Behind the Scenes: Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990) with Robert De Niro and Ray Liott

Cut. Action. Ow! They shot me! Cut. Okay, good. Okay, that's gotta be done much faster. That was so exhilarating, talking with somebody who's ten times more passionate than you are. A smile, but not as long. All right? Try one more. That's why he's so great. He enjoys it. He doesn't put a cap on his own, and he doesn't put a cap on yours. And that's what makes it a joyous experience. The credit belongs to mine, or this would have been just another model. He wanted to counter the romantic image of the massacre and show not only what the pull is, but what that decision means. And that was his goal in that movie. I just know it from what I saw in the streets. And when I saw it, when I lived it, I always said, well, that's the way it should be on film. When we were in Chicago doing The Color of Money, there was an article in New York Magazine that was an excerpt from the book. Having dealt with that world to a certain extent, I felt, therefore, I never really wanted to touch upon that world again. But I found that the style of the book was so interesting, and I tried to say, boy, if I can make a film like the style of this book, because what's the point of making another gangster picture? There have been several books about mob bosses, but it was like getting a hold of a soldier in Napoleon's army. That's who I wanted. I wanted to know how it worked inside. Detail, detail, detail. Everything is detail. I was interested in the minutia of how to live as a wise guy. I wanted to get into the frame of mind of a guy who works that way every day. And you also had the voice of Henry. So much of that book was just his telling the story. And Marty called, and he said, hello? He said, yeah, my name is Marty Scorsese. He said, I'm a film director, a movie director, I think he said. He said, do you know? And I said, I know who you are. And he said, well, I'm calling you because, he said, I just read your book. And he said, I've been looking for this book for years. I said, well, I've been waiting for this phone call all my life. So he said, I want to do it. But he wanted to write it with me, but he couldn't make a deal with me. So I said, don't worry about it. The deal with you is on the phone now. We will make this movie. Don't you worry about anything else. I mean, all directors will work with writers and sort of make it their own. But I think in particularly the case of Goodfellas, it was so much about the world that he understood that he really wanted to put his stamp on it. I hadn't put my name on a script since Mean Streets. And I wanted to create an exhilaration of that kind of life. But he was stuck with somebody who didn't know anything. So he really had to bring me along, I think, as far as film is concerned. And I was a willing pupil because it was fascinating. And he's a great teacher. Now, when you're working with Marty, of course, he already sees the movie. I didn't, but it was all right. He brought me along. I did most of the typing, but he writes longhand. So I would type, and then it would come out, and then he would scratch these little things on it, and we would work on it. And the dialogue would be bounced back and forth between us. So we would develop scene after scene. In this scene, this is what's going to happen. Then we go to this. And he also said, put in the corner, put in the corner, and he would mention a piece of music. I want that music here. What really was important was the nature of the relationship between the main character and the audience. And that's the experiment with voiceover. I think it's a wonderful way to tell a story of a film. But so many times, I think, voiceover is used to patch a little crack in the script, you know, and then it sort of doesn't work. You need a body of material so that you have enough richness of character to be able to justify the voiceover. Because the narrative of that part is not important. It's the language. It's the web that he's spinning as a personality. He's getting you to like him, and that's the danger of the character. The other thing we did was a straight chronology, and that's the way the first draft is written. And then Marty was looking at it. You know, it's a little slow. We have to do, this is a movie. We've got to do something. Hook him. He loved the idea, always loved the idea of these guys driving around with a guy they think is dead in the back of the car that's still alive. Because the moment of that Billy Bats murder is where everything changes for them. And so rather than going from the young boy directly to the ending, the rise and fall, which is, it is just a very traditional rise and fall, but we wanted to give it something extra. So we took that out of the middle of the book, put it in the front, and he says, when they kill him, they put the trunk down, then I'll freeze on Ray Liotta looking out, and then bam, you're in the movie. Marty was lucky in this case. He got to just pick the person that was right for the role. You know, Bob and Joe Pesci were sort of obvious from the start, and Ray just had the qualities. He was believable. Goodfellas was my fourth movie. I'd heard about the book. I'd picked it up just by accident one day just to have something to read from New Jersey to L.A., read it, really liked it, heard they were going to make the movie, and I met Marty, and I would meet him every now and then, but it was a long, long process. It was extremely nerve-wracking, and then maybe 8 or 9 months later, I finally landed it. Henry's character is somebody who grows up with these guys and is very much a part of them, but he's slightly outside of it, and that was part of the quality that Ray has always had. That's why I think he was so perfectly cast. You would never have bought the Bob De Niro character or the Joe Pesci character doing