10 Unnecessary Movie Details You Need To Know
6. Robert De Niro Held Several Thousand Dollars Of The Prop Master's Own Money - Goodfellas
Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas is a movie of such impressive, meticulous control that it's tough to accept that any single variable was still being tinkered with right up to shooting.
But while filming Jimmy Conway's (Robert De Niro) introductory scene where he throws a giant wad of cash down on a craps table and hands some to young Henry Hill (Christopher Serrone), De Niro hated the feel of the fake prop money.
And so, the movie's prop master Robert Griffon decided to just...withdraw several thousand dollars of his own money from the bank in order to keep the star happy.
It's apples and oranges to anyone watching the movie, but it mattered to De Niro, and you can't argue with the end result of his sublime performance.
Unsurprisingly, Griffon was pretty nervous about using so much of his own cash:
"The scene in the casino, [De Niro]'s throwing $50 and $20 bills around. And as soon as they cut, we're trying to get them all back: 'Everybody freeze!'"