Hacker Cinema
GoodFellas
1990 · Film · 145 min
Directed by Martin Scorsese
The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.
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66 comments on Hacker News
Scummy people are like flies to shit - they thrive in the chaos.
People buying up nursing homes are using tactics like what you’d see in the movie Goodfellas. They’ll structure the buy so that they are assuming the license to operate while “renting” the facility from an affiliated entity, cut opex, fraudulently bill Medicare and Medicaid for rehab, and exit through bankruptcy of the operating entity.
My guess is that intelligence gets commodified to the point where LLMs and diffusion models are sold on chips and we seamlessly integrate them into the HW + SW stack. Then they’re just another abstraction; we talk to our computers to get things built. At essentially zero cost, truly too cheap to meter.
In parallel there’s an explosion of creative output; Marvel movies turn around in 1 year instead of 4, solely blocked on availability of actors. Some actors license their likeness to unblock their calendar from reshoots so they can earn more. We don’t replace them wholesale because people idolize celebrity.
And demand for movies? Skyrockets. With new mediums to pursue. Classics like Goodfellas resurrected in high-fidelity 3D on the Vision Pro. A combination of diffusion models and Gaussian splatting means every movie can be upscaled to immersive 3d.
Video games enter a second renaissance, with indie developers having the advantage. For large studios, nostalgia is the moneymaker. The remake of Final Fantasy VII across three games that costs $100Ms and decades? Final Fantasy VIII gets rebuilt from scratch with a team of 30. But the rest of the money and team that would’ve been on that project now expand to other, more ambitious projects.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Mars? Why stop at Mars? Let’s start megaprojects to explore the galaxy. Mine asteroids for resources. What’s stopping us? Humans yearn for the unknown. When we exhaust resources or a modality of existence, we dream bigger, not smaller.
I personally see consumer and entertainment spending, and people employed lucratively in these sectors, growing dramatically. Maybe SaaS and a lot of businesses that have traditionally employed white collar employees fade. And a bunch of boring “financistas” don’t know how to make a buck betting in the casino anymore because boring old businesses and things nobody really wanted to do anyway aren’t lucrative anymore.
But, personally, the whole reason I got into software was to build cool stuff. Starting with video games! The type and scale of cool stuff I can build is only getting better, at an insanely fast rate. My bet is we thrive.
I'm old enough that I grew up (well) before 9/11. Many in my age bracket will describe the 90s as the last great decade. I feel sad for those who are younger who never experienced that world, the world between the Cold War and the War on Terror.
It was a time when you could walk up to the gate in an airport before the TSA. A lot of younger people don't realize that's how it actually was. They think it's one of those things made up for movies.
Houses were cheap. Rent was cheap. Cars were cheap. Gas was cheap. Food was cheap. A friend of mine had college buddies who shared a 4 bedroom house in Iowa for $175/month. Not each. Total. I rented a 2 bedroom apartment close to a train and the city center for a little over $200/month. I lived as a student just fine on $200/week, including paying for rent. My degree cost me about $10,000.
The other side of that was the Cold War when we lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. I think this was generationally traumatic to people who grew up in the 50s (way before my time) but by the 80s? It wwas like background noise.
There was a lot of optimism with the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Union. On reflection, much later, I think this was terrible for the world. When the USSR existed as a counter to the US, the US was forced to at least do something for its citizens. The Red Scare destroyed collectivism and the US does things like the War on Terror now and, well, capturing the Venezuelan president, with complete impunity. They're open about it too: it's for oil. A handful of billionaires will get richer as a result of this.
The Big Lebowski is, to me, the most 90s movie of all time and it just gets better with age. Oh, the output of HOllywood in general was amazing in the 1990s. At that time I used to go see movies once or even twice a week. There was always something good on. Goodfellas and Terminator 2 spring to mind.
There just seemed to be more hope then. Now? I feel for anyone who was born after 2000. Crippled with debt with limited prospects of any kind of security. It's just so different to how it was.
I swap back and forth between favorit movies. Every few days it may be Goodfellas. Some days it is The Room. But I always return to Kiki’s delivery service and Howls moving castle. Both are absolutely gorgeous and incredibly well told.
I also find myself quoting porco rosso a lot lately.
This a treasure trove of gorgeous lockscreen images. Very excited to put them into rotation.
> The Netflix catalog is full of not so good movies, and the video rental shops in the 90s were too.
I subscribed to Netflix for a year or two when the platform became popular, but I quickly realized it resembles those old school rental shops too much. Yes, you could get some popular classics like The Godfather or Goodfellas, but apart from that you were stuck with another crime story or a comedy with Steve Martin or John Candy. Actually, my analogy may not be 100% fortunate, because I still have good memories about watching these comedies as a kid with my dad. Now I wouldn't have time and patience to go through movies of "that" quality. Anyhow, my point is that you were very unlikely to get there anything that wasn't already proved to be popular. Forget about anything more niche / arthouse. Netflix has produced plenty by itself, but how many of those movies are actually any good? I remember a handful of them: Marriage Story, Roma, Don't Look Up and a movie for kids called Okja.
