10 Movie Directors That Lied To Get What They Wanted
6. Martin Scorsese Let Joe Pesci Scare His Colleagues - Goodfellas
Martin Scorsese’s crime drama Goodfellas tells the story of Henry Hill and his descent into the criminal underworld. No better is the drama of this world perhaps better represented that the restaurant scene.
So the story goes that Joe Pesci, who had a rough enough upbringing to occasionally bring him close to the real life mob, recalled a story to colleague Ray Liotta of telling a mobster that he was funny and the ensuing anxiety that it had caused. Scorsese heard and enjoyed the conversation and decided to put it into the film, however he only told the two actors to improvise it and kept it from the rest of the gang around them.
In the legendary scene, Tommy DeVito suddenly turns on a dime from telling a raucous story to intensely uncomfortable bubbling rage as he asks Henry Hill “do I amuse you?”. The sequence was all shot at mid-length shots, with no close-ups. Scorsese was keen to capture the real reactions of the cast in this moment, knowing that Pesci was a master of the unpredictable.
Many of the gang can be seen avoiding eye contact with anyone, looking off-screen or at their hands, with palpable dread about where this is going… before Hill realises DeVito is messing with him.
The scene remains today a powerful example of the powderkeg of the mob that Goodfellas so perfectly portrayed.