Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
Speaker 1: and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy zephynbast start changing
Speaker 1: with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2: Hello, Bechdel Cast listeners.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty five. How bad could it be? Let's find out?
Speaker 3: Happy New Year, everybody. We're here to say hello from
Speaker 3: the present and take you back to the somewhat recent past,
Speaker 3: because to start off the year, we are unlocking a
Speaker 3: Matreon episode for you for an episode that a lot
Speaker 3: of folks who are just on the main feed have
Speaker 3: been frothing for for some time.
Speaker 2: It's the Good Fella's Episode. We recorded this well, we
Speaker 2: did it for a theme on the Matreon that was
Speaker 2: called Mob March. Whether or not we did it in March,
Speaker 2: I don't remember, probably not.
Speaker 3: Honestly, very uncle, but that was a month where we
Speaker 3: covered I think two of the most hyper masculine requests
Speaker 3: we get. We did The Godfather and Goodfellas. So if
Speaker 3: you enjoyed this episode and you want to hear our
Speaker 3: thoughts on The Godfather, then you can head over to
Speaker 3: our matrearch at patreon dot com. Slash Bechtel Cast for
Speaker 3: five bucks a month you get two bonus episodes. It's
Speaker 3: the best way to support the show, killer would you agree?
Speaker 2: I would agree. But also another way to support the
Speaker 2: show is to come to the live shows slash live
Speaker 2: streams that we have coming up. Maybe you've heard of them,
Speaker 2: maybe you haven't, but now they have. We are doing
Speaker 2: shows in La San Francisco, and Portland later in January.
Speaker 2: Tickets are still available to all the shows. We are
Speaker 2: doing a special show in LA on January nineteenth. Jamie
Speaker 2: tell them about it.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Okay, So this is sort of a
Speaker 3: celebration of the show itself. We are having our favorite
Speaker 3: and your favorite guests from the show who live in
Speaker 3: the area or are coming through town to do stand
Speaker 3: up or presentations on their favorite movies, and then we
Speaker 3: will also be doing bits we will also I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just a celebration of the show because we've never
Speaker 3: really gotten to do that in the almost ten years
Speaker 3: we've been making this show. So if you're in the
Speaker 3: LA area, we would really love for you to come
Speaker 3: out and celebrate. And if you don't live in the
Speaker 3: LA area, you can get live stream tickets on the
Speaker 3: nineteenth and watch it for a week after.
Speaker 2: That's so true. So that's the La show. We're very
Speaker 2: excited for it. We also are doing Sketch Fest in
Speaker 2: San Francisco and this is a part of our Shrek
Speaker 2: Tannic tour. And here's something that I decided, Okay, if
Speaker 2: this show sells out, huh, I will get naked so
Speaker 2: that you can draw me like one of your French girls, Jamie.
Speaker 3: And I feel like, you know, what is feminism if
Speaker 3: not meeting your friend where they're at. And so oh sure,
Speaker 3: I have no problem to take my clothes off. Come
Speaker 3: to San Francisco if you want to see us naked,
Speaker 3: and it'll be kind of like clear if we don't
Speaker 3: move tickets from here, how you feel? And that's body shaming,
Speaker 3: So you have to come to the show.
Speaker 2: Actually, it's it's insulting to us.
Speaker 3: It's if you don't buy, you don't It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: I see how it is. That's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So you're gonna wanna come to the show
Speaker 2: and you're gonna want to see us naked.
Speaker 3: You're gonna want to see our titties.
Speaker 2: Tell your friends grab those tickets, and we'll also be
Speaker 2: talking about Titanic, but the real, the real.
Speaker 3: If you're on the fence, there you go. And then
Speaker 3: of course we're gonna be in Portland, and you know
Speaker 3: TVD we could I will actually know that's a live
Speaker 3: stream show. We can't take out our titties. San Francisco
Speaker 3: really is the only place where we can safely take
Speaker 3: out our titties. Yes, sorry, and that's.
Speaker 2: Why you absolutely need to buy tickets and come to
Speaker 2: that show Portland. It is live stream, like you said,
Speaker 2: as well as the live show in Portland, and also
Speaker 2: part of the Shrek Tannic tour and we were doing Shrek,
Speaker 2: so completely different show than the Titanic one. And yes
Speaker 2: we have we talked about these movies before. Maybe I
Speaker 2: don't really remember. I don't think really we've ever done
Speaker 2: a Titanic episode before.
Speaker 3: But however, this is like sort of the amalgamation of
Speaker 3: like all of those episodes put into one unhinged little show.
Speaker 2: Not even it's all brand new stuff. Like if you
Speaker 2: see these shows, you're gonna be seeing lots of fresh stuff.
Speaker 3: And don't worry, we have seen Titanic twice in theaters
Speaker 3: in the last month, so we're absolutely like actually absurdly
Speaker 3: prepared for this.
Speaker 2: So ready, and you can grab tickets to all of
Speaker 2: these shows on our link tree link Tree slash spectel Cast. Again,
Speaker 2: there's live shows, there's live streams. You ain't got no
Speaker 2: excuse not to come.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, we would absolutely love to see you there.
Speaker 3: And in the meantime, we will be back with piping
Speaker 3: hot brand new episodes for you in the coming week.
Speaker 3: But as we prepare for this tour, we wanted to
Speaker 3: share one of our favorite Matreon episodes and again if
Speaker 3: you're if you enjoy this sort of more casual discussion,
Speaker 3: it's patreon dot com slash Bechtel Cast. Five bucks a
Speaker 3: month gets you access not just to episodes like this,
Speaker 3: where we have two new ones monthly, but also a
Speaker 3: back catalog of one hundred and fifty episodes. So that's
Speaker 3: the place to go. And Caitlin, I've always said, I
Speaker 3: think I think we're we're rather good fellas.
Speaker 2: We're good fellas absolutely is how I would describe us.
Speaker 2: And actually, the one last thing to do before we
Speaker 2: jump into the unlocked Matreon episode is to just give
Speaker 2: a quick content warning because the movie involves and we
Speaker 2: discuss on the episode abuse and violence toward women. So
Speaker 2: we just wanted to provide you with that content warning
Speaker 2: at the top. Otherwise, you're so true, Jamie. We are
Speaker 2: good fellas.
Speaker 3: We're great fellas. I mean, that's kind of the difference.
Speaker 3: If the movie is about us who have be called
Speaker 3: great fellas, these ones, oh they're just good. But let
Speaker 3: us know what you think. Enjoy this unluck Matrioch episode.
Speaker 3: Enjoy the decast.
Speaker 2: As far back as I can remember, I always wanted
Speaker 2: to be a podcaster.
Speaker 3: No whoo.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's my rayleiota impression, perfect spot on.
Speaker 3: No, perfect rest and paradise, mister Ray, sweet baby Ray himself.
Speaker 2: Wait did he die?
Speaker 3: He died this year?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, how did I not know that?
Speaker 3: I think that it was no disrespect to to Ray.
Speaker 3: But if I'm remembering correctly, it was like in a
Speaker 3: it was like one of those weeks where a lot
Speaker 3: of famous people died. But he died in May of
Speaker 3: this year, so I think that he may have gotten
Speaker 3: kind of farah fauceted if you if you will, bye,
Speaker 3: I forget who it would have been. But yeah, as
Speaker 3: far as I noticed, a sweet man who, yeah, I
Speaker 3: know is professionally Italian yeah, and you know, we uh,
Speaker 3: we celebrate that. Sure, let's look at his personal life.
Speaker 3: Let's see. I'm in his personal life section. Oh please, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's see. Let's see.
Speaker 2: Because anytime I've said like, oh, I really like this actor,
Speaker 2: I have gone on to regret it. I know, because
Speaker 2: everyone's like, but didn't you know that he was a
Speaker 2: fucking creep, no and predator? And I'm like, well, obviously, no,
Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: No. I think that it looks like looks like our guy.
Speaker 3: Ray got a DUI and O seven and he loved
Speaker 3: horseback riding.
Speaker 2: He loved horseback riding.
Speaker 3: As far as I know, he is a nice guy
Speaker 3: that that made a mistake, did his time or did
Speaker 3: his fee or whatever happens when that happens, and then
Speaker 3: he got back on the horse, got back on the
Speaker 3: horn figuratively. Oh rip, Ray, what a good different. Wait,
Speaker 3: here's something fun. Okay, Here's what Ray has to say
Speaker 3: about working in many genres. He said this in twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen while discussing his role alongside Jennifer Lopez as a
Speaker 3: corrupt cop targeted by the FBI in the NBC crime
Speaker 3: drama Shades of Blue. This is all a new information
Speaker 3: to me. But he was friends with Jennifer Lopez. Maybe okay,
Speaker 3: he says, oh, quote, you want to do as many
Speaker 3: different genres as you can, and that's what I've been doing.
Speaker 3: I've done movies with the Muppets. I did Sinatra, I
Speaker 3: did Good Guys and Bad Guys. I did a movie
Speaker 3: with an elephant.
Speaker 2: He did Good Fellas.
Speaker 3: He did Good Fellas. He did a movie with an elephant.
Speaker 2: Not like that.
Speaker 3: He does not get more specific. I decided that I
Speaker 3: was here to try different parts, to do different things.
Speaker 3: That's what it's really about. That's what a career should be.
Speaker 3: What movie had elephant? Oh? Operation Dumbo drop? Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay? Was he in a Muppet movie?
Speaker 3: He's in Muppets from Space? Oh my goodness, is he
Speaker 3: in another Muppet movie? I'm sorry, I'm I don't know
Speaker 3: looking through his wow, I mean, and what a career?
Speaker 3: Sorry did it? This is our feminist podcast. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: looks like he was in Muppets from Space. I like
Speaker 3: that he singled that out as seemingly a career high,
Speaker 3: because he's right.
Speaker 2: He's correct.
Speaker 3: Oh I forgot he was in b movie as himself.
Speaker 2: B b ray Liotta.
Speaker 3: Bra I can't think too hard of a B movie.
Speaker 3: My head, it's kind of shocking. We haven't done that.
Speaker 3: That's like our next irony pilled Matreon choice.
Speaker 2: Probably I think we Yeah, let's start a campaign to
Speaker 2: get B movie covered on the cast.
Speaker 3: How hard could it be? Well, tlcome to the Oh
Speaker 3: and he was in I think, honestly the Raleigh to work,
Speaker 3: I would have encountered. The most is watching boys play
Speaker 3: Grand Theft Auto in high school because he did. Does
Speaker 3: he did Grand Theft Auto? Yeah, he's in Grand Theft
Speaker 3: Auto Vice City, Okay, And I was looking through it
Speaker 3: and I was like, whoa, I hate that I remember
Speaker 3: this much. But I like just watched my cousins and friends,
Speaker 3: and you know, maybe I'm a bad feminist for this,
Speaker 3: but I actually genuinely don't mind watching other people play
Speaker 3: video games. I think it's fun. I don't like video like,
Speaker 3: I don't like playing video games, and I really don't
Speaker 3: like being watched while I'm playing video games.
Speaker 2: But I like watching others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm like on the side with my iPad playing
Speaker 3: you know, my my gaming which is sure Homescapes. And
Speaker 3: then if they're playing Grand Theft Auto, you know, it's
Speaker 3: kind of a nice little wait. Anyways, he played the
Speaker 3: part of Tommy Rossetti and GTA Vice City. I remember
Speaker 3: it that tracks. Do you want to come over and
Speaker 3: watch me play Pokemon Violet? Because yeah, you're welcome anytime.
Speaker 3: I genuinely like find it very soothing because it's like
Speaker 3: a like an active passive hang where it's like you
Speaker 3: can chat, but if the conversation lulls, it's like we're
Speaker 3: both busy. We're gamers, were gamers, but like, I can't,
Speaker 3: I can't commit to something more than a little puzzle.
Speaker 2: What if we start a Twitch channel, a stream if
Speaker 2: you will, in which I know out watch hear out
Speaker 2: my pitch, my twitch pitch, Jamie, it's you watching me
Speaker 2: play it to sound Pokemon games, but I don't know
Speaker 2: anything about Pokemon. So it's me just being like, who's
Speaker 2: this little guy? And then I catch him and I say, oh,
Speaker 2: it's so and so I'll add them to my poke decks.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's another thing that I like to do, and it's
Speaker 3: not anti feminist because I'm doing it so okay. Is
Speaker 3: while someone's playing a video, we're like, yeah, if you're
Speaker 3: playing Pokemon, and then you're like, who's this little guy?
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'll google it. That's I'm just kind of feminist.
Speaker 3: Your Pokemon wife acquiring knowledge is feminist. I just like
Speaker 3: you know what. I I just don't want to be watched,
Speaker 3: you know, I understand. I mean, I want to be watched, perceived, adored,
Speaker 3: worshiped at all times. But when the video games are on, No,
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2: It's a different story. I understand it's complicated.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the backdel Cast.
Speaker 2: We're talking about Goodfellas. It's part two of Mob March,
Speaker 2: and we are covering.
Speaker 3: The other Mob movie.
Speaker 2: The one other one, Goodfellas from nineteen ninety directed by
Speaker 2: Martin Scorsese. Oh, mister nice, he's such a little cutie pie.
Speaker 3: What Scorsese movies have we covered on this show? Is this?
Speaker 3: This can't be the first?
Speaker 2: Is this the first one?
Speaker 3: Oh? My goodness, I think this may be the first one.
Speaker 2: Wow, Wow, it's about damn time.
Speaker 3: Look. I think Martin Scorsese is the best. The more
Speaker 3: I learn about him as years past, the more I
Speaker 3: like him. I haven't. I am not a completionist, but
Speaker 3: I've seen many of his movies. I like almost everything
Speaker 3: I've seen. I feel like I guess that there's I
Speaker 3: was thinking about this when we were when I was
Speaker 3: like looking into the discourse around Goodfellas over the years,
Speaker 3: because I think, I mean, we both really like this movie.
Speaker 3: But I do think that there is like there was
Speaker 3: a weird point in like the mid twenty tens, which
Speaker 3: is when the show started, where people I think understandably
Speaker 3: took a hard turn against movies like this in general,
Speaker 3: but it had a lot more to do with and
Speaker 3: it's like, I know I've been on I don't know,
Speaker 3: I've been on a journey to this effect for years
Speaker 3: at this point of like I feel like if you
Speaker 3: asked me about Goodfellas in you know, twenty sixteen, I
Speaker 3: would have been like, I don't know, I haven't seen it,
Speaker 3: fuck it, I don't care. Like I'm sick of hearing
Speaker 3: guys talk to me about sure movies like that, like
Speaker 3: who gives a shit? Like I'm watching you know what?
Speaker 3: Anything else out of like sheer frustration of like how
Speaker 3: people talk about it. Yeah, which I do think is
Speaker 3: a valid reaction. And I think it was like that
Speaker 3: was such a I don't you know whatever. In retrospect,
Speaker 3: was it a productive time for discussion? That's kind of
Speaker 3: your mileage may vary, but sure it was a time
Speaker 3: where it felt like socially acceptable to say stuff like
Speaker 3: that kind of for the first time in our lifetimes
Speaker 3: at least, especially having like both of us been through
Speaker 3: film school and like, you know, having to kind of
Speaker 3: be like yeah, totally, you know, like it was cathartic.