I asked it to make a game where you place movies on a time line by dragging the movie poster.
Instead of the movie poster, it decided on its own to use icons that represent the movie instead (a pill represents Matrix, a gun Goodfellas etc.). I was surprised by its creativity to get around any copyright issues.
https://great-orca-9mjte9.manyminiapps.com
I really enjoy the process of ripping a disc to my hard drive, especially the process of finding the right combination of VapourSynth filters to clear up and fix any issues done in the mastering process. I also have discovered some interesting extra features.
An interesting DVD set was the first season of The IT Crowd, which has base64 encoded subtitles. It was a fun little project to OCR those, combine them together, and then decode them.
In terms of interesting DVD commentaries, Goodfellas and Catch Me if You Can have commentaries with the actual criminals who are the subject of the film, which gives an interesting perspective. There was also a hidden commentary track on one of The Simpsons episodes where the writers go into details about why there was a drop off in quality on the show. Actually the commentary tracks on The Simpsons episodes are generally excellent.
Sideways
Back To The Future
Cinema Paradiso
Spaceballs
Up In Smoke (Cheech & Chong)
The Incredibles
Indiana Jones 1-3
Indiana Jones: Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (Rifftrax only)
Falling Down
Office Space
Man Bites Dog
Nothing To Lose
Idiocracy
Space Mutiny (MST3k)
Goodfellas
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Groundhog Day
Barbie
Full Metal Jacket
Mallrats
Flight Of The Navigator
The Founder
One Hour Photo
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I'm pretty certain I've rewatched Sideways more than any other film.
You lose all credibility when you start yakking about FIVE EYES, etc. If you're the target of intelligence services, the advice you need is eloquently delivered in the movie "Goodfellas". That is: "Don't talk on the fucking phone."
American companies are subject to US law, full stop. Global technology companies have to balance interests to operate globally. China requires a local partner to operate services in the PRC, thus Apple and Microsoft (and others) operate with a business partner in that market.
From a business perspective, there's little or no incentive for Apple to take measures to collect information on you systematically - they do not monetize it and won't devote resources to its collection. However, not being responsive to government requests, demands, or order for information will result in punitive action. So they comply.
No company cares about you. They don't love or hate you. There's no moral purity - the competitive platform is owned by a company that owns the advertising market and has a long history of extracting every sinew of data to create profiles that allow for maximally efficient ad delivery. Engaging in whataboutism isn't productive.
Oh come on, kids are watching movies like Goodfellas and Casino. Me mentioning someone losing an air is hardly going to give anyone sleepless nights.
“I see you just watched Goodfellas. Here are six more links to the movie called Goodfellas.”
The author of this piece (Nicholas Pileggi) later wrote the books that became the Martin Scorsese films Goodfellas and Casino (and wrote the screenplays for these as well). More than anything, he seems keen on capturing exactly how these guys talk (or at least presenting a memorable version of it).
Yes: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-183291/
> Romney and Bain avoided the hostile approach, preferring to secure the cooperation of their takeover targets by buying off a company’s management with lucrative bonuses. Once management is on board, the rest is just math. So if the target company is worth $500 million, Bain might put down $20 million of its own cash, then borrow $350 million from an investment bank to take over a controlling stake.
> But here’s the catch. When Bain borrows all of that money from the bank, it’s the target company that ends up on the hook for all of the debt.
> This business model wasn’t really “helping,” of course – and it wasn’t new. Fans of mob movies will recognize what’s known as the “bust-out,” in which a gangster takes over a restaurant or sporting goods store and then monetizes his investment by running up giant debts on the company’s credit line. (Think Paulie buying all those cases of Cutty Sark in Goodfellas.) When the note comes due, the mobster simply torches the restaurant and collects the insurance money. Reduced to their most basic level, the leveraged buyouts engineered by Romney followed exactly the same business model. “It’s the bust-out,” one Wall Street trader says with a laugh. “That’s all it is.”
This was super cool to click around on the various techniques and see the examples.
(Questions/Thoughts)
- I was looking to see if there was a Steadicam group, wondering if I would see a gif of Henry and Karen walking into the Copa, that's got to be one of the most famous shots in film in the last 40 years (not a critique, totally possible it's there under a different name I'm not aware of as a layperson, I didn't peruse every group.) [Edit note added]
- "Fourth Wall" should include a gif of "The Big Short", breaking the fourth wall was a great way to get the minutiae of the financial subject out of the way and return to the characters.
