarette, and so on. Driving to and from the set, Liotta listened to FBI audio cassette tapes of Hill, so he could practice speaking like his real-life counterpart. To research her role, Lorraine Bracco tried to get close to a mob wife but was unable to because they exist in a very tight-knit community. She decided not to meet the real Karen because she "thought it would be better if the creation came from me. I used her life with her parents as an emotional guideline for the role". Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character but found it challenging finding "that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened".
Principal photography
Two weeks in advance of the filming, the real Henry Hill was paid $480,000. The film was shot on location in QueensQueens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, and parts of Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
during the spring and summer of 1989, with a budget of $25 million. Scorsese broke the film down into sequences and storyboard
Storyboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....
ed 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 [Henry's] 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." He claims that the film's style comes from the first two or three minutes of Jules and Jim
Jules and Jim
Jules and Jim is a 1962 French film directed by François Truffaut based on Henri-Pierre Roché's 1953 semi-autobiographical novel about his relationship with writer Franz Hessel and his wife, Helen Grund....
: extensive narration, quick edits, freeze frame
Freeze frame
- Film and Television :*Freeze frame shot, a cinematographic technique*Freeze frame television, a technique making use of freeze frame shots*Freeze Frame, a game on The Price is Right...
s, and multiple locale switches. It was this reckless attitude towards convention that mirrored the attitude of many of the gangsters in the film. Scorsese remarked, "So if you do the movie, you say, 'I don't care if there's too much narration. Too many quick cuts? — That's too bad.' It's that kind of really punk attitude we're trying to show". He adopted a frenetic style in order to almost overwhelm the audience with images and information. He also put a lot of detail in every frame because the gangster life is so rich. The use of freeze frames was done because Scorsese wanted images that would stop "because a point was being reached" in Henry's life.
Joe Pesci did not judge his character but found the scene where he kills Spider for talking back to his character hard to do because he had trouble justifying the action until he forced himself to feel the way Tommy did. Lorraine Bracco found the shoot to be an emotionally difficult one because it was such a male-dominated cast and realized that if she did not make her "work important, it would probably end up on the cutting room floor". When it came to the relationship between Henry and Karen, Bracco saw no difference between an abused wife and her character.
According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese let the actors do whatever they wanted. He made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines that the actors came up with that he liked best, and put them into a revised script that the cast worked from during principal photography. For example, the scene where Tommy tells a story and Henry is responding to him — the "what's so funny about me" scene — is based on an actual event that happened to Pesci. It was worked on in rehearsals where he and Liotta improvised and Scorsese recorded 4-5 takes, rewrote their dialogue and inserted it into the script. The cast did not meet Henry Hill during the film's shoot until a few weeks before it premiered. Liotta met him in an undisclosed city. Hill had seen the film and told the actor that he loved it.
The long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub came about because of a practical problem: the filmmakers could not get permission to go in the short way and this forced them to go round the back. Scorsese decided to film the sequence in one unbroken shot in order to symbolize that Henry's entire life was ahead of him, commenting, "It's his seduction of her [Karen] and it's also the lifestyle seducing him." This sequence was shot eight times. Henry's last day as a wiseguy was the hardest part of the film for Scorsese to shoot because he wanted to properly show Henry's state of anxiety, paranoia and racing thoughts caused by cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
and amphetamines intoxication, which is difficult for an actor (who had never been under their influence) to accurately portray. Scorsese explains to movie critic Mark Cousins
Mark Cousins
Mark Cousins may refer to:* Mark Cousins , Northern Irish writer on film* Mark Cousins , goalkeeper* Mark Cousins , British intellectual...
in an interview the reason for the Joe Pesci shooting at the screen shot at the end of the film, "well that's a reference right to the end of The Great Train Robbery, thats the way that ends, that film, and basically the plot of this picture is very similar to The Great Train Robbery. It hasn't changed, 90 years later, it's the same story, the gun shots will always be there, he's always going to look behind his back, he's gotta have eyes behind his back, because they're gonna get him someday." The director ended the film with Henry regretting that he is no longer a wiseguy and Scorsese said, "I think the audience should get angry at him and I would hope they do — and maybe with the system which allows this."
Post-production
Scorsese wanted to depict the film's violence realistically, "cold, unfeeling and horrible. Almost incidental." However, he had to remove ten frames of blood in order to ensure an R rating from the MPAAMotion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
. With a budget of $25 million, Goodfellas was Scorsese's most expensive film to date but still only a medium budget by Hollywood standards. It was also the first time he was obliged by Warner Bros. to preview the film. It was shown twice in California and a lot of audiences were "agitated" by Henry's last day as a wise guy sequence and Scorsese argued that that was the point of the scene. Scorsese and the film's editor, Thelma Schoonmaker
Thelma Schoonmaker
Thelma Schoonmaker is an American film editor who has worked with director Martin Scorsese for over forty years. She has edited all of Scorsese's films since Raging Bull...
