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1. Who directed Goodfellas?
Martin Scorsese
Scorsese read a review of the book on a plane and called its author to say he had been waiting for it all his life. He wrote the screenplay with him and was nominated for Best Director, losing to Kevin Costner.
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2. The film is based on a book called...
Wiseguy
Nicholas Pileggi's 1985 account of Henry Hill's life, built from hundreds of hours of interviews with Hill in witness protection. The title was changed because a television series called Wiseguy was on the air.
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3. Who plays Henry Hill?
Ray Liotta
Liotta was best known for a frightening turn in Something Wild, and the studio wanted a bigger name. He persuaded Scorsese in person at a film festival, after the director's bodyguards had tried to keep him away.
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4. What's the first line of the film?
"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster."
Spoken over the car on the dark road, after the trunk has been opened. The last option is the advice Jimmy gives young Henry outside the courthouse.
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5. Who plays Tommy DeVito?
Joe Pesci
Pesci won Best Supporting Actor, the film's only win from six nominations, and gave one of the shortest acceptance speeches on record: 'It's my privilege. Thank you.' Frank Vincent plays Billy Batts, the man Tommy shouldn't have insulted.
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6. The "Funny how?" scene grew out of...
Something that had happened to Pesci in real life
Pesci had once told a mobster he was funny and been given the same treatment. He and Liotta worked the exchange out in rehearsals, and Scorsese kept it out of the script so the other actors' reactions would be real.
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7. Which famous shot follows Henry and Karen into the Copacabana?
A single unbroken Steadicam shot through the kitchen
About three minutes without a cut, in through the back door, down the stairs, through the kitchen and out to a table set up at the front. It took eight takes, and the comedian on stage, Henny Youngman, told the same joke every time.
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8. Who plays Karen, Henry's wife?
Lorraine Bracco
Bracco's narration takes over the film at the wedding, the moment Karen enters the life herself. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and later spent six seasons as a mob boss's therapist on The Sopranos.
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9. What does Billy Batts tell Tommy to go home and get?
His shine box
A reminder that Tommy once shined shoes, which Tommy doesn't take well. The night ends with a body in the trunk, the same trunk the film opened with.
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10. What real crime do Jimmy and the crew pull off in 1978?
The Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport
Nearly six million dollars in cash and jewels, at the time the largest cash robbery in American history. Hardly any of it was ever recovered, and most of the men involved were dead within a year.
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11. Which song plays over the bodies turning up after the heist?
The piano coda of "Layla"
Derek and the Dominos, the second half of the song, over the pink Cadillac and the refrigerated truck. 'Gimme Shelter' and 'Sunshine of Your Love' are elsewhere in the film.
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12. What's Henry doing on the last day shown in detail, May 11, 1980?
Cooking dinner, moving guns and cocaine, and watching for a helicopter
Veal, peppers and tomato sauce, his brother stirring, a helicopter that may or may not be following him, and a great deal of cocaine. Scorsese has said he drew on his own memories of that drug for the pace of it.
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13. Who plays Paulie Cicero, the quiet boss?
Paul Sorvino
Sorvino nearly quit, unable to find the man's menace, until he caught sight of his own face in a mirror one night and recognised it. In real life the boss was Paul Vario.
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14. Which role did Scorsese's mother play?
Tommy's mother, who feeds the crew in the middle of the night
Catherine Scorsese serves them dinner and shows off a painting, in a scene that was largely improvised. Her son appears nowhere in the film; his father, Charles, plays the prisoner who puts too many onions in the sauce.
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15. What's the last line of the film?
"I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."
Henry in a bathrobe on a suburban doorstep, picking up the newspaper and missing the life. The line just before it, about ordering spaghetti and getting egg noodles with ketchup, is the one people quote.