- Bonus upvote for finding a shot from "Halt and Catch Fire"! (dolly zoom)
Edit: I knew I was forgetting the proper term for my question about Goodfellas, it's a tracking shot. I didn't see the movie in there though, I think it should be added :)
Even most of his mobster movies aren't really about being depressed or Italian.
Casino's main character is Jewish. Gangs of New York is about Irish Catholics and American Protestants. The Departed is about Irishes. The Wolf of Wall Street may be about depression (haven't seen it), but is not about violence nor about Italians. The Irishman certainly has a lot of depression, and certainly violence and Italians, but even then.....it's called the "Irishman".
Goodfellas is probably the one prime example that is certainly about violence and Italians, and I'm not sure that's that depressed.
Wolf of Wall Street is Scorsese, aka 'Casino'.
One of the few remaining greats.
I agree Andor has better writing.
I could be crazy, but I feel that there is a 'sanitzation' happening, and it could be a multi-faceted thing.
Of course there is 'violence' but it's generally very clean and surreal, even when they are trying really hard to make it dirty, it just feels fake.
It might even just be bland writing by people with limited life experience?
But I feel that we are all 'careful about what we say' in a way we were not before.
On Smartless and Conan all the actors just tell each other how much they 'love one aother', it's purid, a bit revolting. ('aka' I hope you consider me for you next project and don't think I'm one of the 'bad people').
Where are the deviants? Wierdos? Trolls? Odd looking people?
Just Google 'Character Actor' - and you get a long list of old guys!
Scorsese packs his films with tons of very regular looking people, and the production design embellishes but it feels very real, just part of why I think his villains are more 'scary'.
The Joe Pesci "You Think I'm Funny?" from Goodfellas is one of the most unsettling bits in cinema - and consider how simple the scene is and even the relative power dynaic of the characters. He's not the head of the mob, or even a mass murderer like 'Dahmer'.
And probaably 'globalism' aka 'global audiences' is a primary factor among others.
Anyhow - Kermit himself is a classic case.
Have a look at this classic Kermit and Cookie Monster, the later throws a wrench into Kermits thing and he gets pissed. For some reason that level of emotional reality just does not exist on Barney or Paw Patrol.
Watching Paw Patrol feels dystopian, I watch my newphews watching that and it feels more like a 'visual opioid' than anything else.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=kermit+being+violent&client=firefox-b-d&biw=1077&bih=580&tbm=vid&sxsrf=AJOqlzWNcW5UfqiwqhUeMIitHv2lzA8ZtQ%3A1675404150796&ei=dqPcY-eXMLjl5NoPvZqqiAo&ved=0ahUKEwjnqo3q1vj8AhW4MlkFHT2NCqEQ4dUDCAw&uact=5&oq=kermit+being+violent&gs_lcp=Cg1nd3Mtd2l6LXZpZGVvEAMyBQghEKABOgcIIxCwAhAnOgUIABCRAjoFCAAQgAQ6CggAEIAEEBQQhwI6BwghEKABEAo6CAghEBYQHhAdUOACWNhNYPxQaAlwAHgAgAF4iAGHEJIBBDE5LjSYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz-video#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:9e0eab1a,vid:y-Z1BFLteSw
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
> Interesting! Can you share an example or two of such an observation?
It's really nothing as elaborately intelligent as it may sound.
Just that the experience of a movie or series can be good/bad for entirely different reasons for me.
A really serious scene like Joe Pesci getting upset in Goodfellas [1] makes me smile because of how the tension of the scene keeps building, despite being a very serious scene (and not being funny at all although actors in the scene are laughing).
Watching Anthony Hopkins in the Restaurant scene of Westworld [2] deliver so much more than just the content of his dialogue is just stunning for me to watch, while for others it might just be a scene like many others.
Or even more basic, I already have to laugh just watching Gavin Belson in the series Silicon Valley, just because the character is crafted to be such an awful tone-deaf person...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL9rSwrsMHw
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dagzaFjHU4
TBH I find Big Lebowski bit overrated compared to the other greats. It's a nice movie, no doubt, but not in the same league as Strangelove or Goodfellas or Godfather.
"Truth" and "understanding" are both things that have changed throughout human history, they are not fixed. Art can be something that changes the way you understand the world, which would change your idea of what the truth is about reality.
I just rewatched Goodfellas the other day. No doubt that film brought a deeper understanding for many many people about mafia philosophy, history and events, and inspired more research (I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole after watching it, myself). Dali's melting clocks might suggest a new way to conceive of time. I only dabble a little in science fiction, but my impression is that it has historically inspired plenty of scientific and engineering endeavors, including AI generated art (and I'm sure there are plenty of dystopians out there that may show how it could go wrong). Reading literature from everything between the ancients and contemporaries, I'm constantly finding things that parallel my current interpersonal challenges and give me new insights.
