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GoodFellas: Gory Comedy Murders SPOILERS

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
7 replies | jump to latest

The opening of "Goodfellas": Three gangsters in car on the road in the dead of night, barreling down the highway. They hear a "BANGING" in the car. They are worried, then joking: a flat tire? The sound is coming from the truck.

They pull to the side of the road. They open the trunk. Inside: a man, gagged and bound and bloody and making a real commotion.

The solution? One of the gangsters(Joe Pesci) pulls out a big butcher knife and proceeds to stab the trunk victim in his chest, ALMOST until death. (Robert DeNiro steps in with a gun and blasts away to finish the job.)

The youngest, most "innocent' gangster -- Ray Liotta -- shuts the trunk on the now-dead victim. Freeze-frame. Narration from Liotta: "As far back as I can remember, I've wanted to be a gangster."

Goodfellas begins with a bang. And a stab.

Consider: in that opening, as horrifying as it is to see Pesci stab the victim repeatedly, DeNiro suddenly pulling a gun and blasting away gets a LAUGH. Its literal overkill -- who ARE these guys? Ultra-violence can be FUNNY.

And it happens again:

Pesci is given a chatterbox dumb guy sidekick to help with two murders. Pesci and this dumb guy trade comedy barbs BEFORE Pesci kills someone -- then the murder happens -- then the jokes keep coming AFTER the murder. And they are pretty horrible murders. One guy's brains are blown out(superstar in waiting Samuel L. Jackson), the other gets an icepick driven into his brain from behind by Pesci from the back seat of a parked car. And yet: the jokes keep a coming; the murders are "enwrapped in comedy." (The dumb guy after the icepick murder, in the car: "Should I drive?" Pesci: No let's let HIM drive. You idiot!" )

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Gruesome and gory as all this is -- it harkens back to the funny violence of Bugs Bunny and The Three Stooges(especially the latter.)

Indeed, this "comedy murders" theme continues on to Scorsese's "Casino" (1995) when Pesci(under a new character name, but still psychotic) tortures a guy and puts his head in a vise to pop an eyeball. Jokes Pesci to his henchman: "I tell ya, if this guy doesn't give us a name soon, I'm gonna give 'em YOUR name!" After the victim gives up a name(Something like "Larry M") Pesci has the guy's throat slit and stomps off growling ""Larry M! Larry M! All this trouble for Larry M!" as if irritated but uncaring of the torture and murder he has carried out.)

Back up to Goodfellas. The victim we see in the trunk in the beginning(a flash forward) finally enters the movie about mid-film(flash-back): The victim is Billy Batts(Frank Vincent, eventually Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos), celebrating in a closed, near-empty bar after getting out of prison - -and dead set on humiliating current Mafia underling Joe Pesci about his days as a shoe shine boy. We get (paraphrased):

Pesci: You been gone awhile. I don't shine shoes anymore. Not in a long time.
Vicent: Hey, I'm just bustin' your balls, I don't mean nuthin by it.
Pesci: Well, just drop it.
Vincent: OK...but...(with cool, real anger) why don't you go get your f'in shoe shine box.
Pesci: (Yelling, going ballistic) You MFer!

This is a scene known to many of us. Its written and plays like a comedy scene: Pesci's final explosion gets big laughs...but of course it leads to the brutal killing of "made man" Billy Batts -- and killing a "made man" without permission in the Mafia is a big "no no" -- which leads to problems later on.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Scorsese rather started this "comedy gory murders" tradition(with the jokes often best cracked by New York/New Jersey accents.)

But the tradition continued to Quentin Tarantino. The "comedy bloody murders" in Goodfellas and Casino are rather emulated when Travolta accidentally blows off a Black kid's head in "Pulp Fiction" and the bloody death becomes comedy body disposal fodder for a half hour.

And then, in 1999, The Sopranos arrived to make the point that not only "could murder be funny"(like when they throw a body up towards a trash bin and the body misses and falls back on the ground), but gangsters could be funny too -- The Sopranos is filled with one liners and insult humor.

I daresay Goodfellas influence a lot of comedy in the Mafia murder genre...

[–] Drooch (5333) 4 years ago

Yeah. What’s your point?

[–] FentonMeiks (1349) 4 years ago

Have you seen pesci/vincent's first movie "the death collector" (aka family enforcer) from 1976? it feels like a similar attitude to goodfellas (imo) the gangster ball busting joking attitude. *some parts* definately felt like a building block for goodfellas to me (of course some parts are horrible).

terrible video quality. god awful sound quality. horrible clothes and frank vincents hair. BUT...a few "comedy" scenes and some "fuggedaboutit" and "not for nothin'" wiseguy lines that seem more modern.

also the movie starts with a body in the trunk which is a "flash forward" of an event later on which completely changes your feelings of the opening scene.

[–] ExTechOp (2770) 4 years ago

Was this the START of gallows humor though?

In his commentary to "Talented Mr. Ripley," Minghella referred to a "Grand Guignol" tradition that suggest morbid humor goes WAAAAY back.

Besides, in this movie's case, a lot of the "comedy" is based on the real gangsters' dark humor. Jimmy Burke (the real life DeNiro character), used to say, "this one's for Johnny," when shooting hoops at the local basketball court.

"Johnny" had been a friend of theirs who'd crossed Jimmy, so Jimmy killed him and buried him under the court. "This one's for Johnny," was their idea of an inside joke.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Was this the START of gallows humor though?

In his commentary to "Talented Mr. Ripley," Minghella referred to a "Grand Guignol" tradition that suggest morbid humor goes WAAAAY back.

---

I'm reminded that once bloody slasher movies started to catch on -- not in the 70's with Halloween but in the 60's with Psycho, Strait-Jacket, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte and the like -- it seemed like every reviewer used the phrase "Grand Guignol" to describe those movies. I came to equate the term "Grand Guignol" with "bloody slasher movie." Some research indicates that the Grand Guignol was actually a theatrical tradition dating back to 1897 , in France -- staged performances with blood and violence. Evidently, the phrase came back into fashion once Psycho and the slashers(and the head choppers) came in.

That said, I think that the comedy here -- which certainly ties into "gallows humor" and "black comedy" -- is something more specific: the deliberate mix of bloody killing with comedy --whether one-liners or slapstick.

In GoodFellas, TWICE Scorsese plays the same gag with Joe Pesci and the stupid accomplice. Once after the bloody shooting of Samuel L. Jackson and then again after the ice-pick killing of the wig king. Both times, the murder is shocking, but Pesci just moves on and makes fun of his dumb assistant(who himself ends up dead, in a deep freezer, eventually.)

...I would certainly expect cold-blooded, often psychotic mob killers to keep up a steady patter of jokes to make their killings more palatable.

But there's also this: all these comedy bloody murders have been taken in stride by AUDIENCES for decades. The murders don't horrify us anymore, or scare us. Perhaps we always know they are "fake and make believe." So we laugh when Travolta blows the guys head off by accident and brain matter flies into Jackson's afro...

[–] johnmarti59 (2356) 4 years ago

That's how those guys were. It's the way they talk and do things. And it's funny the way they do things.

Take another toke...