On Saturday night, the 14th annual Tribeca Film Festival came to a close with a special 25th anniversary screening of Goodfellas. After the screening, Jon Stewart hosted a Q&A with Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Paul Sorvino, Lorraine Bracco, and Wiseguy author Nicholas Pileggi.
Like most humans, I’ve seen Goodfellas countless times – it’s one of the most rewatchable movies in the history of cinema; it’s hard to believe it’s almost two and a half hours long – but there’s nothing quite like watching it in a sold out Beacon Theater with just under 3,000 other people. There were comedic cues I had never quite noticed before – the way Liotta whines, “Kareeeee – annnnnn”; the look on De Niro’s face as he’s watching Morrie’s wig commercial — and moments that received unexpected raucous laughter knowing what’s coming next, like De Niro’s line, “You insulted him a little bit.” I cannot stress enough that just seeing the film in this setting was pleasurable enough.
Which is good, because the much-hyped post-film Q&A was … not the best. Unfortunately, Martin Scorsese wasn’t there because he’s shooting a movie in Taiwan and his energetic presence was dearly missed. He did film an intro to the film that was classic Scorsese, manic and hilarious, talking mostly about how great it was to film the scene with Liotta, Pesci, De Niro and Scorsese’s mother in the kitchen, stating that most of that scene was made up as it went along and gives a good taste of what it’s like to just hang out with Liotta, Pesci, De Niro and Scorsese’s mother (Liotta’s lack of really have much of anything to say in that scene seems even more interesting now).
The problem with the Q&A is that there just wasn’t anyone really that talkative on stage. It seems as if Stewart was hoping that discussions would break out – as often does during group Q&As – but that never happened. By the end, poor Jon Stewart was resorting to questions like, “Where’s Joe Pesci?” and “If Martin Scorsese were here, would he have wanted to still edit the movie?” to which De Niro answered, “I can’t answer that.”
(There were quite a few cast members in the audience, like Chuck Low, who played Morrie, and Mike Starr, who played Frenchy, and Debi Mazar, who played Sandy. I couldn’t help but think that maybe these people should have been on stage, too. I bet they might have had something to say. If nothing else, we don’t get their Goodfellas opinions very often.)
Still, a few interesting nuggets snuck through – of course, most of them are already known pieces of information to those who have listened to the Goodfellas commentary track – but, here are a few highlights from the largely unremarkable discussion:
– The “funny how?” scene wasn’t improvised, as popular myth claims. Liotta explained that, during rehearsals, Pesci was telling a story and Liotta reacted to Pesci similarly to the way his character in the movie does, so Scorsese thought they should add a scene like this. But Scorsese is all about timing, so the scene in the film was very much scripted – to the point where Scorsese had to reprimand Pesci when he started to go off script during the actual filming of the scene.
– According to Pileggi, while watching the black tie premiere of Goodfellas, Scorsese still wanted to make more edits to the film.
– Robert De Niro is aware that the line, “It’s a hoof,” is a funny line, but he says it’s funny because that’s something a guy like that would have said in conversation.
– After the film premiered, Liotta heard from Henry Hill. Hill invited Liotta to meet him and his brother at a bowling alley. Liotta said that Hill said to him, “Thanks for not making me look like a scumbag.” To which Liotta replied, “Did you see the movie?”
Mike Ryan has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and New York. He is senior entertainment writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.
