Martin Scorsese recalls that after the initial screening, executives were terrified, and it became “a constant battle until a few weeks before release.”
Based on a novel by Nicholas Pileggi, Goodfellas explores the lives of gangsters in a very raw and violent way.
The movie opens with a scene featuring Tommy DeVito (Pesci) repeatedly stabbing gangster Billy Batts with a kitchen knife.
The final version of the “body-in-the-trunk” scene is disturbing as it is, but before the screening, it was even more so.