Kyle Smith of the New York Post has written a piece declaring “women don’t get GoodfFellas.” He first cites his doomed relationship as the perfect example: “Just kidding. (We split up because I was a jerk.)” That single sentence is the most illuminating part of the whole post but we’ll get to that in a minute. He then mansplains writes:
But women don’t get “GoodFellas.” It’s not really a crime drama, like “The Godfather.” It’s more of a male fantasy picture — “Entourage” with guns instead of swimming pools, the Rat Pack minus tuxedos.
It’s not really a crime drama like The Godfather? Gee, Kyle, can you also explain to me what you’re supposed to do with those long plastic tubes they hand out with soft drinks?
He then sets about paying tribute to a movie he clearly loves, trying desperately to shove it into a box that he understands. This is the movie he wants it to be, like so many of Scorsese’s films. They work on multiple levels and often one can see in them what they want to see. Kyle Smith is choosing to see a reflection of himself. His description of the film is proof that he’s the one who really doesn’t get it. He seems only to see the obvious layer, ignoring everything else going on underneath. Or maybe he’s dumbing it WAY down for his female readers.
“Ball-busting means cheerfully insulting one another.”
That’s funny because I thought it meant laying out your scrotal sack on a pool table and then pounding each ball with the thick end of a pool cue.
“Women (except silent floozies) cannot be present for ball-busting because women are the sensitivity police: They get offended, protest that someone’s not being fair, refuse to laugh at vicious put-downs. In the male fantasy, all of this is unforgivable — too serious, too boring. Deal another hand, pour another drink.”
Da fuq? What the fuck is he talking about? Did he see Bridesmaids or Spy? Oh right, he wouldn’t get Bridesmaids. Has he watched Amy Schumer? Oh, right, no. In his world women are dumb as doorknobs.
To a woman, the “GoodFellas” are lowlifes. To guys, they’re hilarious, they’re heroes.
Pushing aside this absurd generalization, one that doesn’t reflect reality in any way, Smith is just flatout wrong here. Only a certain type of man watches Goodfellas and comes away with “these guys are heroes.” This is the same type of guy who breaks his neck watching a Burger King commercial with a big-titted model shoving a fat greasy pile of meat and cheese into her tiny mouth. The same type of guy who worships Walter White and Tony Soprano, mistaking the subtle narrative and inserting their own projections. “That’s the kind of guy I want to be.”
In fact, guys like these often misinterpret Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA as a chest-beating anthem of patriotism. And the kind of guys who all too often mistake Scorsese’s form of satire. These are the guys who take Wolf of Wall Street literally, who laugh along with Joe Pesci when he’s shooting Spider.
Goodfellas, like Wolf of Wall Street is funny. It’s funny until it isn’t. If you miss this subtle distinction with all of Scorsese’s films you miss everything.
They completely miss what makes Goodfellas a masterpiece because to them it’s a funny movie they can drink beers by. If all goes well they will order a woman to suck their manhood later in the evening, their bellies full on beer and brats. Oh yeah, tastes so good, don’t it honey?
As “GoodFellas” shows us, guys hanging out together don’t really like to talk about the women in their lives because that’s too real. What we’d much rather do than discuss problems and “be supportive” is to keep the laughs coming — to endlessly bust each other’s balls.
At this point, the separation between the Goodfellas in the film and Kyle Smith is indistinguishable. He has now launched himself into the film – aka Scorsese’s worst nightmare. And here, he lays out just how profoundly confused he is about the film Scorsese tried to make:
At its core, “GoodFellas” is a story of ball-busting etiquette, which we first learn about in the improvised early scene based on a real experience of Pesci. Tommy turns his attention to a laughing Henry after telling a funny story and threateningly says, “Am I a comedian? Do I amuse you?” Tommy appears to be dangerously angry. Henry saves the day by returning the ball-busting: “Get the f - - k outta here.”
At its core? Really? I guess this shall be Scorsese’s legacy in a certain part of the country where men pat each other on the backs over the terrible things they do, where a morality tale is no more than “I should not have bought her all those drinks if she was going to bust my balls all night.” Except that Karen gets a pass from Smith because she bust Henry’s balls and therefore keeps the party going. To Smith, that’s what Goodfellas is about:
“The rule is, be a man, be tough, and always keep the party going.”
Yes, if you want to miss entirely what the film is about, by all means think of it like that.
Billy Batts (the unfortunate fellow in the trunk, and surprisingly not dead, when the movie begins) breaks ball-busting etiquette in two ways. One, he’s not really one of the guys (he belongs to another crime family), and two, in the guise of breaking Tommy’s balls, he brings up something serious, something that truly bothers Tommy: that he once worked as a shoeshine boy. Billy must die. Later, Morrie, the wig merchant, must also die for improper ball-busting.
