Speaker 1: This is a podcast from Minute Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, welcome back to the show You Can't Be
Serious podcast. This is episode two of The Godfather Versus
Godfather to Versus Goodfellas.
Speaker 1: To start it off today, I've got a joke for you.
Speaker 2: Okay, what kind of drink does the Godfather drink in
the morning?
Speaker 1: I don't know. An al Pacino? Oh my god, that
I know that. Our plan was to go into the
year so funny, and then we do the Joe Fish
a bit, but that's so not funny. I can't even
honestly say that that was funny. That was terrible. First
joke I've ever heard. And the al Pacino it's awful.
So let's talk calf on Goodfellas.
Speaker 2: Okay, when Martin Scorsese and Nicholas pledge you get together
to do Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese goes to his main man,
his ace and the whole Robert de.
Speaker 1: Niro, you're talking to me, Well, I'm the only one here.
Speaker 2: Right, And he says, I want to do this movie
called Goodfellas. I want you to be involved with it.
Which part do you want? Do you want Jimmy or
do you want Tommy? And Robert de Niro says, I
want Jimmy, okay, And that was the piece that fell
into place for the studio to back it, and they said, okay,
we're going to all in on this movie. Al Pacino
and John Malkovich were actually contacted about being Jimmy Conway. Okay,
can you see John Malkovich playing this part?
Speaker 1: Oh you're talking about Tommy or talking about Jimmy Jimmy.
I would see John Malkovich more as a Tommy character.
Speaker 2: So here's the interesting thing to me. So al Pacino says, no,
I don't really want to do this. I don't want
to be typecast as a gangster.
Speaker 1: So hold on, hold on, Francis, I'm on the phone
with Marty. Could you could you just hide please? And
trying to lie.
Speaker 2: Here exactly, and and so he ends up doing as
we said god Father Part three and Dick Tracy, I say.
Speaker 3: You get behind me, we all profit, you challenge me,
we all go.
Speaker 1: There was one the poll, one What's Done? One me
the most charactered mobster in the world, Big Boy Caprice
and Dick Tracy. I'm not sure which of those movies
is worse, Godfather three or Dick Tracy. Now that is
a matchup. We may have to now we don't have
to investigate that Madonna might carry Dick Tracy over the
edge on that one. Yeah, I don't know. Okay, So
how do we end up with Joe Pesci? Obviously, Joe
Pesci and de Niro and Scorsese have done Raging Bull together,
So how do we get to Joe Peschi?
Speaker 2: Basically, once you get de Niro in place, the next
guy you go after is Joe Pesci, right, and so
as it calls me Bump and says, hey, we're getting
the band back together, let's do this right.
Speaker 1: Well, what's interesting is at the beginning of the movie
they have Tommy as basically the same age as Henry right,
And that wasn't exactly right as far as reality goes.
I mean, it was like, I think, I think there's
a ten year age difference in him anyway, and Robert Niro,
with no makeup at all, is supposed to be playing
this twenty eight year old guy. I don't understand that, right.
And then when they're adults, somehow Tommy is exceeded Jimmy
in age and Henry Hill is still much younger. I mean,
I don't mind if you don't do the ages the
same as reality. But let's at least stay consistent within
the movie. Jimmy appeared to have aged rather quickly. Yeah,
by the end of the movie hard Apparently a sociopathic
hard life will get you that kind of age. So
Joe Pesh.
Speaker 2: She had done Raging Bull and then later he does
Casino with Scorsese. He's kind of like Scorsese's second speed
dial ractor, right, and.
Speaker 1: He hadn't He had kind of been absent from big
movies from Raging Bowl up until Letho Weapon too. Let's
talk about leth a weapon too. I got it. I
know all those routine yes, sir, Yes, that's me. Leo
gets whatever you need. Leo gets you get it.
Speaker 2: I use that all the time to break the ice
when I meet people.
Speaker 3: You know, it's good.
Speaker 2: Leo gets is exactly the opposite of Tommy DeVito. Yeah,
he's kind of a wiener. Okay, okay, It's just a scatterbox.
Speaker 1: And it's been both funny though, like funny like funny,
how like why am I funny? I can make you
laugh like I'm a clown, Like I amuse you? I mean,
you said it, what did you mean, he's a big boy.
He knows what he said. Leo gets is hilarious.
Speaker 2: Okay, So imagine we get Leo gets in Lethal Weapon
Part two, we get Tommy and Goodfellas, and then next
week get Harry from Home Alone. Shot what you have
incredibly tough gangster booke, ended by two comedic roles, and
he lights out in both.
Speaker 1: Of them, all of them, all of them, all of them.
He nails it every single time it is. He is
a great act.
Speaker 2: Now we got to talk about Henry. Yeah, Raleiota was
the guy that they hired.
Speaker 1: Okay, but they didn't want it. Once again, the studio
did not want it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Raleiota talks about how they wanted anybody but him,
and he said, in fact, I think they would have
taken Eddie Murphy over. So they looked at Sean Penn,
Alec Baldwin, Dal Kilmer okay, and Tom Cruise. Okay, I
think that that's an interesting movie if you have Tom Cruise.
Speaker 1: In there, it's an interesting movie with any of those guys. Honestly, Yes,
you know what movie caused Martin Scorsese to want to
cast is it something wild? Yes, which we have talked
about multiple times now. But Something Wild is the movie
that they refer to in Dumb and Dumber about the
guy who gets chased down and gets his throat slit,
where Raleiota plays this kind of mobster esque psychopath. Yeah,
he's awesome in that.
Speaker 2: You know the movie right before Goodfellas, he played shoeless
Joe Jackson Field of Dreams.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's right, that was before that. Oh I love
that movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we talked last week Rayleiota. He had
been discussed to be Batman, a joker yep and two
face Harvey Dent right right, and he turned that down
Tim Burton's Batman to do Good Fellas.
Speaker 1: The part of Karen, Karen, Why would you do that?
Karen unsung hero of this movie. I mean, she delivers
a performance beyond comparison. She's awesome. Lorrene Brocco, oh my gosh,
nobody does that to me.
Speaker 3: Who the hell do you think you want?
Speaker 1: Frankie family or some kind of big shot. And you
get a lot of folks who from this movie go
on to do the sopranos. If you, of course have
Lorraine Bracco, then you've got Michael Imprioli, who played Spider
really small part but very memorable. Yeah, definitely. And then
you also have Frank Vincent's who plays but the guy
who's beaten on the trunk at the beginning of the movie. Yeah,
Billy Batts.
Speaker 3: Billy Batts, Hey Tommy, if I'm gonna break your ball
that days to go home and get you shineboughed Frank Vincent.
Speaker 1: So listen to this.
Speaker 2: So Karen ellen Barkin was looked at to play Karen.
She's kind of in that mix.
Speaker 1: I could see that she can play she can play
disgruntled housewife for sure.
Speaker 2: And then also Madonna, what are you looking at? Well, okay, listen, Madonna,
the material girl was at the height of her powers
in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: True.
Speaker 2: She instead goes on to do Dick Tracy with al
Pacino and Warren Baby and that movie sucked. Yep, it
was like Batman without Batman. That's all in the casting
I've got for Goodfellas.
Speaker 1: Shall we talk about the movies. Let's talk about the movies. Okay,
So The Godfather was shot in sixty two days. Okay,
sixty two days. This is a three hour movie was
shot in sixty two days. The entire time that they
are filming this movie. Francis Ford Coppola thought he was
going to be fired. Every day he lived in fear
that they were going to come in and fire him.
Speaker 2: In fact, he's got people on his crew working against him.
The assistant director is talking behind his back to the
studio and they're like, yeah, the pictures that he's taken
are beautiful, but they don't go together. Well, they don't
cobble together. And so that guy at the studio, he
gets another guy, like an independent editor. They piece him
together and he realizes.
Speaker 1: This guy's sabotaging him, and so he.
Speaker 2: Goes to Copola, and then Copola looks around. He's like,
you're gone.
Speaker 1: You're gone. You're gone, You're gone, You're gone.
Speaker 2: He like preemptive strike, fires anybody who maybe even partially
against him. Wow, So he just goes on a firing spree.
Speaker 1: Well you mentioned it. I want to bring it up. Now.
There's one scene that changed everybody's mind. Once they saw
that scene, everybody relaxed and said, we got this. This
is going to be a good movie. Okay, let's talk
about it. It's the restaurant hit scene. Yes, it is
the most pivotal scene in the storyline of the movie
and it is one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history.
Wowback that he is talking in his in his bible
that he's written. He makes notes in here that the
audience has to be on edge about the fact that
he's not following the instructions that he was given. When
he walks out of that, every human being in the theater,
every guy sitting and watching this on TV, is like,
drop the gun, Drop the gun, drop the gun. Dang gun. Yeah,
finally he gets rid of it, right, he's he's messing
it up, but it's that tension. And then he's struggling
to find the gun. Right when he goes into the bathroom,
he's struggling to find the gun. Whenever they're in the
car beforehand he's talking to these guys, he's still got
the swollen jaw. I mean, it is tension, tension, tension
building up to the moment. And then you got this
scene where Salazso is talking and it's it's almost like
background noise, like it's nothing that is of any importance. Absolutely,
and you have the slow pan in to Michael Corleone's
face as he just his eyes are all over the
place as he is you just you're you're with him,
You're going, is he going to do it? Is he
going to do it? Is he really going to go
through with it? Because this is the White Night that
is about to do a double homicide in open public. Yeah.
Once they did that scene and they do the the
death I mean talk about point blank stands up, bullet
to the face, boom, shoots Captain McCluskey, once starts to
choke on his food, shoots him again in the head,
and he comes down like a bag of bricks on
that table and out the door. He goes, so great, man,
Oh my god, so great. Fantastic, fantastic scene.
Speaker 2: When he's reaching around in that old style toilet to
try to find the gun. Yeah, it takes him a minute,
and the whole time, I'm going, those guys are waiting
for you. Let's go right, you know, and then he
comes out. If this movie were made in the eighties,
I feel like.
Speaker 1: He would have said some sort of tagline right here, like,
you know, don't forget the parmesjan you know, yeah exactly,
but you have that that cloud of red blood just
blow out the back of it.
Speaker 2: It's very violent.
Speaker 1: He in the Bible needs to be a spray of
blood everywhere. That's wonderful. Yeah, but you gotta get it
up really close. It's like butter Bean, get all of
your colored shirt. That scene is probably the second most
important scene in the whole movie. Right, Okay, So Michael
has just been beaten up, right, he's got the swollen jaw.
He comes in, he is he has just had to
save the life of his father. Right. He came to
the hospital, nobody's there. He gets this poor guy who's
coming with flowers to pretend like he's one of the
mob members and look tough. Oh. There's so many great
scenes in this but that moment where he walks in
and Sonny is giving him a hard time. You can
watch the transformation as they move through the room where
Sonny is in power. He's standing up, he's taller, he's
above everybody else. He's talking about doing this big hit.
Tom is trying to tell him this is not personal,
this is just business, and we got to do this right,
and Sonny does want anything to do with it. And
Michael just sits down and he's given a hard time
by Sonny. He gets up there and he gets in
his face, and you gotta get him close to the guy. Yeah,
blood all over your brand new college suit, right. Yeah.
And at that moment, Alpatuno puts his hands up and
it's kind of like shoveling him off, and then everything
switches and again we get this scene where Michael is
sitting calmly in the chair and he says, no, here's
what's gonna happen. We're gonna set it up where they
give me a gun. I meet with them and I
take them out and it's not personal, it's just business. Yeah,
that's great. That is the moment that Sonny is not
going to be the dawn. That is the moment that
Michael takes charge. Great movie. Great movie, man, I love it. It
transitions too.
Speaker 2: Unlike Fredo, he's got the balls to pull the gun
and blow those guys away. Kill a police captain in
the middle of a restaurant with people standing around looking
at you.
Speaker 1: It's crooked cop. Yep. We got people on the payroll
that work for the newspapers, right, and then Michael goes
to Italy.
Speaker 2: That scene, the restaurant scene, Francis Foort Coppola like moved
it up in the schedule because he was afraid he
was going to get fired, and he needed to give
them some action because everybody in the studio is like,
when is this guy gonna do anything?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: So his job is on the line. Albacino's job is
on the line. And so then he sends this movie back.
It was like moved up to like day five or
something like that, and so they shot that very early
to get the studio to back off.
Speaker 1: And let them do their thing. Por charm yep Okay.
Speaker 2: After he shoots the Turk and the police captain.
Speaker 1: He goes to Italy. So and he goes over to Italy.
Speaker 2: He's got these two bodyguards, one of them s Fabrizio,
which we'll talk about here in.
Speaker 1: Just a second.
Speaker 2: But he meets Apollonia. Yes, flash back to our Purple
Rain episode, right, who's the most beautiful girl in the village.
Just to be clear, Prince gave Apollonia her name because
of the Godfather.
Speaker 1: Also a throwback, the beginning scene of Purple Rain is
inspired by the last scene of the godfok exactly.
Speaker 2: So he goes to Italy, marries this girl she's killed.
I mean, he's in love, falls in love, he's going
to start a family. He's settled in Sicily. How much
does his life change if Apolonia is not killed.
Speaker 1: Substantially, Yeah, substantially, I would say. I mean, we know
that he has a desire to go back because they
have to tell him it's not safe for him to
go back yet, right, right, And we know that there's
going to be a callback for him because Sonny is
ultimately going to get killed and Fredo has not got
the chops to be the leader of the family, and
so there's going to be that call. But if anybody
else can step in, if if Tom could take over,
If Tom takes over and Appoloni is still alive, I
think he retires making olive oil. And is there Italian
connection for the remainder of his day. I'm with you.
Speaker 2: I think he lives happily ever after with Apolloni and
they have eighteen children.
