20 Movies: Goodfellas

This is the true story of Henry Hill, a criminal associated with the Lucchese crime family from 1955 until 1980, when he was arrested on narcotics charges and chose to become an FBI informant.

I'm posting about 20 specific movies because of a social media trend-game. The idea was that you choose 20 movies that greatly influenced you, and then you post the poster of each one, one per day, for 20 days. No reviews, no explanations, just the posters. So, I’m doing that.

But I also wanted to talk about them a little bit, so...

Simply put, I love this film.

If you ask me, Goodfellas is one of the greatest American films ever, and it’s definitely, hands down, Martin Scorsese’s best. This movie is Scorsese at the peak of his ability, and I don’t think a better film has been made about organized crime either, including The Godfather. It’s also the best film about Henry Hill too, with a close second going to My Blue Heaven, of course.

I’ve seen this film so many times. I used to watch it on repeat while working at the video store, and it’s such a good film that, most of the time, I wouldn’t get to finish it, as one of the customers in the store would inevitably ask if they could rent it. So, all this together means that it makes sense that this movie would be take the 8th spot on my list of 20 most personally influential films.

So, as everyone knows, Goodfellas is based on a “true” story.

Released in 1990, it was initially titled Wise Guy, and was later changed to Goodfellas, mostly due to the popularity of the 1987–1990 TV series Wiseguy. Directed by Martin Scorsese, the film was written by Scorsese and investigative reporter Nicholas Pileggi. Pileggi was involved because the film is an adaptation of his 1985 book, Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, which is the story of the life of mob associate, and famous rat, Henry Hill. Upon entering Witness Protection, Hill testified against his former friends and associates in the mob, resulting in fifty convictions, including his boss Paul Vario and his mob mentor James Burke.

As a result of this being a true story, or at least as “true” as an unrepentant criminal like Henry Hill can be trusted to tell it, the film not only features a bunch of real-life people like Henry, his wife Karen, and their family, but a lot of real life gangsters too, although those names were all changed for the film. For example… Paul Vario is Paulie Cicero. Jimmy "The Gent" Burke is Jimmy Conway. Tommy "Two Gun" DeSimone is Tommy DeVito. On and on.

Apparently Al Pacino and John Malkovich were considered for the role of Jimmy Conway at one point, and actors like Sean Penn, Val Kilmer, and even Tom fucking Cruise were all considered for the role of Henry Hill. Madonna was supposedly briefly considered for the role of Karen Hill.

I can’t even imagine what that shit would’ve been like…

Premiering at the 47th Venice International Film Festival on September 9, 1990, Scorsese was awarded the Silver Lion award for Best Director. The film went on to receive widespread acclaim upon release. Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, it inexplicably lost to Dances with fucking Wolves, one of the best examples of the Oscars getting it wrong. However, Joe Pesci deservedly won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as Tommy. It also won five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, including Best Film and Best Director, and it was named the year's best film by multiple critics' groups. Then, in the year 2000, Goodfellas was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. So, what I'm saying here is, it’s not just me, Goodfellas is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.

And it is not only a timeless classic of American cinema, it’s also one of the most rewatchable movies of all time too. Each scene is so good, so memorable, and so perfectly realized, a glimpse of a moment is all it takes to remind you of that point in the movie. The Lufthansa heist and the bodies. Maury’s wigs. The Copacabana. Henry pistol-whipping Karen’s asshole neighbor. Billy Batts fresh out of prison and busting balls, then fresh into a grave, all with a late night dinner with Tommy’s mom, while Billy is in the car trunk, in between. Lighting a match. Slicing the garlic. Spider and the card game. Frying peppers and onions. Stirring the sauce. Tommy’s comeuppance. Janice Rossi is a whore. Funny how?

In 1955, young Irish-American Henry Hill is enamored of the local Mafia presence in his working class Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn.

He starts out minding the little pizza place the local toughs all congregates outside of, but is soon running errands for local caporegime Paulie Cicero. A Sicilian word, a capo is a "made man" in the Italian mob, a true member of The Family, a person with real influence within it, someone who heads a crew of criminals or “soldiers.”