it, but you did buy Ray's character doing it. He asked me to come and meet him, and then he asked me to come up and read with Ray. Just right from the beginning, you know, I trusted her, she trusted me, and we were kind of like, you know, the new kids on the block. And Marty, he always called us the kids, Ray and I, bring the kids out, you know, it was always very cute. So we had a commitment towards each other and something that we were both going through at the same time, a newness to the situation. And when I came in to meet with him for this, he said, what do you want to play? I said, I want to play Paul. He said, don't play Paul, play Billy Bats. You don't argue with Marty, you say, no, I want to play this. If he says to play, he says, listen to me, play Billy Bats. I said, okay, Marty, whatever you want to do. And that's how I was cast. At that moment, I did not know what Billy Bats was going to be, so it actually was really a gift, because everybody I know that I ever see or meet knows about it, and I did 40 movies. So that's got to be the standout. So, you know, he was perfect, but I wasn't, that I didn't think I could do it, because it was not the kind of role that I felt I really had an affinity for. The externals were easy, middle-aged Italian man. The difficulty was in the lethality that I felt I didn't possess. And so even though I wanted to do it, I was sort of faking when I went to the meeting and giving Martin the impression that I knew exactly what to do with it when I had no idea what to do with it. But I wanted so much to be in a Scorsese movie. I guess he just figured I was capable of it. I had done so much homework. I was just obsessed with it. I knew it from, you know, I remember I was at home in Jersey. Nick Pelleggi had tapes of Henry. I remember putting the cassettes in my mother's car, and as I would drive to New York, we'd listen to him tell a story as he chomped on potato chips. And my dad would say, stop studying, get out and do something. I was just, it was, I knew it was a great opportunity, and I did not want to be a week or so into it. And, you know, Marty says, you know, come to the trailer. I don't know if this is worth it. I just really wanted to play make-believe with these guys. And, you know, again, I didn't want to mess up. I believed I could be Karen and do Karen justice. I knew the motivation of jealousy and wanting to hold on to her man, and I understood those things. The author, Nick Pelleggi, had a lot of information, research material that he had discarded from the book, and I also would talk to people who I thought would have some connection or some relevance to this particular character. Well, he wanted to talk to me about the Jimmy Conway character. So, you know, I mean, there were some mornings that we talked four or five times. He'd be in his trailer before he'd go in front of the camera, you know, get me on the phone. He would call you four or five times a day, you know, in the mornings before he would... You know, how does Jimmy hold a cigarette? How do you think he reacted, you know, when he seen Johnny Roastbeef, you know, pull up with the Cadillac? How he held a shot glass? You know, what kind of a face he made? I mean, all of these crazy, you know... I mean, I thought they were crazy questions at the time, but, you know, I started to get the hang of it, and, you know, I knew what he was requesting, and, you know, and I was able to, you know, participate. You know, and it was rewarding, and I got paid. And it went, it was about two months in preparation to try to get this quality that I knew it called for. I was kind of agonizing over it for a couple of months. I was thinking, I'm going to ruin this movie. I was looking for something to get out of it. So two days before we started production, by virtue of constantly searching to find where that kind of quality that killers have, I was preparing to go out one night, passed by the mirror to check for spinach in the teeth, and I jumped back. I literally frightened myself. I saw a look in my eyes that frightened me. Who was that? I said, that's Paulie. And once I found it, the role became just a duck in water. It just was so easy to do. So much of what Scorsese does is in the way he directs, and so you see something entirely different up on the screen often than is in that script. If I felt a scene could be opened up, I usually did that with the actors in rehearsal. So we would rehearse 35, 40 minutes a scene, and they were all improvisations. They were very loosely around the script, just sort of what was happening, not improvising by writing lines. I mean, improvising behaviorally. He always says, don't act like these people. Behave like them. He gave me a fabulous direction for Karen. He said, she's the movie star. She's the star, you know, of Henry's life. He knows so well what actors need and how to help them. And then he'll see something he likes, and he'll come over and say, you know, you know what you said in that other improvisation? Why don't you say that to him again? Or let him have it. He uses the power of the verb. Acting is doing something. I threaten, I charm, I beg. And what Martin does in the improvisation is encourage the doing of things. Well, that merely means stay with the other fellow and deal with what he's giving you. You feel like you're a real collaborator. He makes you feel that way, and in a certain sense you are because you're giving all the good things that you have. He knows what he wants to do, but you really feel like you're creating and he's letting you go to do what you've come up with. It's just the way he is. He's very open to a lot of ideas from anybody. That was, for an actor, was like the jackpot. So even during the improv, once we had the improv down, then we had to lock it. You don't improvise on camera when we're shooting. They all think that Marty just doesn't do anything, that he