Speaker 3: But now like a half decade past that, I feel
Speaker 3: like in a slightly different place where it's like, have
Speaker 3: it like holding two truths at once of like the
Speaker 3: way that a lot of people talk about these movies
Speaker 3: are deeply fucking annoying and like you know, whoa no,
Speaker 3: I always lose this word every time it has to
Speaker 3: come out of my mouth, Like it's a synonym for condescending,
Speaker 3: but condescending also works patronizing. Patronizing more like matronizing. Am
Speaker 3: I right exactly? But it's the same way as like
Speaker 3: I did like this forever ago, like this performance art
Speaker 3: project that was like around Infinite Jest, a book I've
Speaker 3: never read, but I just I was sick of being
Speaker 3: talked at about it. No one was talking to you
Speaker 3: about it or I was talking at you about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like you couldn't possibly fucking understand, and I feel like
Speaker 3: Goodfellas the Godfather, most hyper masculine mob movies kind of
Speaker 3: fall under that same branch, and people, I think we're
Speaker 3: like and you know, I would say majority women were
Speaker 3: kind of like pushing back against that, like leave me
Speaker 3: the fuck alone. But now half a decade later, like, well,
Speaker 3: wait a second, I like this movie, like and it's
Speaker 3: like the the this feels like very something that pops
Speaker 3: up a lot in Martin Scorsese's catalog, in particular, because
Speaker 3: like he is like a pretty historically progressive and cool
Speaker 3: guy who's always like lifted up other people's work and
Speaker 3: championed other people, and like it seems like a real,
Speaker 3: like just amazing person. I love him so much, but
Speaker 3: like it feels like movies and his catalog often like
Speaker 3: deal with themes of masculinity in ways that are like
Speaker 3: pretty overtly critical, but the fans of the movies don't
Speaker 3: always get that. And then it's like I developed a
Speaker 3: negative opinion of some of his movies before I'd even
Speaker 3: seen them because of how patronizing fans of those movies
Speaker 3: could be. And ultimately I'm like, oh, I lost out
Speaker 3: in that equation because then I was like staying away
Speaker 3: from them movies like oh, there's no way I would
Speaker 3: like them, And now that I'm like actually starting to
Speaker 3: watch them, I was like, well, shit, man, like.
Speaker 2: They had a point. Just because you missed the fucking
Speaker 2: point doesn't.
Speaker 3: Mean I can't get to watch Goodfellas, Like, yeah, geez,
Speaker 3: I don't know. Anyways. I feel like that conversation came
Speaker 3: back around in a totally different way when Wolf of
Speaker 3: Fall Street came out, because that's like one of my
Speaker 3: favorite movies, but I think has the same kind of
Speaker 3: thing going on.
Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, so what's your history with I saw this
Speaker 2: movie I don't know, as a late teenager for the
Speaker 2: first time, and I really liked it. I bought it
Speaker 2: on DVD.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, catalog, you have one of those binders. I
Speaker 3: love it, I.
Speaker 2: Really do, and I watch it maybe once a year,
Speaker 2: once every couple years. It wasn't one that I returned
Speaker 2: to extremely consistently. But I've seen this movie probably like
Speaker 2: eight or ten times throughout my life, always enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been fucking with this movie for nearly
Speaker 2: two decades.
Speaker 3: Now you've been at it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's that's my history about. How about you I.
Speaker 3: Hadn't seen it for all the reasons that I just
Speaker 3: told you. Yeah, like I just hadn't seen it, I mean,
Speaker 3: but also the same thing, honestly is just like this
Speaker 3: has It was like partially that weirdly complicated, convoluted thing
Speaker 3: I just said, and also just like, it's just not
Speaker 3: a genre I've ever been interested in. It's not a
Speaker 3: genre that like whatever.
Speaker 1: I like.
Speaker 3: I feel like the kinds of movies that your family watches,
Speaker 3: like my family, like, no one in my family really
Speaker 3: watch it was interested in mob movies. So it just
Speaker 3: like wasn't something that I was into. And then as
Speaker 3: time went on, I feel like I became disinterested for
Speaker 3: reasons on top of just being like, ma'am, it's not
Speaker 3: really for me. But I love I mean, I really
Speaker 3: loved it. I thought I thought this movie was awesome. Look,
Speaker 3: Mob March really took me off guard in that it
Speaker 3: look points are being made in these movies and the
Speaker 3: and like goodfellow I mean, we had the whole discussion
Speaker 3: around The Godfather, which I also liked, but I think
Speaker 3: for the purposes of this show, like you know, we
Speaker 3: talked about it whatever you listen to it. But Goodfellas
Speaker 3: has like so much more going on. Martin's Coorsese. The
Speaker 3: man's an ally, he's interested. He like I just, ah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I thought this movie. I mean, obviously there's stuff to
Speaker 3: talk about, plenty to talk about, but I really left
Speaker 3: feeling I also love. At the very very end of
Speaker 3: the movie, they're like, by the way she left him, and.
Speaker 2: You're like, yeah, yes, get out of there. Karen.
Speaker 3: Oh god, I'm not us rooting for a Karen, but
Speaker 3: this is Look, yeah, there are hashtag not all Karens
Speaker 3: and Karen Hill. We make an exception for Karen Hill.
Speaker 3: We make an exception for Lorraine Bronco. In general, she's
Speaker 3: just she's she is like pasta canon because she's also
Speaker 3: the therapist in soprano.
Speaker 2: Right, and you know what else she has done. Very recently,
Speaker 2: she was the voice of a character named I think
Speaker 2: Sophia in Pinocchio twenty twenty two. Robert semechis, stop it's true.
Speaker 3: Stop it the Pinocchio Wars coming January. I mean I
Speaker 3: think so now it's oh, it's the Pinocchio. I can't
Speaker 3: believe she was in. That sucks that she was in
Speaker 3: the bad one, the bad Pinocchio. But still on brand
Speaker 3: for her. Pinocchio's Italian exactly. But wait, I know we
Speaker 3: talked about this, but now that we've seen the Mob movies,
Speaker 3: I really want to have like a poster that's like
Speaker 3: Vito Corleone, Robert de Niro and Goodfellas and like Pinocchio,
Speaker 3: the three bad, bad Italian boys.
Speaker 2: No, that's that's that's great merch, possible merch. Something to
Speaker 2: think about.
Speaker 3: Our worst shirt.
Speaker 2: Fellows. I want to see.
Speaker 3: Think about it. Why couldn't Pinocchio be one of the
Speaker 3: good fellas, Nigo? This is like a horrible like bottom
Speaker 3: of the barrel robot chicken sketch brain that is still
Speaker 3: exists in my fucking cortex somewhere. But it's like Vito
Speaker 3: Corleone being like Pinocchio, how.
Speaker 2: Do you disrespect me on the day of my daughter's wedding?
Speaker 3: And Pinocchio my Italian king Pinocchio. Oh, anyway, Pinocchio owes
Speaker 3: me money. All right, Well, should I do the recap? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, here's Goodfellas. It's based on a
Speaker 2: true story and based on a book called Wise Guy
Speaker 2: written by Nicholas Peleggie Allgie Pelegie.
Speaker 3: Being the bad Italian I don't know. Also, Pelegie iconically
Speaker 3: married to Nora E. Fron up until yes, she she's
Speaker 3: written really lovely thing or she wrote really lovely things
Speaker 3: about him, because you know Nora Afron, she loved to
Speaker 3: filet her exes. It's one of my favorite things about
Speaker 3: her and Carl Bernstein. Right, there were no survivors. It's
Speaker 3: he's I think he's still technically alive, but spiritually he's
Speaker 3: been dead for decades. But Nicholas Poleggi was was the
Speaker 3: good husband to Nora Afron.
Speaker 2: So glad to hear it.
Speaker 3: Respect. Respect, Yeah, that's what he's most famous for, not this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, being Nora Efron's her.
Speaker 3: Husband, not shitty husband.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay, here's the recap. We open in media res
Speaker 2: uh oh, screenwriting term alert.
Speaker 3: Okay, why don't you tell Why don't you tell the
Speaker 3: folks what that means?
Speaker 2: That literally translates to into the midst of things or
Speaker 2: like into the midst of because we open on the
Speaker 2: characters as we will see them in the middle of
Speaker 2: the story. Because we see three guys are driving in
Speaker 2: a car. It's Ray Liota, Robert de Niro and Joe Peshi.
Speaker 2: They pull over a guy in their trunk, who they
Speaker 2: thought was dead, is not dead, so they stab him
Speaker 2: and shoot him some more until he is dead. Q
Speaker 2: voiceover from Ray Liota's character Henry Hill. He says, as
Speaker 2: far back as I can remember, I always wanted to
Speaker 2: be a gangster. And then we cut back. We flash
Speaker 2: back to Henry as a teen kid in Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 2: Ever heard of it? I've ever heard of it? I
Speaker 2: think the year is nineteen fifty five. Young Henry gets
Speaker 2: a job working for some mob guys in his neighborhood,
Speaker 2: and he really admires these guys, especially his boss Polly
Speaker 2: Because played by Paul Servina.
Speaker 3: Yeah, King Paul Sorvino, who threatened to who. Famously, his
Speaker 3: most famous thing is that he threatened to uh with
Speaker 3: extreme specificity, threatened to kill Harvey Weinstein after learning that, oh,
Speaker 3: he had been abusive towards his daughter Mira Sorfino. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Paul Sorvino, absolute icon. I believe he also passed this year.
Speaker 3: He did, he passed over the summer. Oh, and also
Speaker 3: he was in Shrek. I mean, wait, who is he
Speaker 3: in Shrek? His well, his Wikipedia picture. Maybe he just
Speaker 3: went to the Shrek premiere because his but look, if
Speaker 3: you go to his Wikipedia page, his Wikipedia picture is
Speaker 3: him at the premiere Shrek four.
Speaker 2: I hope he's in one of the Shrek movies.
Speaker 3: Though, that's so wild. I think it's even funnier he
Speaker 3: is not in Shrek four, So what was he doing there?
Speaker 3: That is weird? Was Mira Sorvino and Shrek for was
Speaker 3: he supporting? Is not?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, she wasn't in it, Paul after, Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: just there.
Speaker 3: No one in the family was in Shrek for what?
Speaker 2: Maybe he just loves Shrek.
Speaker 3: Now this is a mystery I could get really involved in,
Speaker 3: because Paul Sorvina is like a legend. Like he's not
Speaker 3: going for exposure. He's not going to He's not going
Speaker 3: the way that like Carrie would go to things that
Speaker 3: sex and the city to see and be seen at
Speaker 3: the pair of Shrek forever after. That is so bizarre. Anyways, Paul,
Speaker 3: I love it though, also a legend. Yes, shout out
Speaker 3: mister Paul.
Speaker 2: Okay Henry Hill, he admires all these mob guys, especially Polly.
Speaker 2: Henry's explaining how everything works, how he learned the ropes,
Speaker 2: how everyone in the neighborhood came to respect him because
Speaker 2: of who he was a phillyd with. He eventually meets
Speaker 2: Jimmy Conway played by Robert.
Speaker 3: De Niro, and then we're like, Okay, this movie's about
Speaker 3: to be about fathers and sons. Yet again, we had
Speaker 3: a father figure, we had a son figure. Got it.
Speaker 2: He also meets young Tommy before he's played by Joe
Speaker 2: Pesci and I must say the guy who they got
Speaker 2: to play young Tommy and the young actor who they
Speaker 2: got to play teenage Henry Hill. They did a really
Speaker 2: good job finding young actors who very closely resemble I
Speaker 2: thought that Juliota and Joe Peshi.
Speaker 3: Yeah good. I thought it was a good casting all around. Yeah,
Speaker 3: God you got you just gotta love Joe Peshi shout out.
Speaker 2: To know he's despicable, but shout out to his iconic
Speaker 2: Christmas album. Remember that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder if is it allowed for us to
Speaker 3: play it out it's the Matreon because this is kind
Speaker 3: of our episode that comes out as close to the
Speaker 3: to observe Christmas. I mean, would it be Christmas without
Speaker 3: Joe Peshi's Christmas Album? Probably not?
Speaker 2: Probably not. No. Also, never forget that Goodfellas and Home
Speaker 2: Alone come out the same year, nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is his banner year and he wins. So
Speaker 3: the spoiler with Joe Peschi, he wins an oscar this year.
Speaker 3: One of us is like, but not for the movie,
Speaker 3: you would exect for Home alone alone.
Speaker 2: Okay, huge year for him, wow, enormous. Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Henry meets these people and one day he gets
Speaker 2: arrested for selling stolen cartons of cigarettes. And during his
Speaker 2: day in court, he didn't give up any names because,
Speaker 2: as Jimmy tells him, you never rat on your friends
Speaker 2: and you always keep your mouth shut. We cut to
Speaker 2: eight years later. Henry has grown up to be Ray Liotta,
Speaker 2: Tommy is Joe Peshi. They're still doing mobs stuff. They're
Speaker 2: stealing a lot and reselling it. We get that.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, let me let this fucking siren pass. The
Speaker 3: name of the album is just a refinder. Vincent LaGuardia
Speaker 3: Gambini sings just for you. I love it.
Speaker 2: Is that his like musical persona.
Speaker 3: I guess so wait, hold on, I just got to
Speaker 3: refresh my memory and.
Speaker 4: What the work shut games and it's like to bring
Speaker 4: them to theirs.
Speaker 3: He just.
Speaker 5: Vincent LaGuardia Gambini is so funny, amazing, oh man, okay,
Speaker 5: bless him all right, So we get the very famous
Speaker 5: scene where Henry tells Tommy that he's funny after Tommy
Speaker 5: has told the amusing story and then Tommy's like funny.
Speaker 2: How and he seems really mad, but it turns out
Speaker 2: he's just goofin' because these guys love to.
Speaker 3: Goof One thing I love about this movie in contrast
Speaker 3: to the Godfather is that Goodfellas is far less interested
Speaker 3: in like I feel like it's Goodfellas makes it all
Speaker 3: look more realistically like messy and petty and like emotionally
Speaker 3: driven and like, hmm, it is organized crime, but it's
Speaker 3: like not super organized.
Speaker 2: It's pretty sloppy, right a lot of the time.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and it's like it where it's like there's
Speaker 3: so much of The Godfather And I don't know even
Speaker 3: mean this as a negative, but it's just really different
Speaker 3: the way it portrays the same world in the like
Speaker 3: basically the same area of like I don't know, Like
Speaker 3: I feel like there's all these scenes in The Godfather
Speaker 3: that is supposed to like lay out to the audience like, well,
Speaker 3: this family has a conflict with this family but that's
Speaker 3: in conflict with this and they're kind of like really
Speaker 3: laying out what everyone's relationship to each other, their crime
Speaker 3: wise is, where like this movie is like you do
Speaker 3: get that information, but it's not like it's more focused
Speaker 3: on like how mob activity affects people in your life
Speaker 3: versus this is how the mob.