Eventually, Paulie assigns Henry, along with fellow juvenile delinquent Tommy DeVito, to one of his soldiers, Jimmy "the Gent" Conway, an Irish-American truck hijacker and gangster. Jimmy takes them under his wing. Tommy and Henry start out working as a fence for Jimmy, but gradually work their way up to more and more serious crimes.

Throughout the 1960s, the trio spend most of their days hijacking trucks, running scams, and stealing whatever they could get their hands on. They spend most of their nights at the Copacabana nightclub carousing with women—Friday night for the girlfriends, Saturday night for the wives.

This is where Henry meets and starts dating Karen Friedman. A Jewish woman quickly seduced by Henry's flash and glamour, not to mention his money and his lavish lifestyle, she marries him despite her parents' disapproval.

She marries him specifically for the danger.

Then in the year 1970, a man named Billy Batts was newly released from prison, and he's celebrating his release in Henry’s bar. Batts was a made man in the Gambino crime family, a stand up guy who did his time, so he's feeling pretty untouchable in general that night. He was also a loudmouth and an asshole, so he needles Tommy all night long, he insultis and embarrasses him, and finally, Tommy snaps, because Tommy is a short-tempered, murderous, little psychopath with a hair trigger.

He and Jimmy beat, stab, and shoot Billy.

The unsanctioned murder of a made man is a big deal in the world of the mob. This is something that could result in all of their deaths, and all their own friends would do is stand by and let it happen, if not pull the trigger themselves, so Henry helps Jimmy and Tommy bury Billy in Upstate New York. Six months later, the burial site is slated for development, so they have to dig the rotting corpse up, and take him somewhere else.

That’s what friends are for, right?

In 1974, Karen has had enough of Henry’s carousing. She harasses Henry's mistress, Janice, and eventually threatens Henry at gunpoint. Henry moves out as a result, and moves in with Janice, basically hiding out. Karen, meanwhile, is still angry and is letting everyone know it. This upsets the rest of their little mob family so much, that Paulie and Jimmy have to go and have a talk with Henry. Paulie tells Henry that he has to go home and smooth things out with Karen before she does or says something that could bring unwanted attention on them all.

But first, Paulie suggests a vacation.

He offers to be the first to smooth things out with Karen, to sweet talk her about how he straightened Henry out. Meanwhile, he has Henry and Jimmy go down to enjoy the sun and fun of Tampa, and while they’re there, they can collect on a debt from a gambler who’s overdue.

Unfortunately, this gambler has a relative that works in the FBI, and Jimmy and Henry are arrested and end up going to prison. In order to support his family while he’s stuck inside, Henry has Karen to smuggle drugs into the prison so he can sell them to the inmates and guards. Paulie doesn’t approve of the drug trade, but he understands, given the circumstance.

Four years later, Henry is paroled and he has a good thing going with his drug connection in Pittsburgh. It’s so good that he expands his cocaine business, and brings in Jimmy and Tommy, secretly, and against Paulie's orders.

It’s around this time that Jimmy Conway puts together a crew for a heist.

The vault at the Lufthansa airlines cargo terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport can hold millions in currency exchange cash from service members and tourists, so on December 11th, 1978, six masked and armed men raid the terminal in the middle of the night, and end up walking away with nearly six million dollars in cash and jewelry.

But too soon, some of the members of the heist crew start throwing their newly-acquired ill-gotten gains around a little too loudly. Some of them start purchasing expensive items, even though Jimmy explicitly told them to not spend any money, not yet, not with the Feds tailing them all. Then, the getaway truck from the heist is found by police, because the driver (an early career Samuel L. Jackson) got a bit too stoned and fell asleep. So, Jimmy has the crew murdered, mostly by Tommy, and leaves the bodies all over the city for people to find.

In the end, only Henry and Tommy are spared. Henry is making them all good money through his Pittsburgh connection, and best of all, Tommy is about to become a made man, which will be good news for all of them.

But that shit doesn’t work out.

