Wiseguy

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I was a journalist since I was young," says Pileggi. "Right out of college, I went to work at the Associated Press in New York City, in the mid Fifties. I was assigned to cover crime – I covered the police, I covered corruption. That period, in the 1950s and 1960s, was also the period that began to expose Organised Crime, as we came to know it."

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. At the age of twelve my ambition was to be a gangster. To me being a wiseguy was better than being president of the United States. To be a wiseguy was to own the world.'Hill didn’t feel sorry about the crimes he’d committed, so much as the high life he’d left behind. "He was grieving for the life he’d lost – he loved being a gangster," says Pileggi. "He loved being with those guys. They were his family." This was his main source of regret. "He felt awful because he had to give up the life he really wanted to live. He could no longer be a gangster." Needless to say, Henry and his pals are amoral scumbags, and Hill is a sociopath whose justification for his crimes is that his needs outweigh everyone else's, and he dismisses anyone who is hardworking, honest or trusting as weak and just asking to be ripped off. urn:oclc:873216236 Republisher_date 20131030175837 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20131029213835 Scanner scribe3.sanfrancisco.archive.org Scanningcenter sanfrancisco Source

What amazed me most is how closely the movie aligns with the book, because let’s be honest people, Hollywood screenwriters have butchered many a book. A lot of Ray Liotta’s, um, I mean Henry Hill’s classic one liners and pithy monologues are straight from the book. Much of the praise for the movie belongs to Pileggi; like the film, Wiseguy is entertaining from start to finish. It’s nonstop. A thriller and absolute banger right to the very end. Oh how I loved it. FIVE STARS! urn:lcp:wiseguy00nich_aso:epub:1228e7a8-2712-43a3-bf07-6eadd713a8d9 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier wiseguy00nich_aso Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1kh2tv9r Invoice 11 Isbn 0671447343It is this disregard for other people that makes this such a chilling book. In this world of wiseguys, all is theirs for the taking. In fact, it made me think that if this is still the case, that anything you happen to possess that is of interest to the Mob can be taken away from you, the much-touted American concept of freedom is not very valid. At least you're not free to own things, and if you try to put your case to the law, Hill provides ample examples of how both the police and the judicial system has members on the take. When Henry finally accepts that his old friends are after him, he agrees to cooperate with law enforcement. Henry and his family enter the federal witness protection program. Henry's detailed inside knowledge is a dream come true for law enforcement, which has long sought evidence against the elusive Paul Vario. Henry's testimony sends both Paulie and Jimmy to jail, along with a host of other less prominent figures in the criminal underworld. This is Henry's greatest scheme. By turning on his old pals and siding with the government, Henry ensures his immunity to every crime he has ever committed, or may commit in the future. Wiseguy even has some advantages over its still-more-brilliant offspring. A two-and-a-half- hour biopic must necessarily simplify and omit events. In Henry Hill's case, a lot of those events are interesting. Pileggi assumed they’d be arrested. He assumed wrong. "Not a thing happened! Nothing ever came of it!" For Hill, this was normal. Clearly, there was something about him which made the Maitre D' decide it’d be best to let the matter drop.

By the way the legendary “Am I some kind of clown, do I amuse you…” scene is not in the book and, apparently, was improvised by Joe Pesci who had seen a real mobster do something similar.

Henry sees no reason to change his lifestyle. He enjoys the fruits of other people's labor, taking over and bankrupting in weeks legitimate business that others have worked their entire lives to create. For Henry, there are no consequences. No matter how many businesses and personal fortunes he destroys for his own gain, there is always someone else out there to be lied to, stolen from, or conned. Even when Henry gets ten years in prison, he bribes all manner of guards and officials to get out after four years, and those four years are spent in relative luxury. Karen spends this time in a small, shabby apartment, supporting herself and the children even while helping Henry carry out his schemes so he can continue to live in the style to which he is accustomed. 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.

Nicholas Pileggi's non fiction book, ' Wiseguy', is the basis for the film, GoodFellas, directed by Martin Scorsese (1990). It's the true story of Henry Hill, a member of the Lucchese organised crime family in New York. Henry's heyday takes place during the 1960s and 1970s when he works under the protection of mob boss Paul Vario in the Brownsville-East New York section of Brooklyn. That’s why the really tough guys went along with him – he was always looking to make money for them." What made Wiseguy such a thrilling read was Hill’s incredible memory. He was a natural storyteller, with a novelistic eye for detail. 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.

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.