The 3 Guys Podcast Recorded on 5/29/2022 As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster. In this episode we review the movie GoodFellas (released 1990) starring Robert De Niro. Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco and Paul Sorvino. WARNING: There will be SPOILERS!

The 3 Guys Rating  4.7/5

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GoodFellas (Two-Disc Special Edition)

This is the true-crime bestseller that was the basis for Martin Scorsese’s film masterpiece GoodFellas.

Book: Wise Guy by Nicholas Pileggi

Notes From The Show * Quick Synopsis * Released: September 19, 1990

Directed By: Martin Scorsese

Screenplay By: Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese

Based on the Book: Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi

Stars: Robert De Niro. Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino and a bunch of other people.

Plot: The story of Henry Hill and his life in the mob, covering his relationship with his wife Karen Hill and his mob partners Jimmy Conway and Tommy DeVito in the Italian-American crime syndicate.

Tagline: “As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a gangster.” — Henry Hill, Brooklyn, N.Y. 1955.

How did this movie doBudget: $25 MillionBox Office: $47 Million * Awards * Academy Awards

+ Nominated: Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay and Film Editing.
+ Won: Best Supporting Actor – Joe Pesci
  • Casting
    • Martin Scorsese originally offered Joe Pesci the role of Paulie, since Pesci was decades too old for the role of Tommy. Scorsese even auditioned young unknown actors for the role of Tommy, including Michael Imperioli, who would go on to play Spider in the film. However, Pesci eventually convinced Scorsese to cast him as Tommy and try to make him look younger using makeup.
    • Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage, Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin and John Travolta were considered for the role of Henry Hill.
    • Ellen Barkin was considered for the role of Karen Hill.
    • Al Pacino was offered the role of Jimmy Conway. He turned it down due to fears of typecasting. The same year, Pacino ended up playing an even more stereotyped gangster, Big Boy Caprice, in Dick Tracy (1990). He admits regretting the decision.
  • Inaccuracies
    • The film, told from Henry Hill’s perspective, portrays him as a major player in the world of organized crime. Real-life gangsters of that era have said that Hill was a minor figure, and more of a hanger-on like most of the other guys who took part in the Lufthansa heist (apart from Jimmy Burke, who was an important Mafia associate).
    • Henry Hill doesn’t kill a single person in the movie. That might not be accurate in real life, since Hill said on The Howard Stern Show that he had killed three people for the mob, and that he was free to talk about it because he had immunity.
    • Henry states that Tommy was shot in the face so that his mother could not give him an open-casket funeral. It was later intimated that he was not killed instantly as shown but was tortured beforehand. Tommy’s real-life counterpart, Tommy DeSimone, was killed in January 1979. His remains have never been recovered.
    • The character of Frankie Carbone, like some mobsters depicted in the movie, was a fictional composite of a mobster named Angelo Sepe (who was actually present with Tommy DeVito/DeSimone in the scene of Parnell “Stacks” Edwards’ murder) and a small-time drug dealer and con man named Richard Eaton (the infamous trailer freezer scene). Eaton fleeced Jimmy Conway/Burke out of $250,000, then was murdered; the money came out of the Lufthansa robbery. In real life, this was the only murder that Burke was ever convicted of despite committing countless murders.
    • Other than Henry Hill and his family, Prosecutor Ed McDonald, and some of the deceased, most of the characters last names were changed, presumably for fear of libel suits. For example, Jimmy Conway’s real name was Jimmy Burke, his mother’s last name was Conway. Tommy DeVito’s real name was Tommy DeSimone. Paul Cicero’s real name was Paul Vario. Morris “Morrie” Kessler’s real name was Marty Krugman. His name was censored with bleeps in the DVD Commentary by the real Henry Hill and Ed McDonald, who was instrumental in getting Hill into the Federal Witness Protection Program.
    • In the movie, Henry and Tommy hung around a lot. In the book though, Tommy and Henry knew each other, but, the latter actually hung out more with Paulie, Jr., son of mob chief Paul “Paulie” Vario, who is Paul “Paulie” Cicero in the movie.
    • According to US Attorney Edward MacDonald, who plays himself in the film, one important real life detail was left out of the scene of him sitting in the office with Henry and Karen Hill discussing entering the Witness Protection Program: Waiting outside of the office were two of Henry’s mistresses whom he also wanted to be brought along into the program.