Speaker 2: Works, right, which I appreciate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 2: So then Henry meets this woman Karen played by Lorraine
Speaker 2: Bracco because Tommy wants to go on a date with
Speaker 2: another woman who won't go out with Tommy unless it's
Speaker 2: a double date.
Speaker 3: Right, So oh do we because we just did Batman
Speaker 3: Returns the other day and Danny DeVito is canonically thirty
Speaker 3: three in that movie. I do feel that it's important
Speaker 3: that Robert de Niro is introduced as being twenty eight
Speaker 3: or twenty nine at the beginning of the movie.
Speaker 2: That is very funny. And Rayleota is at the beginning
Speaker 2: of the movie, like Henry Hill twenty one. Yeah, Rayleota
Speaker 2: is twenty one at the beginning of the movie.
Speaker 3: I think Lorraine Broncos must be even younger. They're both
Speaker 3: in their mid to late thirties, but whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, movie, Yeah, right, So Henry and Karen go
Speaker 2: on this double date with Tommy and this other woman.
Speaker 2: Henry and Karen get off to a rocky start, but
Speaker 2: like she gives him a second chance, he takes her
Speaker 2: out to all these fancy dinners. He knows a bunch
Speaker 2: of people. He's flinging money around, and she's very impressed. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so they stick together. Meanwhile, he makes a really big
Speaker 2: score stealing cash from an airplane.
Speaker 3: Do you think it's the one now that the Minions
Speaker 3: oh hijack?
Speaker 2: I think it's the same.
Speaker 3: What year with that event? Are we in like nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy now or are we not there yet?
Speaker 2: Uh? It's I think around eight ish to ten years
Speaker 2: after nineteen fifty five, so it would be like the
Speaker 2: mid sixties, I want to say.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember. I'm pretty sure that Minyon's Rise
Speaker 3: of Grew happens in the early seventies. So okay, not
Speaker 3: quite line up, but pretty close. Pretty close and not inconceivable,
Speaker 3: is all I'll say. Because the Minions hijacked a plane
Speaker 3: sometime in the late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: I think it could be the same one.
Speaker 3: Nothing bad happened, they landed the plane. Worst thing that happened,
Speaker 3: Stewart got stocked into the toilet, but he ended up fine.
Speaker 2: He's fine.
Speaker 3: Yep. Anyways, just an interesting synchronicity, thought it pointed out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. So they score a
Speaker 2: lot of money from this airplane heist, and Karen comes
Speaker 2: to understand what Henry actually does for a living. She's
Speaker 2: pretty cool with it. We'll talk all about that. But
Speaker 2: they get married, and we switch points of view from
Speaker 2: like Henry's voiceover to Karen's voiceover and perspective as we
Speaker 2: see her get like acclimated to the quote unquote mob
Speaker 2: wife or mob his wife life style.
Speaker 3: Mob his wife his life. Yeah, exactly that scene. I
Speaker 3: do like how that how Karen present Like that's so
Speaker 3: alarming to be suddenly dropped into like a bunch of
Speaker 3: mob wives just casually discussing like children dying, and she's
Speaker 3: just like there's a lot to talk about that scene.
Speaker 3: But I for sure I love Karen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, root for her. One night, Henry, Jimmy and Tommy
Speaker 2: beat the shit out of this mob guy, Billy Bats,
Speaker 2: who had insulted Tommy and Tommy. We know is like
Speaker 2: he's kind of a loose cannon. He's very reactionary and
Speaker 2: he has an extremely fragile ego.
Speaker 3: He's Joseph Peshi.
Speaker 2: It's true. So Tommy kills Billy Bats and they throw
Speaker 2: him in the trunk of Henry's car and start driving
Speaker 2: to like bury his body. They stop at Tommy's mom's house,
Speaker 2: who is played by Catherine Scorseis aka Martin Scorsese's mom.
Speaker 2: She's so good, so good, so cute.
Speaker 3: I think my favorite I love that it was like improvised.
Speaker 3: But the favorite exchange in the movie is when Joe
Speaker 3: fad She's like, you got one dog vasion this way,
Speaker 3: you got one dog vasion. He had a way.
Speaker 2: I like it. She's like, yeah, one dog's facing east,
Speaker 2: the other dog's facing west.
Speaker 3: In my mind, I'm like, that's where he got the oscar.
Speaker 3: You think anyone could do that?
Speaker 2: No, No, So they chat and eat with her and
Speaker 2: then they get back on the road and then this
Speaker 2: is the scene we see at the very beginning where
Speaker 2: they open the trunk and kill the guy then bury
Speaker 2: his body. But this Billy Bats guy was a made man.
Speaker 2: He was like untouchable, so to speak. So now his
Speaker 2: people are looking for him and our friends will get
Speaker 2: in a big trouble if they find his dead body
Speaker 2: and the spot in upstate New York where they buried him.
Speaker 2: That property had been sold and is being developed into condos,
Speaker 2: so they have to go and dig up the body
Speaker 2: and move it somewhere else. We learn that Henry and
Speaker 2: most of the other guys are cheating on their wives.
Speaker 3: Their wives right on Fridays.
Speaker 2: Right, They all have girlfriends who they take to the
Speaker 2: same club that they take their wives too on Saturday Nights, Diabolical.
Speaker 2: Henry's girlfriend is Janice. Karen starts to realize what's going on,
Speaker 2: that he's cheating on her. They argue, Henry gaslights her.
Speaker 2: Then Karen goes to Janice and screams at her. Then
Speaker 2: Karen puts a gun in Henry's face and threatens to
Speaker 2: kill him. He fights back. He's very physically abusive. He
Speaker 2: threatens to shoot her. That is happening.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, we'll get on around that whole discussion.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Meanwhile, our friend Tommy is flying off the handle
Speaker 2: a lot lately. He shoots and kills one of their
Speaker 2: little minions, Spider, So things are a bit precarious for
Speaker 2: the boys. Yeah, the fellas Joey's gone off leash. It's true. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Henry and Jimmy do a job in Tampa, but they
Speaker 2: get caught and have to go to jail. But because
Speaker 2: they're in the mob, they get to go to a
Speaker 2: special prison room.
Speaker 3: They get to go like jail where you only get
Speaker 3: to hang out with your friends and like pasta, and.
Speaker 2: You have like a little apartment and there's a kitchen
Speaker 2: and they cook all the time. I think it's so
Speaker 2: funny that there's like a solid, like five minute chunk
Speaker 2: of the movie where it's just like them talking about
Speaker 2: all the food that they make, yeah, and like ingredients
Speaker 2: being smuggled in and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: I liked that section, and I wonder, I mean, I
Speaker 3: have we don't read books, but no, I really appreciate
Speaker 3: even more so it seems like, I would say, quite
Speaker 3: a bit more so than The Godfather, that this movie
Speaker 3: is like so based in research. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: I wonder what the actual historical precedent for like mob
Speaker 3: guys going to jail and just hanging out with each
Speaker 3: other was. I believe that it happened. I just like
Speaker 3: don't know any specifics. It's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yup, So Karen is like sneaking at a bunch of
Speaker 2: food to Henry in jail. She's also sneaking in drugs,
Speaker 2: which Henry has started to sell. I don't know if
Speaker 2: he's selling them in prison or he's somehow like moving
Speaker 2: them from prison.
Speaker 3: He's got some sort of operation going, and he's starting
Speaker 3: to skim a little off. He's starting to get high
Speaker 3: in his own supply. As they say, it's true.
Speaker 2: He gets out of prison four years later and Polly
Speaker 2: is like, hey, Henry, stop selling drugs. So he in
Speaker 2: a way is a lot like Vito Corleone, because he's like,
Speaker 2: drugs are bad, Say no to drugs, and Henry's like,
Speaker 2: I don't even know what you're talking about selling.
Speaker 3: What can possibly go wrong?
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Henry is trafficking cocaine from Pittsburgh and selling at
Speaker 2: other places. He's having his new girlfriend, Sandy played by
Speaker 2: Debbie Maser, mix the cocaine and he's making a lot
Speaker 2: of money and he also brings in Jimmy and Tommy
Speaker 2: to help. Meanwhile, they're also planning and they managed to
Speaker 2: pull off another huge airplane heist, the Luftanza heist, where
Speaker 2: they get several million dollars but this guy Morey who sells.
Speaker 3: Wigs is iconic, iconic wig commercial. Love it so much,
Speaker 3: it's really good. Maury is busting Jimmy's balls, as they say,
Speaker 3: because he's like, where's my money? You didn't give me
Speaker 3: my money yet? Yeah, Maury thinks he's a player. But Jimmy,
Speaker 3: Jimmy is getting sick of Maury's shit, and Henry's trying
Speaker 3: to help him out. He's like, cool it. Maury Moore
Speaker 3: is like, it's all right, I'll cool it, and it's
Speaker 3: like but then he doesn't. Then he doesn't quite enough.
Speaker 2: And what happens to Maury, Well, Jimmy wax him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jimmy, Well, he left Jimmy with no choice.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 3: I'm on Jimmy's side.
Speaker 2: Justice for Jimmy. Jimmy also kills or has basically everyone
Speaker 2: involved in this this big robbery killed, so that the
Speaker 2: Feds like couldn't trace this heist back to Jimmy. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Tommy is about to become a made man, which Jimmy's
Speaker 2: really excited about because it'll be good for them to
Speaker 2: help either.
Speaker 3: Is he about to be well, actually, I forget where
Speaker 3: they're living at this point. I was like, is he
Speaker 3: about to be made in Manhattan?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I don't think they're really hanging out in Manhattan, I.
Speaker 3: Know, but little little, too fancy, but he's being made
Speaker 3: near Manhattan.
Speaker 2: That there there you go. Yeah, that's that's the sequel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that was a that was a worthy
Speaker 3: detour to explore.
Speaker 2: Thank You, No, I think no, Jamie, thank you.
Speaker 3: And rayleioa new Jennifer Lopez. It's all connected.
Speaker 2: Makes you think, It makes you think. Okay, so Tommy
Speaker 2: being a made man will be a good thing for
Speaker 2: Jimmy and Henry, but oh no, it's a trap. And
Speaker 2: the people who were gonna, you know, make Tommy actually
Speaker 2: kill him and it's revenge for Tommy killing Billy Batts.
Speaker 3: Again Tommy horrible. And we'll get to why in a bit.
Speaker 3: But the but Joe Pashy's last like, what does he
Speaker 3: what does he say right before? It's just like so
Speaker 3: he's like, oh no shit, yeah yeah, so and then
Speaker 3: his head is just it's so like this movie's use
Speaker 3: of violence is really If I had like more time
Speaker 3: to prep Slash, I had more than five brain cells,
Speaker 3: I would I would understand more. But like I just
Speaker 3: really I liked this movie is like it seems like
Speaker 3: Scorsese was like really carefully choosing when to show explicit
Speaker 3: violence and when not to, Like, it's not just an
Speaker 3: all out bloodbath. A lot of the violence takes place
Speaker 3: like out of frame or off screen, and you like,
Speaker 3: hear it, but you don't see it. But but when Tommy,
Speaker 3: when Tommy gets whacked, they want you to see Joe
Speaker 3: Pashy's head blop like it is, Oh shit, it's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's good stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Tommy is murdered and Jimmy is very upset. Things
Speaker 2: are falling apart for him. Henry is getting more and
Speaker 2: more addicted to cocaine. Then there's this day where Henry
Speaker 2: has a bunch of stuff to do. He's gotta unload
Speaker 2: a big shipment of coke. Sandy is helping him mix it,
Speaker 2: so he's got to go over there. His old babysitter,
Speaker 2: Lois is helping him transport it, so he has to
Speaker 2: organize stuff with her. There's a helicopter following him around
Speaker 2: all day. He's got to go pick up his brother
Speaker 2: and then take his brother home, and he's got to
Speaker 2: make this sauce for the pasta for this big dinner
Speaker 2: that he's cooking all this stuff.
Speaker 3: And Pechi's and peeschi. I thought it was like doing
Speaker 3: a pretty amazing job of like doing all the vo
Speaker 3: for this, as if he was on cocaine while he
Speaker 3: was explaining it too, like it's rale. Sorry, got whacked,
Speaker 3: She got whacked bombed, He's gone. Flea's Flee was again.
Speaker 3: He's just been a little movie buff recently. He was
Speaker 3: a loving good fellas. He planted the whole damn movie.
Speaker 3: He cheered when Karen left Henry, we were both cheering.
Speaker 3: It was great. See please Flee is slowly transitioning into
Speaker 3: being a lab cat. He wasn't a lab cat, but
Speaker 3: now in his advanced age aka three, he's a little
Speaker 3: lab cat. Now. Sorry, I meant Rayleioda. I thought was
Speaker 3: doing a great coke fueled narration.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah, it's he's gonna These are all great performances. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's true. So this very chaotic day is happening, and
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, Henry gets busted by
Speaker 2: the Feds. They throw him in jail. Karen is able
Speaker 2: to bail Henry out by having her mother sell her house.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, devastating. Yeah, but when Henry returns home
Speaker 2: to sell all of that cocaine, it was like sixty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars worth. Karen is like, well, I had to
Speaker 2: flush that down the toilet because the cops were here
Speaker 2: and they had a search warrant and they would have
Speaker 2: found it. And Henry pitches a fit because that was
Speaker 2: their one prospect. They have no other money. Polly won't
Speaker 2: help him because Polly says no to drugs. It seems
Speaker 2: like Jimmy might be trying to whack Karen and Henry
Speaker 2: so they have no one they can turn to.
Speaker 3: Broke my heart because that scene, I mean, and I
Speaker 3: feel like a lot of our conversation is gonna be
Speaker 3: on Karen. But like Karen, I just like she and
Speaker 3: I like I like that she is not like perfect,
Speaker 3: Like she fucks up and she can be pretty hard,
Speaker 3: I think, especially like the moment she chooses to involve
Speaker 3: her children is like she's like not an amazing parent,
Speaker 3: but also she's like set up for just a life
Speaker 3: of pain and misery. Like but I like that scene
Speaker 3: with Jimmy at first, like it. It was the most
Speaker 3: affection I had seen her be given in the entire movie,
Speaker 3: the way that Jimmy talks to her and like asks
Speaker 3: her how she is, showed like offers her a gift
Speaker 3: that you don't think at least in like that moment.
