This is the longest of the four documentaries found on the second DVD of the 2-Disc Special Edition release of Goodfellas. It's a straight behind-the-scenes production. In addition to BTS footage, this has several interviews with cast and crew, excerpts of the script and the director's notes, as well as select clips of the movie, that tend to be used pretty well. A lot of the things said are interesting, and you get insight into how they put it together, Scorsese's process, attention to detail and opinion of his own work and more. The actors go over how it affected them, their careers and the like. This is rather well-edited and paced quite well. With a running time of about half an hour, it's never boring and it doesn't overstay its welcome, either. It's relatively informative, though it doesn't show all that much of the writing, shooting or editing, and they are talked about to some extent. This is subtitled. The language is strong, if not all that frequent. There is a good deal of violence and disturbing content shown from the film. I recommend this to anyone who wants to know how they made the feature. 7/10
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Michael_Elliott22 December 2011Getting Made (2004)
*** 1/2 (out of 4)
Extremely entertaining look at the making of GOODFELLAS, Martin Scorsese's 1990 masterpiece of life in the mob. Ray Liotta, Paul Sorvino, Nicholas Pileggi, Irwin Winkler, Lorraine Bracco, Henry Hill, Thelma Schoonmaker and Frank Vincent are all featured in new interviews while we get archival interviews with Scorsese, Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci. The documentary does a very good job at letting the viewer know how the product came to be from the first time Scorsese heard of the story up to a bad preview screening where the film obviously rubbed people the wrong way. The film does a very good job at mixing the interviews to give you a complete idea of the making of the film. We get clips from the actual filming of the movie where we get to see Scorsese working and then we'll cut to an actor talking about what the director wanted and how he would get it. There's a very good sequence about the Tommy/'I'm a clown' sequence and you really get a great idea of how it was written, rehearsed and how it ended up on the screen. Liotta also gives a good idea of what his process was of getting into his role and Sorvino also talks about how he finally was able to get the look of a killer. The most interesting aspect of the film is the way it shows how involved Scorsese was to get his vision on the screen and this includes the music selections as well as the style of editing. Of course, it would have been nice with a new interview from Scorsese but it's interesting seeing his thoughts from 1990 and in the end this is a very entertaining piece that fans of the film will enjoy.