Henry Hill dies.

[tigerbob]

Here's Paul Vario, whom Paul Sorvino played:

Sorvino:

Vario was known to be brutal and ruthless, despite the brooding and gentle Goodfellas portrayal, Hill saw first hand a show of this violence. He watched, aged twelve or thirteen, as Vario drove up to a barmaid's apartment, took a baseball bat from the trunk of his car and severely assaulted her for telling his wife that the two were having an affair. The barmaid's collar bone was broken.

Not sure why anyone would willingly get involved with the mob.

 

[High_Gravity]

Here's Paul Vario, whom Paul Sorvino played:

Sorvino:

Vario was known to be brutal and ruthless, despite the brooding and gentle Goodfellas portrayal, Hill saw first hand a show of this violence. He watched, aged twelve or thirteen, as Vario drove up to a barmaid's apartment, took a baseball bat from the trunk of his car and severely assaulted her for telling his wife that the two were having an affair. The barmaid's collar bone was broken.

Not sure why anyone would willingly get involved with the mob.

The good money and the flashy life style can be quite enticing, when things were good these guys could have practically whatever they wanted, but when things were bad they were very bad.

 

[J.E.D]

From the book, Wiseguy:

Most hijackers take the truck driver's license as a warning. The driver knows that you know where he lives, and if he cooperates too much with the cops or the insurance company he's in trouble. Jimmy got his nickname 'Jimmy the Gent' because he used to take the driver's license, just like everybody else, except Jimmy used to stuff a fifty-dollar bill into the guy's wallet before taking off. I can't tell you how many friends he made out at the airport because of that. People loved him. Drivers used to tip off his people about rich loads. At one point things got so bad the cops had to assign a whole army to try to stop him, but it didn't work. It turned out that Jimmy made the cops his partners. Jimmy could corrupt a saint. He said bribing cops was like feeding elephants at the zoo. 'All you need is peanuts.'

 

[High_Gravity]

I liked the book Wiseguy better than the movie actually, there was alot of stuff the movie didn't tell us like about Henry Hill's Military service.

 

[J.E.D]

I liked the book Wiseguy better than the movie actually, there was alot of stuff the movie didn't tell us like about Henry Hill's Military service.

Also, the movie only touched a little on his time in prison. He got away with a lot more inside than just selling some drugs.

NPR interview with 'Wiseguy' author, Nicholas Pileggi:

On how Henry dealt with his frequent prison sentences

"There are religious furloughs where you go out for religious training. It allows you to get out of the program and have contact with your family. ... Henry sees this and he says, 'Get me a religious guy.' So they got a phony rabbi to write the letter to the prison. The prison is very responsive to religious letters. All of a sudden, Henry is now going off on 'religious studies' on weekends.

"He got Jimmy Burke to pick him up, they'd cross Pennsylvania, go to Atlantic City, he'd belly up to the craps table and shoot craps until his ankles swolled. And that's what he would do for his whole religious weekend. Then get back in the car Sunday night and drive back to the prison. At the same time, his wife would fly down from New York and other wiseguys would come down — and their weekends in prison were spent in Atlantic City."

 

[J.E.D]

I agree that the book is better (they typically are), but the movie was damn close to being as good as the book. It appears that Scorsese went through great pains to ensure that it stayed true to the book as much as possible.

 

[Toro]

Which was the movie about the Boston mafia with Damon and Nicholson? I thought that was excellent also.

 

[High_Gravity]

I agree that the book is better (they typically are), but the movie was damn close to being as good as the book. It appears that Scorsese went through great pains to ensure that it stayed true to the book as much as possible.

He did a good job, I definently enjoyed the movie as well.

 

[J.E.D]

Which was the movie about the Boston mafia with Damon and Nicholson? I thought that was excellent also.

The Departed. Very loosely based on real-life gangster ****** Bulger.

 

[High_Gravity]

I liked the book Wiseguy better than the movie actually, there was alot of stuff the movie didn't tell us like about Henry Hill's Military service.

Also, the movie only touched a little on his time in prison. He got away with a lot more inside than just selling some drugs.

