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It’s easy to know what to focus on in the Goodfellas Christmas scene, as Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Conway is bursting with gleeful charm at the sight of Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill. There’s many times during the 1990 classic where Jimmy is annoyed, frustrated, full of rage, but he’s never more merry than he is when Hill walks into the bar in that scene. Goodfellas is not a Christmas movie, it’s a movie that spans someone’s entire life, but the Christmas scene in Goodfellas is might be my single favorite Christmas scene in cinematic history. With about halfway through the movie, you can feel the wheels turning, and although the gang has just completed what is supposed to be a score for a lifetime, there’s an obvious anxiety still permeating through the scene. Henry Hill talks about how the Luftanza heist was supposed to be the score for a lifetime, but it wasn’t, because when you do crime, there’s always loose ends and backstabbers that hold your comfort captive. The anxiety of crime — and all the hoops you must go through to stay a free man in spite of it — renders the crime itself moot. That’s what Goodfellas is all about — the chaos of human emotion, decision-making, and how the entire status of your financial security or strictly, your security as a person in the world can change in a New York minute.
So, it is wondrous to see De Niro capture those emotions so well. There’s obviously been a ton of great De Niro roles, so it is almost futile to discuss what his best performance is, but I’ve always been attached to his acting in Goodfellas, one of the best, if not the best, supporting roles in the Scorsese canon. Jimmy Conway is a man who turns the movie on its axis, despite the livewire charisma of Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito and Ray Liotta’s sleekness, every major tide in Goodfellas is turned by De Niro embodying many emotions at once: the greed of the mob, the rage, the efficiency, and lastly, the scary anxiety. (He does some of his best work in the phone scene when the old gangsters tell him that Tommy was executed when he thought he was going to become a made man. De Niro is incensed, begins to cry, and throws the phone booth down like the Hulk would because it means their entire dream is dying. All there is now is him and Henry, two outsiders that will always be middlemen). Jimmy is so tightly-wound — struggling with his lack of trust in everyone around him, including and epsecially Morrie, the token Jewish wig store owner, that it feels startling that he is happy to see Henry. When he yells at Johnny and Carbone for buying gifts for their wives and for themselves — he’s yelling at them in long-winded run-on sentences — his gut instincts about the group of jokers he did this heist with are proven right. They’re not to be trusted; there is no crime family, just people who are a means to an end. Indeed, Jimmy Conway’s Christmas spirit doesn’t last long after this.
I made a list of my favorite things happening in this scene for my Substack. So, subscribe to the blog, and check the rest of that out. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!
Dec 25, 2024
Related Recs
I’m sure you’ve seen it, but if it’s been awhile (it had been for me) I recommend a re-watch. My mom‘s husband had been politicking for its election as our annual x-mas watch for years and I was finally out-voted in its favor this year; I can admit I was wrong. I was near to sobbing by the end and its old-timey-ness did not detract from the incredible writing, pacing, and understanding of the human condition, rendering it - actually - time*less*.
Jan 27, 2025
i never thought i’d find my 10/10 movie but i think this is it
i’m moved, amazed, and also feel seen somehow
every detail made such an impact
between the living situation and dustin hoffmann‘s supreme performance, it brought me to tears so many times
i never knew how much one movie could impact so much of cinema, even freaking elf
i don’t need to watch another movie for a long time lol
i could write a book on all of this, yet i’m astounded and lacking words
i think joe buck represents so much of the innocence/naivety we start with in life (also omg i couldn’t believe that was jon voight at first!)
and i feel like rizzo ratzo rico is the polar opposite, jaded reality of what it feels like in the real world. his pain came through so strong and hit me like a bunch of swords to the soul.
there’s so much more to it than just that but that’s all for now.
