Made Men

by Glenn Kenny

  “It’s in Irwin’s book. About Double Trouble. With Elvis. Which was originally to have been a vehicle for his client...”

  “Yeah, it was with Julie Christie! Yes! And then all of a sudden, it’s Elvis. And why not? His point is getting the film made. And he pursued it because he knew it was kind of a passion for me. And he said, ‘Let’s do it!’ and I said, ‘Great!’ A year later we almost had it. But Graham King was holding it up, because he had put a lot of money in it and he wanted it back. And the times when someone like Frank Mancuso would make that go away for you—not these days. But Irwin tells a story in this room. ‘This is it,’ he says. Emma had come back from meeting with Graham, he won’t go down on his price, there are other issues, they didn’t tell me all of them because they were complicated, I really felt terrible. I said, ‘What are we gonna do?’ And Emma was depressed. And Irwin says, ‘Well, look. There’s a story.’ And Irwin tells this story. Somewhere in the caliphate in the fifteenth century, let’s say, there’s a powerful Jewish person in with the court, of the sultan, or the caliph. And something had happened with the Jewish population in Baghdad, say. And the caliph sent out a decree: kill all the Jews. So his Jewish philosopher or astronomer or mathematician said, ‘Hold off on that for a second.’ The caliph says, ‘Why?’ The mathematician says, ‘Think about it for a second.’ The caliph says, ‘I wanna do it.’ The mathematician says, ‘I tell you what. If I can get that dog that you like to speak, a year from now—’ ‘You’re gonna get that dog to speak—’ ‘Yeah, I’m gonna get that dog to speak, gimme one year, and I’ll get that dog to speak. You hold off on killing all the Jews.’ The caliph says, ‘Okay.’ So. He takes the dog and goes home to his wife. He tells his wife what happened. She says, ‘Are you crazy? That dog can’t speak!’ and he says, ‘Yeah, but we got a year!’ And that’s film producing. We got ourselves a year. And he was right. Don’t panic, don’t go crazy, that’s the way he is. And we had a year and we got it.” Scorsese stood up.

  * * *

  It was almost time to wrap up. “And Brad Grey, too, he got Silence made by agreeing to distribute it.” (Grey died in 2017, shortly after being ousted from Paramount.) “It’s amazing how some people can be, it’s very moving, because they know how much it means to you. And they came through. They came through.

  “It all comes back to can you pull yourself together. For the next one, Killers of the Flower Moon, I think I can. I mean, I love the story. And the people involved. At seventy-seven there is an issue of physical stamina. Pictures take long to shoot. Although Irishman, that was a good, steady rhythm in shooting. We weren’t too tired and we didn’t waste any time. ’Cause I think we all reached a certain age. And Rodrigo Prieto was prepared, as was Emma, as was David Webb. And it was tough. But it was not tough for superfluous reasons. It was get there, Al, and Joe and Bob and Anna Paquin, all amazing.”

  I looked at my watch and saw our ninety minutes were almost done, so I decided to exercise the better part of valor and I turned off my recorder. Lisa was outside the office and I told her I figured I’d call it because...

  “Oh, yes, I was just about to come in for you, anyway.”

  I mentioned to Scorsese that I was glad he had recently met my friend Farran Smith Nehme, the critic who the week before had interviewed him for a supplement on a Criterion Collection edition of his early short films. “Yes. She seemed very nice. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to speak with her more personally but,” and he shrugged again and gestured around, “you know.”

  I then told him that for the past couple of years Farran and I had been enjoying monthly lunches with Scorsese’s old friend and collaborator Jay Cocks. “Really? I didn’t know that.” Then, with mock indignation: “Jay doesn’t tell me anything anymore.” After instructing me to touch base with Marianne Bower sooner than later, and pledging almost blanket permissions on using documentation and production stills, he continued in that vein when I said I’d be seeing Jay in a couple of days: “Don’t tell Jay I said hi!”

  As it happened, the lunch was postponed. By the end of the week, New York City would be in the process of shutting down to try to contain the coronavirus. The film industry would soon follow suit, and as I write this, the production of Killers of the Flower Moon is on hold.

  Postscript

  A GOODFELLAS LIBRARY

  Because Nicholas Pileggi’s Wiseguy was a bestseller (and, better still for those with a stake in it, is still in print), it made sense for Henry Hill, who wasn’t a complete dummy, to look once more to publishing after the well of get-rich-quick schemes he enacted in and out of witness protection ran dry. While it would be an overstatement to say that Goodfellas spawned a cottage industry in books, Hill himself has his name on four volumes, and several other figures associated with Scorsese’s picture have capitalized on it in print. Here is a survey of such volumes, presented in chronological order of publication.

