Striking movie phrases lodged into our brains have made their way into our everyday vocabulary.
We sometimes say the lines when we want to stress a point, raise a smile or launch a hearty laugh.
Whether it was The Godfather, Don Corleone, or Scarface’s Tony Montana, gangsters were devilishly cool with their words.
Martin Scorsese’s mob masterpiece, ‘Goodfellas’, which premiered 30 years ago this month, is loaded with gangster conversation ammo.
Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta turned into one-liner merchants as Nicolas Pilleggi ripped the textbook for mob movies with his fast-paced script.
The popularity of some of the movie’s best lines have been buoyed following the screening of the restored 30th anniversary version of the film at the 77th Venice International Film Festival under its classics section from Sept 2-12.
The festival is a landmark in the reopening of the movie business that was brought to its knees by the coronavirus pandemic.
Over the years, the lines in the “Funny, How?” scene in which Pesci (Tommy DeVito) takes centre stage have been uttered and re-uttered by gangster movie lovers, just as Scorsese’s cast-iron classic has been watched, re-watched and adored for three decades now.
A bunch of gangsters huddle around a table at a dimly lit restaurant. The livewire is an insane, five-foot four Tommy who has piled up a US$7,000 tab and is telling a vulgar joke.
Tommy tells them about having been brought in by the police for questioning following a bank robbery.
His buddies laugh together on cue. They are being careful. Tommy, who switches between charm and homicidal lunacy in an instant, owns them.
Halfway through the expletive-strewn story, Henry Hill (Liotta) tells Tommy that he’s funny, to which the psychopath seems insulted.
The atmosphere curdles and the quick-tempered enforcer in a criminal organisation snarls: “What do you mean I’m funny? I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh, I’m here to f***** amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?”
It’s an absorbing scene – a mix of searing tension, uneasy confrontation and humour – that shows how Tommy can go from being calm to being a raging monster in an instant.
The frenetic scene is one of the most intense moments in Scorsese’s violent, profane and often comedic masterpiece – based on Pilleggi’s book “Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia family” about four gangsters spanning three decades – is extraordinary.
The “Funny, How?” scene, arguably the most well-known scene of the film wasn’t in the script.
The moment is based on Pesci’s early working experience at a restaurant where he thoughtlessly complimented a mobster on his sense of humour.
When Pesci relayed the yarn to Scorsese, the director decided to include it in the film only with the knowledge of Pesci and Liotta.
He chose to keep the scene’s supporting cast off the dialogue of that day’s script so as to provoke candid stunned reactions from them.
Such stinging lines and actions – the bottle-over-the-head of the fraught Bamboo Lounge owner and in the aftermath of the hoodlum Billy Batt’s, “Now, go home and get your shine box” have become inimitable staples of cinema.
In another scene where Tommy shoots stammering waiter Spider in the foot, the drunk mobster waves his smoking revolver from the poker table and shouts, “Take him to Ben Casey!” as the lad writhes in pain on the floor.
Ben Casey was the titular doctor of a hit TV show in the early 1960s.
Tommy plays a fearless character who constantly demonstrates his power to amuse viewers.
It is believed the “f” word is said about 320 times in the movie, artfully mostly by Tommy. Another Scorsese film, “The Wolf of Wall Street”, is said to be Hollywood’s F-bomb Don with 544.
When his mother, played by Scorsese’s mother, Catherine, presses Tommy to get married, he blurts: “Sure mom, I settle down with a nice girl every night, then I’m free the next morning.
Funnily in “Raging Bull”, a 1980 Scorsese film about the life and fights of the disturbed middleweight champion boxer Jake LaMotta, he says the same to his explosive brother played by Robert De Niro.
“What are ya thinkin’ about? Ya keep lookin’, you’re dead! You’re married. You’re a married man, it’s all over. Leave the young girls for me.”
Pesci has standout quotes in most of his movies including when he reunited with Scorsese and De Niro in “Casino” (1996).
The sociopathic violence of Tommy in “GoodFellas” is doubled down when Pesci as mob boss, Nicky Santoro, spits out more striking lines – many unprintable.
So, naturally the audience would have expected to be reeling with laughter when he snared the Best Supporting Oscar for “Goodfellas”.
Instead, his acceptance speech was just five words, “It’s my privilege. Thank you.”
No one expected that from an actor who played one of the most vocally intimidating characters in movie memory: a man whose verbosity can make you roar with laughter at one moment and rise with gooseflesh the next.
The Link LonkSeptember 09, 2020 at 06:00AM
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'Funny, how?' Classic 'Goodfellas' scene still hilarious after 30 years - Free Malaysia Today
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