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Goodfellas

Goodfellas
Theatrical release poster
Film information
NameGoodfellas
Directed byMartin Scorsese
Produced byIrwin Winkler
Narrated byRay Liotta
Lorraine Bracco
StarringRay Liotta
Robert De Niro
Joe Pesci
Lorraine Bracco
Paul Sorvino
CinematographyMichael Ballhaus
Editing byThelma Schoonmaker
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release date 
Running time146 minutes
Country 
LanguageEnglish
Budget$25 million
Gross revenue$46,836,394

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'Goodfellas' (stylized as 'GoodFellas') is a 1990 American gangster film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese. The film follows the rise and fall of Lucchese crime family associates Henry Hill and his friends over the course of thirty years from the 1950s to 1980.

Scorsese originally intended to direct Goodfellas before The Last Temptation of Christ, but when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he postponed what was then known as Wise Guy. The title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a TV series and for Brian De Palma's 1986 comedy Wise Guys, so Pileggi and Scorsese changed the name of their film to Goodfellas. To prepare for their roles in the film, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta talked often with Pileggi, who shared research material left over from writing the book. According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines he liked best, and put them into a revised script the cast worked from during principal photography.

Goodfellas performed well at the box office, grossing $46.8 million domestically, well above its $25 million budget. It also received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, but only won one for Pesci in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role category. Scorsese's film won five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, including Best Film. The film was named Best Film of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Boston Society of Film Critics, Chicago Film Critics Association, Kansas City Film Critics Circle, and by the National Society of Film Critics. Goodfellas is often considered one of the greatest films ever, both in the genre of crime and in general and was deemed "culturally significant" and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. Scorsese followed this film up with two more films about organized crime: 1995's Casino with De Niro and Pesci as mobsters in Las Vegas and 2006's The Departed with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson, which won four Academy Awards.


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