    • An important detail left out of the film was Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke’s involvement was the sports bribery scandal in which they paid players of the Boston College Basketball Team to shave points. This scheme was intertwined with the Luftansa Airlines Heist chronicled in the film. Both Henry and Jimmy used the earnings from the heist to make bets on the team with different bookmakers all over New York City. In an interview for the ESPN series “30 for 30” which chronicles this scheme in the episode “Playing For The Mob”, Henry Hill says that Jimmy was making large bets everywhere using money from the heist. According to Henry, he had no idea for certain how much Jimmy bet on the fixed games but guessed that he was making bets totaling tens of thousands of dollars because Jimmy would fly into a rage whenever the players failed to deliver on the fixes, costing him untold thousands of dollars.
  • Trivia
    • According to Henry Hill, whose life was the basis for the book and film, Joe Pesci’s portrayal of Tommy DeSimone was 90-99% accurate, with one notable exception; the real Tommy DeSimone was massively built.
    • The “How am I funny?” scene is based on something that actually happened to Joe Pesci. While working in a restaurant, a young Pesci apparently told a mobster that he was funny, a compliment that was met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. Pesci relayed the anecdote to Martin Scorsese, who decided to include it in the film. Scorsese didn’t include the scene in the shooting script, so that Pesci and Ray Liotta’s interactions would elicit genuinely surprised reactions from the supporting cast.
    • For the scene where Sonny Bunz complains to Paulie, Martin Scorsese secretly told Tony Darrow to improvise more lines for his character without telling Paul Sorvino. Sorvino’s confused reaction was real.
    • The dinner scene with Tommy’s mother was almost completely improvised, including Tommy asking his mother if he could borrow her butcher’s knife and Jimmy’s “hoof” comment.
    • Ray Liotta turned down the part of Harvey Dent in Batman (1989) in order to make this movie.
    • The long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub came about because the filmmakers couldn’t get permission to go in the short way, forcing them to go around the back. Martin Scorsese decided to film the sequence in one unbroken shot in order to symbolize that Henry’s entire life was ahead of him. “It’s his seduction of her (Karen), and it’s also the lifestyle seducing him”. This sequence was shot eight times.
    • “Fuck” and its derivatives are used 321 times, an average of 2.04 per minute. Joe Pesci says about half of them. The script called for the word to be used 70 times, but much of the dialogue was improvised during shooting, and the expletives piled up. At the time of the films’ release, it had the most profanity of any movie in history. As of 2020, it’s #15; The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), also directed by Martin Scorsese, is #3. After Joe Pesci’s mother saw the film, she told him the movie was good, then asked him if he had to curse so much.
    • Jimmy Burke, on whom Jimmy Conway was based, would’ve been eligible for parole in 2004. He died of lung cancer in 1996, while still in prison.
    • Although Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi collaborated on the screenplay (and received Oscar nominations for doing so), much of the film’s eventual dialogue was improvised by the cast.
    • Ray Liotta had said on a documentary special that his first person narration for the film was often done by him actually saying his narration to another person in a room. That way it felt more authentic, and made it easier for him to tell a story.
    • Henry states that he and Jimmy could never be “made”, because they weren’t of full Italian descent. That rule was changed in 2000 by the Commission (the five New York City families). A man can now be “made” if his father is of Italian descent, and his last name is Italian. That would still exclude Henry and Jimmy; Henry’s father in the film was Irish, and Jimmy’s surname is not Italian.
    • Henry Hill was paid roughly $550,000 for the film. Hill considered it chump change compared to the $15,000 to $40,000 a week he made during his gangster days. He claims he blew almost all of his mob money on partying and a “degenerate” gambling problem.
    • The film has 43 songs, the equivalent of about four albums. According to music editor Christopher Brooks, Martin Scorsese had thought about all the songs and where they would appear “three years before he shot the film.”
    • The long tracking shot in the Copa took seven takes. One take was ruined because Henny Youngman forgot his lines. According to Illeana Douglas, Scorsese was inspired by the long Steadicam shot in The Untouchables (1987).
    • Ray Liotta was intimidated by Robert De Niro. He really wanted De Niro to like him. De Niro put Liotta at ease, saying, “Don’t worry about it. This is all going to work out.”
    • Joe Pesci’s Oscar acceptance speech is the sixth shortest in the Academy’s history, “it’s my privilege, thank you.” Pesci later admitted that he didn’t say very much, because he genuinely felt that he didn’t have a chance of winning. Patty Duke said “Thank you” in 1963 when she won Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Miracle Worker (1962). Louie Psihoyos said “Thank you” in 2010 when he won Best Documentary for The Cove (2009). Gloria Grahame and Alfred Newman both said “Thank you very much.” in 1953. William Holden said “Thank you. Thank you.” in 1954. Alfred Hitchcock said “Thank you. Very much indeed.” when he won an Honorary Oscar in 1968.
    • The film takes place from 1955 to 1980.
