Goodfellas (also spelled GoodFellas) is a 1990 crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who also wrote the screenplay for Goodfellas with Scorsese. The film follows the rise and fall of three gangsters, spanning three decades.

Scorsese originally intended to direct Goodfellas before The Last Temptation of Christ, but when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he postponed what was then known as Wise Guy. The title of Pileggi’s book had already been used for a TV series and for Brian De Palma’s 1986 comedy Wise Guys, so Pileggi and Scorsese changed the name of their film to Goodfellas.

To prepare for their roles in the film, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta talked often with Pileggi, who shared with the actors research material that had been left over from writing the book. According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines that the actors came up with that he liked best, and put them into a revised script the cast worked from during principal photography.

Goodfellas performed well at the box office, grossing $46.8 million domestically, well above its $25 million budget; it received mostly strong positive reviews from critics. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards but only won one for Pesci in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role category. Scorsese’s film won three awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and was named best film of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Society of Film Critics.

Development

Goodfellas is based on New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy. Martin Scorsese never intended to make another mob film until he read a review of the book and this inspired him to read it while working on the set of Color of Money in 1986. He had always been fascinated by the Mob lifestyle and was drawn to Pileggi’s book because it was the most honest portrayal of gangsters he had ever read. After he read Pileggi’s book, the filmmaker knew what approach he wanted to take: “To begin Goodfellas like a gunshot and have it get faster from there, almost like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer. I think it’s the only way you can really sense the exhilaration of the lifestyle, and to get a sense of why a lot of people are attracted to it.” According to Pileggi, Scorsese cold-called the writer and told him, “I’ve been waiting for this book my entire life.” To which Pileggi replied “I’ve been waiting for this phone call my entire life”.

Scorsese originally intended to direct the film before The Last Temptation of Christ, but when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he decided to postpone Wise Guy. He was drawn to the documentary aspects of Pileggi’s book. “The book Wise Guys gives you a sense of the day-to-day life, the tedium – how they work, how they take over certain nightclubs, and for what reasons. It shows how it’s done”. He saw Goodfellas as the third film in an unplanned trilogy of films that examined the lives of Italian-Americans “from slightly different angles”. He has often described the film as “a mob home movie” that is about money because “that’s what they’re really in business for”.

Casting

Once Robert De Niro agreed to play Conway, Scorsese was able to secure the money needed to make the film. The director cast Ray Liotta after De Niro saw him in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild and Scorsese was surprised by “his explosive energy” in that film. The actor had read Pileggi’s book when it came out and was fascinated by it. A couple of years afterwards, his agent told him that Scorsese was going to direct a film version. In 1988, Liotta met the director over a period of a couple of months and auditioned for the film. The actor campaigned aggressively for a role in the film but the studio wanted a well-known actor. “I think they would’ve rather had Eddie Murphy than me”, the actor remembers.

To prepare for the role, De Niro consulted with Pileggi who had research material that had been discarded while writing the book. De Niro often called Hill several times a day to ask how Burke walked, held his cigarette, and so on. Driving to and from the set, Liotta listened to FBI audio cassette tapes of Hill, so he could practice speaking like his real-life counterpart. To research her role, Lorraine Bracco tried to get close to a Mob wife but was unable to because they exist in a very tight-knit community. She decided not to meet the real Karen because she “thought it would be better if the creation came from me. I used her life with her parents as an emotional guideline for the role”. Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character but found it challenging finding “that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened”.

Soundtrack

Scorsese chose the songs for Goodfellas only if they commented on the scene or the characters “in an oblique way”. The only rule he adhered to with the soundtrack was to only use music that could have been heard at that time. For example, if a scene took place in 1973, he could use any song that was current or older. According to Scorsese, a lot of non-dialogue scenes were shot to playback. For example, he had “Layla” playing on the set while shooting the scene where the dead bodies are discovered in the car and the meat-truck. Sometimes, the lyrics of songs were put between lines of dialogue to comment on the action. Some of the music Scorsese had written into the script while other songs he discovered during the editing phase.