Speaker 1: They live their life. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, then quick question, one little nitpicky thing I've got. Okay,
he spends this however long in Italy? Yeah, long enough
to meet court and marry a girl.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a quick turnaround.
Speaker 2: She gets killed whatever, right, she gets blown up by Fabrizio.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Which, there's a deleted scene where Michael gets his revenge. Yes,
I wish we would have seen that because that would
have been really cool. Yeah, he actually shot it for
Godfather Part one.
Speaker 1: It was cut.
Speaker 2: They reshot it for Godfather Part two and it got
cut there too. But all this time elapses. He goes
back to the States. He's there for a year, and
then he goes to see Kay and is like, hey,
I'm back right boom, let's get married. He's a changed
character at that point. I feel like that his marriage
to Apollonia was because of love and desire. I feel
like his marriage to Kay was because family is important,
and so you are the one that I was with before.
Speaker 1: We will go. We will have a family, we will
have children, and things will be as they are supposed
to be.
Speaker 2: I mean, I get that. But Kay's attractive woman. She's
got no boyfriend or whatever. I mean, she's not doing anything.
She's just hanging out for five years guess So okay, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think it was that long. But yes, yeah, she
loved him. She loved him, which makes the impact of
the final scene, the final closing door, much more impactful.
Let's talk about the it was an abortion, Michael, Oh
my gosh, that's Godfather too. So that's the end of
Godfather Part two, right, Kay is pregnant with Michael's boy. Yep.
Speaker 2: He goes back because she's had a miscarriage quote unquote
a miscarriage.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And when he's talking to her, he's like, Okay, this
is the way it's going to be, and she's like,
you don't understand. It wasn't a miscarriage. It was an abortion. Right,
I could not bring another son into this world.
Speaker 1: He is attributing her attitude and unpleasantness to the fact
that she had lost the baby, and he's thinking, it's okay,
it'll get better, don't worry. That's when she drops that bomb.
That's a huge bomb too. Oh my gosh. And you
know who came up with that idea, Talia Shire.
Speaker 3: It was an abortion, an abortion, Michael.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: She goes and she's like, you know what, miscarriage would hurt,
but if she had an abortion, that would.
Speaker 1: Be an affront to Michael of a boy. Yep. And
she was exactly right. It was an abortion.
Speaker 2: I know we're kind of dancing around here, but the
end of Godfather Part one, yes, Michael goes after every
head of the family. It was executed perfectly shoots mo
Green in the eye. By the way, Moe Green, based
on Buggsy c executes.
Speaker 1: Another failed attempt by Warren Batty Bugsy. That's exactly right.
I don't know.
Speaker 2: The end of Godfather Part one is just awesome. The
Christenine scene, Michael is at the church. They have all
the heads of the families killed.
Speaker 1: So at the beginning of the movie, we've got all
kinds of Italian going on, right, I mean, it's just
Italian wedding, and so there's all kinds of it there.
By the way, I remember seeing this for the first time.
I don't know how old I was. I just remember
that it was like on the satellite, you know. And
you get that scene where Sonny follows the bride's maid upstairs.
I'm watching with my brother and he's got a friend
with him. As the first time that I have heard
the F word used as an action verb, where I
was like, oh, so that's what that word means. Okay,
I got it now. But anyway you've got you're you're
establishing some characters, and Michael doesn't show up. I mean,
this is he is the main guy. Despite the fact
that he was nominated for Supporting Actor instead of actor
he is. This is it's his story. It's the story
of Michael Corleone and his rise to power in the family.
But it starts off with him telling Kay, that's my family,
not me. After he tells the made him an offer
he couldn't refuse. Story either his signature would be honest
on the contract or his brains would be. That's when
he says, that's my family, not me. And what we
see is he doesn't want to be that. He wants
to be the white Knight that is untouchable, and they
treat him that way. No, they know he's a civilian.
They won't do anything to him. Those are lines in
the movie. Sure, and so we see him move from
that point, not just to becoming a part of the family,
but becoming the new godfather. Let me ask you this.
Go ahead, let me ask you this.
Speaker 2: So we do see the rise of Michael. I feel
like we are allowed to love the Vito Corleone character.
He's wise, Yeah, he's controlled. Yeah, he's respected, he even
seems kind he does Yeah, he's in control, unlike Sonny.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now he does some things.
Speaker 2: I mean he ordered that horse's head cut off and
put in that guy's bed.
Speaker 1: Real horse's head, by the way, real horses head, not
a prop. They went to a dog food factory and
got a horse's head, and they didn't tell the action
that they were putting real horses in it. So the
reaction that you get is genuine. Hey, one more thing
about that scene. Yeah, that house that they filmed that
scene in. Yeah, that house was the Fletch House. That's
the Stanwick House in the movie Fletch. Okay, if you
need a big, fancy looking house, here's the house that
you can use.
Speaker 2: Also used in the Jerk with Steve Martin.
Speaker 1: It's gonna have a pool shaped like a heart rotating bed.
I don't need let these pants real quick. I just
got to say this. The Luca Brasi, yes character we
talked about that was an actual probably hit man, but
at least enforcer for the Columbo family. Yeah, so they
had that scene where he interacts with Marlon Brandos. So
you have arguably the best actor in the world at
the time trying to do a scene with a guy
who is a hit man for the mob, right, I mean,
And so he's flubbing his lines and Brando doesn't even
know how to react to this. Point right, So I
know that at some point, Brando's like, okay, I need
just a minute, and you told me a story about
this go ahead.
Speaker 2: So in order to crack him up, Brando had written
a note on his tongue that said fu. And when
he's trying to say his lines, he's stuck by his
tongue and you know, he's just looking at Brando with
his tongue.
Speaker 1: Out, so the flub of the line becomes even more pronounced.
So before all of this happens, Coppola catches this guy
rehearsing his lines and he's just sitting there trying to
say this one line that he's supposed to have, and
he's like, this is true life right here, this is it.
This guy is nervous, he wants to get what he's
gonna say right, and so that's when he's like, turn
on the cameras, let's get this in real life. So
Luca Brazzi practicing him lines is actually the actor practicing
his line. Don I am honored.
Speaker 3: I'm grateful that you have invited me to your daughter's wedding.
Speaker 1: On the day of your daughter's wedding. That's fantastic. And
then he gets one of the most memorable references in
all of movie history. It means Luca Brosi sleeps with
the Fishes, right, and his death scene still, it's almost
like he had seen some of those scenes in real
life and knew how to bug out his eyes.
Speaker 2: Prepy away, I'm gonna stick my tongue out and bulge
my eyes. You know, the sleep with the Fishes thing
where they get the fish that's actually wrapped in a
bulletproof vest.
Speaker 1: Every frame of this movie is like a piece of art.
There's a tribute that you told me about it. He
goes along with this.
Speaker 2: George Lucas referenced the Luca Brossei strangulation scene in Return
of the Jedi. Jab of the Hut is killed by
Princess Leah, and it's made to look like the Luca
Rasse scene in The Godfather.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. So you get a
reboot of the strangulation scene in Godfather too. Right right,
pintangially goes to have a sit down, He gets rid
of his weapons at their request, and then he starts
to get choked out. Right, you know who's choking him out.