    • The film’s name was changed from “Wiseguy” to avoid confusion with both the television series Wiseguy (1987) and Brian De Palma’s similarly titled film. Charles Scorsese, Catherine Scorsese, and Frank Vincent appear in Wise Guys (1986) and this movie.
    • Henry Hill’s testimony against some of the most powerful Lucchese crime family associates led to over 50 convictions. As Hill learned at the very beginning of his career, Mafia rule number one is “never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.” In 2010, he told The Telegraph “It’s surreal, totally surreal, to be here. I never thought I’d reach this wonderful age.” He theorized that he hadn’t been murdered because “there’s nobody from my era alive.” Following his death in 2012, The Guardian hypothesized that fame or bureaucratic disorganization in the criminal underworld might have been the reason.
    • The Lufthansa heist remained an unsolved mystery until 2014. Most of the members of the crew that were still alive were elderly or arrested.
    • When Henry Hill closes the door to his house at the end, the sound resembles the sound of a prison cell being closed. Implying normal life is his prison now.
    • Martin Scorsese said John Wayne’s final confrontation in Red River (1948) influenced the pistol-whipping scene.
    • As Goodfellas makes clear, many of the mobsters involved with the $6 million 1978 Lufthansa heist-at the time the largest cash robbery in American history-were taken out by a paranoid and greedy Jimmy Burke, while more still were put in jail by Hill’s testimony on unrelated charges. But as of 2014, the Lufthansa heist case was still an active case, as evidenced by the 2014 arrest of Vincent Asaro (who was 78 years old at the time) on cooperating witness testimony. Authorities claim that Asaro served as lookout and helped the getaway. And in a tie to the movie, Asaro is believed to have taken Spider to get stitched up after he was shot.
    • This was the first Martin Scorsese film for which Saul Bass designed the titles.
    • Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Frank Vincent and Tony Sirico (who played Tony Stacks) would reunite seven years later in another crime thriller, 1997’s Cop Land. Sirico, who would play a mobster named Toy Torillo, was not an active character in the film, but was seen in newspaper clippings and surveillance photos.
    • After the premiere, Henry Hill went around and revealed his true identity. In response, the government kicked him out of the Federal Witness Protection Program.
    • While filming the scene in which his character is killed by Joe Pesci, Michael Imperioli broke a glass in his hand and had to be rushed to the emergency room. When doctors saw what appeared to be a gunshot wound in his chest, they tried to treat it. When Imperioli told them what was really up, he was made to wait for three hours. Martin Scorsese told Imperioli that some day he’d be telling that story on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992).
    • When Henry and Karen Hill are negotiating to enter the Witness Protection Program, former U.S. Attorney Edward McDonald played himself, reenacting what he did in reality.
    • The scene in which Tommy kills Spider was mostly improvised. The only line that was said as scripted was Spider’s “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Tommy”.
    • When Paulie confronts Henry after Hill’s released from prison, Paul Sorvino improvised the slap to Ray Liotta’s face, hence Liotta’s reaction.
    • As he enters the Witness Protection program, Henry requests not to be sent to a cold place. In the final scene, Henry picks up the Youngstown Vindicator, the local newspaper for Youngstown, Ohio, which gets very cold in the winter.
    • In the book “Wiseguy”, Henry Hill cites a few reasons why Tommy was killed. The main reason, of course, was because he killed Billy Batts and a guy named Foxy. Another chilling reason is probably because he once stated that mob chief Paulie “didn’t like having Tommy around”.
    • Late in his life, Henry Hill launched GoodfellaHenry.com, a website devoted to the film and life in the mob. Many of the people visiting the site derided Hill as a snitch. Hill died in 2012. As of fall 2021, the site is still up selling memorabilia from the film.
    • The house where Tommy was killed is located at 80th Street and Shore Road, in the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn, New York. The interior was re-created on a soundstage after the scenes shot on-location were deemed unacceptable.
    • CAMEO: Martin Scorsese’s father appeared in the film. He is one of the two men who take Tommy DeVito to be killed. He is not the one who pulled the trigger. He earlier appeared in prison, where he made spaghetti sauce. The character played by Martin Scorsese’s mother is often seen making spaghetti sauce outside of prison. Off-camera, they pressed the collars on all of the suits.
    • Henry Hill explained to a fan on the Howard Stern Show in March 2003 that neither he nor Jimmy Burke (his last name was changed to Conway in the film) were executed along with Tommy Desimone (Tommy DeVito) for the murder of Billy Batts because both Hill and Burke were huge money makers for the mob.
    • After Henry is arrested for the first time, Jimmy tells him that he just learned the two most important things in life: “never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.” By the end of the film, Henry will have violated both of these principles.

Released: September 19, 1990

Directed By: Martin Scorsese

Screenplay By: Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese

Based on the Book: Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi

Stars: Robert De Niro. Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino and a bunch of other people.

Plot: The story of Henry Hill and his life in the mob, covering his relationship with his wife Karen Hill and his mob partners Jimmy Conway and Tommy DeVito in the Italian-American crime syndicate.

Tagline: “As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a gangster.” — Henry Hill, Brooklyn, N.Y. 1955.

How did this movie doBudget: $25 MillionBox Office: $47 Million

Academy Awards

  • Nominated: Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay and Film Editing.

  • Won: Best Supporting Actor – Joe Pesci

  • Martin Scorsese originally offered Joe Pesci the role of Paulie, since Pesci was decades too old for the role of Tommy. Scorsese even auditioned young unknown actors for the role of Tommy, including Michael Imperioli, who would go on to play Spider in the film. However, Pesci eventually convinced Scorsese to cast him as Tommy and try to make him look younger using makeup.

  • Tom Cruise, Nicolas Cage, Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin and John Travolta were considered for the role of Henry Hill.
  • Ellen Barkin was considered for the role of Karen Hill.

  • Al Pacino was offered the role of Jimmy Conway. He turned it down due to fears of typecasting. The same year, Pacino ended up playing an even more stereotyped gangster, Big Boy Caprice, in Dick Tracy (1990). He admits regretting the decision.

  • The film, told from Henry Hill’s perspective, portrays him as a major player in the world of organized crime. Real-life gangsters of that era have said that Hill was a minor figure, and more of a hanger-on like most of the other guys who took part in the Lufthansa heist (apart from Jimmy Burke, who was an important Mafia associate).

