The first time I saw “GoodFellas,” on a rented Blockbuster videotape in 1991, I was in a daze as the final credits rolled. If I had been a cartoon character, I would have had stars dancing around my head like Wile E. Coyote. I turned to my girlfriend and said, “What’d you think?”
“Boy movie,” she declared — and I knew our relationship was doomed.
Just kidding. (We split up because I was a jerk.) But women don’t get “GoodFellas.” It’s not really a crime drama, like “The Godfather.” It’s more of a male fantasy picture — “Entourage” with guns instead of swimming pools, the Rat Pack minus tuxedos.
“GoodFellas,” which starting next week will have a 25th anniversary showing at the Film Forum on Houston Street, and whose 25th anniversary Blu-ray DVD just hit the streets, takes place in a world guys dream about. Way down deep in the reptile brain, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy the Gent (Robert De Niro) and Tommy (Joe Pesci) are exactly what guys want to be: lazy but powerful, deadly but funny, tough, unsentimental and devoted above all to their brothers — a small group of guys who will always have your back. Women sense that they are irrelevant to this fantasy, and it bothers them.
The wiseguys never have to work (the three friends never exert themselves except occasionally to do something fun, like steal a tractor-trailer truck), which frees them up to spend the days and nights doing what guys love above all else: sitting around with the gang, busting each other’s balls.
Ball-busting means cheerfully insulting one another, preferably in the presence of lots of drinks and cigars and card games. (The “GoodFellas” guys are always at the card table, just as the Rat Pack were, while the “Entourage” guys love video games.) Women (except silent floozies) cannot be present for ball-busting because women are the sensitivity police: They get offended, protest that someone’s not being fair, refuse to laugh at vicious put-downs. In the male fantasy, all of this is unforgivable — too serious, too boring. Deal another hand, pour another drink.
To a woman, the “GoodFellas” are lowlifes. To guys, they’re hilarious, they’re heroes. They rule the roost. From a young age, Henry finds his family’s parking space is always kept free, even though they don’t have a car. He has more money than his dad. As he puts it, “To us, those goody-goody people who worked s - - -ty jobs for bum paychecks, who took the subway to work every day and worried about their bills, were dead. They were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something, we just took it.” The fact that guns are involved — that, at any moment, anyone could get shot for any reason — just makes the stakes higher, the fantasy more exciting.
When the “Sex and the City” girls sit around at brunch, they’re a tightly knit clique — but their rule is to always be sympathetic and supportive as each describes her problems, usually revolving around the men in her life.
As “GoodFellas” shows us, guys hanging out together don’t really like to talk about the women in their lives because that’s too real. What we’d much rather do than discuss problems and “be supportive” is to keep the laughs coming — to endlessly bust each other’s balls.
At its core, “GoodFellas” is a story of ball-busting etiquette, which we first learn about in the improvised early scene based on a real experience of Pesci. Tommy turns his attention to a laughing Henry after telling a funny story and threateningly says, “Am I a comedian? Do I amuse you?” Tommy appears to be dangerously angry. Henry saves the day by returning the ball-busting: “Get the f - - k outta here.”
The rule is, be a man, be tough, and always keep the party going.
Billy Batts (the unfortunate fellow in the trunk, and surprisingly not dead, when the movie begins) breaks ball-busting etiquette in two ways. One, he’s not really one of the guys (he belongs to another crime family), and two, in the guise of breaking Tommy’s balls, he brings up something serious, something that truly bothers Tommy: that he once worked as a shoeshine boy. Billy must die. Later, Morrie, the wig merchant, must also die for improper ball-busting.
Even Karen’s (Lorraine Bracco) relationship with, and eventual marriage to, Henry is based on ball-busting. He’s bored with her on their double dates with Tommy and his girl, but after he stands her up, she comes down to the taxi stand where he’s hanging out with other wiseguys and yells at him. The guys love this and roar with laughter. Karen doesn’t realize it, but she has successfully broken Henry’s balls — hence she’s funny, lively and interesting. She promises to keep the party going.
What would “GoodFellas” be like if it were told by a woman?
Meet an at-risk youth called Henry Hill. Victimized by horrific physical abuse from an early age, and traumatized by the responsibilities of caring for a handicapped brother, he fell prey to criminal elements in his rough East New York neighborhood in a time when social-services agencies were sadly lacking. At an impressionable age, he became desensitized to violence when a gunshot victim bled to death in front of a restaurant where he was working. His turn to the mafia was a cry for help — a need to find a family structure to replace the one he had never really known.
And who would want to watch that movie?