GoodFellas released 23 years ago today - 19 September 1990.  Many consider it the greatest film ever and it was named film of the year by many film critic groups - as one critic said: even great films evaporate from the mind once you leave the cinema but not this one.  Deemed better than The Godfather by many and making such a significant impression that the National Film Registry in the States selected it for preservation (yet it only won one Oscar — for Pesci as Best Supporting Actor).  It was also inspiration for The Sopranos and shares many characters with it.



It's the film of the non-fiction book Wiseguy (1986) and the writer, Nicholas Pileggi,  co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese. The film follows the rise and fall of Henry Hill from 1995 to 1980.  Henry was proud of cleaning up his life in later years but during this period he was a Lucchese crime family associate.  The film wasn't without it's critics (particularly for the violence and swearing) but before his death in 2012 Henry talked about how the film's characters were played down as "These guys were murderers on a daily basis" but he said Pesci's portrayal was "90 to 99 per cent accurate", except his character (DeSimone) was a big man, 6ft 2in and weighing 15 stone, and the real DeSimone's remains were never recovered. The real Henry Hill was so proud after the film's release that he had to be removed from the FBI's Witness Protection Programme as he was boasting about his real identity!

If you disagree that GoodFellas is the gangster film and prefer the Godfather take a look at t-shirts celebrating that film or other Scorcese greats.

For those who do want to be in the GoodFellas ‘borgata' or at least a ‘goombah', 15 GoodFellas facts :

• Ray Liotta nearly missed out on the role as although Scorsese loved Liotta's performance as a maniac ex-con in Something Wild producer Irwin Winkler wasn't convinced he had enough "charm" and it took eight months for Liotta to land the part after approaching Winkler in a restaurant. When he started he found a Horses' head in his dressing room, from both co-star Robert De Niro and Frank Sinatra's daughter Nancy, as homage to the Godfather, welcoming him to the world of Mafia films.
• In test screenings, the film received the worst response in Warner Bros history, with audience members leaving in droves, disgusted by the violence, drugs and language. Scorsese said, "The numbers were so low, it was funny."
• The F-word is used an average of twice per minute – 296 times. Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) being the biggest user, much to his mum's disapproval after seeing the film.  But considering the film is renowned for violence, GoodFellas has a relatively low body count of 10 (Scorsese had to remove 10 frames of blood in order to ensure an R rating).
• Jimmy Conway, Robert De Niro's character is based on Jimmy Burke real-life mobster, aka Jimmy ‘The Gent' / ‘The Big Irishman', an ex-bricklayer.  Believed to have orchestrated the $6m Lufthansa heist in 1978, then killing 10 of the gang. De Niro researched his movements obsessively, down to how he held his cigarette or used a ketchup bottle
• Liotta made the sound man sit in front him to record the narrations so he tell the story to someone.
• The tracking shot through the nightclub kitchen was apparently an accident as Scorsese was denied permission to go through the front door decided to do one long shot to symbolise "Henry's whole life being ahead of him, doors opening to him. It's his seduction of Karen and it's also the lifestyle seducing him". It had to be reshot eight times because the comedian Henry Youngman in the final shot kept fluffing his lines.
• Scorcese asked Pesci to write the famous "Funny how?" scene as Pesci saw a similar incident in real life Chicago and Scorsese didn't film close-ups during the scene, instead concentrating on the affect on the mobsters around them.
• Music was important: Scorsese played the piano coda himself during the infamous montage scene set to Derek & The Dominos' Layla, to get the rhythm and movement of the camera right – and edited the scene where Hill is driving, high on cocaine, specifically for The Who's version of Magic Bus from Live At Leeds.
• Sorvino improvised the slap to Henry (Liotta's) face on his release from prison so the surprise is real
• Some Italian cookbooks actually suggest you slice garlic cloves "GoodFellas thin" even though this doesn't work.
• Scorsese's parents appear in the film. His mother plays Tommy's mother during the dinner scene and his father plays the prisoner who commits the cardinal sin of putting too many onions in the tomato sauce
• In the first series of The Sopranos, Tony's nephew Christopher (Michael Imperioli) shoots a bakery in a nod to Pesci's character shooting Imperioli's character Spider in the foot in GoodFellas.
• Paul Sorvino told a different joke for eight takes when the mobsters are celebrating with the spoils of a robbery just so the laughter you see is real.
• Pesci used fully-filled blank rounds in the gun when he shot Spider as he wanted "...to hear the echo and feel the gun kick like a real .45," .  During the scene Spider (Michael Imperiolo) cut his hand on a broken glass and was rushed to hospital. Doctors saw what appeared to be a gunshot wound in his chest and tried to treat it until told it was make-up - they sent him to the back of the ER queue and he had to wait three hours.
• The final shot is a nod to milestone Western short The Great Train Robbery (1902) as Pesci shoots at the camera, just like the bandit leader.