Speaker 3: And maybe I'm like the most foolish person of all time,
Speaker 3: but I was like, oh wow, Like it seems like
Speaker 3: for a second, it's like the first time someone is
Speaker 3: giving her something without expecting something in return, and it's
Speaker 3: like he's treating yeah, yeah, and you're like, oh, finally,
Speaker 3: like someone is fucking nice to Karen. And then two
Speaker 3: seconds and like you can see how much it means
Speaker 3: to her that he asked her like how her mother
Speaker 3: is and like all this stuff, and then and then
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, he was just doing that to set
Speaker 3: her up to be fucking murdered. Like it's just yeah,
Speaker 3: uh that scene broke my damn heart because I was like,
Speaker 3: finally someone gives Karen the time of day. But it's
Speaker 3: only because they're like and that's the last thing that's
Speaker 3: ever gonna happen to you, Like what the fuck? Man?
Speaker 2: Yeah no, no, no, it's.
Speaker 3: These mob guys. They're not very nice.
Speaker 2: They're kind of not nice.
Speaker 3: They're meanies. They're meanies.
Speaker 2: Good goodfellas more like mean fellas anyway.
Speaker 3: Clee, what do you think exactly?
Speaker 2: So Henry has no one he can turn to. He's broke,
Speaker 2: and he has no choice but to cooperate with the
Speaker 2: Feds and rat out his friends. So we see Jimmy, Polly,
Speaker 2: all of those guys get arrested, and then we get
Speaker 2: that famous closing scene where they're in the courtroom. Henry
Speaker 2: names names, he sells out his friends, and then he
Speaker 2: breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the camera,
Speaker 2: and then we see him living a very like typical
Speaker 2: suburban American life in the witness Protection program.
Speaker 3: Which Karen opted out of.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I know, She's like, I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: I want to do that or not, but I couldn't
Speaker 2: tell if I was.
Speaker 3: I saw oh see. My impression was she opted out it.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's not can't actually listeners sound off in the car?
Speaker 3: I actually don't. I my impression was that she I
Speaker 3: could see it going dif a couple of different ways,
Speaker 3: because like she basically it seemed like in the scene
Speaker 3: which stars an actual cop weirdly, which whatever, that's just
Speaker 3: like a context thing that we can talk about. It's
Speaker 3: not like a but whatever. It seems like she is
Speaker 3: given the choice of like choosing her parents or her husband.
Speaker 3: And then it says later in like the Posts Where
Speaker 3: Are They Now thing, that she separated from him in
Speaker 3: eighty nine. But I could see that being either she
Speaker 3: did do witness protection and then left him or she
Speaker 3: just like technically stayed married to him and then separated
Speaker 3: after not going to witness protection.
Speaker 2: I interpret it as because I think he goes into
Speaker 2: witness protection in the early eighties, he gets arrested like
Speaker 2: five years later for some other drug conspiracy thing in
Speaker 2: like nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: I think, do you think that's like she she stays
Speaker 3: for a little bit longer and then bails.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then she's like, I've had it.
Speaker 3: I liked it better in my head. I liked it
Speaker 3: better in my head because she loves her family so like,
Speaker 3: she loves her parents so much. Well, I hope she
Speaker 3: went back with them. Yeah, I wonder what became of Karen.
Speaker 3: She became Tony Soprano's therapist. She can't escape?
Speaker 2: Well that makes sense, yeah, yeah, I mean she knew
Speaker 2: a lot about the mob, she sure did.
Speaker 3: So that's the movie.
Speaker 2: I mean, for me, I feel like a lot of
Speaker 2: the criticisms that we had about The Godfather, which was,
Speaker 2: like the movie fails to offer any significant character development
Speaker 2: or perspective for the women who exist in this specific
Speaker 2: world and like overly glorifying the lifestyle without offering enough
Speaker 2: critique of it. I feel like Good Fellas handles these
Speaker 2: things not perfectly but but better.
Speaker 3: Certain but like attempts to handle it like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I feel like there's still was more room for I mean,
Speaker 3: there's always more room for, you know, like women's perspectives
Speaker 3: inside of this genre because for all the like I mean,
Speaker 3: and I think I said all I had to say
Speaker 3: about it at the beginning, but I would be curious.
Speaker 3: I mean, if if there's more to say them, let's
Speaker 3: say it. But like I feel like, you know, when
Speaker 3: someone is talking your ear off about Goodfellas, they're usually
Speaker 3: not talking about Karen at all, which I don't think
Speaker 3: is necessarily like the fault of the filmmaker, but I
Speaker 3: but it is like this, It's it's weird because I like,
Speaker 3: based on how I've been spoken to about Good Fellows
Speaker 3: over the years, I wouldn't have expected Karen to have
Speaker 3: as prominent a part as she does, and I think
Speaker 3: that her part is like she's amazed, like I I've
Speaker 3: can we talk about.
Speaker 2: Karen, Let's talk about Karen? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Care?
Speaker 2: But well, I think speaking to what you're saying, it's
Speaker 2: like the biases of the you know, fan base or
Speaker 2: the audience members who are like, well, yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: there's like some woman in the movie, but I'm not
Speaker 2: I don't care about her, even if she does have
Speaker 2: a prominent role in the story, or even like Karen,
Speaker 2: about what's going on with the well the boys, or
Speaker 2: even not like.
Speaker 3: That actively like who cares about women? But just like
Speaker 3: they just don't think to like write, I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 3: like because of those biases, like they they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm just inherently more interested in what's going on
Speaker 3: with Joe Peshi, even though I would argue like Karen
Speaker 3: has like I think one of the clearest strongest arcs
Speaker 3: in the higher movie. Oh for sure, she's just I
Speaker 3: just I just like the lady. I think she's a it's.
Speaker 2: Awesome and I do so like And this is a
Speaker 2: part of the book Wise Guy that is the source
Speaker 2: material for this movie. And while most of the movie
Speaker 2: is accompanied by Henry's voiceover, and it's told from his
Speaker 2: point of view. There are significant portions of the movie
Speaker 2: where the point of view shifts and we hear Karen's
Speaker 2: voiceover and we get a look into Karen's thoughts and
Speaker 2: feelings and perspective.
Speaker 3: It really cool. I mean, it is like and I
Speaker 3: feel like, you know, you do only get and I
Speaker 3: think there was I don't have the window in front
Speaker 3: of me. But in the comments of our Godfather Madrianne episode,
Speaker 3: there was a listener who pointed out, I think very
Speaker 3: ratefully so that like, it's not that there are not
Speaker 3: a lot of mob movies centered around women, because there
Speaker 3: have never been women mobsters. There have been women mobsters.
Speaker 3: So it isn't even like a decent excuse to say, like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: that's why this genre tends to be centered around men.
Speaker 3: It's like, as usual, men's stories are prioritized historically, which
Speaker 3: weirdly this movie kind of says at the end, which
Speaker 3: I thought was interesting. But in anyways, like in The Godfather,
Speaker 3: you get Connie and Kay, both of whom have fascinating
Speaker 3: story arcs that are not depicted on screen and are
Speaker 3: not I don't think, like considered to be important by
Speaker 3: the writers, by the filmmakers. It seems like Scarsace feels
Speaker 3: differently about this Scarscean Polegie, I mean, how is Nicholas
Speaker 3: Polegi gonna go home to Nora Efron and say I
Speaker 3: didn't write a female character? Hello, all I had to say,
Speaker 3: I think that there was still room for more sure
Speaker 3: women because it's like you get one like in The
Speaker 3: Godfather you get two interesting but basically absent female characters.
Speaker 3: And Goodfellas you get one great female character and then
Speaker 3: a couple of other women who seem interesting. It seems
Speaker 3: like there's a lot going on with them, but we
Speaker 3: don't have time kind of thing. But yeah, I mean Karen,
Speaker 3: I thought it was interesting. Lorraine Brocco has done, you know,
Speaker 3: a number of interviews about this part over the years.
Speaker 3: I obviously didn't watch all of them, but I did
Speaker 3: like there is kind of this theme and how she
Speaker 3: talks about Karen where she's unequivocally like, no, Karen is
Speaker 3: an abused like everything, all of her decisions and her behavior,
Speaker 3: like when I was playing the part and I and
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure she says in an interview with them,
Speaker 3: I think it was like the British Film Academy. She's
Speaker 3: just like I think that it was like written to
Speaker 3: be you know, she's an abused spouse, and like that's
Speaker 3: how I played her, That's how I thought of her,
Speaker 3: and I think that that's how, you know, I was
Speaker 3: supposed to be thinking about her, and I think that
Speaker 3: that reads pretty clearly in a way that like she's
Speaker 3: facing a lot of the same issues that Connie is
Speaker 3: in The Godfather, but like this has it ky like
Speaker 3: but yeah, right, because it's like I was thinking about
Speaker 3: kind of a similar scene. It plays out differently, but
Speaker 3: like there's a scene in The Godfather where Kay asks
Speaker 3: Michael at the very beginning when he's still like good
Speaker 3: boy Michael, and she's like what is going on here?
Speaker 3: Like what is happening here? And he's still good boy Michael.
Speaker 3: So he's like, my family's bad, but I'm good. And
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure that is the line.
Speaker 2: He says, No, that's a direct quote.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's a famous line.
Speaker 2: There's leave the gun, take the Canoli's and then it's
Speaker 2: like my family's bad, but I'm good, two most famous
Speaker 2: quotes from The god.
Speaker 3: I didn't finish the quote. He says, my family's bad,
Speaker 3: but I'm good. And then he pauses, there's a beat,
Speaker 3: and he says, for now that is. It's a really
Speaker 3: famous line from Michael Corleon.
Speaker 2: It's really good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of. It's this cinematic tool called foreshadowing.
Speaker 2: And oh interesting, Okay, I think I learned about that
Speaker 2: as I was getting a master's degree in screenwriting, something
Speaker 2: I would never mention.
Speaker 3: They don't tell you an undergrad. They don't tell you
Speaker 3: an undergrad. You do have to go back to be
Speaker 3: able to understand the richness of for now that is?
Speaker 3: And Pacino sells it. But there's a similar scene towards
Speaker 3: the beginning of Goodfellas where it's pretty early into Henry
Speaker 3: and Karen's relationship and Karen's like, what the fuck is this?
Speaker 3: And he lies to her, but she figures it out
Speaker 3: very quickly, where I feel like the Godfather for some reason,
Speaker 3: Kay is like it takes her so long to figure
Speaker 3: out what's going on, even though it's pretty obvious, but
Speaker 3: Karen like has questions right away. I yeah, figures it
Speaker 3: out pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: In the Godfather episode when we were like, why would
Speaker 2: Diane Keaton's character Kay, who did not grow up in
Speaker 2: a mob family. Why would she stay with Michael knowing
Speaker 2: that he's working his way up the mob ladder, Like
Speaker 2: all of these questions that again would have been interesting
Speaker 2: for that movie to explore, but The Godfather skips over
Speaker 2: all that. But in Goodfellas, there's a similar scenario. There
Speaker 2: are similar scenes even like you said, but like Karen
Speaker 2: is from a you know, typical middle class American family,
Speaker 2: has no dealings with the mob until she meets Henry,
Speaker 2: and we're like, okay, well, why would she stay with
Speaker 2: someone like that? Like that's a potentially dangerous situation. He's
Speaker 2: not a good person. But Goodfellas offers a lot of
Speaker 2: insights to her, her her feelings, her trajector, like everything
Speaker 2: about it. There's that scene where Henry beats the crap
Speaker 2: out of this man who had assaulted Karen, and then
Speaker 2: he hands her a gun to hide, and her voiceover
Speaker 2: says like, oh, I know there are women like my
Speaker 2: best friends who would have gotten out of there the
Speaker 2: minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide, But
Speaker 2: I didn't. I got to admit the truth. It turned
Speaker 2: me on, And like that's like kind of simplifying things,
Speaker 2: but I and I'm speculating here, But I feel like
Speaker 2: it's that she found both like the gun and the
Speaker 2: secrecy and just like a lot of stuff surrounding that
Speaker 2: whole situation. The idea that like she has a boyfriend
Speaker 2: who would be able to offer her protection against other men,
Speaker 2: Like all of that stuff is just like exciting and
Speaker 2: would appeal to not everyone obviously, but it appeals to her,
Speaker 2: And she like says that, and that's the insight that
Speaker 2: we need to understand why someone would stay with a
Speaker 2: guy like Henry Hill, Right.
Speaker 3: I mean it's like and and it's again, it's like
Speaker 3: I like that she like opens it by being like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this obviously is not for everyone, but I think that, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the context of like she's lived it seems like a
Speaker 3: pretty you know, quote unquote boring, safe life, and here
Speaker 3: is this exciting person. It's also like taking in the
Speaker 3: historical context of you know, this is I would imagine
Speaker 3: like the early sixties, yeah, where it's like there's not
Speaker 3: as many options for quote unquote an exciting life available
Speaker 3: to women of this time. They're still very the very
Speaker 3: rigid expectation that you have to get married and have
Speaker 3: kids no matter what. And so if she's looked, I mean,
Speaker 3: and again like she's it's hard because the actors are
Speaker 3: very obviously like thirty six, but you're like, oh, she's
Speaker 3: also twenty one years old. Like right, It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: not inconceivable that anyone of any gender would just be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm going out with some like exciting asshole because
Speaker 3: I'm twenty one and that's what twenty one year olds.
Speaker 2: Do, especially like a guy who has money, who has connections,
Speaker 2: who is respected by the people around him, who you know,
Speaker 2: pays for dinners and champagne and all this stuff. Like
Speaker 2: again taking the historical context into consideration, where women relied
Speaker 2: on husbands for survival in a lot of cases because like,
Speaker 2: career opportunities were far more limited for women, in a
Speaker 2: way to support yourself as a woman was far more limited.
Speaker 2: Women have always been conditioned to be like, Okay, find
Speaker 2: a man who can provide for you. And this was
Speaker 2: clearly a man that could provide for her as she perceived.
Speaker 3: It, right, And it's like it would have been, I mean,
Speaker 3: it was it would have been interesting narratively to see
Speaker 3: a foil to that, because it's not like in the
Speaker 3: early sixties, a woman could not support herself or like
Speaker 3: sure could not go another way, and like that would
Speaker 3: have you know, been interesting to have some sort of
Speaker 3: you know, alternative or or even even for Karen to
Speaker 3: see of like, oh, it's not inconceivable that I could
Speaker 3: be on my own. But I feel like, yeah, you're
Speaker 3: giving the information you need as to like why she
Speaker 3: gets sucked into this. I think in particular that moment
Speaker 3: where I guess everything. I mean, Henry is like a
Speaker 3: horrible like Henry's a fucking scum bad, He's a bad fella.
Speaker 3: He's he's a bad fellow, he's a devil father, He's
Speaker 3: he's bad. But but right away, like it's very clear
Speaker 3: that like the way that Henry understands how to be
Speaker 3: in a relationship is with Muny, like is protecting with
Speaker 3: money and violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, not an.
Speaker 3: Armchair psychologist, a person who doesn't exist, although actually Henry
Speaker 3: Hell did technically exist, but fictional Henry Hill.
Speaker 2: Now put yourself in the shoes of Lorraine Broco as
Speaker 2: the therapist in Sopranos, and please psychoanalyze.
