A Couple of Goodfellas: DVD Verdict Interviews Actor Paul Sorvino and Director/Producer Irwin Winkler

Judge Patrick Naugle

October 18th, 2004

In the scope of gangster movies, few can compete with both the intensity and popularity of director Martin Scorsese's classic Goodfellas. To celebrate the film's re-release on DVD in a new two-disc edition, character actor Paul Sorvino ("Paul Cicero") and producer Irwin Winkler sat down with DVD Verdict to discuss what it was like to work on one of the all-time great mafia dramas in cinema history.

Patrick Naugle: How did Goodfellas come about for you?

Irwin Winkler: I was producing a film in France called 'Round Midnight and every Monday afternoon I'd go to a bookstore where they had the New York Sunday Times and stuff like that. One Monday I picked up a New York magazine where they had a story called "Wiseguys." I read it, thought it would make a good movie, and called [author] Nick Pileggi's agent in New York and he told me it was available. He also told me that, coincidently, Martin Scorsese had read it and was kind of interested in it. I called Marty who was doing a picture in Chicago and he said he was interested. I then negotiated the rights and bought it.

Paul Sorvino: It happened when Marty [Scorsese] called my agent and they requested me. And there I was! I had a meeting with him and that's how it came about.

PN: How was it working with Martin Scorsese?

IW: Great, as usual. We had worked together on several films before Goodfellas. We'd worked on Raging Bull together, New York, New York, and had been involved in a lot of other stuff similarly. So we had a good relationship prior to doing Goodfellas.

PS: With the actors, he's the best. Nobody does it better than he does. He's right there, he develops the scene before it's filmed. He doesn't allow anyone to film anything until it's ready.

PN: Goodfellas was a huge success and has gone on to become a classic in the genre. Why do you think that is?

IW: I think it's just a really good movie. I think it is a non-romantic look at the world of gangsters, very different from The Godfather—which I admire tremendously—but this is the flipside. Whereas The Godfather romanticized the mafia family saga, Goodfellas is anything but that; these are a bunch of tough guys who are certainly not heroic in any matter of form. It's that look at the underworld that really attracts people.

PN: Paul, did you do any research for Goodfellas before the shoot?

PS: The only research I could possibly do was an internal kind of research. It's kind of hard to explain because there's no technical pathway to it. It's not like learning a dialect or anything of that nature. I felt I could do a middle aged Italian man without much research. (laughs) Where it was really hard was finding the lethal nature of this 'fella. There was no technical way to do that, no way to research that. You have to look in yourself and I did. It took me two months but I was constant until I found it.and I found it two days before the shoot! I looked at myself in the mirror and said, "Oh my God! There it is!" It was a pretty bad time, a pretty awful time. I felt like I had let Marty down. But it worked out all right.

PN: Irwin, did you ever get a chance to work with the real Henry Hill?

IW: Yes, he was around for part of the shoot. I've seen him since then and he's out of the witness protection program. As a matter of fact, we're having a Goodfellas reunion in Los Angeles and a lot of the people will be there—Ray Liotta, Nick Pileggi, and a lot of the members from the cast. Henry Hill will also be joining us as well.

PN: Was Henry [Hill] pleased with the film?

IW: I think so. He never complained about it, let me put it that way. I think most people who see the film, including those guys who were part of the mob or mafia, or whatever you'd call it, were very happy with it.

PN: Paul, did you ever get a chance to meet your real life counterpart?

PS: No. He was dead! (laughs) And I don't want to meet his ghost.

PN: Did you get a chance to talk to Henry Kissinger after playing him in Nixon?

PS: During. After I shot about two weeks. They gave me about an hour and a half with him. It was helpful. The work that I had to do was essentially doing his mannerisms and his voice, which I could do, but then to make that part of myself is the actor's task. When Rich Little—probably the greatest impersonator of them all—gets the accent and the moves down, that's great. But the actors have to internalize it…weep and laugh, and go through all the emotions without losing the externals. That takes a lot of labor and a lot of practice.