NPR interview with 'Wiseguy' author, Nicholas Pileggi:

On how Henry dealt with his frequent prison sentences

"There are religious furloughs where you go out for religious training. It allows you to get out of the program and have contact with your family. ... Henry sees this and he says, 'Get me a religious guy.' So they got a phony rabbi to write the letter to the prison. The prison is very responsive to religious letters. All of a sudden, Henry is now going off on 'religious studies' on weekends.

"He got Jimmy Burke to pick him up, they'd cross Pennsylvania, go to Atlantic City, he'd belly up to the craps table and shoot craps until his ankles swolled. And that's what he would do for his whole religious weekend. Then get back in the car Sunday night and drive back to the prison. At the same time, his wife would fly down from New York and other wiseguys would come down — and their weekends in prison were spent in Atlantic City."

Yup I remember that, I think I also remember reading somewhere that Henry got a gambling operation going on post when he was in the service, this racket supposedly went all the way up the Colonel in charge of his command.

 

[J.E.D]

I liked the book Wiseguy better than the movie actually, there was alot of stuff the movie didn't tell us like about Henry Hill's Military service.

Also, the movie only touched a little on his time in prison. He got away with a lot more inside than just selling some drugs.

NPR interview with 'Wiseguy' author, Nicholas Pileggi:

On how Henry dealt with his frequent prison sentences

"There are religious furloughs where you go out for religious training. It allows you to get out of the program and have contact with your family. ... Henry sees this and he says, 'Get me a religious guy.' So they got a phony rabbi to write the letter to the prison. The prison is very responsive to religious letters. All of a sudden, Henry is now going off on 'religious studies' on weekends.

"He got Jimmy Burke to pick him up, they'd cross Pennsylvania, go to Atlantic City, he'd belly up to the craps table and shoot craps until his ankles swolled. And that's what he would do for his whole religious weekend. Then get back in the car Sunday night and drive back to the prison. At the same time, his wife would fly down from New York and other wiseguys would come down — and their weekends in prison were spent in Atlantic City."

Yup I remember that, I think I also remember reading somewhere that Henry got a gambling operation going on post when he was in the service, this racket supposedly went all the way up the Colonel in charge of his command.

Yeah I remember that now. It's been years since I read it. I just dusted off the book the other day in anticipation of rereading it.

 

[High_Gravity]

Also, the movie only touched a little on his time in prison. He got away with a lot more inside than just selling some drugs.

NPR interview with 'Wiseguy' author, Nicholas Pileggi:

On how Henry dealt with his frequent prison sentences

"There are religious furloughs where you go out for religious training. It allows you to get out of the program and have contact with your family. ... Henry sees this and he says, 'Get me a religious guy.' So they got a phony rabbi to write the letter to the prison. The prison is very responsive to religious letters. All of a sudden, Henry is now going off on 'religious studies' on weekends.

"He got Jimmy Burke to pick him up, they'd cross Pennsylvania, go to Atlantic City, he'd belly up to the craps table and shoot craps until his ankles swolled. And that's what he would do for his whole religious weekend. Then get back in the car Sunday night and drive back to the prison. At the same time, his wife would fly down from New York and other wiseguys would come down — and their weekends in prison were spent in Atlantic City."

Yup I remember that, I think I also remember reading somewhere that Henry got a gambling operation going on post when he was in the service, this racket supposedly went all the way up the Colonel in charge of his command.

Yeah I remember that now. It's been years since I read it. I just dusted off the book the other day in anticipation of rereading it.

Yeah I'm gonna do the same thing, I also remember reading that Paul Vario told Henry after he enlisted that if he changed his mind Paulie could go the recruiter and make it as if that enlistment paperwork never existed.

 

[geauxtohell]

It's in my Netflix queue.

Funny, I was watching Goodfellas last night, and went to Wiki afterward to look up Tommy DiSimone, the real life creep who Joe Pesci played, which led me to Jimmy Burke (DeNiro) and Paulie Vario (Sorvino) and Henry Hill, where I saw that he had just died. Each of those Wiki profiles are very interesting reading. And the events in Goodfellas are 90-95% true, according to a lot of people. None of them were nice guys at all, despite the way that DeNiro and Paul Sorvino softened up their characters. They were horrible degenerates and psychopaths.