Speaker 3: In a way I'm in my I'm in my Lorraine bag.
Speaker 3: But like you get the context you need for I mean,
Speaker 3: and he's a horrible person, and this doesn't excuse the behavior,
Speaker 3: but I like that you get the context for why
Speaker 3: Henry is such a piece of shit spouse. Also because
Speaker 3: he was physically abused by his own father, he grew
Speaker 3: up seeing his father be deeply resentful of his station
Speaker 3: and life class wise, and I think what you often
Speaker 3: see in households that and obviously not true across the board,
Speaker 3: but I feel like the story wants you to believe, like, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: you know, he grew up around violence, both with you know,
Speaker 3: wanting to be in the mob from the time he
Speaker 3: was a child, and also like he was just experienced
Speaker 3: violence in his home anyways. And so it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: he's made this sort of quote unquote decision that he's
Speaker 3: not going to like die in the class he grew
Speaker 3: up in, even though that is kind of ultimately his fate,
Speaker 3: but whatever, right, But for a while, you know, he's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: how can I secure a partner by showing them I
Speaker 3: care by having money and being violent towards anyone who
Speaker 3: like is fucked up to them? Which is I thought
Speaker 3: that that having that scene where it's early in their
Speaker 3: relationship and Karen is very upset and she has been
Speaker 3: assaulted by her neighbor. And I mean it's like kind
Speaker 3: of an amazing scene. You may disagree with his methods,
Speaker 3: but I kind of don't like Henry, you know, goes
Speaker 3: across the street and like fucking wax him in the
Speaker 3: head over and over and over, and his stil whips
Speaker 3: the guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And then like that is
Speaker 3: his way of showing like he thinks like that is
Speaker 3: a showing love to Karen of like if you stay
Speaker 3: with me, these things will not happen to you, which
Speaker 3: you know, like in that time, there is value in that.
Speaker 2: I mean, women were conditioned to see value in a
Speaker 2: man who was like willing to fight to protect her.
Speaker 3: Like that's particularly in a like culture that abusing women
Speaker 3: physically was far more socially accepted than it was now
Speaker 3: right or than it is now and it's still, you know,
Speaker 3: pretty socially accepted. But yeah, like, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: feel like you're given the information you need to understand
Speaker 3: how she kind of ends up tangled in this.
Speaker 2: Right, there's that, and there's another scene told from her perspective.
Speaker 2: We hear her voice over again. It's after they've been
Speaker 2: married for a little while. But her voiceover says, after
Speaker 2: a while, it got to be all normal. None of
Speaker 2: it seemed like crime. It was more like Henry was enterprising.
Speaker 2: Our husband weren't brain surgeons. They were blue collar guys.
Speaker 2: The only way to make extra money was to go
Speaker 2: out and cut a few corners. We were all very close,
Speaker 2: never any outsiders around, and being together all the time
Speaker 2: made everything seem all the more normal. It got to
Speaker 2: where I was even proud that I had the kind
Speaker 2: of husband who was willing to go out and risk
Speaker 2: his neck just to get us the little extras. So
Speaker 2: she's touching on some interesting class stuff here number one.
Speaker 2: Number two, It like shows the logic of someone who
Speaker 2: who's like exposed to something that is not normal per se,
Speaker 2: but it becomes normal for her because you know, like
Speaker 2: involvement in the mob and organized crime isn't quote unquote
Speaker 2: normal like most people. You know, your average American person
Speaker 2: or family doesn't have exposure to that and would probably
Speaker 2: actively avoid mob stuff, right, But because of the like
Speaker 2: isolation and the just like repid of it, and her
Speaker 2: constant exposure to it, that's the over a period of years,
Speaker 2: over time, that's how things get normalized. So she's like
Speaker 2: speaking to her becoming acclimated to this lifestyle. Because again,
Speaker 2: that was something that I kept thinking about in when
Speaker 2: I was watching The Godfather, I was like, why would
Speaker 2: Kay like stick around, Like why don't we get any
Speaker 2: insight about this? But like here we have Karen saying
Speaker 2: like this is why I stuck around because it felt
Speaker 2: extremely normal. It got to be very.
Speaker 3: Normal, right, and it like became her community, and like
Speaker 3: you see how painful it is for her later when
Speaker 3: Henry's locked up and she loses that community because her
Speaker 3: value in her own community is decided by like the
Speaker 3: status of her husband, which is like you know, traumatic
Speaker 3: in itself. And I liked that, like before even before that,
Speaker 3: because I also loved that they just like take a
Speaker 3: moment and like it helps move the story forward in
Speaker 3: time to explain why she sticks around and how it
Speaker 3: begins to feel like this is just my life now.
Speaker 3: But you also see like two different scenes shortly after
Speaker 3: she gets married that she's like struggling with it, where
Speaker 3: you have first the scene with again, which is just
Speaker 3: like stuff that could actually like that's always like the
Speaker 3: weird thing about The Godfather, Like scenes that could have
Speaker 3: been in The Godfather, probably similar scenes with either k
Speaker 3: or well not Connie Connie grew up with the mob,
Speaker 3: but scenes that you could have seen, but they just
Speaker 3: really weren't interested in the character. But like with Karen,
Speaker 3: when it switches to her perspective, you see a scene
Speaker 3: with her parents shortly after they get married, because she
Speaker 3: gets in an argument with her mother, who is you know,
Speaker 3: making some pretty good points. I would say, Yeah, she's
Speaker 3: just like, you know, where is your husband? Like this
Speaker 3: is really fucked up, this is weird. Where's the at
Speaker 3: you guys just got married? What's going on?
Speaker 2: She says, what kind of people are the And Karen says,
Speaker 2: stay out of it, mom, you don't know how I feel, right,
Speaker 2: And and you're like, okay, these are things I said
Speaker 2: as a teenager. But yeah, sure, but I still think
Speaker 2: she's like supposed to be like twenty two, Like it's right.
Speaker 3: She's supposed to be pretty young, Like I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's weird, like, but also I can totally relate with
Speaker 3: like I don't know, like being in clearly a bad relationship,
Speaker 3: being called out on it and being like you don't understand,
Speaker 3: Like that was sort of how I read that scene
Speaker 3: is like she has made at this point a pretty
Speaker 3: permanent choice, especially in the sixties, of like she's gotten married,
Speaker 3: so like she's got to stand by this decision because
Speaker 3: what is the alternative? And on top of the like
Speaker 3: a lot of people, myself included, hate to hand it
Speaker 3: to their mom for being right about something, but like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like I did understand why she reacted that way, but
Speaker 3: that sucks, and like Karen is just like put in
Speaker 3: such a hard position, emotional all the time. Because it's
Speaker 3: like if Karen was able to, like I feel like
Speaker 3: in that moment, you know, if she didn't feel like
Speaker 3: she had to defend Henry and didn't have to defend
Speaker 3: her decision, like her mom could have helped her out.
Speaker 3: You know, like it seems like her parents want what's
Speaker 3: best for her and she loves them. And even though
Speaker 3: it's like it seems like her and her mom argue
Speaker 3: a lot, but like they love each other. It seems
Speaker 3: like a generally good relationship. But you see her struggle
Speaker 3: with that at the very beginning. And then you also
Speaker 3: see Henry be a bad husband for I guess the
Speaker 3: first time as a husband where he comes back and
Speaker 3: then he sees conflict, and he just turns around and leaves,
Speaker 3: like he doesn't you know, after Karen has spent this
Speaker 3: whole scene defending him right when he doesn't deserve it,
Speaker 3: he can't be there to support her for even a second.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a thing. And then you see the
Speaker 3: scene with the mob wives, which I would love to
Speaker 3: talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, another scene where we get the whole scene is
Speaker 2: told from Karen's point of view. We get her voice
Speaker 2: over some more. She's like, yeah, I that we weren't
Speaker 2: married to you know, nine to five guys, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't until I hung out with the other wives that
Speaker 2: I realized how different things were. And she's like hurling
Speaker 2: some criticisms towards them, which.
Speaker 3: Like she does make it about their looks in a
Speaker 3: way that yeah is I mean, look, Karen is a
Speaker 3: flawed character, sure there so I think that there's like
Speaker 3: moments where it's interesting because it's like Karen can be
Speaker 3: pretty judgmental towards and cruel to other women, but in general,
Speaker 3: it's nothing that she wouldn't also say or do to
Speaker 3: a man. I was finding where like, I mean, this
Speaker 3: comes up more in like the Janice storyline right, so
Speaker 3: we'll get there, but like I did feel like it
Speaker 3: was she wasn't wrong to you know, especially at the
Speaker 3: point she's at, like it's almost like she's looking into
Speaker 3: what could be her future of like which we find
Speaker 3: out is kind of her future of. Like this violence
Speaker 3: is very normalized. It's something you can talk about openly
Speaker 3: in a community setting, Like it's something you have to
Speaker 3: deal with in your day to day life if you're
Speaker 3: married to someone like doing crime all the time, right.
Speaker 2: And her main takeaway from that scene is like when
Speaker 2: she goes back home and is talking to Henry, she's like,
Speaker 2: what if you went to jail? Because she heard, you know,
Speaker 2: the other wives talking about how some of their husbands
Speaker 2: are arrested, like got arrested and are in jail, and
Speaker 2: so she's expressing concern about like, you know, what would
Speaker 2: happen if you went to prison? Like what would that
Speaker 2: mean for me? And like what like, right, the stakes
Speaker 2: are very high, Henry, and he's just like, don't worry
Speaker 2: about it, and then he says something very racist and yeah,
Speaker 2: but he's basically like, you know, addressing her concerns. But
Speaker 2: the fact that she even has concerns is like, again,
Speaker 2: more than The Godfather ever did.
Speaker 3: Absolutely like it's it's so yeah, and we'll talk about
Speaker 3: this movie is racism in a bit, yeah, but again
Speaker 3: it's like so not just good for the genre of
Speaker 3: mob movies that's so male dominated and like male perspective dominated,
Speaker 3: but also just like good for the storytelling of the
Speaker 3: movie that we get these scenes with her, because it's
Speaker 3: like I feel like for Karen, as much as a
Speaker 3: lot of guys would like to think their Henry Hill,
Speaker 3: I feel like most of us are coming in Karen
Speaker 3: to this movie like you don't know what you would
Speaker 3: do in that situation, Like you're fucking kidding yourself if
Speaker 3: you think you just know what you would do, you don't.
Speaker 3: And like seeing Karen have to grapple with that directly,
Speaker 3: and I do want to quote what she says. It's
Speaker 3: pretty it's pretty aggressive towards the other women. They had
Speaker 3: bad skin and too much makeup. I mean, they didn't
Speaker 3: look very good. They looked beat up, a bit aggressive.
Speaker 3: But it's like keeping in mind that she's coming from
Speaker 3: like a pretty Again, it's like boring isn't the right word,
Speaker 3: but like she's from a pretty ordinary, like middle class background,
Speaker 3: like she's not used to seeing women who look or
Speaker 3: talk like this, and she's being you know, judgy in
Speaker 3: her head. But then yeah, like she always like will
Speaker 3: express her concern to Henry, at least in the beginning,
Speaker 3: because it seems like she's going into this relationship thinking
Speaker 3: that they are mostly equals or as much as you
Speaker 3: could be at this time. But he's just like a liar.
Speaker 3: He's a bad fella.
Speaker 2: He's a bad fella, I mean, and he's cocky.
Speaker 3: I mean, I do believe he thinks he'll never go
Speaker 3: to jail in that scene. Oh yea, but that like
Speaker 3: sets I mean, which there's this shot later in the
Speaker 3: movie that I was just like, is so good or
Speaker 3: like made me think back to that scene when it's
Speaker 3: like the scene where Henry's about to go to jail
Speaker 3: and he's like at the bar like talking to all
Speaker 3: the people he's about to go to jail with, and
Speaker 3: she's sitting in the background of the scene and she's
Speaker 3: just like looking at him like she wants to snap
Speaker 3: his fucking neck because like now she has to raise
Speaker 3: their kids two kids, yeah, on her own for ten
Speaker 3: years or however long he's in fucking jail for and
Speaker 3: it's just I just like thought back to that scene
Speaker 3: off of like she doesn't even say anything in that scene,
Speaker 3: but just that one shot is like, Oh, yeah, he
Speaker 3: you know, full of shit, promised you he was never
Speaker 3: going to go to jail. There's no way, and now
Speaker 3: you have to raise two kids by yourself for the
Speaker 3: better part of a decade. It's just like, oh my Karen,
Speaker 3: my sweet Karen.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then one of the things, and maybe this
Speaker 2: is a whole separate discussion, but one of the things
Speaker 2: I appreciate about this movie, and you could make the
Speaker 2: argument that perhaps not enough was done in this regard
Speaker 2: either as far as like the movie leveling criticism against
Speaker 2: this lifestyle and the people in it and their horrible
Speaker 2: behavior and toxicity and all that stuff, because you know,
Speaker 2: hearing what a lot of the fans I have to say,
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem like they necessarily recognize the criticism all
Speaker 2: the time. But you know, I think that this movie
Speaker 2: does more to offer a critical commentary, you know, on
Speaker 2: the horrible things that they do, more so than The
Speaker 2: Godfather for sure. And one of the ways they do
Speaker 2: that is to show how horribly these men treat women. Yes,
Speaker 2: they are abusive, to women in every imaginable way. There's
Speaker 2: a scene that really struck me, and it's a quick moment,
Speaker 2: but they're at a Christmas party and.
Speaker 3: Listening and they're probably it's the only My only note
Speaker 3: is like they're not listening to Joe Peshi's album, which
Speaker 3: is so weird because I'm pretty sure he's at the
Speaker 3: party so he could just kind of start performing it.
Speaker 2: But whatever, he should karayoke his own song.
Speaker 3: But anyways, yes, Christmas.
Speaker 2: Party, right, Christmas party. Tommy has a girlfriend. I don't
Speaker 2: think we ever learned her name, and that might be
Speaker 2: the only scene we see her in. But Tommy says
Speaker 2: something to her like he's like, I gotta go over here.
Speaker 2: Don't look at anybody else, like don't basically saying don't
Speaker 2: look at any other men. And then she turns to
Speaker 2: the woman beside her and says, oh, he's so jealous.
Speaker 2: If I even look at someone else, he'll kill me.
Speaker 2: But her tone is very much like isn't it amazing
Speaker 2: how much he loves me and cares about me? And
Speaker 2: then the other woman responds with that's great, and like
Speaker 2: it's clear satire, you know, or it's just like clear
Speaker 2: like you're meant to watch this and like be horrified
Speaker 2: by their reactions to this, And again it's not the
Speaker 2: women's fault. Like women have historically been conditioned to feel
Speaker 2: this way about what a man's love and affection is
Speaker 2: supposed to look like. Right, So they're just responding to
Speaker 2: societal conditioning. But the movie is presenting this information as like,
Speaker 2: and isn't that horrible? Like that that's horrible for these
Speaker 2: women being so mistreated and abused by these men.
