Big-screen lowlifes / A year without school

Today: John Saward, a writer based in Chicago; and Moh Telbani, a writer living in Egypt.

Issue No. 133

‘Goodfellas’ In the Theater
John Saward

Gazans Living In Egypt
Moh Telbani

‘Goodfellas’ In the Theater

by John Saward

Here they come, those opening horns of “Rags to Riches,” blasting like a herd of excited elephants, like every wiseguy in Brooklyn has thrown a party and they’re all so happy you finally made it.

Last week, I saw Goodfellas in the theater for the first time, a 35mm print where you could could see every swirl of stale cigarette smoke, every greasy lock of Ray Liotta’s disheveled hair at the end of one more night that had been hustled and snorted to its absolute limits. 

I have seen this movie on a Roku TV in an Airbnb on a rained-out vacation. I have seen it as a ninth-grader, after school on a double-sided DVD, electrified by all those avant-garde deliveries of fuck and motherfuck. I have seen it as a sap in his 30s, living in Chicago and missing the combat-meets-affection of the Long Island accent back home. It is awesome in all the ways you remember it, but watching it without the distraction of a phone, of the Sunday afternoon hangover it might be nursing you through, I was shaken all over again by how enormous and ferociously intense this movie is.

Everything in it is turned up to an assaulting volume, from the shatter of cocktail glasses to the 45-second avalanches of Phil Spector; the screech of tires fades into screams and the drums are synced to the rhythm of Robert DeNiro kicking a man unconscious. As soon as Henry’s car pulls up it’s time to peel out again, to another bar, another phone call, another card game, all of it in this supersonic amphetamine blur. Nothing in this world is savored, because savoring is for people whose indulgences are rare and whose next one is uncertain, savoring is for the people waiting in lines and pledging allegiance to a country that is ripping them off.