Goodfellas Martin Scorsese

Development

Goodfellas is based on New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy.[9] Martin Scorsese did not intend to make another mob film, but he saw a review of Pileggi's book, which he then read while working on the set of The Color of Money in 1986.[10][11] He had always been fascinated by the mob lifestyle and was drawn to Pileggi's book because he thought it was the most honest portrayal of gangsters he had ever read.[12] After reading the book, Scorsese 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."[13] 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."[14][15]

Scorsese decided to postpone making the film when funds materialized in 1988 to make The Last Temptation of Christ. He was drawn to the documentary aspects of Pileggi's book. "The book [Wiseguy] 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."[14] He saw Goodfellas as the third film in an unplanned trilogy of films that examined the lives of Italian Americans "from slightly different angles."[16] 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."[12] Two weeks in advance of the filming, the real Henry Hill was paid $480,000.[17]

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 "the visual styling had to be completely redone... So we decided to share credit."[14][17] They chose the sections of the book they liked and put them together like building blocks.[3] Scorsese persuaded Pileggi that they did not need to follow a traditional narrative structure. Scorsese wanted to take the gangster film and deal with it episode by episode, but start in the middle and move backwards and forwards. Scorsese compacted scenes, realizing that, if they were kept short, "the impact after about an hour and a half would be terrific."[3] He wanted to do the voiceover like the opening of Jules and Jim (1962) and use "all the basic tricks of the New Wave from around 1961."[3] The names of several real-life gangsters were altered for the film: Tommy "Two Gun" DeSimone became the character Tommy DeVito; Paul Vario became Paulie Cicero, and Jimmy "The Gent" Burke was portrayed as Jimmy Conway.[17] In the case of Jimmy, the name change actually had some truth to it. He was born James Conway and was only later given the surname Burke by one of the adoptive families he had on his way through the foster care system.[18] Scorsese initially titled the film Wise Guy, but later, he and Pileggi decided to change the title of their film to Goodfellas because two contemporary projects, the 1986 Brian De Palma film Wise Guys and the 1987–1990 TV series Wiseguy, had used similar titles.[3]

Casting

Once Robert De Niro agreed to play Jimmy Conway, Scorsese was able to secure the money needed to make the film.[11] Ray Liotta, who played Henry Hill, had read Pileggi's book when it came out and was fascinated by it. A couple of years afterward, his agent told him Scorsese was going to direct a film adaptation. In 1988, Liotta met Scorsese over a period of a couple of months and auditioned for the film.[12] He campaigned aggressively for a role, though Warner Bros. Pictures wanted a well-known actor; he later said, "I think they would've rather had Eddie Murphy than me."[19] Scorsese cast Liotta after De Niro saw him in Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986); Scorsese was surprised by "his explosive energy" in that film.[16] Al Pacino[20] and John Malkovich were considered for the role of Conway, and Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Val Kilmer, and Tom Cruise were considered for the role of Hill.[21][22][23]

To prepare for the role, De Niro consulted with Pileggi, who had research material that had been discarded while writing the book.[24] De Niro often called Hill several times a day to ask how Burke walked, held his cigarette, and so on.[25][26] 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.[26] Madonna was considered for the role of Karen Hill.[21] 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, saying 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."[27] Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character, but found it challenging to find what he called "that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened."[28]

Former EDNY prosecutor Edward A. McDonald appeared in the film as himself, re-creating the conversation he had with Henry and Karen Hill about joining the Witness Protection Program. McDonald, who was friends with Pileggi, was cast on a whim; while a location scout was taking pictures of his office, McDonald casually remarked that he would be happy to play himself if needed. Pileggi called him an hour later asking if he was serious, and he was cast. The scene was unscripted, with McDonald improvising the line referring to Karen as a "babe-in-the-woods."[29]

Photography

The film was shot on location in Queens, New York state, New Jersey, and parts of Long Island during the spring and summer of 1989, with a budget of $25 million.[17] Scorsese broke the film down into sequences and storyboarded everything because of the complicated style throughout. The filmmaker stated, "[I] 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 wise guy, 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."[10] He added that the film's style comes from the first two or three minutes of Jules and Jim (1962): extensive narration, quick edits, freeze frames, and multiple locale switches.[13] 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."[13] He adopted a frenetic style to almost overwhelm the audience with images and information.[3] He also put plenty of detail in every frame because he believed the gangster life is so rich. Freeze-frames were used for certain scenes because Scorsese wanted to highlight that "a point was being reached" in Henry's life.[3]

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.[12] Bracco found the shoot to be an emotionally difficult one because it was such a male-dominated cast, and she realized if she did not make her "work important, it would probably end up on the cutting room floor."[12] When it came to the relationship between Henry and Karen, Bracco saw no difference between an abused wife and her character.[12]

According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals wherein Scorsese let the actors do whatever they wanted. He made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines the actors came up with that he liked best, and put them into a revised script that the cast worked from during principal photography.[24] For example, the scene where Tommy tells a story and Henry is responding to him—the "Funny how? Do I amuse you?" scene—is based on an actual event that Pesci experienced. Pesci was working as a waiter when he thought he was making a compliment to a mobster by saying he was "funny"; however, the comment was not taken well.[30][31] It was worked on in rehearsals where he and Liotta improvised, and Scorsese recorded four to five takes, rewrote their dialogue, and inserted it into the script.[32] The dinner scene with Tommy's mother (portrayed by Scorsese's mother, Catherine) was also improvised, with the only scripted line being, "Did Tommy tell you about my painting?" Tommy's mother's painting of the bearded man with the dogs was painted by Nicholas Pileggi's mother and based on a photograph from the November 1978 edition of National Geographic magazine.[33] The cast did not meet Henry Hill until a few weeks before the film's premiere. Liotta met him in an undisclosed city; Hill had seen the film and told the actor that he loved it.[12]

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.[3] 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."[3] This sequence was shot eight times.[32]

Henry's last day as a wise guy 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.[3] In an interview with movie critic Mark Cousins, Scorsese explained the reason for Pesci shooting at the camera at the end of the film, "well that's a reference right to the end of The Great Train Robbery, that's 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 wise guy, about which 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."[3]

Post-production

Scorsese wanted to depict the film's violence realistically, "cold, unfeeling and horrible. Almost incidental."[11] However, he had to remove 10 frames of blood to ensure an R rating from the MPAA.[16] With a budget of $25 million, Goodfellas was Scorsese's most expensive film to that point but still only a medium-sized budget by Hollywood standards. It was also the first time he was obliged by Warner 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. Scorsese argued that was the point of the scene.[3] 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.[32] One of the favorite scenes for test audiences was the "Funny like a clown? Do I amuse you?" scene.[3]

Soundtrack

While there is no incidental score as such in the film, Scorsese chose songs for the soundtrack that he felt obliquely commented on the scene or the characters.[16] In a given scene, he used only music contemporary to or older than the scene's setting. According to Scorsese, a lot of non-dialogue scenes were shot to playback. For example, he had "Layla" by Derek and the Dominos playing on the set while shooting the scene where the dead bodies are discovered in the car, dumpster, and meat truck. Sometimes, the lyrics of songs were put between lines of dialogue to comment on the action.[3] Some of the music Scorsese had written into the script, while other songs he discovered during the editing phase.[32]