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:INFO.half
GoodFellas (1990)
Scorsese strips out the honour, the family and the opera, and leaves the wages, the paranoia and the cocaine.

:STATS
[icon:CLOCK] Runtime | 146 minutes
[icon:STAR] Director | Martin Scorsese
[icon:CHART] Budget | $25 million
[icon:TRENDING_UP] Box office | $47 million worldwide
[icon:FIRE] Editing | Thelma Schoonmaker

:INFO
Narration As Seduction
Where The Godfather is about a dynasty, this is about employment. Henry Hill narrates his own career the way people describe a good job they once had, with enthusiasm for the perks and no interest in the ethics, and Scorsese matches that tone with freeze frames, jump cuts, needle drops and a camera that never stops moving. The Copacabana shot, three minutes unbroken from a car through a kitchen to a table placed at the front, exists to make the audience feel what Henry is selling. Then the film's second half withdraws it all: the same energy applied to a single paranoid day in 1980, helicopters overhead, sauce on the stove, a narration that has become a man talking too fast. It ends with the worst punishment the film can imagine, which is having to live like everybody else.

:JOURNEY
Watching GoodFellas
4 Opened
3 Apprenticed
4 Seduced
5 Escalated
4 Unravelling
5 Frantic

:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Henry Hill · GoodFellas · 1990]
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.

:CHECKLIST
What to watch for
[ ] Freeze frames marking the moments Henry stops to justify himself
[ ] The Copacabana Steadicam shot as an argument rather than a flourish
[ ] Two narrators, and what changes when Karen takes over
[ ] Needle drops dated to the exact year of each sequence
[ ] The final shot breaking the fourth wall and the film's whole promise

:NOTE.half
Joe Pesci's funny how am I funny scene came from an incident he had witnessed in a restaurant as a young man, and was worked out with Ray Liotta in rehearsal rather than written.

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Thelma Schoonmaker cut roughly a third of the film's shots to music chosen in advance, so the editing rhythm is set by records that existed in the year each scene takes place.

:LINK
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/
GoodFellas on IMDb: full cast and crew