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18 CINEMONTAGE / JUL-AUG 14 assignments. With his encyclopedic mind for the sounds of urban life — a blend of street noises, loud talking, overlapping dialogue, profanity and music — Fleischman appreciates the discordancy of the soundtrack, and orchestrates what he hears and observes into a sort of symphony. As with his director, music has always been a primary interest for Fleischman. Scorsese has an incredible mental filing cabinet of pop tunes, folk melodies and jazz pieces, which he can connect to any dramatic situation in his films; his movies are populated by songs that drive, underscore or comment on the action — all of which makes a mix for Fleischman a delight rather than just a challenge. With Scorsese films, "I leave the sound studio looking forward to the next day's work," he confesses. According to the re-recording mixer, GoodFellas was structured around doo-wop and pop songs. Scorsese always brings in recordings from his vast collection and conceives scenes built around them. "The film is edited precisely to the music," Fleischman says. What happens if Scorsese changes his mind and substitutes another song? "That does not happen," Fleischman replies. "Everything is an emotional decision for Marty." Fleischman adds that the psychological tone of the scene is set by a particular song, which becomes the subtext of the conceived scene: "He's used pop music as score in GoodFellas, Casino [1995] and The Wolf of Wall Street [2013]. Marty's using music that he's known all his life. It's a methodology that he uses to advance the story." To achieve this seamless mixing, Fleischman works closely with editor Schoonmaker, with whom he's collaborated for almost 30 years. "Thelma always comes to the mixes," he says. Other longtime collaborators he mentions are sound editors Phil Stockton, MPSE, Eugene Gearty and Skip Lievsay. Fleischman likes to experiment with sound levels on films, and GoodFellas was no exception. "I'm always manipulating the sound; I have the fader on all the time," he explains. "The soundtrack is a tapestry, it's like a symphony, and it's the underpinning. There are very few scenes in GoodFellas that do not have music playing as score." Fleischman is very proud of the connecting scenes where Tommy and Jimmy beat Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) to death, stuff his corpse in a car trunk, have a big Italian meal with Tommy's unsuspecting mother (Scorsese's own mother Catherine), ask her for her carving knife, and go on to bury Billy upstate. On the soundtrack is the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron," followed by Donovan's "Atlantis." The juxtaposition of the pop songs with the on-screen action results in a sinister effect, as most of the film is composed of dark interior scenes: restaurants, basements, Tommy's mother's kitchen and even the basement den where Tommy shoots the neighborhood busboy because he laughs at a joke. The songs are wistful, romantic songs, and the characters and their actions appear more depraved and despicable in comparison. A favorite scene of Fleischman's is the tour-de- force tracking shot that opens the film, where Henry seduces Karen (Bracco) with his perceived "made man" power. Throughout the shot, the song "Then He Kissed Me" (the Crystals again) is the underscore, brilliantly mixed by Fleischman with kitchen sounds, barked instructions, conversation between the maître d' and Henry, and the looped-in sounds of the customers. "The memorable thing about the Copacabana scene in GoodFellas is that the entire scene was done in one shot with no cuts," Fleischman reminds. "It is a tracking shot that follows Henry and Karen from the street outside the club, down the entrance stairs, past several extras — some of whom Henry trades quips with — through three rooms of the busy kitchen with busboys, waiters and chefs doing frantic kitchen business in and out of the shot as our characters walk past, out into the nightclub where space is cleared in front of the stage and a table is brought out for them, at which point they sit and have a conversation, trading pleasantries with a table full of 'goodfellas' across the room. Then the band plays a fanfare, Henny Youngman comes on stage and lets go with a couple of one-liners, end of scene. All done in three minutes, one shot, no cuts, with 'Then He Kissed Me' as the musical accompaniment. "It was so much fun to mix that scene," he adds. "Every line of dialogue was important to Scorsese, and in between the lines he wanted to hear the beat of the music, the lyrics of the song, the sound of the kitchen, waiters and cooks calling orders, things being chopped, lines of dialogue — all had to poke through the music at the right balance. There was not much Foley, maybe a bit in the kitchen, and hardly any ADR. Most of what you hear under the music is original sync production track! I think one of the guys he passes in the hallway was ADR, and there MY MOST MEMORABLE FILM GoodFellas. Warner Bros. Pictures/ Photofest CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16 CineMontage_Jul-Aug_14-4a.indd 18 6/19/14 1:56 PM