, made this sequence faster with more jump cuts to convey Henry's drug-addled point of view. In the first test screening there were 40 walkouts in the first ten minutes. One of the favorite scenes for test audiences was the one where Tommy tells the story and Henry is responding to him—the "what's so funny about me" scene.
Soundtrack
Scorsese chose the songs for the soundtrack using only those that 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 that could have been heard at that time. For example, if a scene took place in 1973, he could use any song that was current or older. According to Scorsese, a lot of non-dialogue scenes were shot to playback. For example, he had "LaylaLayla
"Layla" is a song written by Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon, originally released by their blues-rock band, Derek and the Dominos, as the thirteenth track from their album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs...
" playing on the set while shooting the scene where the dead bodies are discovered in the car, dumpster, and the meat-truck. Sometimes, the lyrics of songs were put between lines of dialogue to comment on the action. Some of the music Scorsese had written into the script while other songs he discovered during the editing phase.
Distribution
Goodfellas had its world premiere at the 1990 Venice Film FestivalVenice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
where Scorsese received the Silver Lion award for Best Director. It was given a wide release in North America on September 21, 1990 in 1,070 theaters with an opening weekend gross of US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
6.3 million. It went on to make $46.8 million domestically, well above its $25 million budget.
Reviews
The film was released to critical acclaim and currently has a 97% rating at Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
and a 89 metascore at Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
. In his review for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
wrote, "More than any earlier Scorsese film, Goodfellas is memorable for the ensemble nature of the performances… The movie has been beautifully cast from the leading roles to the bits. There is flash also in some of Mr. Scorsese's directorial choices, including freeze frames, fast-cutting and the occasional long tracking shot. None of it is superfluous". USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
gave the film four out of four stars and called it, "great cinema — and also a whopping good time". David Ansen
David Ansen
David Ansen is a reviewer and senior editor for Newsweek, where he has been reviewing movies since 1977. He came to Newsweek after several years as the chief film critic at Boston's The Real Paper...
, in his review for Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
magazine, wrote "Every crisp minute of this long, teeming movie vibrates with outlaw energy". Rex Reed
Rex Reed
Rex Taylor Reed is an American film critic and former co-host of the syndicated television show At the Movies. He currently writes the column "On the Town with Rex Reed" for The New York Observer.-Life and career:...
said "Big, Rich, Powerful and Explosive. One of Scorsese's best films! Goodfellas is great entertainment." In his review for Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, Richard Corliss wrote, "So it is Scorsese's triumph that GoodFellas offers the fastest, sharpest 2½-hr. ride in recent film history".
Lists
The film is ranked #1 of the best of 1990 by Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, and Peter Travers. It is 38th on James Berardinelli's Top 100 Films.Awards
| Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63rd Academy Awards 63rd Academy Awards The 63rd Academy Awards were presented March 25, 1991 at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. The show was hosted by Billy Crystal.The prominent winner was Dances with Wolves which earned seven Oscars, including Best Picture. Joe Pesci winning Best Supporting Actor... |
Best Picture Academy Award for Best Picture The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards... |
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| Best Director | Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... |
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| Best Film Editing Academy Award for Film Editing The Academy Award for Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nominations for this award are closely correlated with the Academy Award for Best Picture. Since 1981, every film selected as Best Picture has also been nominated for the Film Editing... |
Thelma Schoonmaker Thelma Schoonmaker Thelma Schoonmaker is an American film editor who has worked with director Martin Scorsese for over forty years. She has edited all of Scorsese's films since Raging Bull... |
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| Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay The Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay is one of the Academy Awards, the most prominent film awards in the United States. It is awarded each year to the writer of a screenplay adapted from another source... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... , Nicholas Pileggi Nicholas Pileggi Nicholas Pileggi is an Italian-American author and screenwriter.-Career:Pileggi is best known for writing the book Wiseguy, which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas, and for writing the book and screenplay Casino. The movie versions of both were co-written and directed by Martin Scorsese... |
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| Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the... |
Joe Pesci Joe Pesci Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks... |
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| Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the... |
Lorraine Bracco Lorraine Bracco Lorraine Bracco is an American actress. She is best known for her TV roles as Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO series, The Sopranos, and Angela Rizzoli on the TNT series, Rizzoli & Isles... |
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| 48th Golden Globe Awards 48th Golden Globe Awards The 48th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and television for 1990, were held on January 19, 1991.-Best Actor - Drama: Jeremy Irons - Reversal of Fortune*Kevin Costner - Dances with Wolves*Richard Harris - The Field... |
Best Motion Picture – Drama | Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards... |
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| Best Director | Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... |
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| Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture The Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture was first awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in 1944 for a performance in a motion picture released in the previous year.... |
Joe Pesci Joe Pesci Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks... |
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| Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture The Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture was first awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in 1944 for a performance in a motion picture released in the previous year.... |
