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