lets the actor say, okay, go ahead, and he sits there like this, you know, and enjoys it. It's not true. I mean, it's so crazy to think that you can go in there and make a movie like that. It has to be structured. You're still saying a script. Probably the most memorable improvisation I've ever seen was the Joe Pesci-Ray Liotta improvisation at the nightclub, which is something that actually happened to Joe years ago in reality. And so Marty said, oh, well, we must put that in the film. And that was very carefully worked on. Within our rehearsal period, I was able, as a co-writer, to record several takes, maybe four to five takes between Ray and Joe of this dialogue. I then took that and rewrote that, which was then inserted into the script. It was interesting how he shot that sequence. He's shooting it in a medium shot, not in a close-up. And the reason I always tell film students this, that it's very important, was that, first of all, he knew the scene was powerful enough that he did not need close-ups. And secondly, what he really wanted to show was how the people around Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta were gradually changing the looks on their faces as the sense of dread began to creep into what was supposed to be the casual conversation. And suddenly, it is wonderful how you see their faces change. And he was very adamant that that's how he wanted to shoot it. And you just watch his body language, and you know it's dead serious. And it could turn in a split second. But hard to cut. Marty and I spent a long time figuring out how long to wait until Ray Liotta actually says, come on, Tommy. And all the laughter you hear on the track is me and them and everybody else. Because we have to create an atmosphere of that kind of a moment on the set. When something accidental happens, delightful that an actor does, you'll burst out laughing as an audience. And it's a wonderful thing to see. Very refreshing. Okay. Good, good. We... Joe said... You can thrill him by giving him a good performance. And to watch someone be thrilled while you're doing something is the best thing for an actor. He has an amazing sensitivity to body language and how an actor is conveying a certain idea with just a slight flicker of an eye or something very subtle, and he's reacting to it all the time. And he goes like this. A little more, give me more, give me more. Good, good. No, no, no, easy, easy, easy. That's it, that's it, that's it. And then when you do it, after the take, say, good, that was good, that was good out loud, hear his voice. Good, that was good. I think Marty is probably one of the most prepared directors I've worked with. In the case of Goodfellas, he was working with Michael Ballhaus, who's also incredibly prepared. The good thing about Marty is that he really has this movie in his head already. So the way we work together is that I looked at his shot list, then we look at the locations together, and we figure out if his shots would work on a location like this or that. So there's no discussion, actually, on the set anymore. I mean, we talk about shots, but it's not like we're trying to figure out what it's going to be. So we know what's going to be. There are many times that we didn't do any coverage at all. I never even knew when we were making it what that scene was. I never knew. I had, I was clueless. I'd never even seen a steadicam. And that doesn't exist in the book. But it does in just a couple of lines. Except a couple of lines in the book in the hands of the director, that's where you begin to see how a nonfiction book in detail really blossomed into a kind of art. The whole idea is that it had to be done in one take, so you don't feel that it was a series of cuts, but there was a separation between him and the world that he was trying to get into. The camera flowed through, and just glided through this world. Just all the doors opened to him, and everything just slipped away. It was like heaven. And then to emerge like a king and queen, this was the highest you could aspire to. It was kind of tricky also to get all the actions right, because Marty is so very accurate about every single timing. You know, what the people do in the kitchen. The guy with the table comes at the right time and brings the table over. All these things are very important. But as far as I remember, we shot the scene only 8 times, and it was not even a full day. But we wanted it really in one shot, and we got it in one shot. Yeah, and he really knows every second of what you're doing. I mean, you come to this address, he'll send you back, because you don't like the tie. He sees every detail. The kid doesn't look like a gangster yet. He has to look, his shoes are going to be shined. Got a pinky ring, kid? Yeah. Yeah, that's better. I would like that just a little bit. We don't have any stays in the collar? No stays, Christine? Every little nuance in it means something to him, and he made sure it was registering right. Well, that's the thing with Marty, because his films really have a sense of reality. And he understands it so well. He knows when something is real and when it isn't. Marty would say, no, that doesn't feel right. Does that feel right to you? But the only way you can really be truthful about it is to really not be inhibited by anything. I think it explains what the world is really like, and part of what's so interesting is that it starts out as a lot of fun. We're as bad as they are. We're happy to see the postman go in the oven, and all of a sudden, of course, I mean, he shoots that poor kid in the foot. You should know then, these are not, this is not the way to live. Don't be sucked in by these guys, because it's only going to end one way, before their witness protection program. It only ended one way, death. The most frightening thing, I mean, I was out of my body for a minute, you know. I had to put myself in a frame