Lorraine Bracco Lorraine Bracco Lorraine Bracco is an American actress. She is best known for her TV roles as Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO series, The Sopranos, and Angela Rizzoli on the TNT series, Rizzoli & Isles... |
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| Best Screenplay Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay The Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture is one of the annual awards given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association."†" indicates the winner of the Academy Award for Best Writing "‡" indicates the winner of the Academy Award for Best Writing "§" indicates a Golden Globe Award... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Nicholas Pileggi Nicholas Pileggi Nicholas Pileggi is an Italian-American author and screenwriter.-Career:Pileggi is best known for writing the book Wiseguy, which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas, and for writing the book and screenplay Casino. The movie versions of both were co-written and directed by Martin Scorsese... |
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| 44th British Academy Film Awards 44th British Academy Film Awards The 44th British Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1991, honoured the best films of 1990.Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas won the awards for Best Film, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Editing and Costume Design... |
Best Film BAFTA Award for Best Film This page lists the winners and nominees for the BAFTA Award for Best Film, BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language and Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film for each year, in addition to the retired earlier versions of those awards... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards... |
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| Best Director BAFTA Award for Best Direction Winners of the BAFTA Award for Best Direction presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.-2010s:* 2010 - David Fincher – The Social Network** Tom Hooper – The King's Speech** Danny Boyle – 127 Hours... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... |
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| Best Adapted Screenplay BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay The British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Best Adapted Screenplay has been presented to its winners since 1968:-1980s:1983: Heat and Dust – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala*Betrayal – Harold Pinter... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Nicholas Pileggi Nicholas Pileggi Nicholas Pileggi is an Italian-American author and screenwriter.-Career:Pileggi is best known for writing the book Wiseguy, which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas, and for writing the book and screenplay Casino. The movie versions of both were co-written and directed by Martin Scorsese... |
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| Best Actor BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role Best Actor in a Leading Role is a British Academy Film award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding leading performance in a film.-Superlatives:... |
Robert De Niro Robert De Niro Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973... |
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| Best Editing BAFTA Award for Best Editing The BAFTA Award for Best Editing is one of several annual awards presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . The film-voting members of the Academy select the five nominated films in each category; only the principal editor for each film are named, which excludes additional... |
Thelma Schoonmaker Thelma Schoonmaker Thelma Schoonmaker is an American film editor who has worked with director Martin Scorsese for over forty years. She has edited all of Scorsese's films since Raging Bull... |
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| Best Cinematography BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography -Best Cinematography - Colour:* 1963 - From Russia with Love - Ted Moore** Nine Hours to Rama – Arthur Ibbetson** The Running Man – Robert Krasker** Sammy Going South – Erwin Hillier** The Scarlet Blade – Jack Asher... |
Michael Ballhaus Michael Ballhaus Michael Ballhaus, A.S.C. is a German cinematographer. In 1990, he was the Head of the Jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival.- Life and career :... |
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| Best Costume Design BAFTA Award for Best Costume Design The British Academy Film Award for Best Costume Design is one of the annual film awards given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.-1960s:* 1969 - Oh! What a Lovely War - Anthony Mendleson** Funny Girl – Irene Sharaff... |
Richard Bruno | ||
| 1990 New York Film Critics Circle Awards | Best Film | Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards... |
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| Best Director New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director The New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director is one of the awards given by the New York Film Critics Circle to honour the finest achievements in filmmaking.... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... |
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| Best Actor New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor The New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor is one of the awards given by the New York Film Critics Circle to honor the finest achievements in filmmaking.... |
Robert De Niro Robert De Niro Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973... |
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| Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 1990 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 1990 The 16th Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards were announced on 16 December 1990 and given on 16 January 1991.-Winners:*Best Picture:**Goodfellas**Runner-up: Dances with Wolves*Best Director:... |
Best Film Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Film The Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Film is an award given annually by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards... |
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| Best Director Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Director This is the complete list of the winners of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Director given by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... |
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| Best Supporting Actor Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor The Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor is one of the annual awards given by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.This award has been awarded since 1977.-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:... |
