Let’s rip the band-aid off. You ready? Okay. Goodfellas co-writer and “Wiseguy” author Nicholas Pileggi is developing a television prequel based on Martin Scorsese’s 1990 classic — wait for it — Goodfellas.
I hear your groanw and I understand them, but “I got to admit the truth,” I like the idea.
With Scorsese on board, SlashFilm.com did the leg work to report Pileggi’s intentions to bring the young goodfellas into our homes.
“Of course, you can’t pick up from Goodfellas, since we murdered everybody, or rather, everybody was murdered! There’s nobody left,” Pileggi said. “But I think we’re going to figure out a way to do the early years – sort of a prequel.”
Like many, Goodfellas is among my all-time favorite films. Unlike many, I don’t scoff at the idea of classics being re-imagined. “Normal people don’t act like this,” but as someone who is into minutiae, almost to a fault, I’m pleased with the possibilities to inject more creative fiction into a surreal, mobster reality.
Scenes I’d like to see (in no particular order):
- Young Tommy shining Billy Batts’ shoes.
- Young Henry and Young Tommy delivering their first mobster beatdown after a neighborhood kid calls wheelchair-bound Michael Hill “a schmuck on wheels.”
- The day young Henry goes to the cab stand for a job.
- The buildup that led to Young Henry pouring gasoline into Cadillac windows and lighting the match.
- Young Johnny Two-Times on his first date: “I’m gonna give you a kiss, give you a kiss.”
- Mentions of “going to the bank” immediately followed by airport robberies.
- Jimmy Conway’s first hit and rise to thief supreme, including how he organized truck robberies and learning which cops he could bribe.
- The rise of Paulie Cicero in East New York, depicting him as a fast-moving criminal before not having to move fast for anybody.
- Random appearances by a young Stacks Edwards all around the city, playing guitar with his band.
- Frank Carbone’s first haircut. Also, constant references to him being cold, foreshadowing the discovery of his body in the meat truck.
- Morrie at the racetrack, constantly scheming in and out of his gambling debts, with his wigs coming off at the wrong time.
- Sonny Bunz opening his first restaurant.
- Spider always looming in the background, glaring at Tommy.
- Spider’s “family of rats” exposed more explicitly as informants.
Read more