Again, whoosh. Right over poor Kyle Smith’s head.
Of course, there’s always the chance that this article is a parody, written in the voice of one of the film’s characters where self-delusion and perpetuation of fantasy rules the day. That would make Kyle Smith one of the smartest writers on the internet. There’s also the chance that this is just clickbait to get out all of his aggression on women he really doesn’t seem to understand — he thinks people like me will write articles of outrage and point at him for 15 minutes.
He’s be right about us there. We do get mad at articles like this one even if everyone would be well advised to ignore clickbait. I am less offended as a woman (as if) than I am as a Scorsese fan, reading such a mind-numbingly bad interpretation of a film I love so much.
So yeah, good thing Smith’s girlfriend dumped him. At least he can admit he was a jerk, whether or not he’s keeping the party going. By all means, keep it going, whether it’s ruining your life or not.
kyle should have been more careful on his 15 min. of fame choices.
😛
Kyle Smith is the new Michael Medved. He is a right wing poser for a garbage newspaper. If you don’t believe me, check out the horrific review he gave to “Philomena,” because it dared to question the past actions of the Catholic church. I was stunned. Then again, I’m not.
I just blindly accept what pops up.
Always worked for me.
Is my computer still registering as being in Scotland? Fucking teleporting bastard. Haven’t been to Scotland in years, alas. Still in fucking Belfast. Still in this fucking shitehole.
I should have known better, Paddy. I should have remembered, but I just blindly accept what pops up.
Maybe it’s just any time you say “cunt,” the IP in Scotland wants to embrace you as one of its own.
Paddy…you’re the only person who can, time and again, say cunt and make me laugh 🙂
Joseph, right there with you. The second a movie is labeled, anything really, it’s viewed in a different light and can never recover.
Nowhere else on the planet is the word “cunt” spit out with the best inflections like it’s done in Edinburgh.
Sometimes I wonder if douchebags would be so douchey if they were more aware of my existence.
In the spirit of equality, the immense wrong that is this article must be righted. And thus I’ll call Kyle Smith a worthless cunt, literally a cunt with no worth, like one that’s been so ravaged by decades of distress and degradation at the hands (/penises) of ball-busting ballbags like Kyle Smith that it has ceased to perform any kind of meaningful function whatsoever. Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt. 🙂
Goodfellas is way overrated and so is Martin { look at me} Scorsese . Goodfellas was nothing but an updated version of Mean Streets pumped up with his usual directorial masturbation , Than he does Casino which was Goodfellas goes to Vegas and Wolf of Wall St . Which is Goodfellas goes to Wall Street .
You just opened a can of opinion whoop-ass, Sasha. True about everything. I just point to the editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, because she clearly got GoodFellas.
He’s definitely a conservative and probably does believe some of own his BS, but his article seems like click bait. No one gave a damn about him until this article.
This guy is a tard. Not a crime drama? Oo ok yeah everything is all happy go lucky in Goodfellas. He’s full of it.
The sad state of affairs in a world where the internet controls the human race: The more outrageous and fucked up your message is, the more you will get attention (page views), because everyone wants to see for themselves what all the fuss is about.
I would NEVER in a million years have read Smith’s piece if he had had something ordinarily harmless or just plain reasonable to say about some movie, but because it’s such a ridiculous piece of writing, I get to read it. The people who run the media knows this of course so they will keep publishing stuff like this, because they know all right-minded souls will feel appalled by it (that is, appalled enough to actually read it, which unfortunately equals more crazy stuff coming our way…)
[Kyle Smith]: “The first time I saw ‘GoodFellas’ on a rented Blockbuster videotape in 1991, I was in a daze . . . ”.
I understand that Kyle Smith was born in 1966. So, he surely was old enough to see the film in a theater. I’m with Ryan Adams on this one (save for the coma thing and the likes), because naturally, without missing a beat, it also makes me wonder why a “24-year-old wannabe critic” had managed to miss this movie in a theater, to begin with. I might not have a passion for this very piece (the film) and its director like other readers and AD editors apparently do but, to my perception, one just couldn’t simply miss this (GoodFellas) in a theater given that one supposedly really loved movies [he might have a valid reason back then but for the time being it was still odd, especially for him, being a “24-year-old wannabe critic” back then, to admit it blatantly]. And more importantly, in general the quality of the VHS tape was rather poor; how could one truly enjoy a film, not to mention such a relatively good one [reading: “great” by other readers] as GoodFellas, on [gasp] . . . VHS format? Moreover, in theater one could have found oneself embraced by the ambience, audiovisuals, and everything a film had to offer in the way that it was initially meant to be for one to enjoy the amusement in question, virtually without any distraction whatsoever [well, if you strategically opt for one of the last few days of the screening of a film, and the midnight hours, like I do].
