“Whaddya mean I’m funny?” The reason wise guys meet face to face

It’s one of the most chilling scenes in cinema history: a conversation that starts out as a light-hearted exchange which suddenly lurches into a potentially murderous confrontation. What makes the conversation even more disturbing is that it turns out to be a wind up.

Released in 1990, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas picked up trunk-loads of awards. Based on the real-life memoirs of an American mobster, the film featured Joe Pesci as psychopathic killer Tommy DeVito, and Ray Liotta as his accomplice, Henry Hill.

The scene takes place in a restaurant. Pesci’s character Tommy is telling an off-colour story to a table of gangsters. Everyone’s laughing, including Liotta (Henry). The atmosphere is relaxed, sociable, friendly. When Tommy finishes his story, still laughing, Henry says:  

“Really funny. You’re really funny.”

Tommy stops laughing. Lowering his voice, and with the barest shadow of a smile, he asks:

“Whaddya mean I’m funny?”

“It’s funny, you know, the … the story. It’s funny. You’re a funny guy.”

“Whaddya mean? You mean the way I talk? What?”

Like a man who’s fallen into a shark tank, Henry grasps the danger he’s facing:

“It’s just, you know, it’s … you’re just funny. It’s … you know, the way you tell the story and everything …”

But Tommy’s getting angrier and more deadly: 

“Funny how? I mean, funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you? How the f*** am I funny? What the f*** is so funny about me? Tell me. Tell me what’s funny?”

Dumb with terror, Henry can only stare into Tommy’s eyes. For several seconds, neither speaks. Until something in Tommy’s expression reveals to Henry that it’s all been a game:

“Get the f*** outta here, Tommy!”

It’s a scene that shows how dangerous life as a ‘good fella’ must be. One minute you’re laughing to a funny story, next, you’re sleeping with the fishes.

Pesci (Latin for fish, by the way) based the scene on a real incident that occurred to him when as a young man he was working as a waiter in a tough neighbourhood. A real-life gangster subjected him to the same “Whaddya mean I’m funny?” routine. In the movie, the scene wasn’t in the original script; he and Liotta improvised it to the surprise of the other actors, who weren't expecting it.  

Yet beyond the movie, the scene provides an insight into how people communicate, and why, when it comes to important or difficult conversations, nothing beats face-to-face.

It's all to do with non-verbal signals. In a famous UCLA study, it was found that just seven percent of human communication takes place using verbal content. Thirty-eight percent was linked to vocal pitch and tone. But non-verbal communication accounted for fifty-five percent of all communications, meaning that ninety-three percent of that we communicate to each other is done without using words.   

As more organisations adopt remote working practices, maintaining communications between teams and employees is a challenge. Even with the best digital platforms, conveying and interpreting non-verbal signals is almost impossible. Hand gestures, eye movements, facial expressions, body posture – all can be lost when projected on a screen. Instead of the complex, multifaceted, real-life actors that we are, what gets communicated is an electronic approximation; a pixilated talking passport photograph.

Online meetings also make it easier for us to tell lies.  

According to a new study by the University of Cologne, if you're going to fabricate the truth, doing it at an online meeting is much easier than doing it face-to-face. As the lead researcher, Dr Julian Conrads writes, ‘dishonest behaviour increases as the method of communication becomes more distant and anonymous.’ As I don’t have to look at you across a table, the easier it is for me to get away with murder.

As businesses begin to recover, pressure to cut costs and scale on office and meeting space will mount. But this is short sighted. Building teams, generating new networks and maintaining customer loyalty require high levels of trust – and for that, nothing compares with the power of face-to-face communication. For the routine and transactional, online is fine. But when the stakes are high, it’s got to be eye-to-eye.

Why else did Tommy and Henry call themselves wise guys?

? Paul Redmond 2020