Joe Pesci Joe Pesci Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks... |
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| Best Supporting Actress Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress The Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress is one of the annual awards given by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.This award has been awarded since 1977.-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:... |
Lorraine Bracco Lorraine Bracco Lorraine Bracco is an American actress. She is best known for her TV roles as Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO series, The Sopranos, and Angela Rizzoli on the TNT series, Rizzoli & Isles... |
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| Best Cinematography Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Cinematography The Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Cinematography is one of the annual film awards given by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:... |
Michael Ballhaus Michael Ballhaus Michael Ballhaus, A.S.C. is a German cinematographer. In 1990, he was the Head of the Jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival.- Life and career :... |
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| National Board of Review Awards 1990 National Board of Review Awards 1990 The 62nd National Board of Review Awards, honoring the best in filmmaking in 1990, were announced on 16 December 1990 and given on 4 March 1991.-Top 10 films:#Dances with Wolves *Academy Award for Best Picture*#Hamlet#Goodfellas#Awakenings... |
Best Supporting Actor National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor The National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor is one of the annual film awards given by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.- 1950s :- 1960s :- 1970s :- 1980s :-1990s:- 2000s :-2010s:... |
Joe Pesci Joe Pesci Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks... |
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| Boston Society of Film Critics Awards 1990 Boston Society of Film Critics Awards 1990 The 11th Boston Society of Film Critics Awards honored the best filmmaking of 1990. The awards were given on 6 January 1990.-Winners:*Best Film:**Goodfellas*Best Actor:**Jeremy Irons – Reversal of Fortune*Best Actress:... |
Best Film | Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards... |
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| Best Director Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director - 1980s :- 1990s :- 2000s :- 2010s :- Trivia :* Most wins:** 3: Steven Spielberg... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... |
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| Best Supporting Actor Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor -1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:... |
Joe Pesci Joe Pesci Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks... |
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| Chicago Film Critics Association Awards 1990 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards 1990 -Winners:*Best Actor:**Jeremy Irons - Reversal of Fortune*Best Actress:**Kathy Bates - Misery*Best Film:** GoodFellas *Best Supporting Actor**Joe Pesci, "GoodFellas"*Best Supporting Actress**Lorraine Bracco, "GoodFellas"... |
Best Film | Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards... |
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| Best Director Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Director The Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Director is an annual award given by the Chicago Film Critics Association.-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:-References:... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... |
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| Best Supporting Actor Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor The Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor is an annual award given by the Chicago Film Critics Association.-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:-References:... |
Joe Pesci Joe Pesci Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks... |
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| Best Supporting Actress Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress The Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress is an annual award given by the Chicago Film Critics Association.-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:-References:... |
Lorraine Bracco Lorraine Bracco Lorraine Bracco is an American actress. She is best known for her TV roles as Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO series, The Sopranos, and Angela Rizzoli on the TNT series, Rizzoli & Isles... |
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| Best Screenplay Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay The Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay is one of the annual awards given by the Chicago Film Critics Association.-1990s:*1990: GoodFellas - Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Nicholas Pileggi Nicholas Pileggi Nicholas Pileggi is an Italian-American author and screenwriter.-Career:Pileggi is best known for writing the book Wiseguy, which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas, and for writing the book and screenplay Casino. The movie versions of both were co-written and directed by Martin Scorsese... |
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| Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards 1990 Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards 1990 The 25th Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards, given in 1991, honored the best filmmaking of 1990.-Winners:*Best Actor:**Jeremy Irons - Reversal of Fortune*Best Actress:**Joanne Woodward - Mr. & Mrs... |
Best Film | Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards... |
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| Best Director Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director Steven Spielberg holds the record for most wins: 6 . Peter Jackson won an award for each and every film of The Lord of the Rings-trilogy.-1960s:-1970s:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:-References:*... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... |
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| Best Supporting Actor Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor The Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor is an award given by the Kansas City Film Critics Circle to honor the best achievements in acting.-1960s:-1970:-1980s:-1990s:-2000s:-2010s:-References:*... |
Joe Pesci Joe Pesci Joseph Frank "Joe" Pesci is an American actor, comedian, and musician.He is known for playing a variety of different roles, from violent mobsters to comedic leads to quirky sidekicks... |
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| National Society of Film Critics Awards 1990 National Society of Film Critics Awards 1990 The 25th National Society of Film Critics Awards, given on 6 January 1991, honored the best filmmaking of 1990.-Best Picture::1. Goodfellas2. The Grifters3. Reversal of Fortune4. Sweetie-Best Director::... |
