His time in the Witsec Program were almost comical but for the thought of what his kids must have gone through, especially having to deal with Karen and Henry's drug and alcohol addictions and the crazy homelife arrangement he had with Karen and his paramours. I was not surprised to learn that Henry was the first and only person to be thrown out of the Witsec Program due to repeatedly getting busted. And yet through all this, he managed to make lifelong friends with FBI agents and law enforcement. Go figure. The Boston College point shaving scheme, for example. It's barely alluded to in Goodfellas (just once, by a low level con man named Morris, right before Tommy, Joe Pesci's famously terrifying character, drives a shiv repeatedly into his brain stem). Wiseguy, with more room to roam, delves into the nitty gritty. If, like me, you're fascinated by such details, then the book is an indispensable companion of the film. The Beatles of crime, in case you were wondering, is the Gallo Profaci wars, which launched the stories of The Godfather. Seriously. According to producer Irwin Winkler, Tom Cruise “was discussed,” and according to producer Barbara De Fina, Madonna was “in the mix” to the extent that Scorsese scouted her at a performance of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow on Broadway.

Most of the book, however, is spent re-living and boasting about his criminal exploits and his almost incomprehensible compulsive pursuit of women and the trashy drama that wrought. It's like an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter but with a criminal who keeps getting away. There's something appealing about that, and its vicariously addicting. According to Hill, despite combining characters and slightly altering plot points and timelines, Goodfellas was about 95 percent accurate. Perhaps some of that remaining five percent has to do with the on-screen portrayals of Paul Vario, the one-time head of the Lucchese crime family, and Jimmy Burke, architect of the Lufthansa heist. Goodfellas is No. 94 on the American Film Institute's " 100 Years, 100 Movies" list and moved up to No. 92 on its AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) from 2007. In June 2008, the AFI put Goodfellas at No. 2 on their AFI's 10 Top 10—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the movie-related community. [61] Goodfellas was regarded as the second-best in the gangster film genre (after The Godfather). [62] In 2000, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Warner Bros. executive Terry Semel was pushing Scorsese to cast movie star Tom Cruise as Henry Hill, who had just worked with the director on The Color of Money, and was a big box office draw. Madonna, of course, was one of the biggest musical artists in the world, and she'd recently done Suddenly Seeking Susan, and Semel thought the singer would be perfect to play Karen. Hollywood power player Michael Ovitz is one of several figures who has taken credit for talking Semel out of casting Madonna and Cruise. Meanwhile, producer Irwin Winkler didn't think that Ray Liotta had the charm to play Henry Hill, but following a chance meeting at a Santa Monica restaurant, Liotta sold him on the idea. Nugent, Annabel (September 15, 2020). "All 27 Goodfellas actors who later featured in The Sopranos". The Independent . Retrieved November 21, 2023.

Henry Hill was played by Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. Henry Hill, Jr was associated with the Lucchese family. He was never made, because his father was Irish. In 1980, Hill spilled to theFBI and more than fifty guys were sent up, including Lucchese capo Paul Vario and Jimmy Burke. It’s rare that a real-world event is more dramatic and hard to believe than what transpires in the Oscar-winning movie it inspires, but you can absolutely make the case that it applies to the 1978 Lufthansa Heist, which serves as a climactic moment in Martin Scorsese’s classic film GoodFellas, about rise and fall of Lucchese crime family associate Henry Hill.

Vario was “membership director” for mob boss Joe Colombo’s Italian-American Civil Rights League in the ’70s. He pulled out after Colombo started labeling the FBI and U.S. government racist, drawing heat. Starting in the late 1960s, Vario was underboss to Lucchese family head Carmine Tramunti.

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Wiseguy even has some advantages over its still-more-brilliant offspring. A two-and-a-half- hour biopic must necessarily simplify and omit events. In Henry Hill's case, a lot of those events are interesting.

I recommend this book in audiobook format if you find yourself hankering for true organized crime memoirs. Nobody tops Henry Hill and his adventures. GoodFellas 4K Blu-ray". Archived from the original on February 1, 2018 . Retrieved January 31, 2018. a b c d Hughes, Howard (August 22, 2006). Crime Wave: The Filmgoers' Guide to the Great Crime Movies. pp.176–177. ISBN 978-1845112196. Goodfellas". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on December 18, 2014 . Retrieved December 7, 2014. Modern Times". Sight and Sound. December 2002. Archived from the original on March 12, 2012 . Retrieved August 27, 2008.To prepare for the role, De Niro consulted with Pileggi, who had research material that had been discarded while writing the book. [23] De Niro often called Hill several times a day to ask how Burke walked, held his cigarette, and so on. [24] [25] 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. [25] Madonna was considered for the role of Karen Hill. [20] 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, saying 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." [26] Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character, but found it challenging to find what he called "that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened." [27] a b "Goodfellas review – a brash, menacing hightail through the death of the mob". The Guardian. January 19, 2017. Archived from the original on June 18, 2020 . Retrieved June 25, 2020. genius facts about GoodFellas". ShortList. February 11, 2011. Archived from the original on December 5, 2013 . Retrieved December 6, 2013. For the thirtieth anniversary of its premiere comes the vivid and immersive history behind Martin Scorsese’s signature film Goodfellas , hailed by critics as the greatest mob movie ever made.