'Funny how?': The unforgettable Goodfellas scene that earned Joe Pesci an Oscar

For years, it infuriated devotees of Martin Scorsese that he kept losing at the Oscars – and not to worthy peers, but to actors debuting in the director’s chair. His Raging Bull (1980) was pipped to Best Picture by Robert Redford’s Ordinary People, while Goodfellas (1990), in a humiliating repeat, was a runner-up in all but one of its nominated categories, coming second that year to Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves.

The exception was significant. It’s tempting to say that no one could have wrested Joe Pesci’s award, for Best Supporting Actor, off him that year, for playing the terrifying Mob lieutenant Tommy DeVito. How would they have dared? He’d even lost before for Raging Bull. But the truth is he wasn’t actually the favourite to win – Bruce Davison (Longtime Companion) was.

If there was one scene that tipped the balance in Pesci’s favour, you probably know the one. All that’s needed is a two-word reminder, which they might practically have engraved on the base of his trophy. “Funny how?”

The scene

Wise guy associates Tommy (Pesci) and the younger Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), with a handful of their lesser cronies, have been out all night at the Bamboo Lounge, a Polynesian-themed Manhattan club with blood-red tablecloths and a darkly tropical vibe. The drinks have been flowing – though they have yet to be paid for – and Tommy is holding court with a typically expletive-strewn anecdote about some time he ran his mouth off.

Laughter roars around him, tailing off into just Henry sighing “funny… really funny” as he pulls himself together. But Tommy isn’t finished. “What do you mean I’m funny?”. And as the smiles slowly drop to either side of them, he goes in on Henry with a step-by-step interrogation, seemingly in deadly earnest, with a pungent fury bubbling up on his face.

Almost every question he asks is a variation on the first. “Funny how? I mean… funny, like a clown? Like I’m here to amuse you?”. All interjections are batted away. All the heat’s on Henry, caught in the excruciating spotlight of Tommy’s displeasure, stuttering out the same, lame responses – “Just, you know, you’re funny!” – while the seconds stretch out, feeling like minutes.

No one knows where to look, least of all the audience, until Tommy whips out his last, barely persuasive trump card – it was all a big wind-up! Even after that nominal release of tension, with everyone playing like pals again, the air is still thick with lingering poison, and something vital in the film’s fabric has torn and shifted.

Why is it so good?

From a director fêted for his maestro flourishes – such as the sinuous tracking shot into the Copacabana earlier on – what’s striking about this scene is its unsparing plainness. There are only two camera set-ups – both medium shots – with Pesci and Liotta nestled among their confrères. It’s crucial that no one of higher status – De Niro’s Jimmy, say – is anywhere among them, meaning that Tommy can pull focus, pull rank, and show who’s boss, with no one to hold him back. When Pesci nearly runs out of breath mid-rant, it’s brilliantly intuitive acting.

As the atmosphere curdles, the editing gives Liotta’s Henry nowhere to hide. One minute he’s enjoying the foul-mouthed story of Tommy victimising some poor sap; the next minute, without so much as being reframed for the perspiring close-up we might expect, he is the sap.

The scene is built this way to make their everyday camaraderie scary: or rather, it underlines how close to the surface violence is at all times, even when goodfellas are making out like pals. All it takes is a Tommy, with his combustible qualities of cruelty, small-man insecurity, and a brutish gift of the gab, to make it clear how the pecking order works – wielding fear and being funny, interchangeably.

As a set piece, this does huge structural work, by undermining not just Henry’s level of comfort in this setting, but also our own. Captured at his least attractive, he’s braying, laughing it up, king of the hill – and then he’s like a scared little boy all over again. Tommy, with his hawk-eye observation, even calls it, foreshadowing the whole last act: “Was he shaking? I wonder about you sometimes, Henry. You may fold under questioning.”

Behind the scenes

If you go online to find the Goodfellas shooting script, which Scorsese co-wrote with Nicholas Pileggi, a shock awaits: this scene isn’t in it. This led to off-base rumours for years that Pesci improvised the whole business, based on an incident he remembered as a young man, when, waiting tables at a restaurant, he unwisely complimented a mobster on his sense of humour.

While this real-life inspiration is entirely true, the scene was carefully scripted once they realised Pesci’s real-life encounter was Tommy all over. They weren’t just winging it. “It’s crazy to think you can go in there and make a movie like that,” Pesci confirmed in a making-of documentary. “It has to be structured.”

But that doesn’t rule out an element of surprise on set. While Pesci and Liotta knew exactly how the exchange was going to play out, Scorsese cunningly decided to keep the scene’s supporting players in the dark, and hence kept the dialogue off that day’s script. The pin-drop awkwardness emanating from every corner of the screen is quite genuine: these central-casting goons had no idea what an excruciating game of chicken they were about to witness.

Legacy

Goodfellas may not have cleaned up at the Oscars, but it was a major reassertion of Scorsese’s strengths, wedding acclaim to popular success for the first since Taxi Driver. It’s probably considered his most archetypal film, sometimes his best, and had a vast impact on American cinema of the Nineties: the rise-and-fall structure of Boogie Nights (1997) is hard to imagine without it, as are the gabby stylings and unpredictable menace of Quentin Tarantino. Not to mention those lounge-lizard soundtracks.

Meanwhile, having played a career-defining character so famously averse to shutting up, Pesci accepted the film’s lone statuette with a speech all the cooler for being just five words long. “It’s my privilege, thank you,” he told the auditorium, and walked off.

Tell Tim your thoughts

What’s the greatest movie scene of all time? Tim Robey will be in the comments section below between 12pm and 1pm on Friday May 22 so you can share thoughts about a century of cinema magic

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