In the film, Tommy is summoned to an anonymous house, with the promise of making him. Instead, they shoot him in the head, so his mother can’t have an open casket funeral.

In real life, Tommy DeSimone vanished in 1979, and his body was never found. There are multiple stories about what happened. Some claim Tommy was cut in half with a chainsaw and then dumped into the ocean. Others claim he was buried in some field somewhere, or poured in with some foundation’s concrete, or maybe dumped in some scrap metal yard. However it was done, most of the theories agree that it was done in retribution for Billy Batts. But this is the most widely accepted answer pretty much because the film states this outright. Some claim Gotti wasn’t involved at all, that it was actually Jimmy Burke (Conway, in the film) who was the one behind Tommy’s death. Now, whether Jimmy actually pulled the trigger, or if he simply pointed others’ guns in the right direction, who knows. Still, it makes sense, right? It’s easily explainable as Jimmy not only covering his tracks, not just from the Feds over Lufthansa, but from the Gambino Family too, because of his own involvement in Billy Batts’ murder. Plus, it was a good way for Jimmy to deal with Tommy too, someone who had been becoming increasingly unreliable, which meant he was more and more likely to end up arrested, which meant he could spill a lot of beans in order to save his ass, which Jimmy definitely would not want. And finally, Jimmy would get to keep all the cash from the Lufthansa heist for himself, right? All wins for ol' Jimmy The Gent.

But… who knows?

Either way, Tommy’s death was the beginning of the end, and also the moment where the movie shifts in tone from a glorification of the camaraderie and lifestyle, to one of untrustworthiness, and danger as things start to fall apart…

By 1980, Henry is deep into his cocaine deals, all while he's shoveling his product up his nose on a regular basis. He’s strung out, sweaty, and a paranoid. Eventually, his luck runs out, and he and his whole operation are busted, arrested by narcotics agents, and thrown in jail. Karen bails him out that night, but Henry discovers that they're now penniless, as she had to flush around $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet when the FBI showed up at their door.

With nowhere else to turn to, Henry runs to Paulie.

Betrayed, angry, and terrified of dying in prison as an old man, Pauly hands Henry the $3,200 in his pocket, and then ends their association. A lifetime of service, and all Henry gets is a handful of cash, not even enough to pay for a casket.

At this point, it’s clear that Jimmy is looking to protect his own ass, and is maneuvering for a chance to kill Henry, and if he can’t get to Henry directly, he’ll get to him through Karen. Jimmy not only doesn’t want Paulie to find out about his own involvement with Henry’s drug deals, but also, Jimmy knows that Henry only has one real option left at this point…

He has to run to the Feds. He has to become a rat.

Which is what Henry does. He becomes an FBI informant and enters the witness protection program with his family. Henry’s testimony sends a lot of people to jail, including Paulie and Jimmy, and after that, the protection program moves the Hills to some nondescript suburban neighborhood.

It’s here where we finally learn that Henry is left with regrets, but they’re not for the harm he’s caused, or for the things he stolen, or the deaths he was involved in, it’s for the fact that his life of glamour and power and money is gone forever, and he is now doomed to live an unsatisfying life of anonymous mediocrity out on the unremarkable margins, condemned to live for the rest of his life as a nobody, an average "schnook."

This lack of remorse is probably why Henry was kicked out of the witness protection program in 1987, after he was arrested for narcotics conspiracy, and sentenced to 5 years probation. He and Karen separated a year later. He died of a heart attack in 2012. Jimmy Conway died of lung cancer in prison in 1996. Paul Vario died in prison as an old man in 1988.

Live by the sword, die by the sword, I guess.

One of the things that I love about this film is how it shows you exactly why these people were who they were, and how they stayed who they were. The film lulls you into accepting their lifestyle, to understanding it. It lets you revel in their wanton criminality, by using the charm of this big boisterous family.

It pulls you in, to paraphrase Pacino in Godfather 3.