What is "truth" to you?
You can be a leading character actor. Like Ray in Goodfellas, or Arnold Schwartzanyeaggear in all his movies.
RIP Ray Liotta. Enshrined in movie greatness for Goodfellas, but delivered memorable moving performances in Blow, Field of Dreams, No Escape, and so many others. Piercing eyes. Deep voice. Grateful for the opportunity to have watched his work.
Something like "The Godfather", "Goodfellas" etc. but taking place in Russia during the 1990s.
Actually thousands of movies can be made because you could capture the mob at each and every level ranging from a rotten gym serving as the hub for drug trade up to the Kremlin itself.
I don't know about in sync but I think there might have been more common ground in the past. Movies like The Godfather, Jaws, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction or Shawshank Redemption sometimes feature highly on both critics and the public's favourite movie lists. I doubt many serious film critics are going to be putting any of the Marvel movies in their top 10 of all time yet there are large numbers of people out there who would.
Having seen both, Ordinary People is definitely the better movie.
Goodfellas vs Dances With Wolves: A tie. Sorry, there really are people who really liked Dances With Wolves. I myself saw it again after over 20 years recently, and it's still great in my older age. Most of the criticism I've seen of it is flawed. From an artistic standpoint, it beats Goodfellas hands down - but Goodfellas is much more entertaining.
If you read the book, you will see that Coppola really didn't have to do a lot of adapting for the movie. It's pretty much all there.
My problem with The Godfather is that it makes Italian gangsters look like some chess-playing intellectuals, when in reality they were the crazy low-lifes that you see in Goodfellas.
That will be a fascinating experience: we've had decades of film and TV made either me-too or as a riposte to the films - and The Sopranos was the latter - so it will probably land very differently for you to people who saw it before Casino, Goodfellas, Sopranos, etc.
As another somewhat old fart, it feels like we don’t see any novel breakout titles take top spot at the box office anymore - titles that come out of nowhere; in addition to the movies you mentioned, Forest Gump, The Godfather, Goodfellas, … etc. It’s all superhero stuff. That’s all people are willing to talk about. It practically dominated the conversation.
I don't think I've ever sat down and watched The Shawshank Redeption or Goodfellas. Like, made plans to watch either of those.
But I've seen both movies probably a dozen times at this point.
It's always been a matter of me stumbling upon it while channel surfing (1990-2005) or "guide scrolling" (2005-2018), landing there to kill a few minutes, and watching through to the end. A couple of times I've gotten lucky and caught the movie at the start, so I can actually say I've seen these movies. But I've seen way more of the middle and end parts than the beginning parts.
My favorite story is about the actor (who else, to be honest?) Samuel L. Jackson, born in 1948, who was in his mid 40s when Pulp Fiction (1994) and Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) were released.
Some might argue that he had notable roles before that, but I think most people will argue that his career really kicked off after those two movies in particular.
EDIT: According to Wikipedia, "he rose to fame with films such as Coming to America (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Patriot Games (1992), Juice (1992), Menace II Society (1993), True Romance (1993), Jurassic Park (1993), and Fresh (1994)", which means that he was exactly-ish 40 years old when Coming to America (1988) was released.
Anyone ever see a film called Goodfellas? I grew up and live in Ozone Park and around there the mafia was part of your life in a way. The notorious Bergen Hunt and Fish club was right next to my mothers bank on 101 ave. She'd go to the drive through after picking us up after school and many times you could catch John Gotti walking and chatting with an associate closely followed by two large goons. He'd throw a big 4th of July block party right there on 101 in front of Bergen and my parents took us there a few times. hot dogs, hamburgers, rides and fireworks. Their presence also kept away the "competition" giving people the notion that they protected the neighbourhood. The fact was everyone was so scared of them that no one would dare mess around on their turf.
You didn't mention them. I remember eating with my parents at my favourite Italian restaurant as a kid, Cartuccios on 101ave just down the road from Bergen. Well I was being the usual rambunctious child and due to all the people falling off buildings in Manhattan the name John Gotti was in the news a lot. So I must have heard it and for some reason blurted out "John Gotti!". The friggin restaurant goes silent record scratch style. My mother grabbed me and pulls me towards her and firmly whispers in my ear "Don't ever say that name out loud." I was actually given a talking to after we left on how he was a bad man who hurt people and lives near us.
There were always incidents and whispers of mob activity. The woman who owned the pharmacy two blocks from us was found shot in the head in the trunk of a burnt out car. She owed money. My uncles friend, an amateur boxer, drifter, gambler and alcoholic was found bludgeoned, wrapped up in a rug in a dumpster. Supposedly he stole or owed a lot of money and maybe worked for them. The first blockbuster in the area wound up burning down mysteriously while under construction. Twice. And a whole load of other crap I forget.
