Man - that movie ...
Henry Hill Dead: 'Goodfellas' Mobster Dies At 69
The Huffington Post | By Christopher Rosen Posted: 06/13/2012 8:35 am Updated: 06/13/2012 3:01 pm
Henry Hill Dead
Henry Hill, the low-level mobster turned FBI informant who was the basis of Martin Scorsese's seminal 1990 film "Goodfellas," died in a Los Angeles hospital on Tuesday at age 69, reports TMZ.
Henry Hill with "Goodfellas" star Ray Liotta
“He had a heart attack around the 27th of May, and he went into the hospital and it was really touch-and-go for a long time,” Lisa Caserta, Hill's long-time girlfriend, told the New York Post. As she said to TMZ, Hill's "heart gave out."
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943, Hill's early life and rise up the mafia food chain was recalled with great detail in Nicholas Pileggi's 1986 book Wiseguy, an at-times first person account told in Hill's words. He became involved with the mob at age 12 and took his first arrest at age 16. In 1978, at 35, he participated in the Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport, the then-most expensive robbery in U.S. history. It earned Hill and his conspirators over $5 million.
After the Luftansa heist and a subsequent drug arrest, Hill became an FBI informant and testified against his former colleagues. He was placed in the Witness Protection Program with his wife, Karen.
"I get to live the rest of my life like a shnook," Hill famously said at the end of Wiseguy.
Pileggi and Scorsese adapted Wiseguy for the screen, and the result was "Goodfellas," one of the most quoted and lauded films of the last 25 years. Ray Liotta played Hill in the film, while Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci (who won an Oscar for his work) and Paul Sorvino co-starred as mobsters.
In the years after the events depicted in "Goodfellas," Hill would battle drug, alcohol and legal problems. He was arrested in Missouri in 2009 for drunken disturbance.
“He tried so hard to redeem himself,” Caserta told the Post about Hill's many transgressions. “He felt bad about that.”
Hill claimed he never killed anyone, but according to Caserta, he did allow that Scorsese -- and Pileggi -- nailed the details of his mafia life.
“He always said it was 99.9 percent accurate.”
Henry Hill Dead: 'Goodfellas' Mobster Dies At 69
There was a user Henry Hill here and he was a real dick.
That Martin Scorsese's brilliant GoodFellas lost the 1990 Best Picture and Best Director Oscars to Dances with Wolves is one of the all time miscarriages of justice in the history of the Academy Awards
~ Chuck O'Leary
One thing about Dances with Wolves that I didn't appreciate when I was younger but REALLY pisses me off now is that Costner's character just HAD to fall in love with a white girl. It just happened to be a white girl in the Indian tribe and not one of the Indian girls. The Indians were just there to seem wise and "close to the Earth" and smoke the peace pipe--but the real three-dimensional human characters had to be white. Fucking left-wing racist shit.
Other than that, a good movie.
Goodfellas was amazing, though, although I didn't see it until I was an adult. I'm glad I did--I couldn't've appreciated the dramatic tension and complex character development as a child.
Early versions of the script had him falling in love with a native girl, but focus group testing of the idea found that many people thought it was left-wing racist shit to suggest that any native woman could fall for a pasty-white neurotic.
Go figure, eh.
In the Tom Cruise/Japanese version of the same film, Dances with Ninja, they went with the cross-cultural love interest. Guffaws could be heard from Okinawa to Hokkaido when the film screened in Japan.
That's pretty interesting--a shame they use focus groups in movie making.
I think it has to do with the unpredictability of people calling things in films "left-wing racist shit". For many years in Hollywood, any suggestion of inter-racial romance or sex was taboo, mainly because right-wingers and other social conservatives would not stand for it. Left-wingers and liberals pushed to overcome the taboo and--hey presto!-- next thing you know people are calling "left-wing racist shit" what for years and years was simple right-wing racist shit.
In this way, we can see focus groups as a treatment for cultural/political dyslexia.
Hopefully he can sneak some garlic, sausages and wine into hell.
I'm glad Goodfellas didn't win for Best Picture. Too much reality for its own good.Originally Posted by cluezo
I think it has to do with the unpredictability of people calling things in films "left-wing racist shit". For many years in Hollywood, any suggestion of inter-racial romance or sex was taboo, mainly because right-wingers and other social conservatives would not stand for it. Left-wingers and liberals pushed to overcome the taboo and--hey presto!-- next thing you know people are calling "left-wing racist shit" what for years and years was simple right-wing racist shit.
In this way, we can see focus groups as a treatment for cultural/political dyslexia.
---Update---
Seems like all of Scorsese's best movies get beaten for Best Picture by films many consider to be inferior:
1976 - Taxi Driver was better than Rocky, but Network was better than both of them.
1980 - Raging Bull was a great movie, but Ordinary People is one of my all-time favorites
1990 - Good Fellas vs Dances With Wolves - Love them both
2002 - Gangs of New York was not among his best, but it was certainly better than Chicago
At least he finally won for "The Departed", and I thought it was indeed the best of the nominees that year.
"There's a beverage here man!"
Rated one of the best American movies ever!
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