1975 Film: Las Vegas Boulevard

Plot: The movie will start showing a bank robbing scene where four friends (Ronnie, Paulie, Tonie, and Steve) enter with ski masks and rob a bank. You discover it is Chicago after they leave and the camera pans out towards credits and you can see recognizable buildings. It cuts back four weeks and shows the 4 friends, who are heroin addicts, living in a rundown housing project. Through dialogue you discover that the four are in need of money to pay back their dealer. It then skips back forward where the four are making their get away from the robbery. They escape the police in a car and decide on taking their money to Vegas in order to make all the money back. It then skips forward to Vegas, where the four begin winning lots of money through gambling, but this begins the attraction of mob members. The mob takes Tonie, and he is never seen again and they begin to rough up Steve, warning him to leave Vegas. Steve leaves; however, the other two, Paulie and Ronnie, remain because of the amount of money they are making. The owners of the casino then decide to pay off the police to make sure these two leave. However, when the police realize these are the two wanted for the bank robbery, they force a standoff at their hotel/casino. Paulie is shot and killed and Ronnie decides to surrender. A conversation happens between the police chief and a mob member. The hit man draws his weapon and the screen blanks for a bit and then a single gunshot ends the movie.

Director: Martin Scorsese. His experience from the film Mean Streets, Scorsese would be able to portray the moral ambiguity that the main characters face. I want the film to not convey the main characters as bad people exactly, I do not want them to be sorry for how they live their life, and I want the audience to root for the characters the entire film. I think Scorsese does a really good job with this.

Actors:

Robert de Niro as Ronnie. De Niro works very well with Scorsese and I think he will be able to play this part well.

Al Pacino as Paulie. Pacino is known for his role in the Godfather and I think that would really help him with his role in this movie.

Harrison Ford as Steve. His role in American Graffitti will help him with this role.

Gene Hackman as Tonie. He would play a good role because of his part in the French Connection as the cop. I think that he would be able to transition and play this role.

Jack Nicholson as the mob hitman. He would play a good hitman because of his age and experience in films. This also is not a large part in the movie.

Marlon Brando as the unnamed mob boss. This is a really small part but I think because of his recognition in the Godfather, it won’t require dialogue to explain his position of power.

Bill Butler as the cinematographer. He has a lot of experience with films such as in the Conversation and Jaws. I think this would really help him.

I would use United Artists as my studio because they would offer the most freedom and the film is more experiemental than other films, ecspecially with such a complicated story.

MYST Goodfellas

Goodfellas

For my MYST I watched the movie Goodfellas. This movie is easily one of my favorites as it takes you through the life of Henry Hill, a mobster in New York City. The movie begins in the 1940s when Henry is just a teenager and takes you through the next 30 years of his life. Henry Hill begins working with the mob when he is just a kid. When he gets caught selling cigarettes, he is taught the greatest lesson from his boss and mentor, Jimmy Conaway, "never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut."

The film starts out foreshadowing an event later in the movie. A made man, Bats, was kidnapped by Henry and his friends Jimmy and Tommy. The first scene in the movie shows them opening the trunk and Tommy then stabs Bats to death with a kitchen knife. The film then goes back to a young Henry Hill and the violence goes down dramatically. But as the film progresses, Scorsese uses more and more violence and killings to show the ruthlessness and brutality that is in the mob during the 60s and 70s. The film is also very good with its soundtrack. It plays music from certain decades so you get a better feel for the year because of the amount of time this film takes place over.

Goodfellas starts out by showing the glamour and excitement of life in the mafia. Henry even makes jokes about people who work for a living. When he betrays the crime family at the end, he is still unable to say anything wrong with mob life and still is against normal life. This movie is also based on a true story and a book. I give this film a 10/10.