Just found out a pretty interesting, and surprising, bit of trivia that a lot of you may already know about the movie My Blue Heaven, the comedy starring Steve Martin as a mobster in witness protection. Apparently, it is based on the same real-life gangster as *Goodfellas *- Henry Hill.
*Goodfellas *was based on Nicholas Peleggi’s book about Hill, which was titled “Wiseguys.” The meetings and interviews that Peleggi had with Hill while compiling his research were also attended by Peleggi’s wife - Nora Ephron, who wrote the script for My Blue Heaven.
Goodfellas deals w/ Hill getting dissatisfied w/ witness protection, and MBH is him going into the program. They even both use the line about “egg noodles and ketchup” referring to pasta they ordered while in protection. MBH even uses title cards throughout the movie that are the chapter titles from Wiseguys.
Am I the last person on the Dope that knew this connection? Anyone else surprised as me?
No, I knew about it, but I think you state it backwards – Goodfellas is prequel to My Blue Heaven, since the events in Goodfellas happen before those of My Blue Heaven.
I got the connection as well, although Vinnie in My Blue Heaven seems more like an amalgam of Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke, especially his “I tip everybody,” motto. Witness Burke (renamed “Jimmy Conway” in Goodfellas): And it was when I first met Jimmy Conway. He couldn’t have been more than twenty six or twenty seven at the time, but he was already a legend. He’d just walk in and everybody who worked the room went wild. He’d give a doorman twenty bucks for opening the door. He’d give hundreds to the dealers and guys who ran the games. The bartender got fifty dollars just for keeping ice cubes cold.
The real story of Henry Hill, of course, was nowhere near as amusing as My Blue Heaven; he clearly didn’t fit well into suburban life and ended up leaving the WPP and turning back to theft and drugs, and ended up homeless in Santa Monica.
I had no idea. Of course I don’t like Steve Martin movies and thought Goodfellas was severely over-rated crap; so I wouldn’t have put them together anyway.
That said, I really do enjoy finding out about “unrelated” movies or books that are actually quite closely related, no matter how different they are; so thanks for the trivia tip.