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GoodFellas
What was it that drew you to the GoodFellas material?
I read a review of the book; basically it said, "This is really the way it must be." So I got the book in galleys and started really enjoying it because of the free-flowing style, the way Henry Hill spoke, and the wonderful arrogance of it. And I said, Oh, it would make a fascinating film if you just make it what it is - no sense of whitewash, [to elicit] great sympathy for the characters in a phony way. If you happen to feel something for the character Pesci plays, after all he does in the film, and if you feel something for him when he's eliminated, then that's interesting to me. That's basically it. There was no sense making this film [any other way].
What kind of film did you see this as being?
I was hoping it was a documentary [laughs] - really, no kidding. Like a staged documentary, the spirit of a documentary. As if you had a 16mm camera with these guys for 20, 25 years; what you'd pick up. I can't say it's "like" any other film, but in my mind it [has] the freedom of a documentary, where you can mention 25 people's names at one point and 23 of them the audience will not have heard of before and won't hear of again, but it doesn't matter. It's the familiarity of the way people speak. Even at the end, when Ray Liotta says over the freeze-frame on his face, "Jimmy never asked me to go and whack somebody before. But now he's asking me to go down and do a hit with Anthony in Florida." Who's Anthony? How have your feelings about this world changed since Mean Streets?
Well, Mean Streets is much closer to home in terms of a real story, somewhat fictionalized, about events that occurred to me and some of my old friends. [GoodFellas] has really nothing to do with people I knew then. It doesn't take place in Manhattan, it's only in the boroughs, so it's a very different world although it's all interrelated. But the spirit of it, again, the attitudes. The morality - you know, there's none, there's none. Completely...