That's danny Ilo, danny I l O Papa don't preach.
Madonna's dad and Papa don't preach, right, and so he's
he is not a guy who is in any way
famous at this point. He I mean, it was literally
supposed to be. He was an extra. He ad libbed
this line, Michael Hello. That's true, Michael Corleone says hello.
Some people say he ad libbed the line because he
knew you got paid more if you had a speaking part.
That's what I heard. But what the way he tells
the story is he goes in and they're doing rehearsals
and he's just into the moment and he just says
Michael Corleone says, Hi. He's not supposed to say anything.
He's just supposed to choke him out and that's the end.
And he said Francis Ford Copple was like, what did
you just say? He's like, I don't know, what did
I just say? He's like, did you say Michael Corleone
says hello. He's like, he goes four, couple goes keep it.
I like it. Yeah, And that's how that line gets
in there. It doesn't really make sense. Well, it's like
it's like they're trying to throw the fire off of them,
because obviously Michael Corleone is not the guy who's trying
to kill him. But it's like, hey, it's it's trying
to throw him off. I don't know why you'd try
to throw off the guy that is dying. I don't
get it. I don't really know. It's confusing. Okay, it's
based on a true life event. This is like this
literally happened to a gangster called Joe Gallo. It's same time,
Crazy Joe Gallo, Crazy Joe Gallo. I've got some questions. Okay,
here's my question about Godfather Part two. Michael is in
his bedroom one night and he notices that the curtains
are where my wife sleeps, where my children playing with
their toys.
Speaker 2: Actually, Kay is the one who says, Michael, why are
the curtains open? And he's like, h why are the
curtains open? Boom hit the deck, boom machine guns. Okay,
so obviously there's been a hit put on Michael by
Hyman Roth.
Speaker 1: I get that now, we know now. Yes, the first
time I saw it, I was like, who did this?
Like what? I don't really get it.
Speaker 2: And we find out that Fredo is the one who
betrayed him.
Speaker 1: We know that Fredo is talking to Jimmy Ola because
he gets that phone call in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2: Yes, so he gave him some information, and Fredo thinks
that they lied to him, so he's like, hey, you
guys lied to me. So I don't think that Fredo
knew it was a hit.
Speaker 1: The question is what did he give them, right? Did
he open the curtains? I don't know. I don't know
what he gave him. Maybe he just said he knows
he'll be home this evening because they've got this big
party planned and this is where his bedroom is. I
don't know. We don't get that information on what Fredo
told them that they used as information to put a
hit on him.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we know that that Fredo gave some sort
of information that led to the execution this hit.
Speaker 1: There are only two possibilities as far as Michael can tell, right,
it's either potentially or it's Hymen froth right, right, and
so he's got to figure out which, and he puts
both of them to the test. And whenever Potentially has
not been drinking, he's respectful, and there's he can just
tell this isn't the guy, This is not the guy
who would do this. This isn't it, And so then
he goes to he goes to viitymen Roth and his
little suburb home in Florida, and they're both talking to
each other in such complimentary ways, and they are both
just full of crap. You seem like a nice, intelligent
young boy. Oh, your wisdom is very appreciated. Yeah, I
mean it's they are talking away, which we as the
observer for the first time, you're just thinking, Okay, there's
mutual respect. No, it is Michael keeping his enemies closer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't catch that the first time I saw it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what's going on here? These guys like each other,
you know they're gonna team up, and Fredo completely gives
himself away because when they do ultimately end up in Cuba,
Johnny Olo comes over and Fredo immediately gets awkward and
he's like, uh, yeah, we never met before, and then
he's not wanted to talk. But as Fredo has more
and more to drink, they go to this club where
we the only information we have is that there's something
large and inappropriate and the Cuban sex show, and Fredo's
alcohol up mouth starts talking about how Johnny Olo knows
the place, and then Hyman Roth would never go to
a place like this. And it's at that point that
Michael realizes it's Fredo who's betrayed him. So here's my
question to you.
Speaker 2: Okay, Michael tells Tom Hagen, tell Fredo I know that
he was misled, tell him to come home.
Speaker 1: It's okay.
Speaker 2: And me, as an observer, I'm like, Okay, Michael's bad,
Michael's evil. He's not gonna kill Fredo. I mean, Fredo
is a brother, He's a member of the family. And
then he gives that look to his security guy and
all he does is just gonna glance at him. And
next thing you know, when they Fredo the fisherman out
on the boat gets a bullet in the back of
the head.
Speaker 1: Who sayings, hal Mary. Well, here's my question. Okay.
Speaker 2: So I love the cinematic way that this happens. Michael
gives the death order with a glance.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: But I'm thinking practically to myself, if I'm the security guard,
I'm like, was that the like.
Speaker 1: A week week? Like are you blinking at me? Or
like should I really? You know, I just want to
be sure the girls in the audience get it better
than the boys, because the difference between a girl glance
of hey, check this guy out and hey, this guy
is really creeping me out is so minuscule. But they
get it. Okay, Yeah, No, I don't know. I don't know.
It's it's it's cinema. I guess it's executed. So well,
here's the problem that I have. I don't have very
many problems with either one of these movies, but they're
down in Cuba and the guy who's supposed to be
this covert hit man is dressed in a black turtleneck
the entire time, like what it's standing out of a
sore thumb. Everyone else is wearing white. You got a
black turtleneck sweater and a black hat on. I have
the perfect outfit for this job. So if you're not
wanting to look like a mafia hit man, good job.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's talk about Robert de Niro's performance Real Quick
and Godfather Part two.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, Robert de Niro was one of the guys
that they really seriously considered for Sony that actually offered
him the part of Paulie. Paulie's the guy who was
sick the day that he was supposed to drive Vito
Corleone around and video Corleone gets killed. Do you want
to touch in the oranges right now? Yeah, let's talk
about the oranges real quick, okay. Go. So anytime you see.
Speaker 2: An orange, or even the color orange in The Godfather,
it signifies death. Somebody is about to get it.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So, like Vito is in that market and he's buying fruit,
He's like, hey, how much for the oranges, which he
gets shot about seventy five times. You know, the way
bullets are used in both of these movies.
Speaker 1: I got a problem with. Okay, Okay, this is a
small nitpick. Vito Corleone gets.
Speaker 2: Shot a bunch twenty times, yeah, thirty times, and he
recovers Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gets you know, this dog a little bit because.
Speaker 2: It got one in the throat, right, Sonny, when he's
executed one hundred and fifty times.
Speaker 1: I can actually give you the exact figure there. The
answer is it is a one hundred and forty seven
squibs on Sonny. James CON's telling his story and he's like,
this guy is putting the squibs on me. He tells me,
I never put this many squibs on anybody. James CON's like,
I don't think it's necessary that you should tell me that. Now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that scene is ridiculous. Okay, so I'm gonna nitpick
that sec what. Yes, So Sonny's execution is total junk. Okay,
So here's the deal, all right, So this is the
this is how Sonny's getting killed. Okay, here's the plan. Yeah,
I'm gonna have a woman called Connie's house. Connie's gonna answer,
She's gonna think her husband is cheating, so she's gonna
yell at her husband and throw dishes all over the place,
so her husband gets mad, beats her up.
