When Goodfellas opened in September of 1990, it was only a modest success. Of all five of the Best Picture Oscar nominations that year, it had the lowest box office which was about $47 million against a budget of $25 million. This is ironic, since the movie now is better regarded and respected than any of those movies.
And many have said that it’s repeated viewing holds up more than Dances With Wolves. Granted, watching the great buffalo hunt on the small screen doesn’t hold a candle to the hyperkinetic sequence where Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) is running all over the New York City area being followed by a helicopter, nearly getting into a car wreck and struggling with making dinner.
Some people argued that Goodfellas was too violent. However, only five people are killed on screen. SPOILER ALERT!! We see Jimmy Conway (Robert DeNiro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci in his Oscar-winning role) brutally beat up and kill mobster Billy Batts (Frank Vincent). Tommy shoots a young man, Spider (Michael Imperioli) for insulting him. Tommy shoots Stacks Edwards (Samuel L. Jackson) in the back of the head, spraying his blood against the bed sheets. Tommy stabs Morris Kessler (Chuck Low) in the back of the head with an ice pick, but we don’t see any blood. Then, Tommy meets his end later in the movie when he is shot execution style by Tuddy Cicero (Frank DiLeo). We only see the aftermaths of other mobsters being found dead during the montage set to Derek and the Domino’s “Layla.”
But for a movie that is 146 minutes with credits, I would argue, there isn’t two minutes of violence/gore in this movie. And many of the aftermath scenes are lighter in tone than what was shown on the CSI shows. Even the original Godfather was more violent in tone than this movie. The brutal garroting death of Luca Brasi along with the outrageous shooting of Sonny Corleone along with that montage of all the crime bosses being killed pushed the envelope for 1972.
And Dances had more blood, guts and violence with the opening Civil War scenes but still managed to get a PG-13 rating. Goodfellas also set the record at the time with the most uses of “fuck” in a movie at 300, most of it reportedly improvised by the actors. Director Martin Scorsese would later break this record with his 1995 movie Casino, which had 438 uses, and his 2013 movie The Wolf of Wall Street which had the word say 569 times within three hours.
There’s a certain coolness to the movie that I think appeals to audiences which is how Scorsese would find a new audience of Gen Xers and Millennials in the 1990s and 2000s. You could basically find the movie poster on one dorm room in every college in the country. It’s almost fitting it was up against the third Godfather, as that film series had shown the romance of the life in the Italian-American Mafia. Goodfellas shows the reality and it’s not pretty. It’s a hard life of cheating, stealing and trying not to make someone mad enough they shoot you, cut you up and bury you somewhere.
But over the years, there’s been some speculation that Henry is a unreliable narrator. The real Henry Hill died in 2012 and had struggled with substance abuse for years. I remember seeing him in 1997 on Geraldo looking almost pathetic as he had finally gotten clean in the mid-1990s. He spent many years in the witness protection program committing the same illegal activities that he was reportedly kicked out. Some have speculated Henry may have fudged the facts to make him appear more likable to authorities and writer Nicholas Pileggi. Whether or not, Henry ever killed someone has been debated even though he was known to have a violent tendency.
Even though the movie shows a harsh reality, it still romanticizes the characters. The real Jimmy Burke (basis for Jimmy Conway) was a shrewd, violent man. Mobster Tommy DeSimone (mostly the basis for Tommy DeVito) was very, very violent and reportedly shot someone just to test out a new handgun he had gotten. DeSimone had also tried to rape Karen Hill (Lorraine Bracco), which along with the killing of Billy Batts, who was a made man, and other things led to his murder being ordered.
And a nugget left out of the movie was how Karen had an affair with capo mobster Paul Vario, renamed Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino), while Henry was in the federal prison in Lewisburg, Penn. Sorvino actually demanded changes be made to his character before he accepted the role. Sorvino plays Cicero or “Paulie” as he’s called as a jovial fun-uncle paternal character. This wasn’t the case with the real Vario who like Sorvino was tall and big in size. But Vario was well known for having a violent temper, reportedly assaulting a maitre d’hotel at a restaurant for accidentally pouring wine on his wife’s dress. He also assaulted writer Jimmy Breslin for writing an unfavorable news article about one of his friends.
Sorvino gives Paulie a “Don’t fuck with me” persona and Henry says over the voice over, “Paulie may have moved slow. But that’s because Paulie didn’t have to move for anyone.” In real life, Vario was one of the best caporegimes (i.e. mobster captains) that he was unofficially the consigliere to Lucchese crime boss Carmine Tramunti and later the underboss of the Lucchese family before he was sent to the federal prison in the 1970s.
