Goodfellas: How Martin Scorsese created the greatest tracking shot in history
Throughout the rich annals of American cinema, there has been no shortage of sustained long takes and single, unbroken shots. Yet, whether extolling the excellent camerawork of Robert Altman’s The Player, Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (https://www.joblo.com/children-of-men-2006-revisited/), or perhaps the granddaddy of all masterful continuous shots, the opening of Touch of Evil—the film where Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, attempts to impress his new girlfriend Karen Friedman—reminds us that none eclipse the dizzying euphoria of Martin Scorsese’s Copacabana entrance in Goodfellas. Sure, movies like Birdman and 1917 have made deliberate digital and editorial efforts to give the impression of a prolonged single take for the entire runtime, but that’s quite different from what Scorsese, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and Steadicam operator Larry McConkey achieved for real, without trick photography, CGI, or cheap optical illusions, back in 1989.
For Scorsese, the captivating Copacabana tracking shot brilliantly favors function over fashion. Far from flashy self-indulgence meant to woo and wow the audience with technical mastery and visual panache, it’s the cheerfully intoxicating emotional impact of what’s now famously referred to as “The Copa Shot” that makes the unbroken take the best in class. With Goodfellas celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, it’s only right to reflect on and analyze how Scorsese, Ballhaus, and McConkey created arguably the greatest tracking shot in cinematic history!
Based on Nicolas Pileggi’s harrowing memoir Wiseguy, Goodfellas charts the triumphant rise and tragic fall of Henry Hill, an integral member of the Italian mafia in New York between 1955 and 1980. The iconic Copa Shot occurs when Henry (played by Ray Liotta) attempts to impress his new girlfriend, Karen Friedman (played by Lorraine Bracco), takes her to the Copacabana Night Club, where he and his criminal cohorts are treated like kings. The stage was set by Pileggi’s prosaic description in Wiseguy: ‘On crowded nights, when people were lined up outside and couldn’t get in, the doormen used to let Henry and our party in through the kitchen, which was filled with Chinese cooks, and we’d go upstairs and sit down immediately.’
Somehow, Scorsese saw that simple sentence and, along with the tireless collaboration of Ballhaus and McConkey, translated it into one of the most dazzling and dynamic continuous shots ever recorded. At nearly three minutes, the kinetic camerawork is so exhilarating and vividly inebriating that it leaves Karen and the audience with a sense of punch-drunk vertigo as Henry sweeps her off her feet.
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As the jubilant first notes of Crystals’ ‘Then He Kissed Me’ well up, the Copa Shot begins outside on the street, with a tight shot of Henry handing off a tip to a parking valet. Cars buzz by, and a crowd of patrons lines the sidewalks under the iconic Copacabana canopy in the background. Henry grabs Karen’s waist, and the camera carries them intimately as they cross the street, skip the line, and amble through the back kitchen entrance. With graceful, balletic choreography, the camera seamlessly snakes through the tight corridors of the club, entering the bustling kitchen where a throng of cooks and cleaners chaotically whiz past the frame.
As Henry and Karen pass through the kitchen into the ballroom floor, the smooth, serpentine shot continues to careen and slalom past the two lovers and begins following a waiter carrying a table to the front of the house. Henry and Karen reenter the frame and sit down, with the camera double-whipping from one table to another. Just as it appears as though the shot will end in a static frame, the camera pulls back and pans left to find comedian Henny Youngman on stage. Even when describing it, words can not do justice to how perfectly crafted and executed the Copa Shot remains 35 years later. It’s true poetry in motion!
Okay, the most important first detail to know about the Copa Shot is that it was filmed using a Steadicam. Created by Garrett Brown in 1975, the cinematographer who famously used the technology first in Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory and mastered it in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the Steadicam is a stabilizing camera rig that allows operators to move freely while giving the appearance of a smooth dolly shot. Instead of laying tracks on the ground, the Steadicam enables the cameraman to react fluidly and flexibly by keeping the camera close to their person and filming the subject wherever it goes. Think of it as a handheld shot without the jitters and shakiness. Or, as Garrett Brown’s top protege, Larry McConkey, states: ‘I’ve always maintained that the Steadicam should have been called the ‘smooth cam’ because it’s anything but steady.’
Although Garrett Brown was unavailable for Goodfellas, Scorsese hired McConkey to film the Copa Shot along with the director of photography, Michael Ballhaus. McConkey had already employed the Steadicam to wonderful effect on Scorsese’s After Hours, but had no clue what the director had in mind for the Copacabana entrance. ‘This is going to be a disaster,’ was McConkey’s first thought as he pondered the daunting task described by Scorsese in the summer of 1989. With production well underway by then, McConkey expected to arrive at the real Copacabana location for a few days of work. Unbelievably, it took only a half-day to film the Copa Shot from start to finish, a remarkable feat for one of the most memorable oners in all of cinema.
Rehearsed without a single storyboard, according to the BBC, McConkey, Ballhaus, Liotta, and Bracco listened carefully to Scorsese describe how he wanted the shot to begin on the street with the parking valet before moving into the club across the way. When Scorsese had the cast and crew skip the kitchen during a tour of the space, Ballhaus stopped and implored everyone to go through the kitchen, noting how visually striking the contrast in light was between the dim hallways and the fluorescent kitchen interior. According to McConkey, ‘Very colorful choreography had been worked out’ by the time Henry and Karen are seated in the ballroom. Once inside the ballroom, the sequence was carefully choreographed, blocked, staged, and scripted, a much different approach from the impromptu nature of the kitchen walkthrough.
