Goodfellas is considered one of the best movies ever made, but the road to that wasn’t easy, and some changes had to be made before the movie was released – and among those was the opening scene of Billy Batt’s death. Martin Scorsese is one of the most respected filmmakers in the industry, but even he has come across a couple of obstacles during the post-production process of his movies. Such was the case of his 1990 movie Goodfellas, based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi and starring Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci.
Goodfellas chronicles the life of mob associate Henry Hill (Liotta), from his days as a teenager fascinated by the mafia presence in his Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn, to his involvement with the crime family of Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and his decision to become an FBI informant. During his time working for the mob, Henry became acquainted with various big names in the mafia, as were Jimmy Conway (De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Pesci). The latter two were part of the Lufthansa heist and were also involved in the murder of Billy Batts, for which Tommy was ultimately killed. The murder of Batts not only got Tommy into trouble, but it was also a problem for Scorsese, as he had to make some changes to it so the movie could be released.
Scorsese’s purpose with Goodfellas was to depict violence in a realistic way, but the studio didn’t share his vision. For the first time, Warner Bros. asked him to preview the film, and the audience’s reaction to it was not good at all. Viewers were “agitated” by the sequence of Henry’s final day as a gangster, though that was Scorsese’s intention. Along with editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese then decided to make the sequence faster and with more jump cuts, so the purpose of the scene wouldn’t change much. However, that wasn’t the biggest problem Scorsese and company encountered during the Goodfellas previews, as the opening sequence, with Henry, Tommy, and Jimmy getting rid of Batts, made many people leave the room. Speaking to EW in 2019, Scorsese shared that people started laughing when Tommy takes out the knife, and after the first two stabs, people started leaving. After the third stab, more people left, and so they had to make some changes.
Scorsese added that there were seven stabs shown on screen, so they decided that showing the knife was enough to let viewers know what was coming and kept the first four stabs, with the final three happening off-screen while the camera focused on Jimmy’s reaction, but the sound effects were kept. Scorsese also removed 10 frames of blood to get an R rating, and Goodfellas was finally released. The movie was a critical success and is considered not only Scorsese’s best gangster movie but also one of the best movies of all time. Goodfellas was nominated for a number of awards, including six Academy Awards, with Pesci winning for Best Supporting Actor.
Although toning down the stabbing in the opening sequence of Goodfellas seems like a minor change, it actually improved the scene, as listening to the stabs without seeing them ends up having a bigger effect on the audience, as it’s left to their imagination, enhanced by Jimmy’s reaction. The response of the audience during the previews might seem like an overreaction nowadays, but in a way, it helped the movie become a big success.