From Good to Great

Someone recently asked me, Is this really a big deal? The answer depends on where you fall within the three categories of Goodfellas viewers: The first are those who are entirely repulsed by the violence. You ask these people if they’ve ever seen the movie and all they remember is the infamous trunk-stabbing scene. The rest is a bloody blur. The second type recognizes it as a cinematic classic, powerfully rendered. They’ll watch the movie if it’s on television but probably won’t go out of their way to rent or buy it. And then there’s the third–those who treat it as a religious experience. They’ve seen it hundreds of times. Obsessed, they drop lines into ordinary conversation. And though some would never admit it, they sometimes wish they had that life, above the law and free to administer their own form of justice. (When asked about the appeal of the pernicious Ralphie in The Sopranos, actor Joe Pantoliano summed up by saying, “Look, how many times have you been insulted in your life or embarrassed by someone, where you fantasized on the way home how you could bash that person’s brain in for doing that to you?”)

For the latter two categories, the rerelease of Goodfellas will prove an enriching experience. For the faint of heart, watching it on cable will have to be enough. It does warrant explaining why Goodfellas is so aggressively violent: For director Martin Scorsese, who grew up in Little Italy and was familiar with many of these hoods, the graphic depiction, in all its sloppiness and brutality, was essential. Scorsese had no intention of romanticizing the gangster life–he intended to show just how awful it really is. Unlike the Godfather trilogy, Goodfellas tells the story of the rise and fall of the Mafia in New York with a view from the trenches. The film’s main character, Henry Hill, is only half-Italian and was never “made.” In the end, he joins the Federal Witness Program, ratting out members of his own crew. (The real Hill has since left the Program but doesn’t fear retaliation since most of his former associates are now deceased.)

Commentary with cast and crew: If there is one thing to be learned listening to these voiceovers, it is that Martin Scorsese is a genius. He is friendly and passionate and brilliant all at once. (The veneration does becomes a bit excessive.) Unlike other DVDs offering scene-by-scene commentaries, these were evidently done in prior interviews and later added to the DVD. Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro’s comments are the briefest, which explains why their names aren’t mentioned on the DVD’s back cover.

The observations of Martin Scorsese and author Nicholas Pileggi, whose book Wise Guy became Goodfellas, are certainly invaluable. “I was interested in the minutia–or at least at Henry Hill’s level,” says Scorsese. “And I think in the minutia you’re able to see the reflection of the whole world.” But it is director of photography Michael Ballhaus who is most impressive, explaining the intricacies of various technical footage. The much-heralded four-minute Steadicam shot of Henry and Karen walking into the Copacabana required only eight takes and only part of the day (Hollywood legend has long held that the shot took several days and dozens of takes). Ballhaus mentions some takes being perfect until the very end, when comedian Henny Youngman forgot his lines. The discovery of Frankie Carbone’s frozen corpse inside a meat truck involved a cameraman stepping off a descending crane and walking smoothly inside the truck while filming continuously. Ballhaus is a consummate professional, saying in his thick German accent, “There is nothing unfilmable for me. . . . Sometimes it’s a matter of time or money, but everything is possible. A director would never hear from me, ‘I can’t do it or . . . it’s not possible.’ It doesn’t exist in my vocabulary.”

For Joe Pesci, who plays the psychotic Tommy DeVito, his most difficult moment came when he had to shoot a kid named Spider (played by Sopranos star Michael Imperioli). Pesci refused earplugs for maximum intensity. He notes the silence around the table was awful–“everyone felt like I really killed the kid.”

According to producer Irwin Winkler, there were at least 40 walk-outs in the first preview. Panicky executives asked Scorsese to cut the scene involving the death of Spider. Wisely, he held his ground, insisting that to do so would glamorize the gangster life. Scorsese wanted to remind viewers that in the end, they should not find these men sympathetic. (Note how all the music ceases after Hill’s drug arrest. “If you notice,” says Scorsese, “the arrest was the culmination–afterwards there’s no more music–the good times are over. Now you have to pay.”) But despite initial reactions, Goodfellas was nominated for Best Picture by the Academy (losing to Dances With Wolves); Pesci won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Cop and Crook commentary: Far more intriguing is viewing Goodfellas with insights from the real Henry Hill and Edward McDonald, the assistant U.S. attorney who headed the Brooklyn Organized Crime Strike Force. What you learn here (and from Pileggi’s book) is that Hill and Jimmy “the Gent” Conway (played by Robert De Niro) and Tommy were all members of the Luchese crime family. Tommy’s death (it remains unclear how he died, since his body has never been recovered) was payback not only for the murder of Billy Batts but also another associate named “Foxy”–both members of the Gambino family (the latter being a John Gotti protégé). In addition, the real Tommy DeVito was over six feet tall and strikingly handsome but, true to Pesci’s portrayal, “a sick fuck.” Their boss Paulie Cicero was not as soft and patriarchal as Sorvino renders him. Hill describes the real Paulie as “a vicious, vicious bastard.”

There are moments throughout the film when Hill is emotionally affected, including the deaths of Spider and Billy Batts. (During the commentary, Hill recalls hearing Batts call out for him as he was dying.) Hill feels particular sadness for the character known as Morrie the wig salesman, whom he describes as extremely intelligent. McDonald asks who he was in real life, but the man’s name is censored throughout the commentary. (It seems, at least to this reader of Wise Guy, that Morrie was in reality a man named Marty Krugman.) Hill later says that although being a rat bothered him for some time, it was knowing he was able to avenge Morrie’s death by putting Jimmy “The Gent” in jail that helped him justify his betrayal.

Everything else you ever wanted to know: For Goodfellas fanatics, the special edition is a treasure trove of movie trivia and mob arcana. Just a few examples: The tomato sauce in the final scenes was made by Scorsese’s mother. Pesci’s unforgettable “Funny how?” line was not improvised but rather incorporated into the script after Pesci related a personal anecdote off-camera. The painting in the kitchen scene was done by Nick Pileggi’s mother. (The boatman’s resemblance to “Billy Batts” actor Frank Vincent was coincidence.) The children Karen Hill brings to the apartment lobby to torment her husband’s mistress are in fact the children of Lorraine Bracco. Hill himself did not participate in the notorious Lufthansa heist–he ended up having a fight with his wife that night. Other bonus materials in the second disc will leave even the most avid fan fully satiated.

What comes across strongly in the “Cop and Crook” commentary is Hill’s insistence that despite all the trappings of mob life, he was living in constant fear, knowing that at any moment he could get whacked. When he learns that Tommy has been killed, his reaction was a sense of relief (though it was the only time Hill had seen Jimmy shed a tear). To those who still might idealize the movie and the lifestyle, Hill says, “Believe me, you don’t want to live that kind of life.”

Victorino Matus is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard.