As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To me, being a gangster was better than being President of the United States - Henry Hill

The Cococabana Shot, In Goodfellas



This is one of my all time favourites movie scenes ,known as "The Cococabana shot" in Martin Scorsese gangster classic, Goodfellas.

No one bestows glamour on gangsters lifestyles better than Martin Scorsese. He's made it sexy and he lets me forget that although  technically they are the bad guys, I still wanna sign up, join and become one ! If this is the kind of table service I'm going to get in restaurants, I'm in ! Just find me a horse with a head , and I'll do the rest. Capiche ?

In this scence We follow Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) and his date Karen Friedman (Lorraine Bracco) as they enter the nightclub through the back entrance, Tracking through the hallways, kitchen, and eventually the crowd in the club. This is accompanyed by the song "Then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals, which massively complements the scene.

Walking through the club the couple eventually arrive at their front row table which has been set up with careful haste. Its a happy and exciting scene where you see the result of Hills effortless gangster power, with them being treated like royalty, only they're more cooler than royalty.Like waaay fucking cooler.

What also makes this special is that its such a busy scene with so much going on yet its done in a single smooth handheld shot without cuts or edits, which is known as a Steadicam shot. The director plans the shot, but the Steadicam operator makes it happen.

In this case the Steadicam operator was the legendary Larry McConkey, who also shot Steadicam scenes in the films, Raising Cain and the opening scene in Bonfire of the Vanities, which is itself another masterpiece scene.

Operating a Steadicam is one of the most technically challenging jobs on a movie set, but done correctly, will also  achieve amazing seamless results. For a typical Steadicam shot, a cameraman must follow a predetermined route, while adjusting the camera, avoid any obstacles and still be holding the heavy camera equipment all at the same time. So basically , its Kaa-razy difficult and not as easy as it looks and feels for the viewer, but McConkey, like Scorsese is a master of his craft and these two genius bastards are those who effortlessly put the "move" in movies.

In a 2003 interview with the American Cinematographer Magazine, McConkey said, "Several times I would get to a moment when I felt the shot was starting to die, so we'd bring in another character for Ray to interact with."

Scorsese described the scene brilliantly as "Henry’s whole life being ahead of him, doors opening to him. It’s his seduction of Karen and it’s also the lifestyle seducing him”.

McConkey went on to say,"I deliberately tried to take on the role of an audience member and behave as a surrogate character that responds on their behalf. I thought of myself as a tour guide driving a bus, a sports car or a boat, gently leading the audience to anticipate a turn or surprising them with a sudden curve." He totally delivered, its perfection.

Incredibly,this scene only took eight shots and it was done, it would have taken even fewer but Henny Youngman who played himself as the comedian on stage at the end, kept fluffing up his lines. Can you imagine how pissed off everyone mustv been after doing all that work and even though so much in the sequence could easily go wrong at any moment it didn't, until the guy ( who is playing himself !) cocked it all up at the very end with his couple of lines !he mustv felt like a right proper Jackass!

Anyway we will forgive the old Jackass as all's well that ends well I suppose and it still turned out easily one of cinema's most coolest movie scenes. I remember every part of it and I love how perfect the song fits it.

To this day every time I meet a girl while I'm drunk for the first time and she asks me what I do for a living, I say "Construction" hoping this will provoke a laugh as she gets the joke and that I'm obviously a witty motherfucker who's quoting Ray Liotta in Goodfellas.But sometimes this just gets a bland response , and then a confused looking one when I awkwardly try to explain that I'm not, it was a joke, a quote from a movie. This is then followed by me feeling like a pathetic loser for a second, until I think well actually, if your the kind of person that's not seen Goodfellas yet , were probably going to have Jackshit in common anyway. This is because there are two types of people in the world : those who have watched Goodfellas and those who haven't, the latter category have been scientifically proven more likely to drown their own babies. Stay away from them....and go stick on Goodfellas.