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 moves 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.
Ray Liotta, the star of Godfellas, dies
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.
Can you lose stomach fat just by walking?
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."
Tom Cruise and Madonna?
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 GQ 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.
0 Comments