Speaker 1: That's it, breaking all your spoil guinea break.
Speaker 2: That causes Sonny to get mad. He goes over and
on the way he's unprotected, so they're.
Speaker 1: Gonna shoot him up a billion times. You think that's
the most complicated plan in all those movies? Really? Yeah,
So you don't have a problem with the scene itself.
You just have a problem with the plan and how
it gets executed. What about the fact that Polly's sick
on the day that Veto's supposed to get hit, Well,
how do they know that Fredo is going to drop
his gun like a little pansy. That's a good question.
Here's the other thing. When Sonny gets shot, he I
mean he gets like twenty through the windshield, gets out,
stands up, gets another forty yep. I mean it's hard
to kill. And the whole time he's like, ugh, have
you seen the scene in the Simpsons where Bart gets
those gets snowballed? No? Oh, it's great because they match
it shot for shot, like every twist and turn. Bart
is doing it as these getting Pummel's classic.
Speaker 2: Okay, I wanted to mention Robert de Niro and Godfather
Part two playing young Vito Coleone. Yes, almost his entire
performance is in a foreign language. He didn't speak Sicilian,
he didn't speak Italian at all, and so he not
only had to learn a new language, but he had
to learn how Marlon Brando would deliver those lines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he changed his voice a little bit, a little bit,
a little bit, so he actually spent several weeks in
Sicily just trying to pick up the dialect, trying to
pick up the language. But yeah, his entire performance is
in a language that he does not speak. He has
I think maybe four lines in the whole movie that
are not in Italian and he still gets nominated for
the Oscar. It's incredible. Yeah, I think that is my
favorite part of that movie, to see the old twenties
storyline of him coming to the New World, him becoming
the Dawn, that whole execution, it's a great story. Again.
Beautifully shot him on rooftops, watching him walk the stuff
with the turning the light so that there's like this
distraction and darkness, and then the towel wrapped around it.
That was something they actually did to make it like
a silencer so people wouldn't hear it and then it
catches on fire. This is all real life stuff. It's incredible, right,
Another fantastic movie. Man, I gotta say, ah, crap, I
can't leave The Godfather too yet. The scene with Freedo
where he's laying down in that chair while Michael's talking
to him, I mean, could you make and could you
make somebody look any weaker than I'm stuck in a
chair that won't stop reclining. Yeah, it's fantastic anesthetic. Yeah,
performance is brilliant. I'm not dumb. I'm smart. I can
handle stuff. I'm don't like they say, no, I'm smart.
You're my kid brother.
Speaker 2: Before we get off Godfather, the botta being that James
Cohn says when he is acting like you're shooting Michael
in the head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are you gonna do? Nice college boy? Eh?
Speaker 3: They want to get mixed up in the family business.
And now you want to gun down a police captain
one because he slept in her face a little bit.
Speaker 1: What do you think?
Speaker 3: This is the army where you shoot him a mile away.
You gotta get him close like this. But I'm being
your blow their brains all over your nice side of
the league suit.
Speaker 2: That was a phrase that he heard from an acquaintance
who was a mafia guy. Okay, so James kind adopted it,
added it in and now it is widely accepted as
mafia language by being yep, one.
Speaker 1: Of those ways that The Godfather affected the world. Let's
talk about good Fellow. Let's talk about good Felas. There's
an actor that we didn't talk about when we talked
about casting. But there's one guy, so far as I
can tell, one guy that was in all three of
these movies. His name is Frank Severa. He played the
part in Godfather iiO of the Friend of the Young
Veto who works in the grocery store, whose dad owns
the grocery store, who has the girlfriend who's the actress
that they see get threatened and he cowers away. Yeah, yeah,
about how beautiful a she is? Right, that's right, that's right.
And so he had also been an extra. He had
been like in some of the street scenes and Godfather
one yes, gets the part in Godfather too. And then
he's also Carbone in Goodfellas. He's the guy who gets
frozen solid and takes three days to thaw out in
good film. It's so sad. When I saw it, I'm like, no,
they cook Carbone. He was one of the guys. It's terrible.
So I looked him up. And interestingly, while he was
developing the Carbone character, he lived next to some writers
who were writing episodes of the Simpsons. You know that
in the Simpsons they have the fat Tony character that's
supposed to be like the Godfather character, and he's always
got two guys with them. One of those two guys
is named Louis. And if you look at Louis, he
looks just like Carbone in Goodfellas. And so when the
Simpsons episodes came out, Frank Severro was like, they stole
my identity. I worked this character because it's not a
real guy. He's not playing like an actual character. He
is playing a part that he kind of created that
was an amalgamation of several other guys, and so he
sued him. Buddy lost. Oh okay, yeah, but if you
look at Louis looks exactly like Frank Saverro out of Goodfellas, who,
by the way, was born in Sicily, Italy, he could
be a made man if he needed to be. By
the way, I heard that they recently changed that rule
the Mafia did. Well, I can see that.
Speaker 2: Because you don't have to be pure Sicilian. And it's like,
do they have a rule book, like an actual rule book.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean there's a lot of there's. And this
is important to the idea of these movies. They they
made ceremonies that emphasized how important it was that you
do follow their rules. They've got a I mean a
part of their ceremony is you prick your finger, get
the blood running in your finger, you wipe it on
the picture of a saint, and then you burn the picture.
And the idea is this is what should happen to
you if you ever are a trader to the family.
So it's important for goodfellas, right, the idea of goodfellows.
And then the other one is this code of silence.
You never talk about being a member of the mafia
with anybody else. Henry Hill violates both of those rules.
And always keep your mouth shut, never read on your friends.
There you go.
Speaker 2: You know, we briefly touched on the how my funny
thing with Joe Pesci. Yeah, that was an actual event
that happened to Joe pet She when he was a waiter.
He told a mobster that he was a funny guy,
and the guy did not take that well, Oh my gosh,
especially from a young Ish waiter, punk kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, funny funny? How how am I funny?
Speaker 2: What a great scene that is it?
Speaker 1: It's probably the most memorable scene in the movie, definitely.
It's just, you know, she's just funny. It's you know,
the way you tell the story at everything funny? How
I mean, what's funny about Tommy? Know?
Speaker 3: You got Anthony, he's a big boy, he knows what
he said.
Speaker 1: What'd you say? Funny? How?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: Just you're funny? You mean, let me understand it because
I know maybe E smambled stuff. Maybe, but I'm funny
how I mean funny?
Speaker 3: Like I'm a clown.
Speaker 1: I amuse you, I make you laugh. I'm here to
amuse you. What do you mean funny? Funny? How how
am I funny? And it builds the tension and Tommy
is kind of this driving worse of the danger that
is always lurking over the shoulder of members of the mob. Right,
you never know when your best friend is going to
put an ice pick in the back of your head.