The kitchen dialog and camera moves, improvised and refined in rehearsals, were also carefully crafted to keep the actors’ faces in the frame instead of following their backs the entire way. McConkey was anxious about finding the right rhythm for the scene to build suspense, and ran up against a blocking issue when Henry and Karen descend the stairs into the kitchen. McConkey was worried that the camera would remain fixed on the top of their heads for too long, hinder the rhythm and timing, and appear photographically unappealing. To account for this, Ray Liotta came up with the idea to pause for a moment to tip an employee at the bottom of the stairwell. This enabled McConkey to achieve the proper framing and retain the shot’s dynamism without rushing. By design, every physical posture Liotta makes in the scene was meant to accommodate the camera’s movement. The tip he gives, the gesture he makes to the couple in the hall, his brief greeting to the cook, all of it. As McConkey notes: ‘Ray made sure that anything I asked him to do that was mechanical became a key part of the character.’
One problem McConkey had while filming the end of the shot was anticipating when Henny Youngman, who was 83 years old at the time, would appear on stage, if at all. With the nightclub dialogue scripted, McConkey was so worried that Youngman would miss his cue to enter the stage as the camera pans left. So he had Liotta physically gesture to Bracco and point to the stage, which was really a cue for Youngman to enter the stage, and for McConkey to time the camera move. If you look closely, Liotta clearly makes the gesture at two minutes and forty-seven seconds into the shot, but remains in character to make it look like Henry is motioning to Karen. Indeed, Liotta was far more instrumental in allowing the Copa Shot to sing than ever credited for.
Another trickish moment that often goes unnoticed in the Copa Shot is how Henry and Karen exit the door to the ballroom from the same door they entered the kitchen through. Set decorator Leslie Bloom and her crew invented a way to change the dressing in real-time, so that the door they entered looked different from the one they exited. As McConkey tells it: ‘I wanted a flurry of activity, trays, people crossing the frame, just to confuse people. But also just to make it interesting. The invisible double-switcheroo twice around the kitchen extended the proceedings and made them wonderfully kinetic.’
The kitchen’s labyrinthine layout is also partially disguised by the amusing dialogue and the camera’s intermittent focus on the actors’ faces, constantly spinning around to disorient the viewer. Rather, to make them feel like Karen feels in that moment, floating on air in a drunkenly blissful haze while seduced by Henry and his lavish lifestyle, the camera never stops moving, making it impossible to follow.
Largely left to his own devices by Scorsese, McConkey preplanned as much as possible before rolling the camera. He personally worked with every single background extra in the scene to ensure they hit their precise marks and never looked at the lens. He worked out a cramped corner by incorporating an exchange between Henry and one of the cooks, allowing him the space to maneuver the heavy, cumbersome Steadicam around the bend, pan to the chef’s face, before following Henry and Karen again.
McConkey also equipped the top of the Steadicam with a video recorder to monitor his progress in real-time and ensure the shot matched the aesthetic Scorsese wanted.
At one point, McConkey feared he had too much creative leeway and began taking over the movie in Scorsese’s absence. When it came time to show Scorsese the progress made on the Copa Shot, McConkey thought his career was over when Marty saw the monitor and suddenly barked, ‘No, no, no!’ Thinking he ruined the shot and that it would be cut from the film, McConkey was relieved when Scorsese’s only creative note was to have the dining table fly out for Henry and Karen at a much faster clip. Scorsese used to frequent the Copacabana with his parents in real life and was always struck by the image of how fast the tables came flying out of nowhere to accommodate high-profile guests. ‘That’s the most important thing!’ Scorsese urged. Of course, McConkey complied and tailored the scene to Scorsese’s specifications.
During a ‘long half-day’ of filming, the Copa Shot took eight or nine takes to get just right, largely due to Henny Youngman flubbing his lines. As McConkey recalls: ‘Take seven, that’s where it all comes together because the actors are finding the rhythms, and I begin to predict what they’re about to do and when it’s going to happen. Because with [the] Steadicam, if something happens suddenly, it can be unsettling.’
Of the nine total takes filmed for the Copa Shot, two were considered for the final cut. While Take 7 is the one seen in the film, McConkey actually preferred another. The shot McConkey was most proud of included a line of dialogue spoken by the cook. However, the actor playing the cook was a non-speaking background extra who would have needed to be paid like an actor to keep the shot in the film. As a cost-cutting measure, Scorsese and company went with the seventh take.
All told, the dazzling Copa Shot features a seamless blend of meticulous choreography and innovative improvisation. It’s a true testament to Scorsese’s ability to articulate his vision so clearly and precisely, while also being secure enough as a director to empower his collaborators and let them create independently. The Copa Shot has become so iconic that it has inspired several references and affectionate nods, be it in the opening long shot of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights or several others. As for McConkey, he continued to master the Steadicam in his post-Goodfellas career, famously filming the nearly-impressive 12-minute opening shot of Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes, albeit with several hidden camera edits.
As for Scorsese, all eyes turn to his next project, What Happens at Night (https://www.joblo.com/what-happens-at-night/). Whatever happens at night, the Copa Shot in Goodfellas will always remain one of the all-time magisterial single takes in cinematic history, magically marrying story and character like few others.
