Long Take from *The Godfather* (1990): The Entrance to the Copacabana
Movie Title: Goodfellas
Year: 1990 (Venice IFF, September 9—Silver Lion for Best Director / U.S. release, September 19)
Director / Co-screenwriter: Martin Scorsese
Co-screenwriter: Nicholas Pileggi (author of the 1986 book *Wiseguy*)
Country: United States
Producer: Irwin Winkler
Director of Photography: Michael Ballhaus (ASC)
Steadicam Operator: Larry McConkey
First Assistant Director: Joseph Reidy
Film Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker (BAFTA Award for Best Film Editing for this film)
Main cast members: Ray Liotta (Henry Hill), Lorraine Bracco (Karen Friedman), Henny Youngman (as himself)
Camera: Arriflex 35 BL4S (quiet enough for the final dialogue)
Lenses: Zeiss Super Speed (essential in the dim lighting of the club)
Technical tip: A video monitor mounted above the Steadicam so that McConkey could frame the shot while walking backward—a first for 1990
Duration of the clip: 2 min 59 sec (184 seconds)
Number of catches: 8 - caught before lunch
Music: "Then He Kissed Me" by The Crystals (1963)
Literary source: *Wiseguy* by Nicholas Pileggi (1986), 40 words describing the entrance through the kitchen
Movie runtime: 146 minutes
Budget: $25 million (Scorsese's largest budget at the time)
Box office: $47.1 million
Oscars: 6 nominations (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor), 1 win (Joe Pesci)
Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) gets out of his car, slips a bill to the valet, takes Karen (Lorraine Bracco) by the hand, and leads her away. Not through the Copacabana’s main entrance. Through the back door, down the service staircase, through a long underground hallway, past the kitchen filled with Chinese cooks, and straight into the auditorium where a table appears out of nowhere, set up in front of the stage just for them. Henny Youngman is on stage. Strangers are pouring champagne. Karen asks Henry what he does for a living. Three minutes. No cuts. And you’ve just gotten a taste of what it’s like to be a mobster.
Why This Scene Is a Cult Classic
The entire film is captured in this shot. Not the plot, but the feeling. Scorsese doesn’t explain Henry Hill’s power to you—he makes you experience it. Doors open before he even arrives. People call him by his first name. There’s no line. You’re right behind him, right on his shoulder, and you feel exactly what Karen feels: the thrill of being with someone for whom the rules don’t apply.
The shot doesn’t cut because the experience doesn’t cut. The intoxication of power is a continuous flow—without pause, without respite, without a moment to reflect. If Scorsese had edited the scene in the traditional way— a close-up of the bill, a close-up of Karen’s face, a close-up of the table—you would have had time to step back. Here, you’re trapped by its charm. Karen’s seduction and the viewer’s seduction are one and the same.
The narrative function is threefold. First, this shot seals the Henry-Karen pairing: it’s the meeting that decides everything. Second, it establishes Henry’s status without a single line of exposition—there’s no need for dialogue about his place in the mafia; you see the network in action. Third, it sets the stage for the impending downfall: everything that opens here will close later. The entire film is the story of the gradual closing of all these doors. But at this precise moment, they all open at once. That’s why the scene sticks with you: you have a vague sense that it can’t last.
How They Filmed It
That wasn't how the shot was supposed to go. The Copacabana refused to let the crew film the main entrance. Scorsese had to improvise an alternative route—the service entrance, the hallways, the kitchen. What was supposed to be a constraint turned out to be the most famous shot of his career.
McConkey recounts the first rehearsal to *Filmmaker Magazine*. Scorsese wanted a close-up of the ticket given to the valet, then the camera would follow Henry and Karen. They cross the street, go down a flight of stairs, and walk down a long hallway. McConkey looks at his watch and thinks, “This is already the worst lull in the history of cinema. This is never going to work.” When they reach the kitchens, Ballhaus says, “Marty, we have to go through the kitchen.” Scorsese asks why. Ballhaus replies, “Because the light is beautiful.” Scorsese says OK. They enter the kitchen and come back out through the same door; the path forms a circle, concealed by a change in extras and set design.
Scorsese shows McConkey the result of the rehearsal, then says, “OK, I’ll be back in two hours.” He leaves. McConkey is in a panic. Ray Liotta sees the look on his face and offers to stay and fine-tune the blocking. Liotta and first assistant Joe Reidy stay behind, and they rework the shot while Scorsese is away. It’s during this session that Liotta improvises several of the interactions in the hallway—the handshakes, the greetings, the little remarks to the extras—that give the shot its lively texture.
When Scorsese returns and sees the result on the monitor, he shouts, “No! No! No!” McConkey thinks his career is over. But Scorsese is criticizing just one detail: the table that’s brought out for Henry and Karen at the end of the shot. "It has to fly toward the camera and fill the frame. When I was a kid, I used to go to clubs like that, and the thing I remember most is how a table would appear out of nowhere." That was his only comment.
