BookWorld: How ‘Goodfellas’ dragged the mob’s gothic image back to earth

MadeMen: The Story of Goodfellas By Glenn Kenny Hanover Square. 400 $29.99 --In the late 1980s, Martin Scorsese was not yet Hollywood royalty. Coming off a string of commercial failures - the controversial “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988) and “The King of Comedy” (1983), among them - he was preparing to release “Goodfellas,” but feared the worst. “I want to be a player,” he told a journalist while promoting the movie. “To be a player in Hollywood, you have to take a lot of bruising.”

But, as Glenn Kenny recounts in his book “MadeMen: The Story of Goodfellas,” the pain would soon be behind him. pp.

“Goodfellas” would cement Scorsese’s legacy and would go on to redefine not just the gangster movie but gangster television, too. “The Sopranos” creator David Chase called the 1990 film his “Koran,” and he used more than 25 of its actors for his show. Chase’s series launched the era of prestige dramas by expanding upon the film’s premise of the anti-hero mobster living everyday life.

Scorsese was unsure about making another gangster film, having already directed “Mean Streets” (1973) and the gangsteradjacent “Raging Bull” (1980). However, he was smitten with “Wiseguy,” a 1985 bestselling nonfiction book by journalist Nicholas Pileggi. “Wiseguy” told the story of Henry Hill, a New York mobster who had access to some higher-ups but worked mostly as a street-level “money man.” Precisely becauseHill and his friends weren’t made - official members of a crime family - they were freelancers with more liberty to act recklessly than the subjects of other mob books.

Scorsese grew up in an Italian community in Manhattan where the mob was a powerful, respected force. “Wiseguy” captured that environment well. According to a Los Angeles Times story, Scorsese called Pileggi and told him: “I just read your book. I’ve been looking for it for years,” a revealing statement unfortunately absent from “Made Men.” While the book succeeds in situating “Goodfellas” in Scorsese’s oeuvre, it misses some of how and why the film is so influential.

Scorsese intended to make a gangster picture that was, in some ways, an antidote to the myths of “The Godfather.” That legendarymovie imbued themob with an undeserved nobility and grandiosity. Francis Ford Coppola’s film suggested that mobsters were devoted to their families above all. “Goodfellas” suggested that, in fact, money overrode family, loyalty and everything else. “All that stuff in the Mafia about honor, it’s a lot of nonsense, there’s no such thing,” Scorsese tells Kenny, in an interview relegated to a single chapter near the end of “MadeMen.”

Kennymanaged to track down Henry Hill’s brother Joe, who confirms that Henry was incurably addicted to drugs and alcohol and was vicious to his wife and family. With Ray Liotta in the lead role, Scorsese managed to makeHenry likable by portraying him as a handsome voice of reason around his barbaric friends, played memorably by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. That artistic license endeared Henry to audiences, even as they watched him murder and steal.