“It was really improvisation”: This cult scene from Goodfellas owes a lot to Martin Scorsese’s mother

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Almost everyone knows Joe Pesci’s legendary “You Think I’m Funny?” scene in Scorsese’s “Goodfellas.” But there’s another one, just as brilliant and improvised. And much less cited!

Between the elegance of the staging, the soundtrack with all the trimmings, as always with Scorsese; its (partially) improvised dialogues offering one of the craziest scenes in the history of cinema; the phenomenal performance of Joe Pesci, rightly rewarded with the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor; a cast just as in tune, including a Ray Liotta who has probably never been as good as under the direction of Martin Scorsese… There is no shortage of reasons to raise Goodfellas to the rank of cult film.

If the scene of the “Do you think I’m funny?” Pesci’s sequence has more than largely passed into posterity, there is also another cult sequence, which was partially improvised, but much less cited.

Martin Scorsese’s mother, Catherine, has regularly appeared in her son’s works. In The Goodfellasshe played Tommy’s adorable mother, always ready to prepare a good plate of pasta for her son and his friends, even at 2 a.m. A delicious scene with fierce black humor, seeing our favorite freedmen feasting just after taking care of Billy Batts thrown in the trunk of the car.

Here’s the scene again, for fun…

In 2021, the filmmaker told that this scene with his mother was not scripted, except for one line of dialogue. “All we told her to do was just welcome her son home; she hasn’t seen him in a while. The key, ultimately, is the warmth between them all and especially my mother who plays his mother; he may be a psychopathic killer, but he’s still her son.

When people talk about improv, it was really improv. We had some ideas on set… but basically, once we started shooting, she had an idea and started talking. Joe says, Bob [De Niro] did what he had to do, Ray [Liotta] did the same thing; I had two cameras, we’re in a little house in Queens, and I think the only line written was about the painting she had done.”

A little extra tasty anecdote to conclude this wonderful scene: the painting in question was made by Susie Pileggi, the mother of Nicholas Pileggi, who is none other than the screenwriter of the film. La famiglia is sacred!

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