I’m not sure if Smith eventually got a chance to watch this film once again on the silver screen. If not so, then to me, only for this reason alone, it might be enough simply to ignore his piece or at least where applicable (I have yet to read his article; so, to be fair to him [and AD editors], I can’t make any further meaningful comments than this).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/11/ny-post-goodfellas_n_7560618.html
Kyle Smith says:
“…in a daze?” I hope Kyle Smith had been in a fuckin coma for the past 6 months. Because that’s the only acceptable excuse for a full-grown adult male not to have seen GoodFellas in a theater in 1990 like any REAL MAN should have done.
24-year-old wannabe critic and he’s waiting to watch GoodFellas on pan-and-scan VHS tape? Forget his little NYPost essay. He should be confessing this bullshit to a priest.
Many thanks for that Ryan!!! 🙂 I’ll definitely be keeping up with the happenings in these hallowed halls. 🙂
A thing is a thing. Not what is said of that thing.
I sum it up like this:
Kyle Smith is a fucking idiot.
I saw that and all I thought was, this guy is going to be in a world of pain.
Spot on. I read Kyle’s first and almost go t a migraine trying to keep track of all he got absolutely wrong. But it reminds me of a similar incident: The Godfather videogame.
In the extras section there’s an interview with several ex-gangsters and rap artists (The foremost authority on Italian mafia life), and they talk about the concept of “Respect”. If you haven’t seen it, get ready for the comedy hit of the year. The Godfather mentality of honor and respect is basically acting like a respectable man. See the Kingsman rules of etiquette but with a little lenience towards how a person earns a living.
These guys boil it down to: “If you respect me, I’ll let you live. If not, we kill everybody. You go to jail, you’re on your own.” I don’t remember the exact quote here, but that was the basic gist. And it really just makes me a little irritated. We live in a society today where people can’t understand emotions displayed on faces, think their opinion is the only one that’s protected, and a media that simultaneously encourages self-destructive behavior while vilifying it.
Kyle is just another in a long line that give only a cursory understanding to anything before filling in their own narrative……which is totally NOT what I did just then. Smooth.
Reminds me of the idiots who claim that ‘American Sniper’ is pro-war or ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ is pro-capitalism or ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is pro-torture. Nothing more annoying than when people use movies to push their own political agendas.
Also, I wasn’t aware of any women who had a problem with ‘Goodfellas’ in the first place…
It almost feels like he’s writing it as Johnny Drama from Entourage. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he’s trying to be funny and failing miserably.
But, interesting observation: Goodfellas is played on Lifetime quite a bit. Because Karen narrates half the damn movie and it takes her perspective seriously. Lorraine Bracco’s work in Goodfellas is incredible.
I don’t watch Goodfellas and believe in the American dream. I watch it and fear the American tragedy. And Scorsese sure as shit wouldn’t feed the public the masculine fairy tale Smith claims it is.
I honestly thought that article was some sort of stupid joke. All this article proves is that he doesn’t get Goodfellas. I don’t understand anyone who sees this movie and wants that life. He should never be allowed to write again after putting Entourage and Goodfellas in the same article; let alone the same sentence.
And to think that Kyle Smith posted an article just a few weeks ago defending the feminism in Mad Max: Fury Road (he’s one of the very few right-wing critics on the internet to do such a thing). And then he goes on and writes crap like this. I’ve never cared for the guy’s writing, but this Goodfellas thing is a new low.
If anyone’s interested in the article I’m referring to, here’s the link:
http://nypost.com/2015/05/14/why-mad-max-fury-road-is-the-feminist-picture-of-the-year/
I’m no liberal, but this guy clearly did not “get” this movie at all.
Anyone else hoping that life imitates art, that Martin Scorsese pulls a Marshall McLuhan on Kyle Smith on this issue?
“I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work!…How you got to write in anything is totally amazing!”
Boy, if life were only like this.
I think Pete is right – the way it reads, I don’t think Smith has actually sat down and watched GoodFellas start-to-finish. Of course, that’s one of the main tenets of the far right: the less you know about something, the more attention your convoluted opinion will receive.
He should be cautious because it’s not a big jump from “how do I make this about me” to “how do I make it up these stairs” schools of film criticism. Right, Rex?