of mind to really kill someone. I made them put full loads in the gun, in the .45, because I wanted to hear the echo. I wanted to feel the gun really kick like a real .45. The silence after the last shot rang out was more deafening than the gun. They were very, very intense individuals. I mean, this is what happened. They lived a very violent life, and it was just part of their lifestyle. Marty wants you to figure things out yourself. He wants you to come to the film, and you to look at it, and decide how you feel about it. He doesn't want to tell you what to think. He wants you to experience it. This is, in my view, the most violent scene I ever saw. There were no cuts in it, and there was no tricks, nothing. You felt the violence right there. I think in Marty's movie, there is an intensity which is very similar to Marty. I don't know if it's necessarily violence, but you never know what's gonna happen. Believe it or not, some guys really think you're the real deal. I never forget one guy said to me, Hey, how could you let that little guy beat you up like that? And he says, What is with that language? What kind of talking is this? The effing this and effing that. This guy must have killed 25 people that we know about. That's how real people think it is. I had a woman say to me, and this was a school teacher, educated woman, said to me one time, When they were in the house eating, how could you breathe in the trunk? This is actually what she asked me. I said, I had a little straw, and I put a hole in it. I learned something about that. I love watching Marty direct and being with the actors and with the crew. It's wonderful. But first of all, I don't have time to be there. And secondly, it does prejudice my eyes. I like to experience the film as it's being born and watch it every day with Marty. And then my job is to help him sort of make sure that that all ends up on the screen the way he wants it. When he's in the editing room, he can then relax and sit and just with complete and utter control finish making his movie. And a great deal of Marty's movies are made in the editing room, particularly The Last Day as a Wise Guy, as we call it. The Last Day as a Wise Guy is a sequence that I think came together particularly in the editing room because we found that we could express the state of mind that Ray Liotta was in at that time, It was written in a lot of small montages, but it was never really visualized on a script the way you see it on film. We can make it even more jagged. We can make it more fractured. And so we started doing more jump cuts. That's Henry's life. I know he's stoned, and his vision of it is that. But that was Henry's life. I kind of see everything with music, especially the juxtaposition of the type of music you're listening to to the images that you see out the window and that sort of thing. That's the way music should be in a movie. Do you remember where you ever heard first music? Yeah, usually a piece of music. I remember when I first heard it. With your mother in a butcher shop? Yeah, yeah. And you carry those pieces of music around for years and then suddenly find exactly the right place for that piece. We had the music already played on the set to get the right rhythm for the movement or for the length of the scene. And when I got in the editing room, then I had to make sure that I was trying to get exactly what he wanted. He was very specific about how he wanted the music to cut. Stratus. That's really on the way. Yeah. Right here. Restart. Goodfellas was one of those films that I felt we rode like a horse. It was so beautifully scripted and shaped by Nick Bledsoe and Marty that it had its own energy, it had its own drive, and as Marty was laying it down, it just had an incredible feeling to it. So we were sort of riding it and trying to stay on top of it and stay ahead of it if we could. But it was so strong. It had such a rhythm. The movie has such an effect on people that no one expected. I mean, it's just such a grip. What I found in my experience is that there are certain films that you don't preview, and certainly this is one, and that's when we got our head handed to us. When we took this in front of audiences, we got killed. The audience got really, in some cases, almost violent. We had maybe 40 walkouts in the first 10 or 15 minutes. When they were giving their cards back, they were, like, throwing their cards and writing profanities on them. The people who saw it from the studio at first, they could see how incredibly entertaining it was, what an amazing film it was, but they were nervous about the drugs. We had a lot of problems with them on the cut. They wanted to cut out the violence. Which was impossible because that's what the movie was about. So he did have to fight very hard for that, and it was remarkable to watch him, his courage and his conviction and the fact that he just would never give up but was very good at explaining why it was important to retain the material. And we were able to get the film that Marty wanted on the screen. You know, when you're working on something like this, you're just trying to make it as good as you can. And even in the end, neither of us were still not totally satisfied. And I remember, literally, at the opening of the movie, I think it was at the Ziegfielder's somewhere, and I'm sitting next to him. They got us in tuxedos, and we're sitting next to him. The thing goes up, and then all of a sudden, I get this elbow, and he says, I told you, I told you, we should've, I should've. And he started talking about editing, and we think he was in the editing room. I said, Marty, Marty, forget it. It's over. It's too late. And he laughed. But, you know, even watching it on opening night, there's still things you can tweak and things you can deal with. I don't think he's ever gonna say, I've finally done it. This is perfect. You'll never hear that from him.