Goodfellas is not the only movie about the life of Henry Hill. Another adaptation was released in the same year, but it approached the story very differently. Although Martin Scorsese has made various movies about gangsters and addressing topics like redemption and guilt, his 1990 movie Goodfellas is considered by many to be his best in the genre and has served as an inspiration to many filmmakers since its release.
Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), who ended up turning their backs at him when he got involved in the world of drugs. The real Henry Hill reportedly loved the movie, but this wasn’t the only one based on his life that was released in 1990.
While Goodfellas is a full-on crime and mob movie, another adaptation of Hill’s life went on a completely different route. Titled My Blue Heaven, it was written by Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally...) and starred Steve Martin and Rick Moranis. Ephron was Pileggi’s wife, so much of the research for both My Blue Heaven and Goodfellas was done in the same sessions with Henry Hill. Ephron’s version, however, was far from the serious tone in Scorsese’s work and was instead a crime comedy, with the main character renamed “Vincent ‘Vinnie’ Antonelli”. My Blue Heaven didn’t follow Hill’s days prior to entering the Witness Protection Program (as Goodfellas did), instead focusing on his life after that.
My Blue Heaven is all about Antonelli and his wife, Linda (Deborah Rush), who were recently inducted into the Witness Protection Program and so were under the watchful eye of Barney Coopersmith (Moranis). When both their wives leave them, Vinnie and Barney begin to bond, and Barney finally succeeds in getting Vinnie to a suburb in California – the new challenge, however, is to make sure he conforms to the Witness Protection Protocol until he has to testify against mob kingpins. Though it did well in the box office, My Blue Heaven wasn’t well-received by critics, who found its concept to be funny but the final product fell short. As for Henry Hill’s reaction, he wasn’t happy that the movie was being made as it was just loosely based on his life.
My Blue Heaven was released a month before Goodfellas, but the latter was much better received, leaving the former in the shadows. There can’t really be a comparison between both movies as they’re from different genres and are different approaches to the same story, covering different points of it. Goodfellas is considered among the best movies of all time, and won a number of awards; My Blue Heaven, on the other hand, didn’t receive the same praise, but many consider it a hidden gem, proving that there’s an audience for everything.