Best Film National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film The National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Picture is an annual award given by National Society of Film Critics to honor the best film of the year.... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards... |
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| Best Director National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director The National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director is an annual award given by National Society of Film Critics to honor the best film director of the year.... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... |
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| Silver Lion Silver Lion The Leone d’Argento refers to a number of awards presented at the Venice Film Festival. The Silver Lion is awarded irregularly and have gone through several changes of purpose. Until 1995, Silver Lions were infrequently awarded to a number of films as second prize for those nominated for the... |
Silver Lion Silver Lion The Leone d’Argento refers to a number of awards presented at the Venice Film Festival. The Silver Lion is awarded irregularly and have gone through several changes of purpose. Until 1995, Silver Lions were infrequently awarded to a number of films as second prize for those nominated for the... for Best Director |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... |
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| Bodil Award for Best Non-European Film Bodil Award for Best Non-European Film The Bodil Award for Best Non-European Film was one of the categories for the Bodil Awards presented annually by the Danish Union of Film Critics . The Bodil Awards were created in 1948 and are one of the oldest film prizes in Europe. This category was originally named "Best American Film" until... |
Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation... and Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards... |
Legacy
Goodfellas is #94 on the American Film InstituteAmerican Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's "100 Years, 100 Movies
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
The first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
" list and moved up to #92 on its AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) from 2007. In June 2008, the AFI put Goodfellas at #2 on their AFI's 10 Top 10
AFI's 10 Top 10
AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Goodfellas was acknowledged as the second best in the gangster film genre (after The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
). In 2000, the United States Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
, a friend and supporter of Scorsese, named Goodfellas the "best mob movie ever" and placed it among the best films of the 1990s. In December 2002, a UK film critics poll in Sight and Sound ranked the film #4 on their list of the 10 Best Films of the Last 25 Years. Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
included Goodfellas in their list of Time's All-TIME 100 Movies. Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
placed Goodfellas at #10 in their 2002 poll The 100 Greatest Films . Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
listed Goodfellas at #6 on their "500 Greatest Movies Of All Time". Total Film
Total Film
Total Film is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features...
voted Goodfellas #1 as the greatest film of all time.
Premiere
Premiere (magazine)
Premiere was an American and New York City-based film magazine published by Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., published between the years 1987 and 2007. The original version of the magazine, Première , was started in France in 1976 and is still being published there.-History:The magazine originally...
listed Joe Pesci's 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." Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
ranked Tommy DeVito #59 in their "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll.
Goodfellas inspired director David Chase
David Chase
David Chase is an American writer, director, and producer of television series. Chase has worked in television for more than 30 years; he has produced and written for shows as The Rockford Files, I'll Fly Away, and Northern Exposure. He has created two original series; the first, Almost Grown,...
to make the HBO television series The Sopranos
The Sopranos
The Sopranos is an American television drama series created by David Chase that revolves around the New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the often conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads...
. Chase said "Goodfellas is the Koran for me." He also told Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
: "Goodfellas is a very important movie to me and Goodfellas really plowed that...I found that movie very funny and brutal and it felt very real. And yet that was the first mob movie that Scorsese ever dealt with a mob crew....as opposed to say The Godfather...which there's something operatic about it, classical, even the clothing and the cars. You know I mean I always think about Goodfellas when they go to their mother's house that night when they're eating, you know when she brings out her painting, that stuff is great. I mean The Sopranos learned a lot from that."
July 24, 2010 marked the twentieth anniversary of the film's release. This milestone was celebrated with Henry Hill's hosting a private screening for a select group of invitees at the Museum of the American Gangster
Museum of the American Gangster
The Museum of the American Gangster is a two-room museum located at 80 St. Mark's Place in New York City. Opened in 2010, it is located upstairs from a former speakeasy in a neighborhood once frequented by Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and John Gotti...
, in New York City.
American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
Lists
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesAFI's 100 Years... 100 MoviesThe first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
- #94 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and VillainsAFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and VillainsAFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains is a list of the 100 greatest screen characters chosen by American Film Institute in June 2003. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series. The series was first presented in a CBS special hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger...
:- Tommy DeVito - Nominated Villain
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie QuotesAFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie QuotesPart of the AFI 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes is a list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema. The American Film Institute revealed the list on June 21, 2005, in a three-hour television program on CBS...
:- "Funny like I'm a clown? I amuse you?" - Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - #92
- AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
- #2 Gangster film
External links
- Reel Faces: Fact vs. Fiction
- GQ magazine's oral history retrospective article