The 1990 film, directed by Martin Scorsese, was based on a book, Wiseguy, by Nicholas Pileggi, where he tells the true story of gangster Henry Hill. The filmmaker was always clear that the starring role should go to Ray Liotta, but the name of Tom Cruise also came up. Even Madonna and John Malkovich were thinking about the casting, but for different reasons, they did not make it to the set.
“For twenty years, not a day goes by that I don't hear someone mention GoodFellas. Unless I stay home all night. It defines who I am, in a certain sense", Ray Liotta himself said at the beginning of an interview in 2010, regarding his role in the legendary 1990 film in which he played the leading role, that of mobster Henry Hill, who, for True, he was not a fictional character, but a flesh and blood mobster.
GoodFellas (or as it was known in Spanish, Buenos Muchachos) is the story of the rise and fall of Hill and his colleagues Jimmy Conway (Robert de Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) that drives the film. The viewer follows them throughout a lifetime, something like a Hundred Years of Solitude of Italian-American mobsters. As a chosen one, Hill has always been clear about his destiny to be a gangster.
The film was based on the book Wiseguy, by Nicholas Pileggi, where he narrates the life of Hill. The volume reached Martin Scorsese who, enthusiastic, began to brainstorm the idea of taking it to the big screen. “I read a book review; It basically said, 'This is how it should be. So I bought the book in Galleys and began to really enjoy it because of the flowing style, the way Henry Hill spoke, and the wonderful swagger of it. And I said, oh, it would be a fascinating movie if I made it what is literally as close to the truth as a fictional movie, a dramatization, could ever get. There's no point in trying to cover up, [get| great sympathy for the characters in a fake way ”, Scorsese himself commented in an interview with Film Comment, from 1990.
Curiously, Scorsese's idea was for the film to be similar to a mockumentary: “It's not a joke. Like a staged documentary, the spirit of a documentary. Like if you had a 16mm camera with these guys for 20, 25 years; what you would pick up I can't say it's like any other movie, but in my opinion [It has] the freedom of a documentary, where you can mention the names of 25 people at one point and 23 of them the audience won't have heard of before and won't know again. from him, but it doesn't matter."
Somehow, GoodFellas was a therapeutic experience for his filmmaker, the filmmaker had just made the controversial The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and nothing better than seeing familiar faces again to redirect his career. So Scorsese called back Robert De Niro, whom he had last directed in 1982's The King of Comedy (a film to which Todd Phillips' Joker owes a great deal), and decided to recruit good actors. Italian Americans: Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco and Paul Sorvino.
For the starring role of Henry Hill, Scorsese never had much doubt. “I don't remember there being a lot of options as to who could play Henry Hill. There weren't many actors who could pull it off. He had to do terrible things and yet somehow you had to care about him. But Ray wasn't a big star,” recalled Barbara de Fina, the executive producer, in a Magazine report. In any case, and with the idea of Warner Bros. looking for stellar names, the name Tom Cruise was considered, but Scorsese's decision was firm.
“I had seen Ray in Something Wild, the Jonathan Demme film; I really liked it. And then I met him," Scorsese recalled to the Magazine. He was walking through the hotel lobby on the Lido that is hosting the Venice Film Festival, and he was there with The Last Temptation of Christ. He had many bodyguards around him. Ray approached me in the lobby and the bodyguards moved towards him, and he had an interesting way of reacting, which held his ground, but made them understand that he wasn't a threat. I liked his behavior at the time, and I saw, Oh, he understands that kind of situation. That's something you shouldn't have to explain to him."
The choice surprised even Liotta himself: “I was new. He had only done three movies at the time. All I heard was that the studio wanted someone else: 'What about this?', 'What about Eddie Murphy?'” the actor recalled to Magazine.
An alternative that was considered for the role of Karen, Henry's Jewish wife, was that of Madonna herself. In fact, Barbara De Fina commented that there were negotiations with the Like a Virgin star: “I remember we went to see her in the play Speed-the-Plough. Marty greeted her after her. There was definitely someone somewhere wanting to choose her. You can imagine? Tom Cruise and Madonna? But Marty can get a performance out of almost anyone." In the end, the role fell to actress Lorraine Bracco, why? A detail in her life story caught the attention of the always-obsessive Martin Scorsese.
“One of the things that worked for me with Marty (Scorsese) was that I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. So that I could relate to Karen Hill as a child. Like, I get it: she lives in a Jewish household dominated by her mother; for me, everything was rebellion. Marty wanted to see what Ray and I looked like together," Bracco recalled. For Scorsese, the experiential was important.
The first work meetings were in Scorsese's apartment, on West 57th Street, New York. Bracco remembers the impression that seeing Liotta made on him: “I thought Ray was really handsome. We all had a drink and talked about the script and the book and blah blah blah and that was it."
For the film, Pileggi himself worked on writing the script and even had a knack for finding extras. “We were spreading the word: ‘Anyone who wants to be in the movie, come on. They must have hired like half a dozen guys, maybe more, outside the club."
In the casting, until the last minute, they sought to include John Malkovich, but the actor withdrew the offer: “It came at a bad time in my life, when I wasn't feeling well and I didn't want to think about working. It's hard to explain why you end up in Eragon and not GoodFellas. But De Niro is fantastic,”.
After the confirmation of the cast, what follows is known. GoodFellas was filmed and subsequently released in 1990 to good box office results. In the United States, it grossed $46.8 million, well above its budget costs of $25 million. The film was nominated for six Oscars but only won one for the role of Joe Pesci in the category of best supporting actor.
“Ray Liotta fit perfectly into the intimidating cast of GoodFellas,” Rodrigo González, film critic at La Tercera, tells Culto. He was a newcomer to Hollywood and there were none other than Robert de Niro and Joe Pesci: he had no problem empathizing with them from an acting point of view to form a first-rate gangster trio. He was a great sparring partner for Pesci in the famous scene from 'You Think I'm Funny' and we must not forget that in this ensemble film, he was the real protagonist: Goodfellas begins and ends with him, with his voice and his face, towards the end even speaking to the camera, breaking the fourth wall. In that sense, it was the connecting cable that Martin Scorsese established between the mob and the public.
“Because of those things of luck, of typecasting, or perhaps by his own decision, he never managed to totally escape the stereotype of the gangster, the villain, or the psychopath -adds González-. In recent years he had managed to resurface and had managed to be in very good movies. One of his last memorable performances is that of Adam Driver's ruthless lawyer in Marriage Story, opposite Scarlett Johansson.
Hill passed away in 2012, in Los Angeles, and Ray Liotta had words to remember him on TMZ: "Although I played Henry Hill in GoodFellas, I only saw him a couple of times for a short time and I can't say I've ever met him. but I know that he lived a complicated life. I send my condolences to his family and may his remains rest in peace, "he added about the man who, without a doubt, had a movie life."