In many ways, Paulie is the father figure Henry needs as he is a young man (played by Christopher Serrone as a young teen) who becomes an errand boy for Paulie and his brother, Tuddy. Henry was the son of an Italian mother (played by Elaine Kagan) whose family was from the island of Sicily and his father (played by Beau Starr) was a tough-as-nails Irish-American. What little we see of Henry’s father is that of a brutish man who felt that tough love was the only love and sometimes that meant beating your kids.
So, it’s only natural that Henry will feel some sense of worth around Paulie, Tuddy and Jimmy, who seem to show him the love and appreciation he’s missing. While he works getting drinks for mobsters, parking their cars, making phone calls on Paulie’s behalf, and other minor duties, he sees it a way of fitting into a family. This carries on to when Henry becomes an adult and along with Jimmy and Tommy are hijacking trucks or stealing from cargo areas at the Idlewild Airport, later renamed John F. Kennedy Airport. We don’t see much of Henry’s father throughout the rest of the movie, except for a brief appearance at his wedding.
While Henry finds the fatherly figure in Paulie, Tommy knows well enough to stay clear of him. Aside from an earlier scene when he’s younger, Tommy and Paulie are only shown together once, when they are paying “tribute” of $50,000 from the Air France money theft. This was because Vario and DeSimone didn’t get along. And Vario didn’t care for some of DeSimone’s actions. We don’t know much of Tommy’s father or even if he’s still alive. Tommy’s mother (played by the scene-stealing Catherine Scorsese) seems almost to worship the ground Tommy walks on.
This has led me to speculate that something happened to Tommy’s father earlier in his life that made her feel he was more special and important that she would overlook certain thing. Catherine was well into her 70s when the movie was film and Pesci was in his mid-40s, but supposed to be playing someone in his 20s and 30s throughout the movie. This has led me to believe that Tommy’s father may have been part of the older generation of mobsters from the 1930s and 1940s and been killed. Or it’s even possible that Tommy’s father was sent to fight in World War II and died.
For the most part, Tommy’s behavior represents a recklessness that Italian-Americans without fathers would behave. And since Tommy’s mother appears to be very religious (and most likely Roman Catholic), she wouldn’t get married again as she sees herself still married to Tommy’s late father. Since Henry still has a father and sees Jimmy as his older brother type, he’s more calm and reserve than Tommy, who is hot-tempered most of the time.
Henry seems more willing to please Paulie as he wants his acceptance. Tommy only sees Paulie as an authority figure so that’s why he avoids him. Paulie tells Henry to stay out of the drug business after he’s released from prison because it can lead to others, including him, going to prison by association. However, despite a strict warning (where Sorvino improvised a slap to a surprised Liotta), Henry continues to deal drugs and is eventually busted by narcotics officers.
When he goes to plead with Paulie for help, Paulie looks offended and upset that Henry lied to him. But in a last show of sympathy, he gives Henry some $3,200 in cash and says, “Now I got to turn my back on you” giving Henry a look and tilt of the head that means, “I told you what would happen.” Henry cries very emotionally because he’s been kicked out of the crime family. He’s lost all the love and admiration he was seeking from Paulie.
Later when Henry has to point out Paulie in court as he has cut a plea deal to testify against him, Paulie looks hurt this man he’s known for 25-30 years is ratting on him. I don’t think Paulie would’ve thought twice about approving the order for Tommy to be “whacked” because of the killing of Billy Batts, whose real name was William Devino and Ronald “Foxy” Jerothe, both close friends of John Gotti with the Gambino Crime Family. DeSimone had reportedly also taken off his mask during the Luftansa cargo heist and was identified by the hostage, so his killing was necessary because he could cut a deal if arrested. It’s also like Paulie would’ve seen Tommy as a more dangerous person down the road.
But aside from the drug dealings, Paulie might have thought differently about Henry. Because Jimmy was involved with him, Henry says that Paulie would have Jimmy whacked before him. And it’s likely Jimmy knows this, which is why he tries to go after Henry and even threatening Karen’s life. While giving up Jimmy to authorities could be viewed as justified because Jimmy was going to double-cross him, Jimmy wasn’t a made man because he was Irish. The feds wanted a more higher-up official, which is why Henry had to give them Paulie to beat the drug trafficking charges.
The greater tragedy at the end is that Henry never learned his lesson. He was given a second chance to start over but continued to ruin his life, finally coming out of the shadows in the late 1990s when he was broke and desperate. Without the threat of Paulie or Jimmy, Henry is out of control like Tommy. Vario died at the age of 73 from respiratory failure while in prison in Fort Worth, Texas. Burke had died at the age of 64 from cancer while in prison. It’s quite possible, since Burke and Vario were both dead, Hill felt it was time to come out of hiding.
Having read Wiseguy, the book written by Pileggi used for the basis of Goodfellas, and The Lufthansa Heist, the book the real Hill wrote with Daniel Simone, it was a harder life than what was portrayed in the movie. Who knows if Vario and Hill had the same type of relationship in real life? But on screen, you can see it.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 