PN: Paul, your first role was in the Carl Reiner film Where's Papa. How did you get involved in acting?

PS: Professionally? I'd been a singer since I was sixteen. One thing led to another and I got into summer stock, they saw that I could act, gave me some lines, et cetera. I met a famous agent who liked my look, I went on a few auditions, and he said I needed acting training. So they sent me to Sandy Misner, the great acting teacher who was starting a new school. So I went there, they gave me a scholarship for the acting and musical department, I studied a year there and had to go to work. I didn't have any more money to study anymore. Ultimately, of all my jobs I became a copyrighter. I then went back into working on commercials. I had been on Broadway in a musical called Bon Jour and a play called The Mating Dance. It was a steady progression.

PN: Paul, with the comic book boom at an all time high, did you enjoy your experiences on Dick Tracy and The Rocketeer?

PS: Yeah. Dick Tracy was with my friend Warren Beatty, and that's always fun to be around him. He's a marvelous, creative artist. The Rocketeer was a lot of fun as well. That was really enjoyable.

PN: Irwin, how did you get involved in the Rocky series?

IW: [Sylvester] Stallone came in to see us as an actor and said that he had an idea for a fight film, and we had an idea for a boxing film as well. He told us his idea, which we liked a lot. He told us he'd write it for us if he could also star in it. We were kind of intrigued with him and thought it was an interesting character. We said okay and worked with him on the screenplay. We liked the script a lot and brought him into the film.

PN: You've been involved with the Rocky films since the beginning—do you think that mythical character will be making a comeback any time soon?

IW: No, I don't think so. (laughs) I think he's probably seen his last days.

PN: Any of your films made you want to put your head in your hands and weep?

PS: About fifty. (laughs) Out of my over one hundred movies there's probably about fifty of them where I feel that way.

PN: Irwin, you've gone from producer to director. How did that change come about?

IW: I was very interested in directing after 25 years of producing. I thought I'd take over creatively where I had turned over a lot of creativity to the directors. That brought me through this last decade to my last project, De-Lovely. I just really liked doing that. I got a lot of encouragement from Marty [Scorsese] and Robert De Niro, who I'd worked with a lot. As a matter of fact, Robert starred in my directorial debut [1991's drama Guilty By Suspicion].

PN: Your new film, De-Lovely, is based on the life of famed musician Cole Porter. How did you get involved in that project?

IW: I knew a little about Cole Porter's life. He had this long marriage to Linda, his wife, and they were married for over thirty years, yet he was homosexual. I thought that would be an interesting story to examine, how that marriage and his own personal sexual preferences imbued itself to this great American music that he wrote. A lot of Cole Porter's stuff is so fascinating when you look at it in the light of it being written by a gay man who was married to a straight woman. When you think about the songs he wrote, like "What is This Thing Called Love?" and even the great love songs from Kiss Me Kate, they're all questioning love. It was just a fascinating subject for me. I'm so pleased with the film.

PN: Did you get any input from his family?

IW: Well, he has no family to speak of. However, I did get a great deal of input from his lawyer, who died about a year before we started shooting, but he gave me the rights to the music and told me a great deal about Cole Porter. So I did get a lot of information from his lawyer who knew more about him than almost anyone else.

PN: What projects are you currently working on?

PS: I'm working on a few things. The money isn't raised for one film, and half for the other. One is called The Rights of Winter, which is about two Greek sponge fishermen. It's one of the best scripts I've read in many, many years. I'm looking at that right now. There's also another one that I can't talk about yet because I don't want to jinx it! Then there's a script written by my daughter called The Trouble with Callie, which I'm going to try and direct and also act in.

IW: I'm in the DVD business right now! (laughs) I just did a lot of new DVD stuff for De-Lovely, Raging Bull, The Net…all of these films seem to have a new life because of this digital medium. We recently did a new DVD for The Right Stuff, which really turned out to be terrific. Once I get done with all of that I'm going to think about going out and finding another job!