Everything You Need to Know About Martin Scorsese's 'Goodfellas'

During a test screening, audience members walked out during the very first scene, when Pesci's character stabbed Billy Batts seven times with a kitchen knife. Scorsese eventually cut the seven stabs on-screen down to four stabs on-screen. Three additional stabs occurred off-screen, although you can still hear the sound of them.

The soundtrack for Goodfellas is iconic: a rich sampling of popular music spanning three decades. According to music editor Christopher Brooks, Scorsese had already planned out the songs he wanted three years before production began. Goodfellas was, at the time, one of the most expensive soundtracks ever made because of the necessary licensing; even if Scorsese only used thirty seconds of a song, as he did with the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter," he had to pay for it.

At the beginning of the movie, we see a young Henry looking down from his window at the gangsters hanging out on the street. Scorsese could relate to that. Scorsese was a frail kid growing up in Little Italy; he suffered from chronic asthma, which forced him to stay inside his apartment a lot and watch life passing by around him. However, there was a silver lining: staying inside nurtured an intense love of film. Scorsese credits his asthma with saving him from a life of crime.

Many of the extras were connected, in one way or another, to organized crime; many actually knew the main characters in real life, and one of the extras would later be convicted of carrying out hits for the mob. This casting blurred real life with Hollywood; Scorsese warned the cast ahead of time about who these people were so they would be shown proper deference and respect.

Robert De Niro is a dedicated actor—so much so that when he was developing the Jimmy Conway character, he called the real Henry Hill up to eight times a day to get every detail right about him, from the way he walked to the way he poured ketchup.

The mobsters in Goodfellas were full of excess, and the costume department went overboard to make De Niro seem particularly decadent. Every single suit was accessorized with its own pinky ring and watch. De Niro also used real money; he carried $5,000 of cash in his pocket on set.

Scorsese was concerned with accurate detail. He wanted his mobsters to appear and act like the ones he knew from real life. Ray Liotta, who played the main character Henry Hill, recalled that Scorsese would tie his tie for him to make sure it looked just right.

The famous "How am I funny?" scene comes from a real event: actor Joe Pesci used to be a waiter. While waiting on a mobster, Pesci told him he was funny, and he got a less-than-enthusiastic response to his sass. Scorsese loved the anecdote so much that he decided to shoot it, even though it wasn't in the script. Pesci and Liotta both knew what would happen in the scene; they had improvised and rehearsed it beforehand. But Scorsese deliberately didn't inform the other actors on set during the actual shoot to elicit natural reactions.

During the scene where Sonny begs Paulie to take control of the restaurant, Scorsese told Sonny's actor, Tony Darrow, to improvise more, but didn't tell Paul Sorvino, Paulie's actor, about the change. This elicited real anger and confusion from Sorvino, who brought those emotions into the finished scene.

The long Steadicam shot, where Henry takes Karen on a date to the Copacabana to see Henny Youngman, is still studied in film classes as a classic filmmaking moment. It's a bit of seduction on Henry's part—that he's able to show this woman that he knows people and commands respect. The crew took eight takes to capture the final footage.

Liotta's mother died from breast cancer during the production of the film, and Liotta used the anger over her death to drive his performance—most notably, during the scene where he pistol-whips Karen's neighbor Bruce. According to Mark Evan Jacobs, the actor who plays Bruce, he was legitimately hit on one take.

During the scene where De Niro's character is kicking Billy Batts, the kicks were real. The actor who played Batts, Frank Vincent, wore padding, but he still woke up with bruises the next day.

Scorsese's mother, Catherine, played Tommy’s mother; in the scene where they stop by her house to pick up a shovel, she shows them a painting she made. Nearly the entire scene was improvised, and it was almost cut from the finished film for pacing. Test screenings, however, saved the scene; almost every audience member liked it, even if they hated the film overall.

Ed McDonald plays himself at the end of the film; he was the prosecutor who brought down the real-life Henry Hill and later placed him and his family in witness protection.

One of the final shots is of Joe Pesci shooting directly at the camera. This directly callbacks to the revolutionary 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery. It also ends with a criminal shooting a gun directly at the camera. To an early 1900s audience, this was a startling, thrilling way to end a film.

There are 300 usages of the word f*ck in Goodfellas, which, for a time, made it the record holder for most usages in a film. Many of these usages were ad-libbed by Joe Pesci; the original script had fewer than 100. Scorsese actually topped his own benchmark with 2010's The Wolf of Wall Street, which had 506 usages of f*ck.

After the test screenings (which, as mentioned before, people walked out on during the first scene), the studio thought it had a flop on its hands. Scorsese fought Warner Bros. executives to release the film to the general public as he intended. It turns out Scorsese's instincts were correct; the critics loved the film, and it was nominated for six Academy Awards.

Pesci won the film's only Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His acceptance speech was notable for its brevity: "It's my privilege. Thank you." We're surprised he didn't drop an f-bomb for good measure.