Goodfellas (also styled GoodFellas) is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese. The film follows the rise and fall of three gangsters, spanning three decades. The word "fu*k" is used in the film approximately 300 times, ninth most in film. Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) admits, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster," referring to his idolizing the Lucchese crime family gangsters in his blue-collar, predominantly Italian-American neighborhood in East New York, Brooklyn in 1955. Henry is taken under the wing of the local mob capo, Paul "Paulie" Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and his associates, Jimmy "The Gent" Conway (Robert De Niro), who loves hijacking trucks, and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), an aggressive armed robber with a hair-trigger temper. In late 1967 they commit the Air France Robbery, marking Henry's debut into the big time. Enjoying the perks of their criminal life, they spend most of their nights at the Copacabana with countless women. Henry meets and later marries Karen (Lorraine Bracco), a Jewish girl from the Five Towns. On June 11, 1970, Tommy (with Jimmy's help) brutally beats Billy Batts (Frank Vincent), a mobster with the Gambino crime family, for insulting him about being a shoeshine boy in his younger days. However, Batts was a made man, meaning that he could not be touched without the consent of his Gambino ...