Wise Guy

Product Information

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. Lccn 85022047 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL7660706M Openlibrary_edition 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. :) 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. 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.”

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. It 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. Directed by Scorsese from a screenplay by himself and Eric Roth, Killers of the Flower Moon boasts a seriously star-studded cast led by Emmy nominee and the star of Breaking Bad, Jesse Plemons as lawman, Tom White, with DiCaprio due to play Ernest Burkhart alongside De Niro as his uncle, the American cattleman and convicted murderer William Hale. 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.

Table of Contents

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! 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.

There are a lot of books out there for women, and the Christian book market seems to aimed at women. This book though is just for men. Women could read it, but there really isn't much for women in it. Sorry ladies. :) The book is based on the true story of the mobster Henry Hill. It is the book that Goodfellas was made after, in fact Nicholas Pileggi co-wrote the script and the version I listened to had an introduction by Martin Scorsese. I had not realized how closely Goodfellas was based on true events so the book had the added benefit of making me appreciate the movie even more. The book and movie are thus very much alike, with the book just going deeper into characters and events, the epilogue was also very interesting. 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.With a mixture of self-deprecating humor and personal stories, Evans leads the reader through the life lessons he has learned from 16 diverse men. The author attributes much of the decline in mentoring to the rapid growth of fatherless homes and absentee dads over the last 50 years. urn:lcp:wiseguy00nich_aso:epub:1228e7a8-2712-43a3-bf07-6eadd713a8d9 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier wiseguy00nich_aso Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1kh2tv9r Invoice 11 Isbn 0671447343 So I would actually be more likely to recommend this to someone who’s never seen Goodfellas, who can appreciate the sheer outlandishness of this memoir. Henry Hill, in collaboration with Nicholas Pileggi, wrote this book after he’d been placed in witness protection after ratting out the other members of his New York mafia family – so at that point, he’d already burned all his bridges and had nobody left to protect and nothing much left to lose. This means that he shares everything in this memoir, detailing the murders, the robberies, the drugs, the affairs, the betrayals…it’s all here, and it’s all just on the safe side of completely unbelievable.

Kent has provided sixteen personal stories in this book about men that have influenced his life. They involve men whom God placed in Kent's life, often at crucial junctures when he was ready to listen. The goal of this book is for the reader to consider people in their own lives whom they could approach for help when they need it based on Kent's personal experiences. The "wise guys" in this book are unique to the author, but there are men like them in each of our lives. He exposes points in his life for all to see, whether they be proud or good hearted or shameful or painful moments. urn:oclc:873216236 Republisher_date 20131030175837 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20131029213835 Scanner scribe3.sanfrancisco.archive.org Scanningcenter sanfrancisco Source 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 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) Wise Guys takes an honest and clever look at the current state of manhood/fatherhood. The book is laid out in easy to digest chapters, a conversational style, and questions to provoke personal growth. When an author starts out in the introduction by relating his theme to The Princess Bride, you know it’s going to be an enjoyable book, even if it does step on your toes a bit.

The goal of Wise Guys, according to its author, is to help men again learn how to learn from each other. Evans takes the reader through 16 stories of men whom he feels God has placed in his path during crucial junctures in his life. What happens when a young man grows up and thinks he needs no father? It’s not a great reach from there to the conclusion that he doesn’t need to be one, either. And the cycle continues.” Returning to the genre that made him a household name, Robert De Niro will star in Wise Guys, a feature intended for theatrical distribution that will be directed by Barry Levinson, the filmmaker known for movies such as Oscar best picture winner Rain Man and Wag the Dog.