Speaker 3: Right, and and like that is what your conditioned to
Speaker 3: believe love looks like, which is a lot of like
Speaker 3: Karen's early stuff as well, Like exactly I was I
Speaker 3: think that the girlfriends are generally I actually was like
Speaker 3: not when the girlfriends were first introduced. I was sort
Speaker 3: of like, oh, no, are we about to just get
Speaker 3: like a bunch of like poorly written like bimbo stereo
Speaker 3: type characters, because I feel like the girlfriend quote unquote
Speaker 3: is often written that way. But again, Nick and Marty,
Speaker 3: they they give you I mean, and I think that,
Speaker 3: like I totally agree that that moment you just described
Speaker 3: at the Christmas party was like a pretty solid like
Speaker 3: moment of satire. And then I mean we don't need
Speaker 3: to pivot into this discussion all the way yet. But
Speaker 3: like Janice, who's Henry Is girlfriend who ends up it
Speaker 3: ends up becoming serious enough that he gets her an apartment.
Speaker 3: She sort of there's like kind of this secondary social
Speaker 3: scene that seems relegated strictly to people that know that
Speaker 3: they are the girlfriend of a married mobster. And you know,
Speaker 3: Karen is kept completely away from this world, even though
Speaker 3: she's well aware it exists and is getting increasingly upset
Speaker 3: about it. But I sort of was like, oh, is
Speaker 3: Jana's just going to be written off as like the
Speaker 3: bimbo stereotype and again justice for Bimbo's Bimbo's rule. But
Speaker 3: again you do get not as much inside. I think
Speaker 3: that there could have been more space for Janis in
Speaker 3: this story, and she does kind of like she's referenced
Speaker 3: a few other times, but she never really like she
Speaker 3: doesn't come back in a meaningful way. But you do
Speaker 3: get like a moment of insight into her struggle and
Speaker 3: her predicament in this story where you get the part
Speaker 3: of like, I mean, Henry uses the exact same time
Speaker 3: with Janie as he did with Karen, where he provides
Speaker 3: for her financially, and then when she gets in trouble
Speaker 3: at work, he beats the shit out of somebody because
Speaker 3: that's the only way he knows how to show love,
Speaker 3: because he's a broken person. So she already is kind
Speaker 3: of set up with the same degree of emotional abuse
Speaker 3: to some extent and or just at least control aspects
Speaker 3: that Karen is on top of knowing that she is
Speaker 3: supposed to be a secret and that scene between her
Speaker 3: and Karen, even though they never like speak face to face,
Speaker 3: and this doesn't pass the Bechel test because it's I mean,
Speaker 3: does it pass the Bechel tests with Karen yelling at
Speaker 3: you and you're just crying in your apartment afraid? I
Speaker 3: don't think so. But it's a meaningful interaction where Karen
Speaker 3: and this is like, you know, I just think, well,
Speaker 3: we'll get to this in a second. But like Karen is,
Speaker 3: you know, trying to scare and intimidate janis out of
Speaker 3: associa with Henry. Ever again, she's saying horrible things about her.
Speaker 3: She's threatening to tell the landlord that I quote unquote
Speaker 3: Whoror is living at this house, like she's sledshaming her.
Speaker 3: She's calling her horrible names, and Janie is just like
Speaker 3: sitting upstairs miserable in this house. That the only other
Speaker 3: time we've seen her in this house, she's been she's
Speaker 3: just like showing it off. She's like, Henry loves me
Speaker 3: so much, we have set so much sex here, blah
Speaker 3: blah blah. But then the only other time you see her,
Speaker 3: she's completely alone and she's scared and she's miserable, and
Speaker 3: it's sad, Like it's sad. That scene makes me so
Speaker 3: sad for both of those characters because it's the sort
Speaker 3: of thing where it's just like women need to unionize,
Speaker 3: like go upstairs, have a talk with Janie, and then
Speaker 3: both of you guys go kill Henry, you know, like
Speaker 3: let's get let's let's whack Henry. I understand why that
Speaker 3: doesn't happen in the movie, but like would have been fun.
Speaker 2: But Karen comes close to killing him or thinks about
Speaker 2: killing him, because.
Speaker 3: She's like Henry wasn't the star of the movie. I
Speaker 3: thought she would have done it right.
Speaker 2: So there's the scene where's Karen knows about Henry's infidelity.
Speaker 2: He's been neglecting her needs. He's just been a bad husband,
Speaker 2: and so you wonder why might Karen stay with him?
Speaker 2: And the movie offers us insight into that too, where
Speaker 2: she's pointing a gun at his face, and then her
Speaker 2: voiceover says like, you know, how could I hurt him?
Speaker 2: I couldn't even bring myself to leave him. The truth was,
Speaker 2: no matter how bad I felt, I was still very
Speaker 2: attracted to him. Why should I give him to someone else?
Speaker 2: Why should she win? And again that's like that feels
Speaker 2: like a simplification of what's going on, but you can imagine,
Speaker 2: like what's actually going on beneath the surface is like
Speaker 2: she is an abused spouse, and that takes a toll
Speaker 2: on people, and it seems like a lot of the
Speaker 2: abuse he's leveling at her is like you need me,
Speaker 2: like you, I'm the source of income here, Like what
Speaker 2: would you do without me? She needs his support the
Speaker 2: way that a lot of abused women in a relationship
Speaker 2: needs some form of support that their spouse is offering.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately in the same way that like Janice needs
Speaker 3: the support, right, yeah, I mean and that like that interiornary.
Speaker 3: So yeah, like she goes back and you really do
Speaker 3: think she might kill Henry, but also she knows, first
Speaker 3: of all, I do think that she loves him, which
Speaker 3: always makes being an abused partner that too, even worse. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but on top of that, like like you're saying, like
Speaker 3: if she kills him, everyone loses, Like she has to
Speaker 3: think of her children because her husband certainly isn't right.
Speaker 3: She has to think of herself, you know. And it's
Speaker 3: like if Henry's gone, how are they gonna survive? Even
Speaker 3: if they are generally happier, probably in the short term,
Speaker 3: but the long term, you know. And I understand, But
Speaker 3: also I do love that because when that scene happens
Speaker 3: between Karen and Janis, I was like, Okay, even if
Speaker 3: in the dynamics of this movie, I don't think that
Speaker 3: that is like, I don't think it was a thoughtless
Speaker 3: choice to have her do that, because I think showing,
Speaker 3: you know, an abused woman at the end of her rope,
Speaker 3: I think very often you see trying to phrase this
Speaker 3: correctly or like, but like, you know, how turning women
Speaker 3: on women in movies is a well worn trope, but
Speaker 3: it is based in something that is real and something
Speaker 3: that I like that women are so often put in
Speaker 3: competition with each other because we're conditioned to believe there's
Speaker 3: only room for so many and so.
Speaker 2: As we've discussed a number of times on the show.
Speaker 3: Right and so like that on top of the fact
Speaker 3: that she is already in this horrible relationship and now
Speaker 3: she's finding out that there's another person that she's been
Speaker 3: lied to about repeatedly. I understand, you know, and she
Speaker 3: has so little power in her relationship that of course,
Speaker 3: in her mind, it makes more sense to go to
Speaker 3: the only person who has less power than her in
Speaker 3: this dynamic, like, regardless of the gender of the person.
Speaker 3: I was like, it makes sense that she goes and
Speaker 3: tries to rip Janis's head off because she feels like
Speaker 3: she can't go to Henry. But then she does go
Speaker 3: to Henry and she almost blows his head off, And
Speaker 3: you're just like, well, that's what I mean when I
Speaker 3: say it's like, yeah, Janis like is not always kind
Speaker 3: to women, but like she's got enough rage to like
Speaker 3: spread around a fucking everybody like it. It doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like she has a particular issue with women. She's just
Speaker 3: like she's just surrounded by issues and that.
Speaker 2: Oh, so you said Janie, but you mean Karen.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, I mean I mean Karen. I mean Karen
Speaker 3: Kah yeah, yeah, yeah. Karen goes after Janis because Janis
Speaker 3: has less power than her, right, and Karen needs to
Speaker 3: feel like she has some sort of control over her life.
Speaker 3: And then she goes to Henry to try to wrest
Speaker 3: some control back from him, but she can't and she
Speaker 3: sort of knows that, and he definitely knows that, and
Speaker 3: so then he ends up beating her down anyways and
Speaker 3: intimidating her even more because he knows that he holds
Speaker 3: all the power in this relationship and that is like
Speaker 3: what abusers do, and it just like it's upsetting to
Speaker 3: watch play out, but it felt like everything made sense
Speaker 3: and I honestly like wasn't expecting the movie to like
Speaker 3: let Karen shove a gun in his face like that
Speaker 3: was like really cathartic and cool. And even though she
Speaker 3: quote unquote loses that and he does continue to cheat
Speaker 3: on her because the only time you hear about Janis
Speaker 3: again is when you find out that she's visiting him
Speaker 3: in prison.
Speaker 2: Right, and then she you know, rightfully calls Henrielle being like, look,
Speaker 2: I'm the one smuggling in all this crap for you,
Speaker 2: Like let her be the one who's raising your kids
Speaker 2: and smuggling all this shit in like, I'm doing all
Speaker 2: this labor emotional and HOWLD and otherwise for you, and
Speaker 2: you're giving me no gratitude and you're receiving visits from
Speaker 2: your girlfriend. And she's like very rightfully extremely pissed off.
Speaker 3: And she also says in that like in that scene,
Speaker 3: that she's like, also, no one talks to me anymore,
Speaker 3: Like she's lost her whole community because of how fucking
Speaker 3: sloppy and bad at his job. Fucking Henry is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's not even good at being a good fella. He's
Speaker 3: sad at being a good fella. Yeah, like I. And
Speaker 3: so she does get to get those moments, and then eventually,
Speaker 3: you know, after twenty five years, she fucking leaves him,
Speaker 3: and so it is like it's I don't know, I
Speaker 3: just I love that we get so much of her.
Speaker 3: And I know that, you know, not everyone is gonna
Speaker 3: love her character, but I think a woman of her generation,
Speaker 3: in her predicament, get in insights into what she was
Speaker 3: going through, into what the pressures on her were, and
Speaker 3: getting to see her fuck up. I just like thought
Speaker 3: it was really cool because I think the only thing
Speaker 3: about Karen that I was just like, Okay, I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously being cruel to Janice was not necessary, but I
Speaker 3: can't bring myself to judge her too harshly for it.
Speaker 3: I just wish that they had been in a social
Speaker 3: climate that would have encouraged them to talk to each other,
Speaker 3: because friends always get better when women.
Speaker 2: Talk to each other. Too, because she had grown accustomed
Speaker 2: to the mob life, which is riddled with violence, like her, now,
Speaker 2: her go to response to something is to respond with
Speaker 2: violence because, as she says in her voiceover, that became
Speaker 2: normal to her. So right, yeah, she responds to Janice
Speaker 2: and Henry with threats of violence.
Speaker 3: She's a she's a better good fellow than Harry.
Speaker 2: Uh but true.
Speaker 3: But the only, the only, but my my only like
Speaker 3: thing about And I don't think that the movie is
Speaker 3: like endorsing this behavior. It just like made me sad
Speaker 3: to see. Was how when Karen is in moments of
Speaker 3: like feeling desperate and needing to rest control back from
Speaker 3: Henry to some degree, she is not above weaponizing her
Speaker 3: own children. And that, like, I think that the movie
Speaker 3: is like very well aware that that's what she's doing,
Speaker 3: because there's that moment where it's like one shot but
Speaker 3: it's in the scene where Karen is first yelling at
Speaker 3: Henry about the fact that he clearly has a girlfriend,
Speaker 3: and you just get this long shot of their like
Speaker 3: three year old daughter watching this whole thing play out,
Speaker 3: and it's like, okay. So the movie also, unlike The
Speaker 3: Godfather again, is interested in how this really toxic, horrible
Speaker 3: relationship dynamic is going to affect their children, because of
Speaker 3: course it is. And then you see later when when
Speaker 3: Karen shows up at Janii's place, she brings both of
Speaker 3: her daughters. I think sort of as ponds to demonstrate like,
Speaker 3: this is why you need to get out of my life.
Speaker 3: He has children, you need to get the fuck away.
Speaker 3: And I think also, you know, unfortunately, I think in
Speaker 3: this genre sometimes why you would have children around is
Speaker 3: to like make sure a violent confrontation doesn't take place.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I like I think that that was like
Speaker 3: fucked up of Karen. If I was, if I was
Speaker 3: their kids, I would it would probably be coming up
Speaker 3: in therapy for.
Speaker 2: Me a bit again, therapy with with Karen. In the Sopranos. Sopranos,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Her name is their character's name is Jennifer in the show,
Speaker 3: but like, but in any case, like you can see
Speaker 3: how again I feel like, but I as much as
Speaker 3: that is bad for the fictional children, I think that
Speaker 3: that is a cool grounded choice by the movie to
Speaker 3: demonstrate a woman who feels she has no other option,
Speaker 3: and like, it doesn't make it morally okay, I don't
Speaker 3: think in the eyes of the movie either, because the
Speaker 3: movie will draw your attention to the kids several times
Speaker 3: when their parents are fighting to make it clear it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: kids obviously fucking notice their little sponges. But I think
Speaker 3: it's like, I thought it was a good choice to
Speaker 3: do that with Karen in that she's not the like
Speaker 3: selfless perfect mother character that we I think we'll often
Speaker 3: see in underwritten female characters, Like she's like not a
Speaker 3: perfect mother's She's not. I don't think she's a bad parent,
Speaker 3: but like, she's not a perfect mother, and you can
Speaker 3: still as if you were really love and empathize with
Speaker 3: her even though that is like clear, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Agree, Karen Gulls. I want to share a quote from
Speaker 2: a review about this movie from The New York Times
Speaker 2: published when it came out so nineteen ninety by Susan Linfield,
Speaker 2: entitled Goodfella's looks at the banality of mob life. It
Speaker 2: is speaking about the actor who plays Karen. So quote,
Speaker 2: Miss Brocco, despite having known mister de Niro and mister
Speaker 2: Scorsese for years through her husband, the actor Harvey Kitel,
Speaker 2: says she found the shoot an emotionally difficult one because
Speaker 2: she was playing the lone woman character in a very brutal,
Speaker 2: very male world. And then this review shares a quote
Speaker 2: from Lorraine Bronco that goes as follows, if I didn't
Speaker 2: make my work important, it would probably end up on
Speaker 2: the cutting room floor. Marty said to me, I know
Speaker 2: you think I only make men's movies, but I really
Speaker 2: love this character Karen. But I think if push came
Speaker 2: to shove, if the performance wasn't there, he would have
Speaker 2: the film more to Ray and the boys. So I
Speaker 2: felt a little bit of extra pressure on me. So
Speaker 2: totally see her, like concerns are not unfounded, Like yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean so obviously she's just speaking to how as
Speaker 2: the one female character in the movie, she felt all
Speaker 2: this extra pressure to like, if I don't do an incredible, amazing,
Speaker 2: fantastic job, my part is in danger of like being
Speaker 2: scaled way back on and like cut out of the narrative,
Speaker 2: because you hear that all the time, where like an
Speaker 2: actor is in a movie but then they're like, whoops,
Speaker 2: they cut my scenes, so I'm actually not in the movie.