Not long ago I used to go to the local dive where just down the block above the glass shop was a "club". Now the gentlemen at said club would sometimes stop by and grab a drink. You knew who they were. Older, Italian, wearing nice designer clothes and shades. They'd come in, walk to the end of the bar and people would know to move. They're long gone now. But that place was and still is full of old neighbourhood goons and whatnot. One night I stopped in after work on a Tuesday and there's the bartender and another well dressed gentleman having a private conversation about Ronnie one arm. I felt unwelcome, finished my beer and left. Last year I was hanging out in the yard and and some old crew comes in, real goomba goons. This annoying jackass decides to drunkenly joke around with one of said goons. I knew shit was going down so I go back in and within seconds there were screams and the jackass comes running for his life through the bar covered in blood with two big goons after him. A guy picks up the phone to call the cops and the two other goons grab and start beating him up. I got the fuck outta there.
And just this past weekend I sat in my yard with two friends one of which invited a real neighbourhood character over, think Kramer from Seinfeld but a total degenerate and pill/coke head. Anyway he knows all of the other degenerates and told me that the nice man who lived next door to us was deep in the mob and supposedly a killer. His son was a cop. We just knew him as a nice guy who owned an auto wrecking, glass and radiator shop. He then tells me my other neighbour was also involved with a crew who went away for 15+ years and was handed their auto business. He wound up marrying my cousin. But that guy, you knew he was up to no good. And just a few years back Gotti's grandson was arrested for selling pills out of a tattoo shop just down the street. They're still around but just remnants.
And through the old family business I've had plenty of dealings with them. Once my brother helped me do a delivery in Brooklyn to an obvious gambling parlor. We drop off the equipment and had to pick up a cash payment of $3000. All hundreds. So my mind goes blank and I start counting the money like an asshole in front of this guy standing there with with two goons (I should have known better). For some reason I guess one bill looked funny so I paused to look at it and then the dude blurts out "What, my fuckin money isnt good enough for you" me: "sorry, no I'm just making sure..." he cuts me off: "Do yourself a favor, take the money and get the fuck out" while the two goons glared at us. We did just that.
And of course, going back to Goodfellas, over the years there have been a few homes dug up around the neighbourhood by the FBI looking for Burk's Lufthansa money. And a bunch of bodies found buried in "The Hole". I still pass by Roberts Lounge on my way to my favourite Halal cart. It's a Jamaican Restaurant now and I wonder if they know there were upward of a dozen bodies buried in and around that building at one point.
I wish I could gather up more stories and write a better post but work.
Oh I would definitely love to have any recommendations you'll give me, I feel like I've seen so many movies that it's hard to find good ones now.
In the emotional vein of the movies discussed above:
Nightcrawler is very very good and very unusual. Prisoners is very good though more ordinary in its plot and characters and I found that I forgot about it after a while and didn't realize I'd seen it until I was rewatching it... It's not especially tense but it's well written. Drive is an incredible noir thriller. Goodfellas is another one that has unforgettable moments that will force you to just clench your fists, even if in the end the story left me feeling a bit empty. I should probably throw out American History X too, which is a different sort of movie but still has that feeling of "oh my God did that just happen?"
The equation is a bit similar to the one played out in the movie "Goodfellas".
You have two mobsters, the good mobster and the bad mobster, and a business. The bad mobster actively harasses the business in multiple ways, prompting the business to seek protection from the good mobster in exchange for buying into the business.
Of course, both the good mobster and the bad mobster are in the same mob, and benefit from the revenue stream from the newly acquired stake in business.
You may be interested in the book “Wiseguy”, a very interesting, informative, and often hilarious book about Henry Hill, a member of the mafia in New York.
https://www.amazon.com/Wiseguy-Nicholas-Pileggi/dp/1439184216
It explains in great detail how he got into the mob and how the mob works. I would assume many organized crime groups follow similar paths. Essentially young kids with problems with authority meet hoodlums who can vouch for them, they get into the lifestyle, and start learning how to hustle. No one rats because doing so means death.
This book is also what the superb movie Goodfellas is based on, which is a fairly close portrayal of the book.
At the point where the Bitcoin was converted into bank account funds.
There's a reason why money laundering is a criminal specialty.
He needed to stop stealing and fencing the goods before getting caught, wait a few months or years without doing anything shady at all, then start dripping the ill-gotten gains into his account alongside an entirely legitimate cashflow, a little bit at a time.
Buying a mansion and a roadster out of the blue is an "stupid criminals get caught; all criminals are stupid" type of move.
Even if all you know of crime comes from the movie theater and television set, you'd know that after the airport job in Goodfellas, some of the guys got whacked for violating the "don't buy anything!" edict. In Breaking Bad, the car wash and the Pollos Hermanos chicken restaurants were necessary for laundering the methamphetamine revenue.