And and Henry Hill said, this is the way I lived.
I was constantly scared that Tommy was gonna do something
and gonna go off. He was legitimately this kind of
psychopathic character. And he wasn't a little guy, that's the thing. Yeah,
he was a big, freaking like bare fist fighter big guy.
So not only do you have the psycho killer, you've
got one that can do the job quickly. Yeah, Henry
Hill said, in watching Joe Pesci do the performance, he
nailed the character by ninety percent of how the real
guy was. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you know that this movie has three hundred and
twenty one f wards or fward variations?
Speaker 1: What do you want to tell me now, tough guy,
I said, I mean, what is doing?
Speaker 2: I want to tell you to go five money.
Speaker 1: There's so many wonderful ways to use the I mean, right.
You know, as of twenty twenty, it is number fifteen
on the list. Wow.
Speaker 2: Martin Squisese bested himself with the Wolf of Wall Street
and apparently it has more f words.
Speaker 1: So things that happened in the movie that happen in
real life. Yeah, you can. You can probably guess. I mean,
if you're watching it and you're going, oh my gosh, this,
the more crazy the scene is, the more likely that
it happened. For example, the scene with Spider this is
true life. Like Tommy DeSimone really killed a guy for saying,
go f yourself, right, right, I mean it was, and
it was after doing the shooting at him, after Tommy
had shot him in the foot, shot him in the foot.
Days later, comes back. He's a little upset because he's
in a cast, right, and so Tommy's busting his balls again,
and so he's like, you know what, go f yourself.
And the guys who are sitting around Tommy You're like, oh,
and they still to bust his balls. A little bit too,
and that's when he pulls out his gun and blows
the guy away. Incredible. So when Michael Imperioli perform the scene,
you know when he gets shot on the chest, he's
got these drinks on him and he goes flying back. Yeah,
well he actually sliced his hand open on the glass.
Continue to shoot the scene, finished it out lying there
in both fake blood and real blood, got all the
squibs gone, and his real bleeding hand. And so once
the scene is done, they're like, oh, crap, that's a
bad cut. We need to take you to the hospital.
They rush him over to the hospital. He's at the er.
The er is like ah, and they get him in
there and they start working on his hand, and then
they start to try to work on his chest and
they're like no, no, no, no, that's these are squibs. This is
this isn't real where we're actors. This is a movie.
And they're like, oh, go back in the waiting room. Ah,
that's funny. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about the beginning of Goodfellas. Okay,
Mark Scsese does a couple of interesting creative choices, I think. Okay,
so number one, you start off with the billy bats scene.
Speaker 1: Middle of the movie. Well, like now, I'm saying, the
middle of the story starts the beginning of that. That's right.
Speaker 2: Yes, So they're just driving and you hear this banging around.
So they pull over, open the trunk and there's a
guy that's clearly been beaten, and they just stab him
with kitchen knives and shoot him, shoot him, stab him.
Speaker 1: You're thinking, holy shnikes, this is horrible right out of
the gate. And then Raleoda slams the trunk shut and says,
all my life I wanted to be a gangster boom
into the back into nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 2: Fascinating choice by Scorsese to pluck that out of the
middle of the story.
Speaker 1: Start off the movie with that scene where he gets
beat by his dad from missing school. True to life
Really happened. Also followed by the scene where they threaten
the mailman stick his head in the oven. True to
life really happened. You don't deliver mail? You see this?
No mail for a mail man. I really want to
get to the Liftanza story. It's interesting. This is Henry
Hill's story, and he's got a really small part of this.
But this could be an entire movie all to itself.
It's incredible that Liftanza heist. So there's a podcast out there,
it's called Infamous America, and they've got a series, what
is it, six episodes. It's a six episode, six episode
series devoted just to the heist. That's it, not the
whole Henry Hill story, although they do give you plenty
of information there, But just about that heist.
Speaker 2: Infamous America from friend of the show Chris Wimmer for
those of you who may not really remember, it's when
they rob the airlines, they were actually bringing cash.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gis had come and exchanged money. There were two
different two different heists. One was the Air France heist
and the other one was the Lafonsa heist, and two
separate things. Both of them really occurred, and both involved
the same guy that worked for the airport, right, the
only guy, by the way, that was prosecuted in the
case until like late two thousands. It was a mystery
until twenty fourteen. Yeah, I mean, well, because they killed everybody.
That part is true as well. Jimmy got super paranoid
and he started killing everyone who is involved.
Speaker 2: That's the reason why he's offing everybody at the end of.
Speaker 1: The movie, right, and so what are you buying this
for a crup for? I told you not to buy
anything right the point where take it off? Take it off?
Henry Hills asked to go do a hit down in
Florida and says, at that point, I knew I was
never going to come back from Florida. It's at that
point he has to choose. He's like, do I keep
on living or do I obey the rules of the mob? Right,
I guess I'll have to choose keep on living. By
the way, when they're doing the interview scene talking to
him about the witness Protection program with him and Karen, Yes,
the guy who's doing the interview is the actual prosecutor
investigator of the case. He's the real guy. He and
Henry Hill actually became friends after this, like they would
They tour and do talks together. It was It's crazy
that is, but the guy, the real guy who did it.
He's like, I'm sitting there with these cameras around, and
we having a conversation with these two actors that I've
actually had with Henry Hill and Karen.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. You know the movie My Blue Heaven with
Steve Martin and Rick moranis That is based on the
Henry Hill going into the Witness Protection Program. That movie
was written by Nora Efron Yes, who is married to
Nicholas Polegi.
Speaker 1: There you go a rut. I haven't had a rug
ala in six weeks. What's that? It's a vegetable. What's
the difference between a light bulb and a pregnant lady?
You can unscrew a light bulb? Should not be in
the frozen food sections. You could melt all this stuff.
My Blue Heaven and Goodfellas are same sorogers, same source material.
Married couple wrote both of them. That's fantastic. Okay, let's
talk about the romance that occur between Karen and Karen. Okay,
before he gets to the crazy stature when he's just
ignoring her and then he stands her up. He doesn't
care about her, right, It's not until she comes in
confronts him in front of all of his friends and
is screaming at me, who do you think you are?
Henry Hill? You don't stand me up? You know what happens?
He gets turned on. He he does, and then he
starts and then he starts charming her, and then she
gets turned on, and then that's the moment you have
this awesome scene where it's a one shot right follows
them the whole time. As they bypass the line, they
go downstairs, they walk through the back hallway. He tips
the guy who opens the door for him twenty bucks.
He walks through the kitchen, he walks through they are
bringing in a brand new table to this full restaurant
so that he has a place to sit, and Karen
is like, what do you do for a living? Exactly,
I'm in construction. Yeah, it's amazing. You don't have hands
like you're in construction. And then the guy that they
talk to who who is managing the copa, which is
where they are, actual manager of the copa, and the
guy who's performing the comedy is actually Hinny Youngman. Oh yeah,
take my wife please. And then that's followed by the
scene where she gets she gets ruffed up by the
guy across the street tennis pro guy, yeah whatever he was, and.
