Wiseguy

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This is not to suggest that ' Wiseguy' (aka ' GoodFellas') is anything other than a good book, it’s just that the film is a masterpiece, and so much more than just this book brought to life on the screen.

GoodFellas' is an amazing tale, and a wonderful evocation of a bygone era but is one of those rare occasions where the film is all you really need. Hill was no Godfather, but he’d spent his whole life in the Mafia. For Pileggi, this was a big attraction. "I thought, 'It’d be great to do a story from the point of view of a middle level guy, or even a low level guy.’"This was a wonderful read in so many ways. It’s the only time in my reading experience where I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed the book after seeing the movie, and believe me, I’ve seen the movie countless times. Scorsese- the greatest filmmaker of all time- masterfully brought it to life on screen (as only Scorsese could). It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen GoodFellas, you will enjoy the book nonetheless and that is A RARITY. I always recommend reading the book first or the movie will mar the reading experience. For all the books I’ve read where I saw the movie first I always end up hating the book. Every. Single. Time. Except this one. At the age of twelve my ambition was to become a gangster. To be a wiseguy. Being a wiseguy was better than being President of the United States. To be a wiseguy was to own the world." -- Henry Hill It wasn’t that Henry was a boss. And it had nothing to do with his lofty rank within a crime family or the easy viciousness with which hoods from Henry’s world are identified. Henry, in fact, was neither of high rank nor particularly vicious; he wasn’t even tough as far as the cops could determine. What distinguished Henry from most of the other wiseguys who were under surveillance was the fact that he seemed to have total access to all levels of the mob world.”

Pileggi, Nicholas (1976). Blye, Private Eye (Firsted.). Playboy Press, Chicago. ISBN 978-0-87223-475-8. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2012-12-12 17:36:29 Boxid IA120121212-IA1 Boxid_2 CH114201 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York, NY Donor The project is centered on Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, two Italian-American crime bosses that ran their respective families in the middle of the 20th century. In 1957, Genovese attempted to assassinate Costello but failed, although he was wounded and decided to retire, as much as one can retire from the Mafia. The book “Wiseguy” is about Henry Hill a member of the Lucchese crime family.The book itself tells a different perspective of the “Mob”. Its seen through the eyes of Nicholas Pileggi the author but told to by Hill himself . It displays an interesting outlook,Mob movies books characters have fascinated the world for so long and its the belief that their is another world more exhilarating and exciting fast paced and the common person is just looking to escape the real world into a book or another life. Pileggi, Nicholas (1985). Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family (Firsted.). Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-72322-4.

Warners’ first original feature of the Warner Bros. Discovery era is here … and it’s a period mobster drama fronted by two Hollywood veterans. Pileggi, Nicholas (1995). Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas (Firsted.). Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-80832-1. So what sort of man was Henry Hill? "He was a hustler. He wasn’t a mean man, he wasn’t a violent man – not that he wouldn’t commit violence – but he was hyperactive, and always into mischief." He was also very clever, with a genius for thinking up moneymaking scams.

And when you finally get to the end, and see how Hill escapes a bullet in the head (that was issued to everyone else who knew of the Lufthansa heist) to become a Federal employee, you wonder... is this all okay and correct that this should happen? People are killed en route to this, millions of dollars of property and cash are redistributed among wiseguys, and yet the prime mover becomes another man in lieu of the one he never was. I am not sure. He was visualising the movie, where the camera would be, what he would be focusing on, while we were writing the script. He already sees the movie in his head." Paulie offers Henry the opportunity to buy into a gambling ring with the Air France money, and Henry's new wife, Karen encourages him to buy a restaurant to provide for their growing family with a legitimate source of income. Henry does both of these things, and involves himself in dozens of other schemes as well. Henry works hard and plays harder, spending as many nights with girlfriends, prostitutes, and drinking buddies as with his wife and children. Henry is pinched by the police a few times over the years, but invariably buys himself out of trouble with Paulie's support. His children learn to consider his arrests and police searches of their home as routine occurrences. Karen is unfailingly loyal, helping him provide for the family in both his legal and illegal schemes. The Boston College point shaving scheme, for example. It's barely alluded to in Goodfellas (just once, by a low level con man named Morris, right before Tommy, Joe Pesci's famously terrifying character, drives a shiv repeatedly into his brain stem). Wiseguy, with more room to roam, delves into the nitty gritty. If, like me, you're fascinated by such details, then the book is an indispensable companion of the film.

Wiseguy

Whilst reading it, it is soon very obvious why Martin Scorsese was so attracted to this story, indeed I can almost imagine his excitement, as he works out how to structure key scenes and who to cast. urn:lcp:wiseguy00nich_aso:epub:1228e7a8-2712-43a3-bf07-6eadd713a8d9 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier wiseguy00nich_aso Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1kh2tv9r Invoice 11 Isbn 0671447343 Part of me wishes that I had read this book, which directly inspired Goodfellas, without having seen or even having any knowledge of the movie. There’s so much about Goodfellas that seems outrageous and over-the-top and made up, so it was almost weird to learn that Henry Hill was a real person, and that everything he describes in his memoir actually happened. Having seen the movie created this weird mental disconnect where even though I knew I was reading a memoir, it still felt kind of like a novel. (It also doesn’t help that the narration in Goodfellas is practically lifted word-for-word from the text of Hill’s memoir, to the point where I hope he got a screenwriter’s credit for the movie)