Goodfellas is based on a true story, and while it changed the names of most of its main characters, the names of many others were left as they are, and that almost got a real-life gangster into trouble. Martin Scorsese has become one of the most respected filmmakers in the industry, and while he has explored a variety of genres throughout his career, he’s still best known for his gangster movies – and the one often considered as his best is Goodfellas, released in 1990.
Based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, Goodfellas tells the story of mob associate Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his days as a teenager running errands for the crew of Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino), to his full involvement with his crime family and his decision to become an FBI informant. During his time in the mob, Henry met (and worked with) a lot of big names and dangerous people, most notably Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) and Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), but a bunch of other names from real-life gangsters are mentioned in the movie, even if briefly, especially in the scene where Henry is walking through the Bamboo Lounge, and it’s that particular scene which almost got a real gangster into trouble.
In that scene, the camera follows Henry through the Bamboo Lounge, a place where many mobsters gathered, and he introduces them, with some of them interacting with him. Among those is Michael Franzese, who turns to him and says “yeah, I’m gonna see that guy”. Franzese and many others don’t appear again in Goodfellas, but this scene was enough to almost get the real Franzese into major trouble. Franzese is the son of John “Sonny” Franzese Sr., underboss of the Colombo crime family, and dropped out of a pre-med program at Hofstra University to help his family make money after his father was sentenced to 50 years in prison, eventually becoming a caporegime of the same crime family.
While in prison in 1991, Franzese became a born-again Christian and retired from the mob in 1995, after which he had to move to California with his family as he received multiple death threats and contracts on his life, among those one approved by his father. Once out of prison, Franzese watched Goodfellas with his wife and was shocked to hear his name during the aforementioned scene, and feared that it would draw unwanted attention to him and his family, especially because the way he quit the mob goes against the mafia code. In addition to that, he shouldn’t have been mentioned as one of the gangsters at the Bamboo Lounge as that was the hangout place of the Lucchese family, and he was a member of the Colombo family.
Michael Franzese ended up becoming a writer and motivational speaker and has publicly denounced the life of organized crime. In the end, Franzese was able to leave the mob and start over though not without some big risks, and while Goodfellas represented a minor threat in his new life, nothing major happened and he now openly speaks about what life as a gangster is about, and has even pointed out how accurate or not some TV and film depictions of the mob have been.