goodfellas
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Outta Respect: Remembering the Goodfellas Diner
“We tried to do everything we could.” “What do you mean?” “You know what I mean. He’s gone. And we couldn’t do nothing about it.” So kicks off an iconic sequence in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, the emotional summit of a movie that’s basically one iconic sequence after another: the moment on the pay- phone when Jimmy “The Gent” Conway (Robert De Niro) hears his old friend Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) has just been whacked. Jimmy doesn’t just hang up — he bashes the phone into the receiver, finally stomping the booth into the ground between muffled sobs while the film’s narrator, […]
by Steve Macfarlane on Oct 31, 2019 -
Getting the Job, Learning from The Master and Goodfellas, and Shooting with Cleaner Glass: Cinematographer Sean Porter Talks Green Book
Viggo Mortensen always seemed like the kind of actor who would insist on eating a dozen hot dogs in a scene if his character did the same. Green Book cinematographer Sean Porter confirmed those suspicions. “We shot a hot dog eating contest and Viggo was cramming them in at full speed every take,” laughs Porter. Green Book provided Mortensen (and his digestive system) with ample opportunities to display that kind of commitment to authenticity. In the based-in-fact story, Mortensen plays Tony Vallelonga, a Bronx bouncer with a penchant for gluttony who accepts a job driving a refined piano virtuoso (played […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Dec 15, 2018 -
Outta Respect
“We tried to do everything we could.” “What do you mean?” “You know what I mean. He’s gone. And we couldn’t do nothing about it.” So kicks off an iconic sequence in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, the emotional summit of a movie that’s basically one iconic sequence after another: the moment on the pay- phone when Jimmy “The Gent” Conway (Robert De Niro) hears his old friend Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) has just been whacked. Jimmy doesn’t just hang up — he bashes the phone into the receiver, finally stomping the booth into the ground between muffled sobs while the film’s narrator, […]
by Steve Macfarlane on Dec 14, 2017 -
Steadicam Operator Larry McConkey on Filming the Goodfellas Copacabana Tracking Shot and The Early Days of Steadicam
The Copa Shot: It’s one of the few shots in the history of cinema readily identifiable by name, instantly conjuring the image of Goodfellas gangster Ray Liotta leading Lorraine Bracco – and by extension the audience – through the back entrance of New York’s legendary Copacabana nightclub, as Steadicam operator Larry McConkey glides along behind them. How long did one of film’s most famed tracking shots take to pull off? It was in the can before lunch — which isn’t to say it was easy. With a 25th Anniversary screening of Goodfellas set to close the Tribeca Film Festival on April […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Apr 23, 2015 -
Of Tarantino and TV: The Legacy of Goodfellas
In the mid-1980s, Martin Scorsese was regaining his footing as a director after a brutal few years. His passion project, The Last Temptation of Christ, had fallen apart at Paramount just days before production was scheduled to begin, and The King of Comedy had been a commercial, and largely critical, failure – in spite of the fact that it was, and is, one of the most incisive films ever made about celebrity culture. After years of working on studio movies with substantial budgets and luxurious schedules, Scorsese went back to ground zero for After Hours in 1985, stripping his methods […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 22, 2015