  • Henry Hill doesn’t kill a single person in the movie. That might not be accurate in real life, since Hill said on The Howard Stern Show that he had killed three people for the mob, and that he was free to talk about it because he had immunity.
  • Henry states that Tommy was shot in the face so that his mother could not give him an open-casket funeral. It was later intimated that he was not killed instantly as shown but was tortured beforehand. Tommy’s real-life counterpart, Tommy DeSimone, was killed in January 1979. His remains have never been recovered.
  • The character of Frankie Carbone, like some mobsters depicted in the movie, was a fictional composite of a mobster named Angelo Sepe (who was actually present with Tommy DeVito/DeSimone in the scene of Parnell “Stacks” Edwards’ murder) and a small-time drug dealer and con man named Richard Eaton (the infamous trailer freezer scene). Eaton fleeced Jimmy Conway/Burke out of $250,000, then was murdered; the money came out of the Lufthansa robbery. In real life, this was the only murder that Burke was ever convicted of despite committing countless murders.
  • Other than Henry Hill and his family, Prosecutor Ed McDonald, and some of the deceased, most of the characters last names were changed, presumably for fear of libel suits. For example, Jimmy Conway’s real name was Jimmy Burke, his mother’s last name was Conway. Tommy DeVito’s real name was Tommy DeSimone. Paul Cicero’s real name was Paul Vario. Morris “Morrie” Kessler’s real name was Marty Krugman. His name was censored with bleeps in the DVD Commentary by the real Henry Hill and Ed McDonald, who was instrumental in getting Hill into the Federal Witness Protection Program.
  • In the movie, Henry and Tommy hung around a lot. In the book though, Tommy and Henry knew each other, but, the latter actually hung out more with Paulie, Jr., son of mob chief Paul “Paulie” Vario, who is Paul “Paulie” Cicero in the movie.
  • According to US Attorney Edward MacDonald, who plays himself in the film, one important real life detail was left out of the scene of him sitting in the office with Henry and Karen Hill discussing entering the Witness Protection Program: Waiting outside of the office were two of Henry’s mistresses whom he also wanted to be brought along into the program.

  • An important detail left out of the film was Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke’s involvement was the sports bribery scandal in which they paid players of the Boston College Basketball Team to shave points. This scheme was intertwined with the Luftansa Airlines Heist chronicled in the film. Both Henry and Jimmy used the earnings from the heist to make bets on the team with different bookmakers all over New York City. In an interview for the ESPN series “30 for 30” which chronicles this scheme in the episode “Playing For The Mob”, Henry Hill says that Jimmy was making large bets everywhere using money from the heist. According to Henry, he had no idea for certain how much Jimmy bet on the fixed games but guessed that he was making bets totaling tens of thousands of dollars because Jimmy would fly into a rage whenever the players failed to deliver on the fixes, costing him untold thousands of dollars.

  • According to Henry Hill, whose life was the basis for the book and film, Joe Pesci’s portrayal of Tommy DeSimone was 90-99% accurate, with one notable exception; the real Tommy DeSimone was massively built.