Speaker 2: And that's something that like, I mean, women have discussed,
Speaker 2: you know, dealing with all the time, people of color
Speaker 2: have discussed dealing like the pressure to be the absolute
Speaker 2: best at a thing, to just be on the same
Speaker 2: level as like cis hat white men who are pretty
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not calling Robert your own raliota mediocre, but.
Speaker 3: Like what if you were, though, that would be wild,
Speaker 3: but like some fucking chumps, But.
Speaker 2: Just like the pressure to like give like two hundred
Speaker 2: percent because marginalized people have to put in so much
Speaker 2: more effort to prove that they are just as talented
Speaker 2: and to be taken as seriously as their straight white
Speaker 2: guy counterparts, right, And I think that.
Speaker 3: Like honestly, like in the context of that, there is
Speaker 3: and this does kind of tie back to this, So
Speaker 3: I feel like that is like symptomatic of a bunch
Speaker 3: of things where at first is like, oh, yeah, that
Speaker 3: happens a lot when there's like one female character basically
Speaker 3: or like one non white character where it's like all
Speaker 3: of the pressure is on you and you know, and
Speaker 3: I can't speak to like what these specific filmmakers think,
Speaker 3: but I feel like inherently they are aware that their
Speaker 3: target audience is not as interested in Karen as they
Speaker 3: are in Henry, and so it's easier to make those cuts.
Speaker 3: And already there's kind of this, you know, at least
Speaker 3: tokenizing adjacent effect to how Lorraine Broco is in this movie.
Speaker 3: And I feel like it also speaks to like the
Speaker 3: writing of like they're actually because like, as you're talking
Speaker 3: about that, I was like, oh, I think that you
Speaker 3: actually could scale back Karen's part kind of significantly and
Speaker 3: have the events play out exactly the same.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Pretty close.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So as much as this movie does to show
Speaker 3: you Karen's perspective, that just like demonstrates that this is
Speaker 3: this is still ultimately the you know, Henry's story, because
Speaker 3: you could cut out a lot, Like there's a lot
Speaker 3: of things that in the same way that like if
Speaker 3: you added forty minutes to The Godfather, which you should not,
Speaker 3: but like if you added forty minutes of the Godfather,
Speaker 3: that's really like a meaty, in depth look at what's
Speaker 3: going on with Connie and Kay. It would be amazing,
Speaker 3: it would have elevated that movie, but it wouldn't have
Speaker 3: changed the fact that the men in the story are
Speaker 3: clearly the drivers of the story because it's.
Speaker 2: A story about godfathers. It's these are stories about the goodfellas,
Speaker 2: not the good ladies.
Speaker 3: He'll be I think that's like not a crisis, but
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, that's that's an extraordinary pressure on Laurien
Speaker 3: and Bronco, and like she obviously rose to the occasion,
Speaker 3: but that kind of pressure certainly doesn't help. And and
Speaker 3: the thing that I that I liked about Goodfella again
Speaker 3: that like The Godfather, doesn't quite do even though it's
Speaker 3: like a little it is funny because it's like Henry Hill.
Speaker 3: The whole end of the movie is kind of like
Speaker 3: how history will forget him, which is funny because obviously
Speaker 3: it didn't because I'm watching Goodfellas, so it didn't. But
Speaker 3: I like that the kind of core message, unlike The Godfather,
Speaker 3: where it's you know, like presented in this very Shakespearean
Speaker 3: way of like history you will remember these great men,
Speaker 3: you know, like it's all presented in this very grandiose way,
Speaker 3: but Goodfellas takes a very different tack where it draws
Speaker 3: your attention to the end. It like, this lifestyle is
Speaker 3: very fleeting, you can very easily be forgotten, and like
Speaker 3: hopefully you had a good time because and like hopefully
Speaker 3: it was all worth it for you, because this is
Speaker 3: not the sort of position that history will remember you as.
Speaker 3: And I just like that, I mean whatever. I know
Speaker 3: there's room for both approaches, but I appreciate where Goodfellas
Speaker 3: kind of like tackles it from where it also just
Speaker 3: like draws your attention to like how kind of pathetic
Speaker 3: you can view Henry as at the end, because he's
Speaker 3: in the process of doing the one thing Daddy de
Speaker 3: Niro told him not to.
Speaker 2: Do, don't write out your friends and keep your mouth shut.
Speaker 3: And so he is. He is like going against what
Speaker 3: he's claimed his whole life was about. He's being called
Speaker 3: a rat in court, which is fucking brutal, but even
Speaker 3: then he's still like I feel like Henry is like
Speaker 3: such a and and it's it's tricky because you're, like
Speaker 3: I could totally see how you could be a you know,
Speaker 3: fifteen year old boy and completely miss the fucking point
Speaker 3: of what's going on here, But I just thought it
Speaker 3: was like so cool and well done. Of like Henry
Speaker 3: was always about the romantic aspects of the lifestyle. That's
Speaker 3: why he wanted to do it when he was a kid.
Speaker 3: Was probably because he like saw some neighborhood guys saw
Speaker 3: a couple movies and was like, I want to do that,
Speaker 3: And like he never even fully took in the message.
Speaker 3: He only wanted the surface level of the lifestyle and
Speaker 3: he wanted the respecting, he wanted the money. But when
Speaker 3: it actually came to like the one core like quote
Speaker 3: unquote more holistic value that this group has, he doesn't
Speaker 3: have that, like, and so he is a rat and
Speaker 3: he is kind of a fucking chump and he like
Speaker 3: sells everyone out to like he never even really got it,
Speaker 3: Like he wasn't even a real mobster because he didn't
Speaker 3: follow rule number one. And but he's like going over
Speaker 3: this all the romantic aspects that initially pulled him to
Speaker 3: this lifestyle until the very very end in a way
Speaker 3: that like I think if I have seen this movie
Speaker 3: when I was young, like a teenager, I would I
Speaker 3: wouldn't have taken it in maybe, but like that.
Speaker 2: Last scene, I was like, oh, he's like pathetic, Like
Speaker 2: he's kind of like just loser, alert.
Speaker 3: A fucking loser, right, Like it's like he's he's a
Speaker 3: he's a bad good fella.
Speaker 2: When I watched the movie, I'm like Henry Hill, loser,
Speaker 2: rat coward, Tommy the most fragile male ego I've ever
Speaker 2: seen on a person, and.
Speaker 3: Will weaponize it against women and people of color, especially
Speaker 3: like he is he is like very misogynist and racist
Speaker 3: while also presenting as inherently likable, which I think is
Speaker 3: a really really difficult tone to strike while still clearly
Speaker 3: condemning the views of the character that.
Speaker 2: And I see Jimmy and I'm like he was gonna
Speaker 2: have his friends, his wife murdered because like loyalty means
Speaker 2: nothing to these people. It's all about I mean to me,
Speaker 2: Like Jimmy is like just a capitalist through and through,
Speaker 2: Like he will choose money over anything over like connections
Speaker 2: with other humans, who cares as long as I'm rich
Speaker 2: and I can steal stuff and become richer.
Speaker 3: Right, he might shed a tear here and there, but
Speaker 3: it's not gonna stop him from right whack and Tommy right, So,
Speaker 3: like all these men are like pathetic, Yeah, and the
Speaker 3: movie seems to recognize that and put that on display,
Speaker 3: and I would imagine and again it's like, I haven't
Speaker 3: read Wise Guys, right, but I would imagine that like
Speaker 3: a lot of the and again, like Listeners, if you
Speaker 3: have done more reading into this than we have, which
Speaker 3: wouldn't be hard. We hate books. But I guess just
Speaker 3: off of the perception of these two movies. And I
Speaker 3: don't mind pitting these movies against each other because who cares, like,
Speaker 3: but you know, technically both of these movies were based
Speaker 3: in some degree of research, but I feel like you
Speaker 3: can tell which movie is based on source material of
Speaker 3: like a guy who wrote fiction and was really into
Speaker 3: the mob and a journalist who was reporting on the
Speaker 3: mob and doesn't necessarily have these romantic connections to mob guys.
Speaker 3: And I feel like that's why, Like, I mean, one
Speaker 3: of the reasons, because I feel like Karen being very
Speaker 3: much at the center of the story for a lot
Speaker 3: of the movie is another huge reason that I prefer
Speaker 3: Goodfellas to The Godfather. But I also like that it
Speaker 3: just like feels like a more grounded way, like if
Speaker 3: the goal is to like show mob life versus glorifying
Speaker 3: mob life, I feel like Goodfellas does a far better job.
Speaker 3: Not perfect because obviously, like I mean, a lot of
Speaker 3: mostly men still manage to take away the completely wrong
Speaker 3: message from it. But I also like that it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it seems to be based in actual reporting versus like
Speaker 3: observation that like borders on admiration right on Mario Puzzo's part,
Speaker 3: And the fact that it's like I watched this bravely
Speaker 3: on HBO Max.
Speaker 2: Did you.
Speaker 3: Did you watch the Little Marty featurette before that they had?
Speaker 2: I did, but it was two weeks ago, okay, and
Speaker 2: I didn't rewatch it, so it's not very fresh. I
Speaker 2: can't remember exactly what he was saying.
Speaker 3: So I rewatched it this morning, and I really, first
Speaker 3: of all, what a cute what a cute little guy,
Speaker 3: just truly, you just gotta love this guy. But on
Speaker 3: top of that, he spoke to like a lot of
Speaker 3: it's like a ten minute I think feature, and at
Speaker 3: the very beginning it's like a TCM thing, but he
Speaker 3: spoke to, you know, kind of his personal connection to
Speaker 3: this story, which I feel like also really helps in
Speaker 3: unders just like understanding what the filmmaker's motivation was in
Speaker 3: making it where it's like this character, like Henry Hill's,
Speaker 3: I believe, like a little bit older than Scorsese, but
Speaker 3: like Scorsese grew up in Brooklyn, he also grew up
Speaker 3: very very fascinated in buying into the romance of the
Speaker 3: mob life in the same way that Henry did. And
Speaker 3: so it's like he's able to kind of like come
Speaker 3: from a very personal place and like explore it. And also,
Speaker 3: I mean, just going back to what you were just
Speaker 3: saying about these men ultimately being pathetic, take it all
Speaker 3: the way through. So okay, I have this quote because
Speaker 3: it's like, by the end of the movie, Henry is
Speaker 3: not only acting very very selfishly, he because of his lifestyle,
Speaker 3: has fallen into addiction. He has fallen into repeatedly putting
Speaker 3: his loved ones at risk in a very selfish way
Speaker 3: and a way that he doesn't even seem to realize
Speaker 3: he's doing. And just like he's just completely come undone
Speaker 3: as a person. Here's what Marty has to say. Quote,
Speaker 3: the main character of the film is the lifestyle itself,
Speaker 3: and that brings some certain things to the four Lots
Speaker 3: of discussions about glamorizing in a sense of this lifestyle.
Speaker 3: But if you see how it proceeds, then you see
Speaker 3: ultimately the final reckoning, and you see that it's not
Speaker 3: something to be desired. Yet I wanted to explore what
Speaker 3: is the attraction to these people and why are you watching?
Speaker 3: Which I think is like a very valid place to
Speaker 3: come from. Is like, because he's right, you do see,
Speaker 3: you know, the more glamorous aspects of the mob. You
Speaker 3: see the you know, I kind of like that it's
Speaker 3: sloppier and like less organized than it is in The Godfather.
Speaker 3: But like, but you also see the fact that everyone involved,
Speaker 3: their lives are completely fucking destroyed, and it's kind of
Speaker 3: implied that it was all for basically nothing by the end.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, because like I think most people would
Speaker 2: look at certain aspects of that lifestyle and think against.
Speaker 2: Certain aspects of it are glamorous, like the just.
Speaker 3: Like Karen did when she started danting in exactly, like.
Speaker 2: You know, just the like the lavishness of it, the
Speaker 2: access to nice, expensive things like those things are seductive
Speaker 2: to a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Like you know, right, So it's like all fleeting and
Speaker 3: right and yeah.
Speaker 2: So the movie's agenda, I think is to be like, sure,
Speaker 2: we can all understand why someone would be seduced by this.
Speaker 2: But remember how there's all this.
Speaker 3: Fella don't be if you're not, if you're gonna do.
Speaker 3: It's a cautionary tale against being a good fella exactly.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think it is like effective in that way.
Speaker 3: I get why people watch it the wrong way, but
Speaker 3: I'm just like, well, hut, it's kind of not Marty's problem,
Speaker 3: I don't have to say, but like, but also, I
Speaker 3: mean it is that that is also symptomatic of like
Speaker 3: being a filmmaker, but also just like existing in a
Speaker 3: larger movie culture that is always going to prioritize men
Speaker 3: at the center of stories, because that is like where
Speaker 3: that problem kind of stems from. Is you know, if
Speaker 3: every single movie you've ever made is centered around a
Speaker 3: male character, of course you're at a higher risk for
Speaker 3: you know, audience members with not I don't know a
Speaker 3: way to sound it. That doesn't sound like fucking like
Speaker 3: coastal elite little bit, but like you know, like someone
Speaker 3: who's not gonna like be thinking super super hard about
Speaker 3: like the subtext, like, of course it's gonna be higher
Speaker 3: at risk for that to happen, which I think is
Speaker 3: why it happens to mainly filmmakers who make movies about
Speaker 3: men regardless of their gender, because you see that in
Speaker 3: I don't know, like even a lot of like copaganda.
Speaker 3: Copaganda is made by people of all genders, and you know,
Speaker 3: like COVID. So anyway, I mean the way that there
Speaker 3: are still like.
Speaker 2: Dipshits who think that Elon Musk is awesome because he's
Speaker 2: rich and powerful, and it's like, well, no, take one
Speaker 2: look at anything he's ever said and done, and then
Speaker 2: you realize what a monster he is. But like, because
Speaker 2: I mean again, society conditions people to think that money
Speaker 2: and power are awesome. So if you're able to achieve
Speaker 2: those things, that equals awesome. So people are gonna bring
Speaker 2: their own biases into things and interpret things in a
Speaker 2: way that I think is funked up.
Speaker 3: And I think that I think that that Marty and
Speaker 3: Nick I think that they did what they could to provide.
Speaker 3: Like I think that all the puzzle pieces are there,
Speaker 3: and whether you choose to connect them is kind of
Speaker 3: like that's you bringing your own shit to the table,
Speaker 3: which is part of the whatever. Yeah, silent contract of
Speaker 3: watching a movie. Doesn't that sound fun watching a movie?
