Sunday, September 19, 2010
As far back as I can remember, I always loved Goodfellas
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By Edward Copeland
Some films' excellence hit you so hard with their greatness that once the end credits roll, you know that you will have to see the movie again — and soon — as you float out of the theater in a state of euphoria greater than a high any drug could produce. This feeling consumed me the very first time I saw Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, which premiered 20 years ago today.
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In 1990, I already had been a fan of Scorsese for quite some time, having seen every new film he made in a theater since The King of Comedy, including having to travel four hours to Dallas and stand in a long line in the rain to see The Last Temptation of Christ since my backward-ass state legislature actually passed a measure to prevent the film from playing here. Of Scorsese's films between 1983 and 1989 that I'd seen in a theater, After Hours was my favorite, though I felt Taxi Driver was his best, even though I'd only seen it in a cropped video version. Then Goodfellas came into my life and it changed forever. What grabbed me was not that I'd just seen an incredibly well-made, well-acted, well-written and well-directed film that provided one helluva entertaining time at the movies but that it seemed to me that hidden inside Goodfellas, Scorsese disguised a film school that all could attend. If you wanted to explain to any non-cinephile about any aspect of filmmaking, you could find a great example within Scorsese's gangster movie to illustrate to them simply and wonderfully what it was, be it a tracking shot, a pan, types of editing, great cinematography, use of music and sound, etc. It truly was a wonder to behold.
When I recently marked the 25th anniversary of After Hours, I noted that in the DVD extras Scorsese mentioned that part of what attracted him to that film was his negative experience of living in the lower Manhattan area of Tribeca and it seems to me that while
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When I was a kid, it was not unusual for me to go see films I was crazy about multiple times in the theater. Most were the usual suspects such as the original Star Wars trilogy, Grease — movies that I'd see again and again with new companions or relatives or even by myself. However, as I grew older and started reviewing (and tried to review just about everything out there, heaven help me), once was enough. Goodfellas became a glorious exception as I saw that four times in the theater in its original release, dragging new people to it to share in its wonder (usually following the film with an Italian meal). In the years since, it's become one of those films that if I flipped past it on TV, I'd inevitably watch it despite the cropping and censoring. Sitting down to watch the DVD of it for this piece was the first time in a while that I'd seen it unexpurgated and in its proper ratio. It excited me in a way that cut-up partial viewings had failed to do. It always was great, but it renewed in me how magnificent an example of moviemaking it remains.
It's also fascinating to watch the entire film again in the wake of The Sopranos which, let's admit it, probably never would have existed without Goodfellas. Granted, no one in Scorsese's film seeks psychiatric help, but it sets the template of the balancing of domestic life with criminal life. At one point, Henry's wife Karen
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Since I've brought up Bracco, the performer with the most prominent roles in both Goodfellas and The Sopranos, this does make it as
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Ray Liotta, so great as Henry, hasn't had the career he deserves. Since his breakout role as Melanie Griffith's psychotic ex in Jonathan Demme's Something Wild, which was followed up soon after by Goodfellas, he really hasn't had a chance at another great role to live up to those early successes. He's so good here and he more than holds his own with Robert De Niro's Jimmy Conway, one of the last times De
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Which brings us to Pesci, who not only won a well-deserved Oscar as Tommy Devito, but really provides most of the moments of the movie that resonate throughout pop culture, even by people who have never seen Goodfellas. In fact, though he appears in the pre-credit prologue, the first time we see a grown Tommy and Pesci gets dialogue of any length it is the infamous, "What makes me so funny?" bit at the Bamboo Lounge. It's not only entertaining and a classic moment in film history, it quickly establishes Tommy's unstable nature and Pesci's frightening ability to change demeanor in a split-second. First, he's being scary, then he admits he's joking, then he's terrorizing the restaurant's owner (Tony Darrow) and a waiter and then it's back to kidding
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Pesci provides so many of the movie's memorable moments, that I'd feel remiss (if only to myself) if I didn't single out the middle of the Billy Batts sequence. The attack proves brutal enough, though it's beautiful in its own way as Pesci and De Niro punch, pummel and kick Frank Vincent to the sounds of Donovan's "Atlantis." Actually, the film history of Pesci and Vincent amuses on its own. Pesci basically had
