Something that always really bothered me about Goodfellas

For that scene, De Niro actually asked the real Henry Hill how the real Jimmy Conway (Burke) dispensed ketchup.

I always thought it was a play on the final scene. Jimmy is Irish so he doesn’t know marinara sauce.

quote:

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Right after I got here I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup.

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My question is did she have that painting sitting next to her legs the whole conversation just to bring it up at the end.

Tommy has an uninhabited, evil look in his eyes while his mother is talking. Like that of someone that either just took a human life or of someone that just saw his friend kill a pasta dish with ketchup.

quote:

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My question is did she have that painting sitting next to her legs the whole conversation just to bring it up at the end.

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They start the scene with her after she's dressed and is the process of sitting at the table. She could've leaned it against DiNero's chair before she sat. There's also a cut before she pulls it up, so all bets are off.

Yeah, that wouldn't fly in an Italian household.

I love how he drenches the dish in Ketchup and then tells the Mom, delicious, delicious.

Yeah no shite, you just drenched it in Ketchup. That would make a horse apple taste edible.

I can't stand when people alter a dish by adding way too much of condiment seasoning that has no place on the dish and then tell you...oh this is great, this is delicious...when they're now not eating the dish you cooked.

Jimmy is not Sicilian/Italian. At the very end of the movie , Henry breaks the fourth wall and makes a comment about living in BFE as part of witness protection. The comment is that he ordered marinara and got noodles and ketchup. It’s a knock on non Sicilians/Italians and their lack of pallet. (Henry’s mother is Sicilian ). It’s a pretty common knock and Scorsese /De Niro amplify it with the scene.

Mrs. Scorsese didn't paint it. It was done by the mother of Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote the book Goodfellas was based on and who cowrote the film’s screenplay with Scorsese.

The scene was almost all improvised, according to this article:

A Late Meal, a Painting, and Mrs. DeVito