The Smith article has to be some sort of humor thing or whatever. He can’t possibly be serious. I don’t get how an alleged fan can take his beloved film so un-seriously. Don’t let Scorsese ever read that – he might have a stroke.
He is just about the worst critic (writing and taste) I’ve ever read. He even makes Rex Reed look like a modern day James Agee.
He well deserves the trashing he received here. I enjoyed reading it. But yeah, big-time right wing ass kisser for that NYC rag sheet.
GOODFELLAS? A masterpiece.
Sam, if any good can ever be said to come from Kyle Smith’s trolling, it’s having you drop by with your succinct sage observations. Good to see you!
“I also think Kyle Smith needs to actually watch Goodfellas again, maybe with a room full of women, and not write an entire piece based on his observation of one woman – his girlfriend who saw this as a “boy movie.””
Right you are. That’s the problem when anybody makes any generalizations whatsoever. The person generalizing makes a bold claim on a group of people when they have not met everybody whom they lump into that category.
Didn’t Thelma Schoonmaker edit Goodfellas or something? Surely the person who actually cut the film together has at least as good an understanding of the film as a second-rate film critic. What a clown.
Sasha, you sum this up really nicely and Ryan you do too!
I first saw this film when I was in college, studying Scorsese. My teacher used three films and this was one of them.
The film to this day remains in my top 5 all time faves ever.
Was I capable of understanding Goodfellas? Hell yes and guess what, nothing about that film bothered me.
I never viewed Tommy or anyone in that film as a “lowlife.”
As for his comment about if it were directed by a woman and his “idea” about the kind of film that would be, I think he needs to familiarize himself with Angelina Jolie and Kathyrn Bigelow for one.
I also think Kyle Smith needs to actually watch Goodfellas again, maybe with a room full of women, and not write an entire piece based on his observation of one woman – his girlfriend who saw this as a “boy movie.”
That’s all.
Thanks for the Ryan-esque summation of a dbag, Ryan. I don’t read his writing but I believe he’s one of the critics I’ll seeing on Metacritic who gives low scores to otherwise really great movies. You know him better than I and if you say he is a dbag well, by golly, he’s a dbag.
“Who would want to watch that movie?”
Take a poll and see how many people would actually be curious enough to watch it.
Thanks, Steve.
“Who would want to watch that movie?”
I hate to quote Kyle Smith further, and I think a fraction of his narrow mind is being facetious. But here’s his exact quote in full:
See? He’s trying to make the “girl version” of Goodfellas sound like librul pablum (especially with his insane mockery of “social services” — as if that life-saving safety net is a silly urban plague)
But as Sasha neatly extracts from this mess so very well: Scorsese’s gangland movies do not romanticize that life. They are honest brutal depictions of the obvious temptations and thrills but they are essentially designed to be stern indictments of the type of crude mentality that gives in to such base temptations.
So the movie Kyle Smith sneeringly describes is in fact exactly the movie Scorsese directed. But Kyle Smith is too busy having his ball-busting needs tickled to see past the jerkwad surface.
Is there any chance this is all satire and Smith’s paragraph-long “feminine” analysis at the end is his actual analysis of the film…? I’m holding out hope that the satire wasn’t quite obvious enough and that he isn’t THAT stupid….
Goodfellas is a tragedy plain and simple. He wanted spaghetti and marinara and he got egg noodles and ketchup. He wanted to be like Paul and ended up more like Tommy. It’s all there in the narrative of the film.
“Goodfellas, like Wolf of Wall Street is funny. It’s funny until it isn’t.”
PRECISELY! In WoWS when DiCaprio was dragging himself to the car, it was funny for a bit but the scene went on for a long time. I didn’t quite understand why…but then it hit me a day or two after watching the movie. I stopped laughing midway through that scene because it stopped being funny to me and all I was watching was a man who had it all but he looked so pathetic. I saw Mad Max in theaters and there were dudebros aplenty around me. They would chant at the action, and who wouldn’t? But anything resembling “serious”? Nope. They would laugh or focus on the skimpily dressed women. I also couldn’t tell how old they are. I’m no fuddy duddy but there’s a time and a place to laugh and oogle at tits and another time to soak in the experience. Some people can’t tell the difference. Kyle Smith is wrong if he truly believes all, or the majority, of men believe the Goodfellas are heroes. But saying “To women, the ‘Goodfellas’ are lowlifes” might just prove that women understand the movie more than the men in Smith’s world. So in a way he’s proving a pretty valuable point without realizing it.
