If you have watched the movie Goodfellas, you might know that it is based on a true story. So when I went to New York I checked out the places where the real characters that were depicted in the movie hung out and lived. Here are some of those pictures.
Henry Hill is the main character and the only narrator in the movie, he’s played by Ray Liotta. This is his real childhood home in East New York, Brooklyn. The house looks fairly similar to what is shown at the beginning of the movie.
Auto Junkyard on Avenue D
Goodfellas: the next stop was the infamous Robert’s Lounge, which was owned by Jimmy Burke (an Irish gangster played in the movie by DeNiro) and was a hungout for his crew. The well known Lufthansa heist (the biggest at the time, netting the robbers $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewels) was planned here. The Heist had the approval of the crime families, which controlled criminal activities and union activities at JFK airport respectively). Jimmy Burke also used the backyard of the bar to bury Remo (his friend from San Remo, Italy, who betrayed him by becoming a police informant and) under a layer of cement next to the bocce court. The actual murder of Remo happened in a car: Remo was strangled using a piano wire. That murder inspired the scene of the murder of Morris (the guy from the wig shop) in the movie. Since that day, every time, Burke or Tommy DeSimone (who is played in the movie by Joe Pesci) played they would jokingly say, "Hey Remo, how're you doing?”. The body was removed before the police searched Robert’s Lounge. Now the bar has become a Caribbean restaurant.
While the actual Robert's Lounge building is not shown in the movie, it's fictionally represented as the small bar in the scene where the crew meets around Christmas to celebrate the success of the heist. Furthermore, it was in the basement of Robert's Lounge that the real Michel "Spider" Gianco was killed by Tommy DeSimone (played by Pesci, as mentioned earlier), as shown in the movie.
This building with a an employment agency for nurses used to be Geffkens Bar/restaurant, A fence company right next to it
Goodfellas (also styled GoodFellas) is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese. The film follows the rise and fall of Lucchese crime family associates Henry Hill and his friends over the course of thirty years from the 1950s to 1980.
Scorsese originally intended to direct Goodfellas before The Last Temptation of Christ, but when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he postponed what was then known as Wise Guy. The title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a TV series and for Brian De Palma's 1986 comedy Wise Guys, so Pileggi and Scorsese changed the name of their film to Goodfellas. To prepare for their roles in the film, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta talked often with Pileggi, who shared research material left over from writing the book. According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines he liked best, and put them into a revised script the cast worked from during principal photography.
Since I was in the area, I went to the formerly Jewish neighborhood of Brownsville to check out the former headquarters of Murder, Inc.: a former organized crime group composed by Jewish and Italian gangsters who carried out countless murders for the mob and other criminals in the 1930s and 40s. Midnight Rose was a 24 hours candy store where the hitmen would assemble and get their assignments. It is now a Deli Grocery Store.
Then a detour heading north to Bushwick, specifically to Knickerbocker Ave., which was apparently once nicknamed the “the well” for its endless supply of drugs. Here Carmine (Lilo) Galante was murdered in 1979 in the grotto of what was once Joe and Mary’s Italian American Restaurant. The building looks plain and nondescript.
Knickerbocker Ave where I was born and lived until I was 7 years old.
Next stop is Ozone Park where I also grew up in my later years, specifically to the former Bergin Hunt & Fish club, which used to be the headquarters of boss John Gotti of the Gambino crime family. The Bergin was located on the left portion of this building, after the Gotti era it became a butcher shop and now it’s an innocent Medical Supply Store and Cat & Dog Grooming Salon
Tommy DeVito: I said, no more shines. Maybe you didn't hear about it, you've been away a long time. They didn't go up there and tell you. I don't shine shoes anymore.
Billy Batts: Relax, will ya? Ya flip right out, what's got into you? I'm breaking your balls a little bit, that's all. I'm only kidding with ya...
Tommy DeVito: Sometimes you don't sound like you're kidding, you know, there's a lotta people around...
Billy Batts: I'm only kidding with you, we're having a party, I just came home and I haven't seen you in a long time and I'm breaking your balls, and you're getting fucking fresh. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.
Tommy DeVito: I'm sorry too. It's okay. No problem.
Billy Batts: [takes a drink] Now go home and get your fuckin' shinebox.
Tommy DeVito: Mother fuckin' mutt! You, you fucking piece of shit!
Billy Batts: [taunting] Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, come on, come on!
Tommy DeVito: Motherfucking... He bought his fucking button! That fake old tough guy! You bought your fucking button!
Tommy DeVito: You mother fuck... Fuck! Keep that motherfucker here, keep him here!
[leaves]
Billy Batts: Go home and get your fucking shine box.
Tommy DeVito: Just don't go busting my balls, Billy, okay?
Billy Batts: Hey, Tommy, if I was gonna break your balls, I'd tell you to go home and get your shine box.
[to his friends]
Billy Batts: Now this kid, this kid was great. They, they used to call him Spitshine Tommy.
Billy Batts: [under his breath after Tommy leaves the bar] I'll fuck him in his ass. I fucked kids like him in the can in the ass. Fuckin' trying to break up my party.
Billy Batts: Hey Jimmy! What's right is right. You understand what I'm talking about?
It really wasn't that bad. Excepting that I missed Jimmy. He was doing his time in Atlanta. I mean, everybody else in the joint was doing real time, all mixed together, living like pigs. But we lived alone. And we owned the joint......Happy Fathers Day From Goodfellas ECigarettes
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"Karen: 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."
