GoodFellas (Movie Review)

Hollywood Reporter
United States
September 2, 2004

Martin Scorsese Collection (After Hours/Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore/Goodfellas/Mean Streets/Who's That Knocking At My Door?)

The DVD includes a commentary track by the film's editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. Abel writes about Schoonmaker's description of the scene in Goodfellas which is set to Harry Nilsson's ^"Jump Into the Fire^":

Nowhere is Scorsese's love of popular music more apparent than in the paranoia-drenched scenes in which Liotta's character tries to run mob errands, cook dinner and hoover cocaine while a DEA chopper flies overhead. Scorsese "has a deep sense of how music should go," Schoonmaker says. "Sometimes it's a shocking choice, but it works like crazy."

The sequence opens with Harry Nilsson's frantic ^"Jump Into the Fire^" and never lets up. Each shot was designed to work with specific bars of music, Schoonmaker says. "We just jumped around and experimented and violated every rule there is."