Editing Goodfellas (section)

=== Screenplay ===
Scorsese and Pileggi collaborated on the screenplay, and during the course of the 12 drafts that it took to reach the ideal script, the reporter realized that "the visual styling had to be completely redone... So we decided to share credit."<ref name="Kelly, Mary Pat" /><ref name="Hughes pp176-177" /> They chose the sections of the book that they liked and assembled them like building blocks.<ref name=Thompson>{{cite news |last1=Thompson |first1=David |author-link=David M. Thompson |first2=Ian |last2=Christie |author-link2=Ian Christie (film scholar) |title=Scorsese on Scorsese |pages=150–161 |isbn=9780571178278|year=1996|publisher=[[Faber and Faber]]}}</ref> Scorsese persuaded Pileggi that they did not need to follow a traditional narrative structure.

Scorsese wanted to take the gangster film and deal with it episode by episode, but start in the middle and move backward and forward. Scorsese compacted scenes, realizing that if they were kept short, "the impact after about an hour and a half would be terrific".<ref name="Thompson" /> He wanted to use narration in a manner reminiscent of [[François Truffaut]]'s 1962 film ''[[Jules and Jim]]'', and use "all the basic tricks of the [[French New Wave|New Wave]] from around 1961".<ref name="Thompson" /> This is the first time since ''[[Mean Streets]]'' that Scorsese is credited as a co-writer.{{sfn|Wilson|2011|p=164}}

The names of several real-life gangsters are altered for the film: [[Thomas DeSimone|Tommy "Two Gun" DeSimone]] became Tommy DeVito, [[Paul Vario]] became Paulie Cicero, and [[James Burke (gangster)|Jimmy "The Gent" Burke]] became Jimmy Conway, after Burke's birth surname.<ref name="Hughes pp176-177">{{cite book |last=Hughes|first=Howard |title=Crime Wave: The Filmgoers' Guide to the Great Crime Movies |date=August 22, 2006|isbn=978-1845112196|pages=176–177}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=August 30, 2021 |title=Jimmy Burke aka Jimmy the Gent |url=https://ganglandwire.com/jimmy-burke-aka-jimmy-the-gent/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240107135450/https://ganglandwire.com/jimmy-burke-aka-jimmy-the-gent/ |archive-date=January 7, 2024 |access-date=January 7, 2024}}</ref> Scorsese initially titled the film ''Wise Guy'', but he and Pileggi decided to change the title of their film to ''Goodfellas'' because two contemporary projects, the 1986 [[Brian De Palma]] film ''[[Wise Guys (1986 film)|Wise Guys]]'' and the 1987–1990 TV series ''[[Wiseguy (TV series)|Wiseguy]]'', had used similar titles.<ref name="Thompson" />