I think the mention of Bitcoin mixers was just chaff. The guy was caught because his bank tattled on him, and the IRS didn't buy his flimsy sourcing story. If he had just kept the proceeds as some variety of cryptocurrency, he might not have gotten away with it entirely, but the investigation would probably still be ongoing--the questions remaining to be answered being, of course, "how much did he steal, exactly?" and "how do we seize and forfeit those funds?" Someone might know that he was stealing something, but they wouldn't necessarily know how much.
> Godfather - Goodfellas - Casino, those are the three must see imo
Provided you are into graphic violence and fat Italian dudes :)
Godfather - Goodfellas - Casino, those are the three must see imo. That and every episode of the Sopranos, but it’ll take you at least a week to binge watch those.
Totally agree. I came across a few of these over the years. Entrepreneurs that have done 5-10 companies in the past and none succeeded. They always raise money and fill their coffers and their friends' too. They stiff good vendors. Because if you can get real work done for free, it gives them the optics of having created something but they still have more money to squander before it goes belly up. And when the company closes down, unless you can prove fraud there's no recourse.
In the movie Goodfellas they articulate it well - obtain the goods on credit, move it in front door and sell it at a discount out the back. It doesn't matter. It's all profit! Then they even light it on fire and collect insurance money.
I just wrote this, in reply to an essay about The Irishman https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/18/links-lessons-to-unlearn-carbon-capture-and-storage-status-and-signaling-and-more :
“The lonesome Irishman.” On the movie The Irishman; the essay almost makes me want to watch it, but not quite enough, because I feel like I’ve seen enough mob movies. After The Sopranos, Goodfellas, The Godfather, and probably some more, plus reading Diego Gambetta’s Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate, I think that universe is pretty played out. Killing people is also bad. Many of the things that thrive in the underworld should be legalized, like gambling has been and marijuana is being. If gambling, prostitution, and most non-opioid drugs are legal, there’s not much left for the mob to do, and it will be starved of revenue, because most activities are best done using conventional means and corporate or legal structures.
We've seen gambling move from being illegal to being conducted by the state (lottos) or sanctioned and taxed by it. Marijuana is moving in the same direction. Certain other things, we should probably be seeing move that way too.
After reading the comments here, I've started to wonder...
Does elitist mean "Doesn't like the same things I do?"
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While I wouldn't phrase it the way Scorcese did, I sort of share his opinion. Super hero movies bore me to death in most cases. As do most things created and A/B tested by a committee, i.e. most Disney movies. Despite having all the time in the world, I do not go to the movies any more. There's very little I want to see...
When will there be new movies in the same vein as Pulp Fiction, Tombstone, Donnie Brasco, True Romance, The Godfather, Goodfellas or hell, even the Rocky movies.
/Old man yells at clouds
I agree with your overall point, but your analogy doesn’t work that well for me. The Marvel movies (particularly the biggest of them) are insanely intricate and detailed and could only be created by both a huge team of talented performers, craftspeople, and technical experts, and a (probably smaller) executive team executing on a vision.
I still agree that there’s a difference in genre between, say, Avengers: Infinity War and Goodfellas, and I don’t know how to articulate precisely the difference, but I’m certain that the difference is not that the latter requires more talent or contains more details that reward multiple viewings.
Superhero movies are mostly throwaway pop culture. No one is going to mention Iron Man 2 and Spiderman Reboot 4 in the same sentence as Goodfellas or Cape Fear in 30 years, to name a couple excellent Scorsese films. Honestly they won't even be mentioned at all, in any context.
That being said, I saw my first superhero movie in several years recently when I saw The Joker. That was a truly excellent film! I believe it was excellent because it was not throwaway pop culture but a disturbing character study based on dark source material that happened to be in the comic book universe. If more superhero movies were like that I would pay to see them.
Because of the Joe Pesci observation?
Everyone that can scrambles to take their "commission" from every project they're able to block.
I call it the Joe Pesci observation because of a quote from, I think, the movie Goodfellas.
"Your business burned down and you have no income?" "Fuck you, pay me!"
I don't see the public interest angle here. This is merely entertainment. If even entertainment is something the government should be butting into because of unspecified "public interest" considerations, then what is outside the government's role?
Goodfellas, Dances with Wolves, Edward Scissorhands, Total Recall, Ghost, the Hunt for Red October, Back to the Future III, Pretty Woman, and the Godfather Part III were all released in 1990, 29 years ago. These were all created by a group of individuals, and studios spent millions of dollars paying those people to make those movies. The government had nothing to do with creating any of those movies. Why should the government be able to take those movies and release them for free?