Speaker 3: It's like silent a silent social contract scary. Can we
Speaker 3: talk about the casual racism that appears in this movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, we did bring this up on The Godfather Episode two,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's definitely worth repeating. Where all the main
Speaker 2: characters in this movie are to some degree of Italian descent,
Speaker 2: and particularly the Tommy character complains about people being prejudiced
Speaker 2: toward Italians.
Speaker 3: There's also a discussion of people being prejudiced towards Jewish
Speaker 3: peace because Karen is from a Jewish family.
Speaker 2: Right, But then you'll have someone like Tommy and various
Speaker 2: other characters turning around and dropping the N word talking
Speaker 2: about Jewish people and disparaging ways murdering.
Speaker 3: The only black character who appears in the entire fucking movie.
Speaker 2: You have Samuel L. Jackson in the movie. He's in
Speaker 2: there for two seconds, like could you use him? Well,
Speaker 2: are you serious?
Speaker 3: I gasped. I did not know he was in this movie.
Speaker 3: I was like, well, that has to be like that's
Speaker 3: like pre famous, right, pre famous?
Speaker 2: And j was I think or like he was up
Speaker 2: and coming, But yeah, not certainly not the name that
Speaker 2: he is now. But yeah, he's in the movie for
Speaker 2: like maybe a total of fifteen seconds. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 2: violently brutally murdered. I would.
Speaker 3: I think the only thing you can say for that
Speaker 3: scene is that you don't see it, like it happens
Speaker 3: just out of frame. But like, even so, it's fucking.
Speaker 2: It's it's still really hard to it's still very brutal,
Speaker 2: like you see like the blood splatter, it's like it's
Speaker 2: ugh and like aside from his character and I think
Speaker 2: like a doctor who gives valume to Henry Hill. Yes,
Speaker 2: this is a version of New York where there are
Speaker 2: almost no people of color living and working there, or
Speaker 2: at very.
Speaker 3: Least the movie has no interest in showing it. And
Speaker 3: like I again am like I wonder how pulled from
Speaker 3: historical precedent sequences like that are because it's it also
Speaker 3: is like, you know, dishonest to portray New Yorkers in
Speaker 3: the sixties and seventies as being extremely tolerant, or as
Speaker 3: non black New Yorkers as being extremely tolerant, but this
Speaker 3: movie like doesn't really have any interest in exploring any
Speaker 3: of it. I think it's almost like Tommy's mask off racism.
Speaker 3: I think more so than any other character like repeat,
Speaker 3: because there's is more of like a character trait to
Speaker 3: show you how insecure he is, not something that the
Speaker 3: movie's actually interested in exploring, because if they were interested
Speaker 3: in exploring it, there would be a black character in
Speaker 3: the movie who's in the movie for longer than a minute,
Speaker 3: right exactly.
Speaker 2: So it is like it.
Speaker 3: I was frustrated with like the use of you know,
Speaker 3: realistic for the time racism, but like the I was
Speaker 3: frustrated that, like, you know, racism was used as a
Speaker 3: shorthand to be like, well, this guy isn't as friendly
Speaker 3: as he seems. He's very racist, and you're like, okay,
Speaker 3: Like I don't know. I did think it was I guess,
Speaker 3: I don't know. It stuck with me. I guess that
Speaker 3: In the first scene with the girlfriends, Tommy's girlfriend mentions that,
Speaker 3: like I think she says, like, oh, I saw you know,
Speaker 3: Sammy Davis Junior Reform and he's so handsome, Like I
Speaker 3: totally understand, like why you know, people have a crush
Speaker 3: on him and stuff, and Tommy, being both racist and
Speaker 3: deeply insecure, goes nuts about this and says a series
Speaker 3: of racist things like that I don't even care to repeat.
Speaker 3: But I thought it was interesting that the movie chose
Speaker 3: to like hang on that moment, because it does make
Speaker 3: it clear, like I don't even know how to feel
Speaker 3: about it, but like it does make it clear how
Speaker 3: like his like male fragility and white fragility are like
Speaker 3: overlapping in that scene in a way that is like
Speaker 3: uncomfortable for people at the table. But no one says anything.
Speaker 3: And it's and and the girlfriend because I mean, I
Speaker 3: don't know, like I was assuming because of her, you know,
Speaker 3: lack of power in this dynamic has to like back
Speaker 3: off of a very innocuous comment about a hot man being.
Speaker 2: Hot right exactly.
Speaker 3: And I don't know. I just thought it was interesting
Speaker 3: that that the movie, because it's not like an important well,
Speaker 3: it could have been cut. So I just thought it
Speaker 3: was interesting that it was left as a way to
Speaker 3: like show you a very specific way that Tommy's different toxic,
Speaker 3: insecure qualities were like intersecting in this weird moment.
Speaker 2: I don't know for sure, Let's see, do you have
Speaker 2: anything else you wanna touch on? I do appreciate that
Speaker 2: the movie shows you how corrupt and easily bought off cops.
Speaker 3: Yes, I also like that. I don't think I have
Speaker 3: really very much else to say about it. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's ultimately I liked how one dog was
Speaker 3: facing east and the other dog is facing west.
Speaker 2: I wrote in my notes Feminist Icon Tommy's Mom's painting
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: True, which was apparently Nick Poleggio's mom's painting.
Speaker 1: I really liked.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of like very sweet personal touches
Speaker 3: that you're just like, you gotta love Marty. Both his
Speaker 3: parents are in the movie his Mother's Sweetheart.
Speaker 2: Who does his dad play?
Speaker 3: I didn't recognize it in the movie, but he plays
Speaker 3: Charles Scorsese plays Vinny, which it could be fucking anybody
Speaker 3: who knows, But I think that that's like a thing
Speaker 3: for Scorsese, as his parents are in almost all of
Speaker 3: his movies for as long as they're alive. Like, it's
Speaker 3: very very sweet. Yeah, because it's if you look at
Speaker 3: if you look at Charles Scorsese's IMDb Wikipedia page, it's
Speaker 3: he's in Taxi Driver, he is in Raging Bull, He's
Speaker 3: in King of Comedy. He's in Muppets Take Manhattan. I
Speaker 3: don't even know why he's in that one.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of Muppet crossovers. Also, Yeah, and he's
Speaker 2: in Moonstruck.
Speaker 3: Why is he in moonstruck, like he's like, you know,
Speaker 3: he's Italian in New York, plasta meAll canon. Like, I
Speaker 3: just think it's very I just think that that's like
Speaker 3: yet another way that you're like, what a sweetye pie.
Speaker 2: Also, well, speaking of some production things people who were
Speaker 2: in or worked on the movie, this movie has an
Speaker 2: editor who is a woman, Thelma scoon Maker love that
Speaker 2: maybe how you pronounce it, And she was nominated for
Speaker 2: an Academy Award for the editing on this movie.
Speaker 3: She's a bit of a legend. She's Martin Scorsese's go
Speaker 3: to editor to this day.
Speaker 2: And the editing in this movie is really solid. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so shouts out Thelma. The production designer is a woman,
Speaker 2: Krista z or Zia, and a woman was the executive
Speaker 2: producer on this movie, Barbara Dafina, Which, you know, we
Speaker 2: just tend to mention these things because those are roles
Speaker 2: often that men occupy to this day, especially on like
Speaker 2: major Hollywood productions. So cool that you've got a handful
Speaker 2: of very major roles occupied by women. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: totally agree. I mean that the editing in this movie
Speaker 2: is wild. There's so many cuts. It's so much like
Speaker 2: I just got stressed out watching because I was like
Speaker 2: someone was in the trenches.
Speaker 3: But yeah, she did. Did she win?
Speaker 2: She did not win. The only this movie was nominated
Speaker 2: for six Academy Awards, The only one did it received
Speaker 2: was for Joe Peschi's Supporting Actor.
Speaker 3: And I think, okay, so does this movie pass the
Speaker 3: Bechdel test?
Speaker 2: It does not unless you count one dog facing east
Speaker 2: and one dog facing west. It's passing the Bechdel test,
Speaker 2: which in a way just got back to each other there.
Speaker 3: I don't think that passes thet all fine.
Speaker 2: There is very little in the way of women interacting
Speaker 2: in this movie, aside from that one scene where it's
Speaker 2: a bunch of the Mob wives mostly gossiping with each other.
Speaker 2: Because women be gossiping and there might.
Speaker 3: Be a stray. I mean it's possible, because there's possible
Speaker 3: there's a stray interaction. I would say spiritually it doesn't
Speaker 3: because it's like, yeah, I agree, Mob, Wi've seen you
Speaker 3: have a scene where I may have caught like there
Speaker 3: there's like maybe a single exchange inside of Karen talking
Speaker 3: to her mother that passes, but they're mostly talking about her.
Speaker 2: Marriage, about Henry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then she screams into uh, like the intercom
Speaker 3: at Janie's apartment, but Janie is crying. Is it incretively important? Yes,
Speaker 3: but it is all about Henry. I don't think we
Speaker 3: ever see her like have a conversation with her daughters.
Speaker 3: I kind of thought, honestly that because there was that
Speaker 3: lingering shot on their oldest daughter watching them fight, that
Speaker 3: maybe the daughters would have just like appeared a little
Speaker 3: more meaningfully later on. But it's not a big criticism.
Speaker 3: I just sort of thought that this movie does not
Speaker 3: really care about the children, no and b well, and
Speaker 3: to be fair, neither do their parents, so it's fair point.
Speaker 3: So yeah, no, I do not think this movie passes
Speaker 3: the Bechdel test, at least not the way we play it.
Speaker 3: But our nipple scale. Though the nipple scale, oh boy,
Speaker 3: you know, I.
Speaker 2: Want to do a split down the middle for this one.
Speaker 2: It might seem I like the cheating, but I'm gonna
Speaker 2: give it two point five nipples. And because like comparing
Speaker 2: it to a movie like The Godfather, it's doing a
Speaker 2: lot more as far as characterizing the women Slash mostly
Speaker 2: just that one woman of Karen, and giving the audience
Speaker 2: insight into her feelings, her perspective, all the things that
Speaker 2: she's dealing with and all of the things that the
Speaker 2: movie The Godfather did not bother to do because it
Speaker 2: just clearly did not give a shit about the women
Speaker 2: who occupy this world. Now this movie seems to care
Speaker 2: a lot more about that, but it's ultimately still a
Speaker 2: story about the good Fellas. Of you to say, you know,
Speaker 2: you might not know it, but Goodfellas is about the Goodfellas.
Speaker 2: But they're bad, Kaitlin, So they're bad, and the movie
Speaker 2: is like it's offering criticism about the Goodfellas and actually
Speaker 2: maybe saying that they're not goodfellas, that they are perhaps
Speaker 2: bad fellas. Guy, But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: there's still only one woman that the movie has any
Speaker 2: real concern about. Uh, still still focuses on the men.
Speaker 2: I don't know, just uh, you know, it's it's a
Speaker 2: step in the right direction, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I view it as kind of like in
Speaker 3: the genre of like it's I mean, it's like a
Speaker 3: super myopic genre right where it's like only interested in
Speaker 3: a very very very specific group of men, and it
Speaker 3: doesn't really stray out of the myopic focus. But like
Speaker 3: of the movies that we've covered that have this myopic focus.
Speaker 3: It does the most and gets the most mileage out
Speaker 3: of that myopic focus because obviously there's a ton of
Speaker 3: people excluded when the focus is this specific, right, but
Speaker 3: this is but this is the most I've seen of
Speaker 3: like taking interest in everyone in this myopic focus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which isn't to say it's perfect, right exactly, so
Speaker 2: it's complicated, but even so, I'll give it two and
Speaker 2: a half apples. I'll give one nipple to the dog
Speaker 2: that's facing east. I'll give one nipple to the dog
Speaker 2: that's facing west. And then that's not fair. I'll give
Speaker 2: one nipple to Karen. I'll give one nipple to Tommy's
Speaker 2: mom aka Missus Scorsese, who's just giving the performance of
Speaker 2: a lifetime. Her whole thing is that whole scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, amazing is that.
Speaker 2: She took some UCB classes if I've ever seen it,
Speaker 2: Oh boy, did she? I love that her whole thing?
Speaker 2: I mean, I love I think it's funny that her
Speaker 2: whole thing is Tommy. Why don't you find a wife
Speaker 2: and settle down, like your friend Henry kays, Like, mom
Speaker 2: too busy fucking a different woman every night, Leave me alone.
Speaker 3: Wait, till I tell my friend McCaulay about this. I
Speaker 3: like to think that Joe Pesci would be on set.
Speaker 3: This is like so fake, but this is like I
Speaker 3: just heard of Hollywood today. I think that Joe Pesci
Speaker 3: would be on set a Good Fellas from eight am
Speaker 3: until one pm, and then he'd drive over to home
Speaker 3: alone and be slipping and sliding around for the rest
Speaker 3: of the day.
Speaker 2: Wow, he's a busy guy that he's got a lot
Speaker 2: on his plate.
Speaker 3: Bless his heart.
Speaker 2: So okay, So one nipple, Karen, one nipple to Tommy's mom,
Speaker 2: and I'll give my half nipple to feminist icon the
Speaker 2: Dog Painting. I'm gonna go.
Speaker 3: Two and a half as well. Like we've been talking
Speaker 3: about this whole time, you know, like as far as
Speaker 3: a mob movie that focuses on the Italian American mob
Speaker 3: in the mid twentieth century, of which there are so
Speaker 3: many movies, this is my favorite one that I've seen.
Speaker 3: But also if you're a listener and you have seen
Speaker 3: one that you like even more, I would be curious
Speaker 3: to see. Honestly, I might not watch it. I feel
Speaker 3: like I feel like I get it, But I actually
Speaker 3: really did enjoy this movie. I think that, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're stacking these movies against each other, which is
Speaker 3: like sort of kind of what we've been doing this month,
Speaker 3: intentionally or not, you know, I if you've got to
Speaker 3: have two white guys coming at this material, I feel
Speaker 3: far better about Scorsese and a man that Nora Evron
Speaker 3: deems worthy of love of then of the other team. However,
Speaker 3: I do think that both movies are really, really good.
Speaker 3: I understand why they hold their place in history. I
Speaker 3: still want my Connie and Kay Rosenkranz and Gildenstarter Dead movie.
Speaker 3: I'm giving this movie two and a half nipples because
Speaker 3: I think that you made an excellent point at the
Speaker 3: end that there were women meaningfully involved behind the camera,
Speaker 3: which you don't hear a lot about to this day.
Speaker 3: This is this movie over thirty years old. I think,
Speaker 3: you know Marty, you know he's got a shit together.
Speaker 3: So give it two and a half. I'm gonna give
Speaker 3: one to Karen, and I'm gonna give one too Marty's mother,
Speaker 3: and then I'll give my last half to Joe Pesh
Speaker 3: saying oh shit.
Speaker 2: And then getting his head blown off. That's the Uppis folks.
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Speaker 3: And we'll see you next week with a brand new episode.
Speaker 3: Bye bye bye.
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