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De Niro received an Oscar nomination in 1990, but it wasn't for his great work as "Jimmy the Gent" Conway, but for Awakenings. Put those performances side by side and, honestly, see which film you think he really gave the best performance in. It's not that De Niro has been turning in bad performances, but the amazing work of the hungry young actor certainly hasn't been present much in the past 20 years or so. The following year, re-teaming with Scorsese, he gave an entertaining but scenery devouring turn in the Cape Fear remake. Really though, since Goodfellas, I'd only count Heat and Wag the Dog as truly impressive work by De Niro (and I'm being generous) but it came alongside embarrassments such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In other films, he turned in fine, workman-like performances that smelled suspiciously as if they
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While Goodfellas boasts an exceptionally large cast, there really is only one other character large enough to be of separate note and that's Paul Sorvino as Paul Cicero, the boss of this particular Brooklyn crime family. One thing I've never quite understood about this film (or Casino for that matter) both of which were based on nonfiction books by Nicholas Pileggi, who in both instances co-wrote the screenplays, change the names of the
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As you can probably guess, my answer to that heading is Scorsese himself, since I consider Goodfellas to be the director's greatest film in a career filled with great films. I think the timing proved particularly auspicious for him to make Goodfellas. He'd re-energized himself with After Hours and three years later finally realized his longtime dream to bring Nikos Kazantzakis' novel The Last Temptation of Christ to the screen. Except for the lark of "Life Lessons," his segment (the best one) of New York Stories, Goodfellas would be the very next film he produced and it seemed as if he were at the peaks of his powers. As I mentioned earlier, watching Goodfellas seems as if you are attending film school in about 2 hours and 20 minutes since he displays practically every filmmaking technique possible. More importantly, they aren't used to call attention to themselves. He employs them because they are the best way to illustrate the scene and story he wants to convey at that time.
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The sequences that Scorsese concocts with his collaborators such as film editor Schoonmaker and director of photography Michael Ballhaus, the temptation for me would be just to show, not tell, but despite searching the Web far and wide, Warner Bros. seems to have done a good job at preventing people from embedding clips from the film. That's fine. In the end, I'm a man of words anyway, even if language can't do justice to what Scorsese has assembled. Take for instance what's probably the film's most infamous sequence: the heralded Copacabana tracking shot. It's an amazing, unbroken take that begins outside the club as Henry escorts Karen on one of their first real solo dates and, eager to impress, guides her past the long line of people waiting to get in through a basement entrance and a labyrinthine
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Of course, that's hardly the only bravura sequence Scorsese and crew conjures for this masterpiece. In the DVD extras for After Hours, Michael Ballhaus, told how Scorsese gave him a shot list, a list that came from pseudo-storyboards that Scorsese drew on the script itself.
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Then there is the food, that glorious food. Talk about scrumptious details. The entire prison sequence showing how Henry, Paulie, Vinnie (played by Scorsese's father, Charles) and others, prepare for meals that would make free people salivate. With the details of how Paulie
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As great a feat of movie magic as the Copa scene is, including its use of music, the absolute highlight of the film, at least in terms of using one piece of music, concerns the aftermath of the famed Lufthansa heist. Jimmy starts getting both nervous about the actions of the people who carried out the job (and greedy as well), so he finds it more fortuitous to cut all his ties by killing all of them. The sequence showing the discovery of the various corpses starts slowly, almost innocently, as some kids who appear to have been playing stick ball stumble upon a pink Cadillac. It's the same car Jimmy had chewed one of the men out for having bought on the night of the robbery and told him to get rid of. Then the music begins and it's the wonderful piano exit to "Layla" by Derek and the Dominoes (for the young'uns out there, Eric Clapton's old band) and you see close up the slain bodies of Johnny Roastbeef and his wife. The Cadillac's sales sticker remains on the passenger window. The song and Liotta's narration goes on as we see bodies falls in garbage trucks and discovered frozen in meat tracks. It's a perfect pop score for such a grisly sequence.