The use of licensed music is a critical component in many movies. Just consider Donnie Darko or Goodfellas.
This was also a bit confusing to me. "Goodfellas"? I knew that was a film (I've heard the name before), but I haven't seen it, and I couldn't tell you who's in it or what it's about. Does that count as "uniquely identifying?"
And yet, Goodfellas was directed by Scorsese. What was he thinking with TWOWS?
This also applies to almost every single gangster movie. "Scarface" being really the case study.
I believe it is mostly due to the last scene of these movies where the hero dies in some crazy action scene. Lot of adrenaline, and it looks so "cool" on screen that you can't help thinking "wow this guy was awesome!".
One movie that dealt with that really well was "Goodfellas". During the 2nd part of the movie, the downfall is filmed in a very slow, almost boring manner. And the end is boring as f*ck, specifically to avoid this pitfall of glorifying the "hero".
Well, put it this way... when an outcome is the product of a collective of individuals, some members of the group may be more competant than others, and different tasks might be carried out with varying degrees of success. Taking it a step further, a group comprised of multiple teams might have one very disciplined team for highly demanding critical tasks, surgical strikes, site reliability, and several weak teams for grunt work, digging ditches, scraping logs, whatever.
In such scenarios, you might see gaps open up in areas viewed as optional drudgery, or dull thankless conveniences.
Consider the Lufthansa heist depicted in the movie Goodfellas. It involved some highly motivated gangsters, who enlisted some sloppy flunkies for assistance. Guys like the getaway driver screwed up and got whacked for failing to dump the getaway car without incident, inviting paranoia that they might arouse suspicion. Then, as paranoia magnified over time, the displined core erased every untrustworthy witness.
The principal stakeholders in an operation will often possess power and skill, but their accomplices might not.
I should have clarified: there's no sampling bias. These are incredibly popular movies. Here are some movies not on Netflix streaming that I've wanted to watch this year: Gladiator. Star Wars IV. Shawshank Redemption. The Wizard of Oz. When Harry Met Sally. The Princess Bride. All Star Trek movies. Goodfellas. Lord of the Rings. Gone with the Wind. All Godfather movies. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Airplane. American Graffiti. The Usual Suspects. All Jim Carrey movies except a bad one (the Grinch) and one I've never heard of (the Number 23). Toy Story. There's Something About Mary. All Austin Powers movies.
The last time I tried searching for a good movie to watch on Netflix streaming, I gave up after 10 minutes. I'd think of one movie after another after another. Nothing was there. All it could suggest was "related titles," as if that's what I would want.
What movie did you get that from? It sounds really cool. Like a cross between Goodfellas and the Bourne Identity.
My ranking is the reverse; I prefer this film to the Godfathers, but only by a hair. Goodfellas is third. This is definitely Leone's best, though, followed closely by Once Upon a Time in the West.
In movies this technique is known as a contrazoom or dolly zoom, most famously used in Jaws [1], but most effectively used in Goodfellas [2] where it's done incredibly slowly to give a terrible feeling of claustrophobia. One of my favourite shots of all time.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDWcQnaMMlM [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udgF6hNoCRE
Wise Guy - Nicholas Pileggi This is the chronicle of the life of Henry Hill, a half-Irish half-Sicilian kid from Brooklyn, New York who rose through the ranks of the Mafia back in it's heydays. The most entertaining book concerning organized crime that I've ever read, by far (these guys really had it all. they were both feared and respected. they could quite literally do whatever they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it and they need not have any fear of reprisal from anything or anybody). Also, this is the book that gave birth to the Martin Scorsese movie GoodFellas -- but as is so often the case, the book is much better than the movie. Given that the movie is fantastic, that is really saying something IMHO.
Plus, insurance fraud was at an all time high, detecting accelerants was very difficult, people smoked in bed, people smoked everywhere. As a kid, all I remember is adults lighting cigarettes. My job was stomping out the butts.
Source:watching Goodfellas, and that movie with Bull--forget the name--Backdraft.
> What ?
The movie they ended up watching was Goodfellas, and roflchoppa's ah.. friend.. saw Ray Liotta's eyes and concluded that he had no soul.
At least that's my guess.
This is an excerpt from my 'friends' diary..
