Wiseguy

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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. When Pileggi came out of the men’s room, Hill said, "Come on, let’s get out of here!" Straight away, Pileggi saw why Hill was so keen to leave. "I looked over and I realised Henry had hit the Maitre D' in the head with a wine bottle. The guy was bleeding." "What happened?" asked Pileggi, as they drove away. "The guy gave me some lip," said Hill, by way of explanation. Wiseguy reads so well because Pileggi knew the world he wrote about. And GoodFellas plays so well because Scorsese knew that world too. When he was arrested for a range of offences, including drug-dealing (which his Mob bosses had told him to stay away from), he agreed to testify against his fellow ‘wiseguys’ and was given a new identity, under the US government’s Witness Protection Program. This was where Pileggi came in.

Nobody had written much about Organised Crime before. The subject became Pileggi’s speciality, and when the publishers Simon & Schuster bought the rights to Henry Hill’s life story, Pileggi was a natural choice to write it. 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. Pileggi, Nicholas (1985). Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family (Firsted.). Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-72322-4. 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! Goodfellas ( originally titled Wiseguy) is a terrific true crime book that just stops short of romanticizing the life of a gangster. The book is about working class Italian and Irish gangsters in Brooklyn, starting from their early days in the 1950s to their fall in the 70s and 80s, told through the eyes of a foot soldier - Henry Hill and his wife Karen.

My Book Notes

I waited for this book for a long time. Watched my favorite movie "Goodfellas" based on this book several times. So when I got the hard copy of the book, I could not resist myself finishing it at once. It is As good as the movie. But if someone watches the movie, the book is waste of time in my opinion. The movie is a total honest representation of the book. But my case is different. I love to read about Mafia. :)

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.” 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." 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 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. 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.

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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. For anyone who hasn’t seen GoodFellas (or read Wiseguy), Hill was an Irish-Italian New Yorker who became a small-time gangster as a teenager, and grew up to become involved in many of the Mob’s illegal enterprises. PDF / EPUB File Name: Wiseguy__The_25th_Anniversary_Edition_-_Nicholas_Pileggi.pdf, Wiseguy__The_25th_Anniversary_Edition_-_Nicholas_Pileggi.epub Pileggi began his career as a journalist and had a profound interest in the Mafia. [2] He is best known for writing Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family (1985), which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas (1990), and for writing Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas and the subsequent screenplay for Casino (1995). The movie versions of both were directed and co-written by Martin Scorsese. [3] Pileggi also wrote the screenplay for the film City Hall (1996), starring Al Pacino. He served as an Executive Producer of American Gangster (2007), a biographical crime film based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas. He also authored Blye, Private Eye (1987). [4] 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.

He grew up with those people - he knows the culture better than any other movie director out there," says Pileggi. "Marty knows it, Marty grew up with it, Marty lived it. I had the same experience - I knew those people, so there was an intimacy with that material that gave Marty tremendous freedom." Nicholas Pileggi admitted somewhere that the screenplay for Goodfellas, co-written with Martin Scorsese, improved on his book: it's more succinct, more impactful. He was right. Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family is a 1985 non-fiction book by crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi that chronicles the life of Henry Hill, a Mafia associate turned informant. The book is the basis for the 1990 Academy Award–winning film Goodfellas directed by Martin Scorsese. [1] [2] [3] Summary [ edit ] 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.

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urn:lcp:wiseguy00nich_aso:epub:1228e7a8-2712-43a3-bf07-6eadd713a8d9 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier wiseguy00nich_aso Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1kh2tv9r Invoice 11 Isbn 0671447343 Hill died in 2012. He never read Pileggi’s book. "I don’t have to read it," he told Pileggi. "I told you everything that’s in it – what am I going to read it for?" So, if like me, you’ve seen the film multiple times, is it worth reading the book? Probably not. It’s good but the overwhelming sense of familiarity makes it all feel very recognisable. That said, if you really love the film then you will inevitably still get quite a lot out of reading the book including quite a lot of interesting detail about what the authorities did leading up to Henry Hill's arrest, and the aftermath of his entry into the Federal Witness Program. The book is based on the real life story of a mobster Henry Hill. He used to be a member of Lucchese crime family. A deeper look into a Mafia World And it's something different to know about the Mafia from someone inside the under world. The experience was totally different from reading a Mafia Fiction (i.e. The Godfather, The Sicilian, Omerta etc). When I read The Godfather, I don't know from where it came, but a strange sympathy worked for the Mafia. But when I read this book, I came across to know about Mafia (the real Mafia) that it's totally different from what I read in those fictions. It's not so sympathetic and it's quite brutal and blood thursty. The money and self-interest is everything in this world. In this sense, I will give all the credit to Henry Hill. He was so honest about his detail description.

Warners’ first original feature of the Warner Bros. Discovery era is here … and it’s a period mobster drama fronted by two Hollywood veterans.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. Pileggi was married to fellow author, journalist, and filmmaker Nora Ephron from 1987 until her death in 2012. [2] Partial filmography [ edit ] Year