Goodfellas opened on September 19, 1990.
Martin Scorsese had built it from Nicholas Pileggi‘s 1985 book Wiseguy, about a real New York mobster, and the film went to the Academy Awards that spring with six nominations. It came home with one.
Where the ‘Funny How’ Scene Came From
Joe Pesci did not find the “funny how” exchange on the page. He carried it in from a night years earlier, when he was waiting tables and a connected customer turned on him over what Pesci had meant as a compliment. Pesci had resisted the film at first. Once he was persuaded, he gave Scorsese the story. “He acted out this scene that had happened to him,” the director recalled.
Scorsese had Pesci and Ray Liotta throw lines back and forth four or five times before anything was locked. He ran two cameras in wide medium shots so the diners stayed visible, and the sequence took about ninety minutes on a day the schedule had not set aside for it. The bottle that shatters was not planned.
Six Nominations and One Statue
Goodfellas was up for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing for Thelma Schoonmaker, Best Adapted Screenplay for Scorsese with Pileggi, plus supporting nominations for Lorraine Bracco and Pesci.
Dances with Wolves took seven awards on March 25, 1991, including Best Picture and Best Director for Kevin Costner. It also took Film Editing and Adapted Screenplay, which meant four of the five races Goodfellas lost went to the same movie. Whoopi Goldberg took the fifth, beating Bracco for Ghost.
Pesci was the exception. The Academy preserved the speech in full: “It was my privilege. Thank you.” When he came back out later in the broadcast to introduce a segment, he told the room he still could not talk.
What That Night Missed
The American Film Institute ranked it 94th among the 100 greatest American films, then moved it up to 92nd a decade later. Time Out‘s ranking, updated this month, places it 11th. Its soundtrack has had a life of its own. So has the argument over where it belongs among the best movies of the 1990s.
Liotta, who played Henry Hill, died in 2022 at 67. Robert De Niro turned 83 in August. Pesci still holds the only Oscar the picture ever won, for a performance he had not wanted to give.
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