Karen Friedman Hill

... you go upstairs or downstairs to the basement.

It's like Karen Hill's mom's house.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

You're good.

I have to do an honorable mention to when Karen shows up in front of all the guys and yells at him-

Sure

... for standing her up.

How do- It's not that it's the, like the most fun to watch, but I feel like it really encompasses all of their relationship and like the expectations of being in the family.

In one scene, it like summarizes it.

Uh, Jimmy and Paulie go to Henry and say, "You have to go back with Karen."

Mm-hmm.

Pesci won an Oscar for the role and the death scene is tidy in a way real life almost never is.

The real Tommy DeSimone got none of it, and what the record holds is a wife who went to the Missing Persons Bureau in January 1979.

Every account of what exactly happened to the real DeSimone has come secondhand at best.

Thomas DeSimone grew up in Ozone Park, Queens, and even his age is slippery and considered unconfirmed.

Notably, the portrait Goodfellas built that scene on, a happy, dressed-up Tommy heading off to be made, came from a man who was in Florida at the time.

The paper trail is thinner, and it doesn't line up nearly as neatly as the cinematic portrayal suggests.

Tommy's wife reported him missing in the second week of January nineteen seventy-nine, usually dated to January fourteenth, a little over a month after the heist.

Henry Hill's chronology makes the disappearance of Tommy Desimone even stranger.

Um-

You know that scene in, in, in Goodfellas where, where Karen Hill, you know, he, Henry Hill walks in, he's like, "How much do you need?" And she's like, "This much." That's what this reminds me of.

[laughs]

This, Kimberly Gilfoyle's going around being like, "This much I need.

Is that from Melfi?

Yeah, Karen.

Yeah.

Karen Hill.

Yeah, she flushed the junk.

Mm.

Tough.

Never flush the coke, Doug.

But let's talk about this movie in a whole.

So the logline of this movie is the story of Henry Hill and his life in the mafia, covering his relationship with his wife, Karen, and his mob partners, Jimmy Conway and Tommy DeVito.

And it stars Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Cervino, Frank Civero, Tony Darrow, Mike Starr, Frank Vincent, Um, Chuck Lowe, Gina Mastro Giacomo, Catherine Scorsese, Debbie Mazar.

I mean, there's so many, I mean, look, a lot of the guys in this movie, you will see them in other movies.

The first part of the movie, we're in 1955, and Henry Hill is a teenager, and he becomes enamored with criminal life, because it is seeing those guys... know and you're young italian american and you're living and you're not you know maybe your family's not you know doing as well but you see these guys and they got these fancy cars they wear these nice suits and they they command respect like everybody respects them maybe out of fear but still respect nonetheless and he uh you know he ends up henry starts working for paulie and and associates jimmy who's an irish-american truck hijacker And then he also has another fellow juvenile delinquent, Tommy DeVito, who's played by Joe Pesci.

And they make their way up through the through the organization.

Then, you know, 10 years later, in the mid 60s and 65, Henry starts dating Karen Friedman, who is Jewish and initially confused.

And then she gets seduced by his lifestyle and what have you.

We've got Joe Pesci as Tommy.

Lorraine Bracco as Karen Hill, which I was...

I had only, I'd seen her as Dr. Melfi in The Sopranos before I had seen this.

So it was fun to see her there the first time.

Like, just...

She's really clued in to who that character is as well.

Yeah, Karen is not a well woman.

Like... that's not a woman who therapizes like she is my favorite is when she's like at the sorry don't be when she's at the mistress's house and she's like pushing all the elevator buttons i mean like the woman in what is it 505 or whatever she's like she's poor i'm like oh my god that is like everyone's dream level to do if like their husband was having an affair because everyone in the apartment be like this woman's a bitch