But Have You Read the Book? by Kristen Lopez

Author:Kristen Lopez [Lopez, Kristen & Patra, Jyotirmayee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

GOODFELLAS

1990

DIRECTED BY Martin Scorsese

SCREENPLAY BY Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese

BASED ON Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, 1985

“All my life I wanted to be a gangster.”

Director Martin Scorsese’s return to the gangster genre with 1990’s Goodfellas tells a different view of the famous Mafiosi lifestyle. Ray Liotta plays Henry Hill, an Italian-Irish man who works his way up the ranks in the Mob. Starting out as a teenager, young Henry’s one dream in life is to be a gangster, and as he rises he encounters all manner of the suave and ruthless, particularly Jimmy “the Gent” Conway (Robert De Niro) and the hot-tempered Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). Released the same year as Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part III, Goodfellas shook up cinema with its pulse-pounding, decade-spanning soundtrack, its crackling script, and its unrepentant use of violence and foul language. The film went on to be nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, though it only won one, for Joe Pesci’s iconic performance as Tommy.

Scorsese thought he was done with gangster films, having burst onto the scene with 1973’s Mean Streets. But after reading journalist Nicholas Pileggi’s book in 1986 while he was filming The Color of Money, the director was enthralled by how honest Pileggi was about Henry Hill and the Mafia life. As Pileggi himself said, he had grown bored with the “egomaniacal ravings of illiterate hoods masquerading as benevolent Godfathers.” Pileggi didn’t see the Mob as Robin Hood figures stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. He saw them as violent and greedy. Part of his desire to interview Henry Hill was that he “didn’t look or act like most of the street hoods I had come across.” The finished product, 1985’s Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, focused on the minutiae of being in the Mafia. Scorsese himself was drawn to “the tedium, how they work, how they take over certain nightclubs, and for what reasons.” The film itself is enthralling with its rapid-fire depiction of Henry Hill’s excesses and the high body count littering New York streets, but Pileggi wanted to show the average day and how the groundwork was laid.

Because the Mob moves as a unit, there’s no central character. Pileggi’s story is told through Henry Hill’s eyes, but the author illustrates how Hill is a link in the chain. As Hill’s wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) mentions, nearly everyone she encounters is named Peter, Paul, or Marie, a line directly lifted from the text. But much of the book is made up in showing the claustrophobic society in which the Hills live. Pesci’s Oscar-winning turn in the feature is an expansion of the character in the book, who is far from Henry Hill’s best friend—that distinction goes to Lenny Vario, the son of Mob boss Paul Vario (Paul Sorvino’s Paulie Cicero in the film). Hill’s relationship with Jimmy Burke (De Niro’s Jimmy Conway) is also expanded upon, particularly once Hill is indicted on drug charges. Nearly a year passes from the 1978 Lufthansa

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