Speaker 2: Then he goes over and just pistol whips the crap out.
Speaker 1: Man, I love it. The guy's in the driveway, his
own driver. He's like, you want some too, bam bam,
Oh my gosh, that was rough and what did it
do turned her on? Yeah? Of note, Yes, Paulie never
takes phone calls, right, Yes, never takes phone calls because
he thinks the phones can get you in trouble. And
it seems silly because somebody's got to take a phone
call right down the message, Go over to Polly's house,
talk to Paulie, get Paully's information, go back to where
they were, call back on the phone to give the information, right,
because he won't talk on phones, which seems all silly
until the end of the movie, when talking on the
phone is exactly what gets him caught. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Paulie played by Paul Sorvino, who for me growing up,
I used to watch the movie Oh God with George Burns.
He is the crazy Bible thump and pastor.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: And I personally have been chosen to render the benediction
at this year's Super.
Speaker 1: Bowl, and he is actually Italian. But he just felt
like he wasn't right for this part himself. Yes, he
didn't know how to play the character, and he said
he was literally about to go out to a show.
He glanced up at himself in the mirror, and he
caught a look, a look that he wasn't even trying
to give, and he's like, ah, that's Pauli's look.
Speaker 2: By the way, according to Rayleiota, Robert de Niro put
a fake severed horsehead in his trailer as an.
Speaker 1: Homage to the Godfather. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So the
thing about these movies is that they make me hungry?
Am I wrong? They make me unger. I even texted
you while I was watching The Godfather. I'm like, I
want some spaghetti and you what I did? I push
pause and I went and I made some spagh any
with meat balls.
Speaker 2: Did you slice the garlic with the razor blade?
Speaker 1: No? No, what I did, put the wine and the sugar,
get out of the sausages and brown the sash because
Italians don't brown. They fry, right, right. So you've got
this whole scene where Clemenza is talking about food and
how to cook. And then in The Goodfellows you've got
the scene where they're in prison. They're in prison and
they it's basically like a bachelor pad. Yeah, I forget.
I mean, it's like my college house growing up, right right,
and they get all the food that they want. They
get steaks, they get garlic that they can slice with
the razors, so it just melts in the butter and
it makes me hungry. And then you've got the whole
scene where he's at his house, where Henry Hill's at
his house, and it's Hill. He keeps during the sauce,
he keeps hearting the sauce, he gets the meat sauce,
and he's talking about all these things, and it says,
though those things are just as important, if not more,
than selling the drugs and avoiding the cops.
Speaker 2: I know, right, Let's talk about the helicopter at the
end of the movie, Okay, is that a paranoid delusion
or is that just a helicopter.
Speaker 1: I think he's really following him. I think it's definitely
really following him, because you're not gonna have cops come
read the scene after a phone call without already having
some information and being ready with phones tapped and that
kind of thing. So yeah, I definitely think that they
were tailing him.
Speaker 2: By the way, I just want to mention this. Mike
Star plays Frenchie and Goodfellas. Yeah, he also plays Frenchie
in another movie called The ten Million Dollar Getaway Okay,
which is a movie about the lift Tianza heist.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, and he plays menthyl in dub and Dummer fellas.
I think we could listen to a radio lesson. Oh yes, okay, Yes,
I know what you're talking about. Yes, the same character.
He was the inside guy at the airport. Yes, yeah, okay,
love it, yes, love it. Ten million Dollar get Away.
How do you know? I had gas? Let me tell
you something. They never get an asked my pills. Okay.
So Jimmy gets paranoid and he starts whacking everybody that's
involved in this ice. Yeah, true to life, True to life.
That's exactly what's happened. Carbone ends up in the freezer.
But they found a like an address book sewn into
his coat, and that's how they got That's how they
got their information. That's right, that's right. And so so
the the hits that Jimmy put out, all of that's
true to life. And then while that's going on, Tommy's
becoming a made man, right, and it's all just a
setup just to lead him down the primrose path until
they put a bullet in the back of his head.
True to life, Jimmy gets the call, finds out that
Tommy's been killed, and after he's been often one guy
after another, it's at that point that he starts to cry. Yeah,
the sociopath gets killed, and that leads you to cry.
But you've murdered all of your friends and your associates
and it's not a problem, right. Henry Hill says, It's
the only time I ever saw Jimmy burke. Shit.
Speaker 2: Wow, let's talk about that. So the Luftanza thing is
coming down. Jimmy is monitoring these people. They're spending money.
He gets mad at them for spending money. But in
real life, there was one guy they call him Stacks.
Speaker 1: In the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that guy was in charge of the getaway vehicle
and he was supposed to take it to a nen
pound yard.
Speaker 1: Two jobs. Replace the license tag, yes, crush the car. Yes,
that's all he had to do. That's all he had
to do.
Speaker 2: He went to his girlfriend's house and he fell asleep.
Speaker 1: And they immediately found it.
Speaker 2: They found the car with his prints all over the place.
And so guess what they're hot on the trail of
all these guys.
Speaker 1: Early appearance by Samuel L. Jackson. By the way of
the movie, this is pre almost everything. I mean, he
had been the guy, he had been the robber in
coming to America, but he hadn't been in hardly anything.
It was just four years before pulp fiction. Wow, Samuel L.
Jackson and Stacks. One quick thing I want to talk
about before final judgment. Okay.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy four, The Godfather premiered on NBC over
two nights. Both nights it ended at eleven PM, and
in both nights, the New York City Municipal Water Authorities
had some overflow problems from all the toilets flushing at
the same time because you can't pull yourself away. That's
why I'm so thankful that this movie had an intermission.
Let's talk about the reception of these movies.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right. Obviously The Godfather was a nuclear bombs
smashing success. Yep.
Speaker 2: Not only that, I mean it made a ton of money,
but it won Best Picture. Yeah, Brando won Best Actor.
Speaker 1: Didn't show up. Let's talk about that, all right.
Speaker 2: So Marlon Brando won the Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather,
but instead of going to the Oscars, he set sashen
little feather. She went up Roger Moore. James Bond offers
her the statuette. She would not accept it and proceeded
to have a speech about the film industry's mistreatment of
Native Americans.
Speaker 1: Yep, I've watched the old reel of this, and I
think she handled herself in a very diplomatic and for
what she was doing, handled it very well.
Speaker 2: So Marlon Brando became the second actor to refuse a
Best Actor award.
Speaker 1: Do you know the other one? No, George C. Scott.
That's what I was gonna say for Patten, which was
also Francis Ford Coppola, right.
Speaker 2: Francis Ford Coppola wrote the screenplay, by the way, The
Godfather Part two. Yeah one Best Picture, Yes, Goodfellows was
nominated for Best Picture and lost to Dances with Wolves.
Speaker 1: Mario Puzzo one for Best Writing, James Cohn was nominated.
Robert Devall was nominated. Al Pacino was nominated.
Speaker 2: Al Pacino boycotted the Oscars because he was nominated for
Best Supporting Actor and he felt like he should have
been nominated for Best Actor because he was in he
had more screen time than Brando.
