If it isn’t a surprise to anyone that Ray Liotta admitted that the iconic tracking shot that follows Henry and Karen through the back of the nightclub to the inside was ruined on the first take when another actor flubbed their line at the last possible moment.
Did it serve the purpose though? Well that is something of an enigma. Well as comical as it sounds like, Liotta had some context to deliver while he was a guest at the The Rich Eisen Show where he narrated the entire incident, some of the fun anecdotes he shared about the Martin Scorsese film was truly hilarious.
There’s like 100 extras, we’re going through the kitchen, we’ve got a guy picking up the table and all of a sudden, we’re in the center of this thing,” Liotta said. “She says, ‘What do you do?’ and I say, ‘I’m in construction.’ And then it goes up to Henny Youngman. And after all that, he forgot his lines. He forgot his own jokes. So we had to do it again because the whole thing was one shot.”
That is some revelation given the Importance of the scene, and the serious nature of it. Filmmakers and enthusiasts would talk about it as a sign of perfection. But then bummer, the unthinkable happens.
Liotta also noted that he and Joe Pesci improvised the classic “How am I funny?” moments after Pesci told a story to Liotta and Scorsese about an actual situation he was in when someone took what he was saying wrong and got angry.
To get Joe Pesci pissed off is a massive thing in itself, now that being said it makes sense that most classics are not just a work of perfection but sometimes something insane happens and viola you have a masterpiece there.
Liotta also talked about his upcoming film
The Many Saints of Newark In Many Saints, the prequel film to The Sopranos TV series, Liotta plays Aldo “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti, who is the grandfather of Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) from the HBO show.
There was paramount secrecy regarding his upcoming film but he did lighten up the mood by telling some amazing stories about Goodfellas.