You could say that a good two-thirds or even three quarters of Goodfellas is about the perverse and wicked excitement of the gangster life. Earlier this month I wrote about having read portions of a ten-year-old draft of Steve Zallian‘s Irishman screenplay, and said it was “so spare and direct and absorbing, such a page-turner, so seemingly familiar with the behavior, rituals and language of 20th Century northeastern criminals.” The portions I read felt episodic in a Goodfellas-type way, although not as darkly thrilling, I suppose. I dsidn’t come upon any crazy Tommy stuff. It seemed to be “a melancholy summing-up of the whole Scorsese criminal culture exploration that began 46 years ago with Mean Streets…a fascinating assessment of what this kind of life amounts to, and what it costs in the end.”