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When I was in fifth grade, our music teacher assigned groups to create mix tapes that would splice together parts of different songs into some kind of creative collage. I'm not sure what inspired her to give us this project but that's how one of Scorsese's other great Goodfellas sequences plays, where he manages to depict about 16 hours of time in a day in 10 minutes of screentime with brilliant editing and constant changing of the music he's using in the sequence. It covers the last day before Henry's arrest on drug charges. He's drugged out on cocaine and convinced that a helicopter is following him. He has a busy day of errands: bringing guns to Jimmy, meeting his Pittsburgh drug connection to prepare a shipment that his nanny will take on a flight out of state, pick up his handicapped brother (Kevin Corrigan) from the hospital to bring home for dinner, help prepare dinner and placate his mistress (Debi Mazar). It's a daylong frenzy and it feels like it. The first time I actually timed it, I was shocked to realize that it only took 10 minutes because so much is going on at such a manic pace, it seemed an impossibility. With his use of so many different songs in the sequence, it's almost like one of those radio contests where they play short snippets of songs and callers have to identify them for a prize. Maybe that's where my music teacher got the idea.
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I could go on endlessly about this film because for me it's as infectious to talk or write about as it is to watch. Pretty much without options, Henry and Karen Hill had to become government witnesses and go into the Witness Protection Program. They later divorced. During the trial sequence, as Henry testfies against Jimmy and Paulie, Scorsese even breaks the fourth wall, having Henry step off the witness stand and speak directly to the camera. He admits that what he misses most is the lifestyle. He later got into trouble again and was kicked out of the program. In the film, his last line is that he'd be forced to live the rest of his life as a schnook. Twenty years later, that is very true for Henry Hill. You can befriend him on Facebook. I wonder if he plays Mafia Wars. The real Jimmy and Paulie both died in prison as old men.
The movie about Henry Hill's life will outlast him by many, many years, as will the name Martin Scorsese. One of his quick final shots pays homage both to the gangster movies of the past and the infamous opening of Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery of 1903. That's why Scorsese is such a master. He doesn't just know how to make great films or how to relate to them personally, he's like an encyclopeda of film history. He's also more than willing to dive into something new, which he will be doing tonight as he becomes executive producer of a dramatic series for television for the first time and directs the pilot for HBO's Boardwalk Empire starring Steve Buscemi. (I've seen the first six episodes and it's very good.) That's why I love him and that's why I love Goodfellas.
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Labels: 90s, Altman, Boardwalk Empire, Buscemi, De Niro, De Palma, Demme, HBO, Liotta, Movie Tributes, Pesci, Scorsese, Seth Rogen, Star Wars, Television, The Sopranos, Zemeckis
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Thanks. I've been working on it a long time since it means so much to me and I was beginning to think I made it too long and no one was reading the whole thing since there weren't any comments.
Fantastic review of a brilliant movie. Goodfellas has been one of my all-time favs since I first laid eyes on it, it introduced me to the genre and firmly embedded the name Scorsese in my head forever - good work!
Awesome tribute to this film. And length was not an issue at all as you passion for this film came through, big time.
This is a great film and one that I can watch again and again. It is just so alive and bursting at the seams with energy and conviction. So many classic scenes and memorabler lines of dialogue. And what about that cast? Aside from the main leads you have a good chunk of future SOPRANOS cast members filling things out in the margins, each getting little moments to do their thing.
Great film. Man, now I wanna watch it.
This is a great film and one that I can watch again and again. It is just so alive and bursting at the seams with energy and conviction. So many classic scenes and memorabler lines of dialogue. And what about that cast? Aside from the main leads you have a good chunk of future SOPRANOS cast members filling things out in the margins, each getting little moments to do their thing.
Great film. Man, now I wanna watch it.
Great stuff, Edward, the best piece I've ever read on this film, which may be my favorite Scorsese picture too. I saw it on its first day of release with my parents when I was 20 and we all thrilled to it. Back then it was the adrenaline rush that hooked me; today I still get jazzed by the movie while seeing its darker meanings. Most movies are about character or theme; "Goodfellas" is about a lifestyle, a pretty tricky thing to capture on film, but Scorsese is up to the challenge.
I would argue that DeNiro is great in Jackie Brown, especially with the small touches and prop work that you speak of.
You are right. Somehow I always seem to forget about Jackie Brown and that he was in it. Where did Bridget Fonda go?
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