“Of course, there’s always the chance that this article is a parody, written in the voice of one of the film’s characters where self-delusion and perpetuation of fantasy rules the day.”
This is also a possibility, Sasha, since you will write in this manner at times. Maybe not for an entire article but you’ll write things like you’re a big wig white Hollywood evil male producer and say things like, “all women are only as good as they are fuckable in Hollywood”, okay nothing like that verbatim but that’s definitely your way of saying, “These aren’t my words but it’s probably how most executives see women.”
“Ball-busting means cheerfully insulting one another.”
“That’s funny because I thought it meant laying out your scrotal sack on a pool table and then pounding each ball with the thick end of a pool cue.”
Now I know you don’t actually think when people say “ball-busting” they literally mean they are squashing testicles with bar objects. That’s just your way of being cynical and “No duh, Kyle.” As you say, maybe this whole article is just a parody. But…maybe, and probably, it isn’t.
I never connected with Goodfellas the way that a number of people did, and certainly not the way Smith suggests.
In my opinion, it was good, but it did not make it to great category. It’s not a mob film that I have ever returned to. Personally, I liked Casino better.
Christ on a cracker, what the hell is wrong with movement conservatives lately? First Mad Max, now this?
His take that Goodfellas is just a cautionary tale of ball-busting run amok might be a tip off that he’s never actually SEEN it. There is a marvelous Catholic morality play on the lure and downside of EVIL just rippling through that film. Scorcese never lets you forget for a nanosecond that this isn’t the Godfather, there is no operatic “honor”. These are thieves, murderers, and all around scumbags.
His writing is always a thinly disguised party-line screed. Much more than any other well-known critic, Kyle Smith makes sure that everything he puts online adheres snuggly to the current right-wing talking points du jour.
It starts with the headline. If we look at the URL, we can plainly see that the original headline was “Sorry -Ladies, Youll Never Understand Why Guys Love Goodfellas”
As if that first draft headline was not patronizing enough, it was saddled with some pathetic male-victim baggage (“My wife doesn’t understand me.” “My girlfriend doesn’t understand me.” “Girls will Never Understand Me.” wah wah wah”)
So Smith (or his editor) fixed the pathetic aspect and made the headline ever worse. “Women are not capable of understanding ‘GoodFellas’ ” — and there we have it. There’s the crux and thrust of the whole silly piece, which can be distilled to the most important essence for right-wingers: “Women Are Not Capable”
That’s the underlying message. Of course Sasha is spot on in the way she’s able to dismantle Kyle Smith’s clumsy superficial take on Goodfellas itself. But the entire article is soaked with the subtext: “Women simply are not capable of grasping the complexity of a Man’s World.”
It’s painfully clear to me how this weird rightwinger whine takes hold of insecure rightwinger men — and it’s clear how men like Smith need to cocoon themselves in order to support their fragile concept of modern realities.
Sad to say, I sort of almost believe Kyle Smith is able to convince himself women are basically God’s punishment to men who just wanna have fun. (especially any fun involving their balls.) How do these sad pitful men like Kyle convince themselves that women are “not capable” of understanding a movie?
Easy. Typical boorish rightwinger men only like to associate with typical compliant rightwinger women — compliant conservative women who for whatever sad reasons have chosen to accept and surrender to the narrow boundaries of thinking, abiding by the strict limits that their rightwing men have placed on them.
So sure, I really do believe that Kyle Smith probably hangs out with a lot of really women (or women who pretend to stupid so stupid men won’t feel threatened). And it’s typical of the right-wing conservative male mindset to deny that any type of person has any right to exist beyond their narrow view of the way the world should work.
And by the way, I don’t buy it for one second that Kyle Smith is really taking any blame for being “a jerk”
Because look at his logic:
1. Hey, I’m a jerk.
2. All the men in Goodfellas are jerks.
3. All the men in Goodfellas are heroes.
4. Ergo, I am a hero. I’m a big bad “ball-buster” hero.
But back to beginning, back the crux of Kyle Smith’s crotch rot: He begins and ends his weasly slap at women by framing it with his own failed relationship with one woman.
And Kyle Smith reaches this conclusion in his final lines:
Unless a woman is a ballbuster then guys are going to be “bored with her.” Women
And then to cap it off, Kyle Smith asks the idiotic question:
What would “GoodFellas” be like if it were told by a woman?
…then he describes when he thinks is a pack of liberal blather with boring social messages… and then Smith asks:
And who would want to watch that movie?
Kyle Smith, you stupid douchbag, the socially-conscious liberal message-movie you mock is the movie Scorsese actually made. And, as Sasha said, it flew right over your ignorant right-wing head.