Speaker 1: Francis Ford Coppola was nominated for Best Director. Oh my gosh,
we can't not talk about the music. This is one
of my favorite soundtracks of all time. You got two
key pieces of music here. One is a waltz which
is three four time, and the other one is in
four to four times. But it's got this beautiful Italian
I will walk around whistling these tunes at work. They
are beautiful and sad and sweet and take you right
down to little Italy. It is. It's They're all by
Nina Rota, who did ton of great movies. He composed
the soundtrack for Romeo and Juliet, which is I mean,
that's that's up there with like Beethoven and Bach. I mean,
it's amazing stuff that he's done. And the piece of
music that he did in Godfather One, of course they
used again and Godfather Iwo. Nina Rota love it. Soundtrack
for Goodfellas, it's all popular music. It's all pop music.
Out of the head of Martin Scorsese' here's the song
we need for this scene on the script, before we
get an actor cast, before we before one photography piece
is made, I am telling you these are the songs
that we have, These songs that come out of Martin
Scorsese's head. In the fifties, You've got rags to riches,
You've got life is but a dream. You've got Baby,
I Love You, and be on the sea. And then
when they move up into the sixties and the seventies,
you get Sunshine of Your Love and that awesome scene
where they're panning in on Robert De Niro's face and
Layla the piano music. Oh my gosh, you couldn't pick
a more perfect song that where the switch happens in
Laila and it goes into that piano music. Perfect. Perfect.
He knew when he was filming that scene.
Speaker 2: He's like, you know what'd be great here, Laila, except
not that regular part of Leila, the piano part of Laila.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know.
Speaker 2: He also used he wanted to use Frank Sinatra's version
of My Way at the end of the movie. Yeah,
but Sinatra wouldn't let him, so then he used Sid
Vicious' version instead.
Speaker 1: That's perfect. One quick thing.
Speaker 2: So Godfather Part one one Best Picture, Godfather Part two
one Best Picture. Yeah, there's only been two sequels that
received Best Picture, Godfather Part two and Return the King.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, Lord of the Rings. It's
gotta be Yeah. Joe Peshi's acceptance speech at the Oscar
for winning Best Actor, it's like the shortest in Oscar history. Okay,
he said, it's been my pleasure, thank you, and that's it. Nice.
All right, on to final judgment. I thought he was
gonna say, dances with I'm not ready yet. We've been
rolling this around for weeks. This is driving me nuts.
This is like, this is worse than Major League versus
Boulder Eyes. This is this is like the hardest comparison
I think we have ever had. I don't really have
a good read on you on this. Okay, you got
to go first. I'm still gonna I'm probably gonna change
my answer free times, Okay, in the next thirty seconds.
All right.
Speaker 2: So these are some of the greatest movies of all time,
reaching their fiftieth birthday. They have major cultural impact, and
I have gone back and forth. I think I've had
every movie at the number one spot at some point
on my list. But here is where I come down.
Number one for me is.
Speaker 1: The Godfather Part two.
Speaker 2: So many of the interesting characters from Godfather Part one
have been killed off. You know, we changed some people
characters and the importance and stuff like that. I thought
the stuff in Cuba was beautiful and amazing. I felt
incredibly sad when Fredo got killed, but still number three
for me.
Speaker 1: Number two is going to be Good Fellas. Now.
Speaker 2: I love Peshi, I love de Niro, I love Leota,
I love Braco.
Speaker 1: I love what Scorsese has done with Goodfellas. I watch
it over and over again.
Speaker 2: I think the vignette nature of it makes it easier
to kind of jump in and jump out of.
Speaker 1: You've got the Luftonza stuff.
Speaker 2: You've got the beatings and the Billy Batt's part and
all this stuff, the mafia life.
Speaker 1: Love Goodfellas. That brings me to number one. Overall. It's
the original, it's the oldest one.
Speaker 2: It's Marlon Brando as the godfather, the epics story of
the family in crisis and the ascension of Michael to power.
Speaker 1: For me, that is number one. D Where are you? Okay?
I can't fault you for anything that you've said, but
I am completely like we don't agree on any one thing,
not one thing, single thing. Okay. So this is where
I fall, and this could be different tomorrow. It could
be different in five minutes. But for right now, at
this moment, I have to say in the number three
spot for me is Goodfellas. It is fantastic. It is
a unique animal like we talked about before the original Godfather.
It made you want to be a gangster. It made
you want it to be a part of the mafia.
Goodfellas freaked me out, made me not want to be
I mean, I'm Joe Peshy. Is terrifying in every respect,
but action packed, fun filled even with all of its uncomfortableness.
Great movie, great soundtrack, great direction by Martin Scorsese. I mean,
talk about an icon. I'd be willing to spike the
football on this one. This is the best Martin Scorsese
movie that exists. Wow. I like The Departed, I like
I like Raging Bowl, I like those movies, but this one,
to me is his Koudi Graf. But for me, it's
number three, which leaves us with the two Godfather movies,
and they're both beautiful, Like every single frame is a
piece of art. I mean, it's so beautifully photographed. And
Coppola it is his masterpiece. Either he has done nothing
before or since that has has amounted to what this
thing is, but it's so so good, and it's hard
to pick between these two because they are linked hand
in hand. But when it comes down to it, the
story that I find the most fascinating, the most engaging
is the rise of Vito Corleone from immigrant in Italy
to the Dawn. I think that movie or that storyline
is fascinating, and the fact that it's almost all in Italian,
it is beautifully done. And so for that reason, The
Godfather has to finish at number two for me, and
number one is The Godfather Part two.
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm gonna put you on spot real quick. Okay,
greatest sequel of all time is what Empire Strikes Back
exactly exactly right? Okay, Well for once you and I agree,
Football Empire Strength. Okay, come back next week. I'm so
excited what we're going to talk about next week. We've
got two albums that we're going to compare that are
turning forty this year, and there is a song on
this upcoming one that we're going to do.
Speaker 1: It's Total four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been playing it for forty years and it
hasn't got old.
Speaker 1: It's been downloaded one point one billion times. It's incredible.
We're going to talk about Africa.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about a song about Rosanna Arquette
and some of the greatest session musicians of all time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're going to compare that to some guys
who were very pretty but still managed to learn to
play their instruments pretty well and became rock icons of
the eighties Duran Duran. Both of these albums came out
in nineteen eighty two, and so it's only fitting that
we match these guys up, pretty boys who just learned
to play their instruments versus a bunch of well, for
lack of better term, ugly guys who were the best
musicians of the day. It's an interesting comparison Toto four
versus Rio Duran Duran. Everybody be sure and hit the
follow button on your podcast app so that you are
sure not to miss that episode. And if you would
do this for me, all right, write a review for us,
give us five star rating. Write a review and throw
in either the Godfather or Goodfellas or an offer we
can't refuse, and we will read your review on our
next podcast that sounds like an offer they can't refuse.
There you go, see you back here next week. All
in my life, I wanted to be a podcaster. One
love is a love, A love a love