Jan 4, 2025
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In an earlier draft I sent Tyler 87 different movies so this is my favourite of those 87 movies. House of Games is a perfect movie about confidence art, which really is the same as visual art. My dad was a con artist, so I like this nonviolent way to revisit my childhood. Joe Mantegna (I smoked a joint with Mantegna in 1994 on the set of a film I was working on) and Lindsay Crouse are perfect, the writing is perfect, tight as a fucking trampoline like all Mamet stuff but not as sweary and unnecessarily verbose as his other stuff.I like seeing anything where smart people get played by people they think they’re smarter than. I like confidence art (The Grifters also v good) because (at least ideally), the victims are just idiots who want an easy buck, not fundamentally vulnerable, although that clearly happens also, and really this likely isn’t an accurate take on con-art but just some romantic reimagining on my part. Also Ricky Jay was one of the greatest character actors of all time.
Mar 29, 2022
Top Recs from @jayson
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I'm often accused of being an "old soul", a categorization I vehemently dislike because it pretends as if my taste is because of nostalgia, as opposed to what is actually cool and compelling. (If something cool comes out now, I enjoy it, but we're in a down period when it comes to culture). But, something old about me, is that I do not care at all about TikTok ending, if does happen. If Elon takes it over from the Chinese, you might as well leave anyway, but I'm just worried at why this is a huge deal for people. It's just an app. Another one will be made. TikTok is not culture, it directly flattens culture into these ten second clips that take music, movies --- things that you need to process --- into something that is now consumed by everyone at a rapid pace, not allowing for the nuances, the style, the aesthetics to sit with us.
I have never watched something on TikTok and thought that this is something in that pushing American culture to deeper heights. I am sorry. Now I am sure they're good stuff on the app, but it's not really a necessity. Whenever I hear the words "it's blowing up on TikTok", my mind immediately growls.
I understood why X becoming overrun with Elon bots and right wingers is a big deal; X actually created things, made careers, made American life, and American events available to be seen by everyone. However, TikTok is a corrupt fantasy, chopping at the wires that make physical connection important.
Read a book! Go to the movies! Go to the restaurant of a cuisine that is unheralded, go to a baseball game. Who cares about TikTok?
Jan 14, 2025
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There's something quite startling about Martin Scorsese's 1980's period compared to the rest of his decades as one of America's greatest filmmakers. In the 80's, he was weird, strange, and making weirdly manic films that feel more New York than even some of his movies about the mob. They're movies about characters who aren't glamarous people that they want to be, but rather, are losers who can't seem to correctly fucntion in normal society. They're non-violent sociopaths. I saw The King of Comedy at Metrograph recently, and it's exhilarating, hilarious, manic, and scary. With Jerry Lewis, Bobby De Niro and Sandra Bernhard, Scorsese was able to create a world where incels who are bad at comedy are wishing for fame. Sound familiar?
This is a great movie. In 1983, it was a box office flop. But in 2025, it is magical in how it's telling the future. A future of scam artists who don't want to work to get there, and don't want to sit in their mediocrity: they want to steal to get their fifteen seconds. Go watch this masterpiece.
Jan 28, 2025
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I am a NBA boy at heart, the players who play in the Association are the greatest athletes on the planet, and everyone should check out a piece I wrote on the Knicks: https://jaysonbuford.substack.com/p/the-knicks-are-struggling-to-be-fun
But MARCH MADNESS is here. So, look, college basketball can be overly sentimental, corny, for hick Midwesterns, and it is not the smart league that the NBA is. Imagine watching Nikola Jokic or LeBron James and that not being good enough for you. NBA haters are, like, a bad financial month away from being KKK members, hiding in plain sight.
However, the NCAA Tournament objectively rules. It shows games every day, every hour, non-stop, teams that you would normally not see play, and upsets, upsets that break your bracket. Upsets happen because mid-major teams get better throughout the year, especially when they play tougher competition before the conference schedules start. It's awesome to when they pull off a shocking upset.
The games are on all day! watch them! BA BA BA BA BASKETBAKLL, GIMME GIMME GIMME THE BALL CAUSE I'M GONNA DUNK IT
Mar 20, 2025