Maybe that's why Goodfellas isn't as high up on my list - there was no one to root for, no one with a shred of redeeming qualities.

One of the reason that the book is worth reading (if you liked the movie) is that you get the inside scoop on the characters. For example, the "Tommy" character in good fellows is more of a composite character between Disimone and Paulie Vario's son. It also goes into the criminally brilliant point shaving scheme that Hill came up with. The movie doesn't even touch that.

 

[J.E.D]

It's in my Netflix queue.

Funny, I was watching Goodfellas last night, and went to Wiki afterward to look up Tommy DiSimone, the real life creep who Joe Pesci played, which led me to Jimmy Burke (DeNiro) and Paulie Vario (Sorvino) and Henry Hill, where I saw that he had just died. Each of those Wiki profiles are very interesting reading. And the events in Goodfellas are 90-95% true, according to a lot of people. None of them were nice guys at all, despite the way that DeNiro and Paul Sorvino softened up their characters. They were horrible degenerates and psychopaths.

Maybe that's why Goodfellas isn't as high up on my list - there was no one to root for, no one with a shred of redeeming qualities.

One of the reason that the book is worth reading (if you liked the movie) is that you get the inside scoop on the characters. For example, the "Tommy" character in good fellows is more of a composite character between Disimone and Paulie Vario's son. It also goes into the criminally brilliant point shaving scheme that Hill came up with. The movie doesn't even touch that.

Oh yeah. The college basketball scheme. I had totally forgotten about that. Good point on the Tommy character. Some of the stuff attributed to Tommy in the movie was actually done by or with Vario's son (according to Hill in the book).

 

[geauxtohell]

It's in my Netflix queue.

Funny, I was watching Goodfellas last night, and went to Wiki afterward to look up Tommy DiSimone, the real life creep who Joe Pesci played, which led me to Jimmy Burke (DeNiro) and Paulie Vario (Sorvino) and Henry Hill, where I saw that he had just died. Each of those Wiki profiles are very interesting reading. And the events in Goodfellas are 90-95% true, according to a lot of people. None of them were nice guys at all, despite the way that DeNiro and Paul Sorvino softened up their characters. They were horrible degenerates and psychopaths.

Maybe that's why Goodfellas isn't as high up on my list - there was no one to root for, no one with a shred of redeeming qualities.

One of the reason that the book is worth reading (if you liked the movie) is that you get the inside scoop on the characters. For example, the "Tommy" character in good fellows is more of a composite character between Disimone and Paulie Vario's son. It also goes into the criminally brilliant point shaving scheme that Hill came up with. The movie doesn't even touch that.

Oh yeah. The college basketball scheme. I had totally forgotten about that. Good point on the Tommy character. Some of the stuff attributed to Tommy in the movie was actually done by or with Vario's son (according to Hill in the book).

"For your birthday, I gotcha a mirror! Now you can make tails!"

That's one of the few lines I remember from the book.

Not to go off topic, but another good mob book: "Havanna Nocturne" about how Mayer Lansky and Santo Trafficante had Cuba in the palm of his hands and how Castro fucked it up for him (and also the rest of the mob when they got greedy).

 

[geauxtohell]

I never understood why the main Irish Mobster in "The Departed" is named "Costello".

*edit*

Nevermind. It's apparently an Irish name.

 

[Synthaholic]

The Boston College point shaving scandal is what actually sent Burke to prison, not the Lufthansa heist or all the murders and robberies.

Hill dealt untaxed cigarettes while in the military, along with loansharking. He ended up in the stockade for a few months for stealing a sheriff's car.

Hill's wife, Karen (Lorraine Bracco) was having an affair with Paul Vario. When Hill went off to prison, DeSimone attempted to rape her. She told Paulie, and that's why Paulie told the Gambino family that DeSimone was the one who had murdered Billy Batts and another made man.

More evidence that ***** will get you killed.

 

[Trajan]

Which was the movie about the Boston mafia with Damon and Nicholson? I thought that was excellent also.

the departed, it was....

 

[tigerbob]

Anyone seen Layer Cake? Well worth a look.

 

[AgentSparky]

Good bloke..RIP Henry..

Really?


He was a murdering mafia thug.