And oh boy, what a welcome release that hilarious moment is. It's safe to say their stunned silence as the scene becomes unbearably tense was no doubt matched by viewers - right up until Tommy reveals it's just a ruse, of course. He apparently didn't tell the extras what they were in for, though. As revealed in a 'Making of' documentary, Pesci actually brought the idea to Martin Scorsese during rehearsals, with Scorsese writing it into the script the way he and his actors wanted to do it on the day. Director Martin Scorsese reunites with members of his GoodFellas gang (writer Nicholas Pileggi actors Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Frank Vincent) for a three-hour epic about the rise and fall of mobster Sam 'Ace' Rothstein (De Niro), a character based on real-life gangster Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal.
While Pesci's real-life experience informed the infamous scene, the moment wasn't improvised in the strictest sense of the word.
the guy said something who happened to be a connected guy and he said 'Well. Per Liotta, a similarly unsettling event happened to Pesci himself in his youth, 'Joe was telling me a story about what happened to him in Queens or wherever it was and he said to some guy. As covered by Insider, during a 2015 post-screening Q&A session celebrating the 25th anniversary of 'Goodfellas,' Ray Liotta regaled audience members with the story of how the scene came together.
