GOODFELLAS

1990

DIRECTOR:  MARTIN SCORSESE

WRITERS:  NICHOLAS PILEGGI (BOOK "WISEGUY" AND SCREENPLAY) AND MARTIN SCORSESE (SCREENPLAY)

STARRING:  RAY LIOTTA, ROBERT DE NIRO, JOE PESCI, PAUL SORVINO, AND LORRAINE BRACCO

I finally convinced my girlfriend to watch Goodfellas.  i am jealous.  I wish I can eliminate amazing movies from my memory just so I can watch them for the first time all over again.  To ponder to myself, who the fuck is that guy in the trunk and what did he do to those three guys to make them want to stab him to a bloody pulp before shooting him, all over again.  

There's no other fictional character I would rather be than Henry Hill.  I feel this movie has the same effect on everyone who genuinely enjoys it.  It makes you fantasize about what it would be like leaving your real life to become a mobster or a mob wife or anything else as long as you're connected in some way.  The image of life consisting of a constant cash flow and respect in return for flexing your muscles every so often seems exciting, yet completely folkloric.  Deep down inside, the viewer has sniff at least a little bit of bullshit.  I cannot confirm nor deny if the mobster image and lifestyle is accurate, but what I can disclose and raise red flags on is the real life man, Henry Hill.  

I used to think the real Henry Hill was the tenacious and charismatic wise guy I idolized from the film.  That was until I read the book "On the Run" which is written by Hill's children, Gina and Gregg.  The book exposes and shatters Hill's whole persona.  Gina and Gregg's memory of events strays far from their father's version of his mobster life.  Apparently, Henry Hill is a much better story teller than he is a father.  

Only few people know the absolute truth of what went on behind closed doors at the Hill's residencies, but I cannot deny wondering what his kids were doing while he was playing cards throughout the night.  While Henry Hill was cleaning enemy blood off the floor, who was getting his kids ready for school the next day?  Every minute Hill was with his girlfriends, mafioso friends, and behind bars is another minute he was not at home achieving in daddy duties.  Instead, Gina and Gregg recall countless memories of Henry Hill failing at parenting.  

One event that stands out in my mind from the book is when the two describe jolting awake in the middle of the night while Hill ripped the mirror off their bedroom wall so he and his party guests could snort cocaine off of it.  Gina and Gregg also illustrate how it felt bouncing from school to school while their family was in the witness protection program.  Their father couldn't cut his old habits loose and as a result, the kids would be forced to up and leave their school, friends, and entire life in a short heart beat again and again.  Every sentimental scene from the movie was actually a mentally damaging hardship for Henry Hill's kids.  

Goodfellas was, is, and always will be one of my favorite films of all time.  It's brilliant how cinema can fool your mind and manipulate you to think whatever it is that they want you to think.  It's like giving people's brains a two hour vacation.  It is responsible for my extreme love for movies, writing, and filmmaking.