  • The “How am I funny?” scene is based on something that actually happened to Joe Pesci. While working in a restaurant, a young Pesci apparently told a mobster that he was funny, a compliment that was met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. Pesci relayed the anecdote to Martin Scorsese, who decided to include it in the film. Scorsese didn’t include the scene in the shooting script, so that Pesci and Ray Liotta’s interactions would elicit genuinely surprised reactions from the supporting cast.
  • For the scene where Sonny Bunz complains to Paulie, Martin Scorsese secretly told Tony Darrow to improvise more lines for his character without telling Paul Sorvino. Sorvino’s confused reaction was real.
  • The dinner scene with Tommy’s mother was almost completely improvised, including Tommy asking his mother if he could borrow her butcher’s knife and Jimmy’s “hoof” comment.
  • Ray Liotta turned down the part of Harvey Dent in Batman (1989) in order to make this movie.
  • The long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub came about because the filmmakers couldn’t get permission to go in the short way, forcing them to go around the back. Martin Scorsese decided to film the sequence in one unbroken shot in order to symbolize that Henry’s entire life was ahead of him. “It’s his seduction of her (Karen), and it’s also the lifestyle seducing him”. This sequence was shot eight times.
  • “Fuck” and its derivatives are used 321 times, an average of 2.04 per minute. Joe Pesci says about half of them. The script called for the word to be used 70 times, but much of the dialogue was improvised during shooting, and the expletives piled up. At the time of the films’ release, it had the most profanity of any movie in history. As of 2020, it’s #15; The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), also directed by Martin Scorsese, is #3. After Joe Pesci’s mother saw the film, she told him the movie was good, then asked him if he had to curse so much.
  • Jimmy Burke, on whom Jimmy Conway was based, would’ve been eligible for parole in 2004. He died of lung cancer in 1996, while still in prison.
  • Although Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi collaborated on the screenplay (and received Oscar nominations for doing so), much of the film’s eventual dialogue was improvised by the cast.
  • Ray Liotta had said on a documentary special that his first person narration for the film was often done by him actually saying his narration to another person in a room. That way it felt more authentic, and made it easier for him to tell a story.
  • Henry states that he and Jimmy could never be “made”, because they weren’t of full Italian descent. That rule was changed in 2000 by the Commission (the five New York City families). A man can now be “made” if his father is of Italian descent, and his last name is Italian. That would still exclude Henry and Jimmy; Henry’s father in the film was Irish, and Jimmy’s surname is not Italian.
  • Henry Hill was paid roughly $550,000 for the film. Hill considered it chump change compared to the $15,000 to $40,000 a week he made during his gangster days. He claims he blew almost all of his mob money on partying and a “degenerate” gambling problem.
  • The film has 43 songs, the equivalent of about four albums. According to music editor Christopher Brooks, Martin Scorsese had thought about all the songs and where they would appear “three years before he shot the film.”
  • The long tracking shot in the Copa took seven takes. One take was ruined because Henny Youngman forgot his lines. According to Illeana Douglas, Scorsese was inspired by the long Steadicam shot in The Untouchables (1987).
  • Ray Liotta was intimidated by Robert De Niro. He really wanted De Niro to like him. De Niro put Liotta at ease, saying, “Don’t worry about it. This is all going to work out.”
  • Joe Pesci’s Oscar acceptance speech is the sixth shortest in the Academy’s history, “it’s my privilege, thank you.” Pesci later admitted that he didn’t say very much, because he genuinely felt that he didn’t have a chance of winning. Patty Duke said “Thank you” in 1963 when she won Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Miracle Worker (1962). Louie Psihoyos said “Thank you” in 2010 when he won Best Documentary for The Cove (2009). Gloria Grahame and Alfred Newman both said “Thank you very much.” in 1953. William Holden said “Thank you. Thank you.” in 1954. Alfred Hitchcock said “Thank you. Very much indeed.” when he won an Honorary Oscar in 1968.
  • The film takes place from 1955 to 1980.
  • The film’s name was changed from “Wiseguy” to avoid confusion with both the television series Wiseguy (1987) and Brian De Palma’s similarly titled film. Charles Scorsese, Catherine Scorsese, and Frank Vincent appear in Wise Guys (1986) and this movie.
