Given that the Martin Scorsese produced “Boardwalk Empire” was renewed for a second season HBO after just one episode (you can see the preview for episode two after the jump), it’s no surprise that Warner Bros. TV is eying a series based on the stone cold classic, “Goodfellas.”
Obviously, where it will pick up in the “Goodfellas” timeline remains unclear, but Nicholas Pileggi is said to be writing at least the series pilot and Irwin Winkler is on board to produce. Martin Scorsese’s participation is unclear at this point, but we would imagine he will want to be involved on some level. While this is potentially exciting, TV series’ based on movies have had a spotty history at best and given the film it will be tough shoes to fill the roles adequately that the likes of Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Paul Sorvino made so iconic.
At any rate, while we wait for more news about this project to surface, do yourself a huge favor and spend a few minutes reading GQ’s excellent oral history of the film by pretty much everyone involved in the film. There are way too many juicy anecdotes to recount here but our favorite? The story that the famous “Copacabana” steadicam shot started initially as Martin Scorsese wanting to top Brian De Palma’s lengthy shot in “The Untouchables.” As Illeana Douglas recalls, “Brian De Palma had just done this incredibly long Steadicam shot in The Untouchables, and Marty said it would be funny to try to do it one minute longer than De Palma’s. The world perceives this as ‘Oh, the Copacabana scene!’ But what it really is, is directors behind the scenes having fun fucking with each other.”
But perhaps even more hilariously, steadicam operator Larry McConkey thought that Scorsese had no idea what he doing and the shot was ridiculous saying, “The impression I had when Marty walked us through the Copacabana shot was that this is going to be the most boring, worst thing I’ve ever done. We’re walking across the street, down the stairs, down a hallway, in the kitchen…. What is this shot about?”
Seriously, the piece is great which lots of interesting nuggets including that at one point Tom Cruise, Madonna and John Malkovich were being considered for the roles of Henry, Karen and Jimmy Conway respectively. Uh….what?