"I was scared too my first time, a bit reluctant to eat them. However I was visiting my friend on vacation, and his girlfriend offered to babysit us. She even took us to the beach and to get ice-cream (note dont eat, i threw up, part of the purge) I ended up consuming around a gram of caps and stems, which is considered to be a small dose. It took around 45-1hr to start to feel the effects of them, while the full trip lasted around 4-6 hours. The feelings toward the peak of the trip, was very familiar, but everything was new. Almost no visual distortion, sometimes waves of the feeling when you stand up too fast, but not in a nauseating way. C wanted to go to the beach, so she drove us to the gas station, where i was able to find a peach soda. Then we went to this place that was above town that had this overlook. Everything was dark, and we were standing on the edge of the cliff side on this outpost like structure. I recall the sets of waves that were constantly coming in. As well as the deep blue color of the ocean. With the clouds rolling in, we headed back to the apartment. Some people came over, but i dont recall who it was, or why they were there. We were listening to old records, debating what movie to watch. There were more events that happened, looking back on it, it was too much to recall. Over all a good experience, I slept very little that night, and woke up and started cleaning. "
Also Ray Liotta in Goodfellas has no soul, you can see it in his eyes.
Ciao.
Speaking of airport heists, the infamous Lufthansa heist was featured in three different feature films, including Goodfellas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_heist
This is just like the movie Goodfellas, except Tom Hayes (a.k.a. "Henry Hill") was not smart enough to, in a timely manner, seek out the prosecution and rattle everybody out in exchange for entering the Witness Protection Program or some form of clemency.
From what I have read in different cases involving a criminal group or simply a group of teenagers vandalizing a place, it does help to be the first one to talk to the police. Once the police / prosecution has enough information to make a case, they don't need anybody else.
(For those who have not seen the movie, it's a good movie to watch.)
The phrase originated from the movie Goodfellas (1990), and then was brought back into the memesphere when Mike Monteiro (co-founder of Mule Design Studio) used that phrase in a fun yet forceful presentation[1].
[1] http://vimeo.com/22053820
Ok, this is the most idiotic Internet comment I've ever responded to, but here goes. Rappers are more akin to poets than musicians, the way you are using the word musician. The musicians in rap are called producers - they make the backing tracks. The appeal includes: complex technical rhyming, nuanced delivery ('flow'), vignette painting, storytelling, wordplay including numerous puns, double-entendre, and punchlines, some backing tracks are actually epic, or especially funky, i.e. they have merit as music. You apparently disapprove of the subject matter. Would you level the same criticism at movies like Scarface, Goodfellas, or The Godfather for the same reasons?
I suspect Disney may be atypical in that regard. People are constantly having kids for the first time, and there is then a steady stream of people buying movies for their kids that they know kids like. Most other genres probably have not enjoyed much of that.
Most of the value in old movies, going forward, is probably going to be in padding streaming libraries for Netflix/etc to license. Will Goodfellas itself worth much currently and in the future? Probably not; anybody who wants that on DVD probably already has it on DVD. A streaming library that includes movies of the caliber of Goodfellas though? That is probably worth a hefty chunk of cash.
This actually supports my theory that the 90s were the greatest decade in popular culture history. It jibes so well with the (arguable) Golden Age of Rap/Hip-Hop music as well as the Seattle Grunge and Hard Rock renaissance.
Rap in the 90s had Biggie, Tupac, Wu-Tang, NWA, Nas, Outkast, De La Soul, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and a Tribe Called Quest.
Rock in the 90s had Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Radiohead, the Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, Weezer, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, and Rage Against the Machine.
It also had some of the greatest movies of all time in the 90s as well: Goodfellas, Terminator 2, Trainspotting, Fight Club, the Matrix, Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, the Big Lebowski, Boogie Nights, Schindler's List, Rushmore, and Pulp Fiction.
Now, I may be looking through with rose-tinted glasses (and having my adolescence back then, how could I not?), but let's just make it official, and not only with just cartoons. It's almost empirical that the 90s were the greatest decade of American Popular Culture.
Think twitter would have gone as viral if it was called "smsdispatch.com" or "sms.com".
It wouldn't have.
Names fit a particular purpose. What is good for one purpose (selling to the corporate market for example) then "sms.com" might be worth the money. Another situation, maybe not.
Naming and branding is important because based on psychological principles and things that have been around forever it is important. (Sorry that I don't have time to point to the underpinnings of the research and basis for this statement.)
Ev's argument is also like saying the name of a movie is less important. You can always find isolated cases where the name wasn't that important like "the social network" and counter it with movie names like "goodfellas" "godfather" "rocky" the list is endless.
As John Gotti Jr. said to the interviewer on 60 minutes "la cosa nostra" like the way that rolls off your tongue? The fact is people do like cool names.
is it me or is 30 a robbery? I feel like Im watching goodfellas and any italian mafia movie where the mob asks for unfair piece of the business so they can protect you from unwanted guests...
People wouldn't associate pirates with Johnny Depp if they hadn't made a movie showing how cool pirates are, starring Johnny Depp. Hollywood likes to make movies glamorizing criminals -- public enemies, goodfellas, princes of thieves: crime is cool, except when it's happening to us.
Perhaps we should call it "stealing" instead? No problem, as long as people don't associate it with Russell Crowe in Robin Hood (coming to a theater near you; check your local listings).