  • Henry Hill’s testimony against some of the most powerful Lucchese crime family associates led to over 50 convictions. As Hill learned at the very beginning of his career, Mafia rule number one is “never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.” In 2010, he told The Telegraph “It’s surreal, totally surreal, to be here. I never thought I’d reach this wonderful age.” He theorized that he hadn’t been murdered because “there’s nobody from my era alive.” Following his death in 2012, The Guardian hypothesized that fame or bureaucratic disorganization in the criminal underworld might have been the reason.
  • The Lufthansa heist remained an unsolved mystery until 2014. Most of the members of the crew that were still alive were elderly or arrested.
  • When Henry Hill closes the door to his house at the end, the sound resembles the sound of a prison cell being closed. Implying normal life is his prison now.
  • Martin Scorsese said John Wayne’s final confrontation in Red River (1948) influenced the pistol-whipping scene.
  • As Goodfellas makes clear, many of the mobsters involved with the $6 million 1978 Lufthansa heist-at the time the largest cash robbery in American history-were taken out by a paranoid and greedy Jimmy Burke, while more still were put in jail by Hill’s testimony on unrelated charges. But as of 2014, the Lufthansa heist case was still an active case, as evidenced by the 2014 arrest of Vincent Asaro (who was 78 years old at the time) on cooperating witness testimony. Authorities claim that Asaro served as lookout and helped the getaway. And in a tie to the movie, Asaro is believed to have taken Spider to get stitched up after he was shot.
  • This was the first Martin Scorsese film for which Saul Bass designed the titles.
  • Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Frank Vincent and Tony Sirico (who played Tony Stacks) would reunite seven years later in another crime thriller, 1997’s Cop Land. Sirico, who would play a mobster named Toy Torillo, was not an active character in the film, but was seen in newspaper clippings and surveillance photos.
  • After the premiere, Henry Hill went around and revealed his true identity. In response, the government kicked him out of the Federal Witness Protection Program.
  • While filming the scene in which his character is killed by Joe Pesci, Michael Imperioli broke a glass in his hand and had to be rushed to the emergency room. When doctors saw what appeared to be a gunshot wound in his chest, they tried to treat it. When Imperioli told them what was really up, he was made to wait for three hours. Martin Scorsese told Imperioli that some day he’d be telling that story on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992).
  • When Henry and Karen Hill are negotiating to enter the Witness Protection Program, former U.S. Attorney Edward McDonald played himself, reenacting what he did in reality.
  • The scene in which Tommy kills Spider was mostly improvised. The only line that was said as scripted was Spider’s “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Tommy”.
  • When Paulie confronts Henry after Hill’s released from prison, Paul Sorvino improvised the slap to Ray Liotta’s face, hence Liotta’s reaction.
  • As he enters the Witness Protection program, Henry requests not to be sent to a cold place. In the final scene, Henry picks up the Youngstown Vindicator, the local newspaper for Youngstown, Ohio, which gets very cold in the winter.
  • In the book “Wiseguy”, Henry Hill cites a few reasons why Tommy was killed. The main reason, of course, was because he killed Billy Batts and a guy named Foxy. Another chilling reason is probably because he once stated that mob chief Paulie “didn’t like having Tommy around”.
  • Late in his life, Henry Hill launched GoodfellaHenry.com, a website devoted to the film and life in the mob. Many of the people visiting the site derided Hill as a snitch. Hill died in 2012. As of fall 2021, the site is still up selling memorabilia from the film.
  • The house where Tommy was killed is located at 80th Street and Shore Road, in the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn, New York. The interior was re-created on a soundstage after the scenes shot on-location were deemed unacceptable.
  • CAMEO: Martin Scorsese’s father appeared in the film. He is one of the two men who take Tommy DeVito to be killed. He is not the one who pulled the trigger. He earlier appeared in prison, where he made spaghetti sauce. The character played by Martin Scorsese’s mother is often seen making spaghetti sauce outside of prison. Off-camera, they pressed the collars on all of the suits.
  • Henry Hill explained to a fan on the Howard Stern Show in March 2003 that neither he nor Jimmy Burke (his last name was changed to Conway in the film) were executed along with Tommy Desimone (Tommy DeVito) for the murder of Billy Batts because both Hill and Burke were huge money makers for the mob.
  • After Henry is arrested for the first time, Jimmy tells him that he just learned the two most important things in life: “never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.” By the end of the film, Henry will have violated both of these principles.

About The Movie From IMDB

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