The audiences’ experience is most closely reflected in Karen, as she is gradually pulled into Henry’s world, dazzled with the glitz and glamour and status and ready violence. The long shot of them going in the side entrance to the Copa is symbolic, it’s her dizzying entrance to this world, to the spectacle, to the fun, to the respect and subservience she is afforded. It’s a whirlwind, and a quick leap to the grandeur of the wedding. The lone sour note comes with the hostess party, as she glimpses the true face behind the flash, but it’s brief and small and quickly brushed aside for a big stack of cash to go shopping with, and she happily goes to her knees to symbolically suck the mafia lifestyle’s dick in gratitude.

Just like Karen, we too are drawn in and dazzled. We too see that there really is something different about Henry and his friends, something notable and laudable, something enviable. And this was their whole world. Just them, all of them giddy with their shared secrets, all of them in on the scam, all of them getting away with it, for the most part. And there are never any outsiders in the film for Karen (or the audience) to measure against just how strange this world is.

At least, not until the very end.

The narco cops that arrest Henry don’t seem all that different from him and his friends and family either. The way they talk and move and look, they’re really more like the other side of the same coin. It’s when we see the way the prosecutor talks to Henry and Karen about the witness protection program, that we are jarred awake. His disgust, his normalcy… it’s truly jarring.

Fun fact: That prosecutor was played by the real Edwards A. McDonald, who was the Organized Crime Task Force prosecutor who dealt with Henry and Karen Hill in real life when they first walked in and offered to become state witnesses.

Just a little movie trivia for your pocket…

Anyway, MacDonald’s normalcy is what suddenly turns Henry and Karen into caricatures. This is when the whole movie is flipped on its head, revealing that this glamorous lifestyle we’ve all be pulled into is actually not glamorous at all. That’s the trick. For all of their charm, for all of their camaraderie and loyalty, for all the laughs and good times, it’s all bullshit and lies. These are broken men. These are bad men. Selfish men. Untrustworthy, unrepentant, and dangerous men, and on a whim, they will kill and take from anyone, even each other.

“See, your murderers come with smiles, they come as your friends, the people who've cared for you all of your life. And they always seem to come at a time that you're at your weakest and most in need of their help.” — Henry Hill, Goodfellas

And where do they all end up?

Prison. Dead. Buried somewhere, unknown and unremembered. Or on the run, their old lives over, the real names gone, unable to talk to their family and friends, and most likely stuck living in some podunk piece shit middle of nowhere town, where the entire reason that no one will ever find them there, is because no one would ever go that piece of shit place unless they absolutely had to.

But... this is not a morality play.

Henry isn't punished for being a criminal, not in his eyes, and he learns no lessons. Yes, Goodfellas is a long movie at 2 hours and 26 minutes, but it doesn’t drag at all, not if you ask me. Eschewing a formal three act structure, the story is more a series of incredible anecdotes and shocking illustrations of the ridiculous and almost casual horror that makes up seemingly daily life in the mafia.

What makes the film truly great is how these anecdotes are used to effectively explore and expand on its themes, to lead you in, and then to pull the rug out from under you, and all while the film barrels along, relishing its great moments and its pop music needle drops.

In the end, yes, GoodFellas is a movie about guilt, yes, but not in the traditional sense. Our hero only ever feels guilt over not upholding the code of the Mafia. He only ever feels guilty over the crime of his betrayal. Most of all, he only ever feels guilty that he left it all behind. As a result, Henry understands why he is being punished, and he even seems to accept it as deserved, at least to a degree. He did the crime, right, and for that, he is now he is banished to the hinterlands, a foul and low place where they can’t even make a good sauce for your pasta. In Henry, we see clearly that these men aren’t rebels or outlaws or some kind of noble Robin Hood in thin socks and shiny sportsjackets, that these men are not to be admired, because they’re nothing but an ugly gaggle of opportunistic scumbags, cheap hoods, and violent thugs.

And thus, Scorsese lifts up the overly-romantic and stupidly macho ideals common to Mafia fiction, and exposes it as a sham and a joke, revealing to all that the Copa was just a gaudy and ugly hole, and he does this all while making what is probably the best Mafia movie of all time.

Plus, that One-shot?

Amazing.