They shot that very evening. Eight takes, and it was in the can before lunch. McConkey was using an Arriflex 35 BL4S, quiet enough to capture the final dialogue, equipped with Zeiss Super Speed lenses—essential in the club’s dim lighting. A small video monitor was mounted above the Steadicam so he could check his framing while walking backward—an unusual technical setup for 1990. Joe Reidy summed it up: “There were 400 moments of absolutely precise synchronization. It was completely impossible, mathematically speaking.”
The soundtrack "Then He Kissed Me" by The Crystals was chosen by Scorsese and plays throughout almost the entire shot. The only real dialogue comes at the very end, when Karen asks Henry what he does for a living. Producer Irwin Winkler recounts in his book that six or seven takes were nearly perfect, but each time, some mechanical or dramatic detail was off. In one technically flawless take, it was Henny Youngman who flubbed his iconic line, “Take my wife, please”—a punchline he had delivered thousands of times over forty years on stage. Five additional takes were needed. When Youngman finally got it right, the crew applauded the comedian.
What to Look For When Watching It Again
The bill to the valet (first shot) The very first image of the shot is a close-up of Liotta’s fingers slipping a bill into the valet’s hand. The money literally sets the stage for the scene and everything that follows. Not a word. Just a gesture.
The kitchen scene (~1 min 30) Henry and Karen enter and exit through the same door. The extras and props change as they walk around to hide the loop. Look for the stacks of plastic crates that appear against the bare wall through which they entered—that’s the visible trace of the sleight of hand.
Liotta's improvisation in the hallway (~2 min) The handshakes, the greetings, the "Henry!" calls from the extras: most of it isn't scripted. It comes from the rehearsal Liotta did with Reidy while Scorsese was away. You're watching an actor choreograph his own social status on the spot.
The Flying Table (~2 min 30) Watch how quickly the table and chairs appear at the front of the stage. This was the only detail Scorsese insisted on changing after the rehearsal. He wanted the table to fill the frame, just as it did in his childhood memories of Manhattan nightclubs.
Did you know?
Larry McConkey shot the two most famous long takes of 1990: this one and the opening sequence of Brian De Palma’s *The Bonfire of the Vanities*, released that same year, using the same Steadicam. Two journeys behind the scenes, two entrances through the back door, two visions of power—Scorsese puts you right in the thick of it, while De Palma shows you what goes on behind the scenes. McConkey shot both within six months of each other.
The Copa Shot was inspired by a forty-word sentence in Nicholas Pileggi’s book *Wiseguy*: the doormen would let Henry Hill in through the kitchen full of Chinese cooks and seat him directly at his table. Scorsese transformed that sentence into three minutes of cinema. And this technique—a long take to draw a character into his world—has permeated everything that followed: the opening of *Boogie Nights* (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997, Steadicam shot in the porn nightclub), *Birdman* (Iñárritu/Lubezki, 2014, a faux single take behind the scenes on Broadway), and the opening of *The Place Beyond the Pines* (Cianfrance, 2012, a walk through the carnival). Anderson, Iñárritu, and Cianfrance have all cited *Goodfellas* as their inspiration.
A few years later, a taxi driver recognized McConkey and said to him, “Steadicam, yeah, like in *Goodfellas*, the Copacabana scene.” McConkey recalled that it was on that day that he realized the audience—even without understanding the technique—could feel the narrative power of a single continuous shot. And there’s one last detail: the sixth episode of Season 17 of *Family Guy* (2018) replicates the shot almost frame by frame—Chris walks into his new school, greeted by the entire staff, with a table set before him, accompanied by the same music by The Crystals. When a Fox parody cartoon reuses your shot twenty-eight years later, you’ve created something that stands the test of time.
Sources
Larry McConkey, Filmmaker Magazine interview - "Steadicam Operator Larry McConkey on Filming the Copacabana Tracking Shot in *Goodfellas*" (April 2015)
Irwin Winkler, *A Life in Movies: Stories from 50 Years in Hollywood* (Abrams Press, 2019)
Glenn Kenny, *Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas* (Hanover Square Press, 2020)
Cinephilia & Beyond - "Goodfellas at 35: Martin Scorsese's Anthropological Masterpiece"
No Film School - "How Was the Copa Long Take in *Goodfellas* Filmed? Let the Steadicam Operator Explain"
The Mob Museum - "The mob classic *Goodfellas* debuted in theaters twenty-five years ago" (2015)
MovieMaker - "How the 'Goodfellas' Three-Minute Tracking Shot Went Wrong in the Silliest Way" (2023)
The Spool - "The Copa Shot: Martin Scorsese's Best Short Film"
GQ - Interview with Joseph Reidy
Far Out Magazine - "The seminal Steadicam shot from Martin Scorsese's *Goodfellas*" (2024)
IMDb - Goodfellas (1990), Awards section
Wikipedia - Goodfellas / Thelma Schoonmaker
See also:
Long take from *Boogie Nights* (1997) https://www.plan-sequences.com/categories-de-plans-sequences/boogie-nights-plan-sequence-1 - Another iconic opening shot by Paul Thomas Anderson, with the same energy of total seduction
Real vs. Fake Long Takes—The Complete Guide https://www.plan-sequences.com/blog-plan-sequences/vrais-vs-faux-plans-sequences-guide-complet - To understand why the Copa Shot is a real long take with no hidden cuts