  WISEGUY, NICHOLAS PILEGGI, 1985, Simon and Schuster

  As Dobie Gray sang on “The In Crowd,” “the original’s still the greatest.” Pileggi knows his turf backward and forward, blindfolded. His own prose style is terse, precise, direct. He doesn’t just transcribe his subjects: he creates credible, recognizable, memorable voices for them. And he tells a compelling and frequently mind-boggling story.

  Its considerable true-crime literary value aside, the Goodfellas fan will be struck by the often small deviations Scorsese and Pileggi took, in the screenplay, from the truth according to Pileggi/Hill. Omitting Hill’s army stint, of course; the duo made this decision very early in the process, and agreed on it before even discussing it. It was for reasons relating to witness protection that the book did not go into much detail concerning the Hills’ children. (Even though, according to the account of Gregg and Gina Hill, Henry had given up witness protection in 1984, before Wiseguy was published.) In the movie the kids were changed from a son and a daughter to two daughters, and their birth dates were fudged. This, too, was for their protection. Other changes were for reasons of dramatic coherence. Henry actually met Karen Hill on a double date with Paul Vario, Jr., the son of the actual underboss Paul Vario. In the film, Paulie Cicero’s kids do not figure at all, except as background. So the double date partner became Tommy, and the offer of the double date that Henry refuses occurs during the torching of the Bamboo Lounge. While Scorsese has often expressed an indifference to, if not outright disdain for, plot, he is acutely conscious of story and story flow (if not “narrative arc”). Shifting Paul Jr. to Tommy moves things along organically; there’s no sense of a component being shoehorned in as such.

  TIN FOR SALE, JOHN MANCA AND VINCENT COSGROVE, 1991, William Morrow and Company

  Nickey Eyes of the Bamboo Lounge gang, Manca, a gambler who’d had a long stint as an unusually crooked cop, was wrangled into the Goodfellas role by Nicholas Pileggi. This book, which is dedicated to Pileggi, followed shortly. It’s in a similar format to Wiseguy: prose narrative surrounding long accounts in quotes from Manca.

  Manca has a lot of crazy stories, going way back. A homicide cop in NYC in the late ’50s, he was called to the scene of the murder-suicide of conservative muckraker Howard Rushmore and his wife, Frances—said scene being the back of a taxicab. On noting Rushmore’s address, he took the man’s house keys off his corpse and toddled up to the place, hoping to lift some valuables, but he found none there. (Had he been a little more knowledgeable about Rushmore he’d have known that a series of legal trials had largely cleaned him out already.) Because that’s the kind of guy Manca was. Other characters include guys with names like Sal Cannoli and Dave Cadillac. Manca’s misadventures with these sorts will bring to mind the Massachusetts sleazebags of George V. Higgins, although this book’s coauthor, Vincent Cosgrove, is, it probably should go without saying, not quite the prose stylist Higgins was. For all that, this is very nearly in the same league as Wiseguy.

  MAFIA COP, LOU EPPOLITO AND BOB DRURY, 1992, Simon and
Schuster

  Like most criminals, Henry Hill had what your mother might call “a lot of nerve.” But he did not have nearly as much nerve as Louis Eppolito. Shortly after making his screen debut in Goodfellas as the placid wiseguy Fat Tony, he worked on this book, a fulsome self-justification of his career in law enforcement, a career he chose in spite of having been born into gangsterdom. The book, despite bearing Eppolito’s name as a coauthor, toggles between close third person and first person, or more accurately stumbles between the two modes. To hear Louis, or Louie (the book also toggles between the two spellings of his name) tell it, he was one tough cop: “Patrolman Louis Eppolito adored the battle but despised the bureaucracy of his new profession. He had been taught by his father to care about people, to respect their feelings, to go out of their way to help others in need. He had also been primed to be combat-ready at all times. When murderers and rapists were banging on your door, Officer Louie Eppolito was the cop you wanted answering your 911 call.”

  Murderers and rapists banging on your door. It’s a vivid image.

  Anyway, there are some dustups on the force relative to Louie/Louis’ mob ties, and these don’t sit well with the fellow.

  “As frightening as it may sound, I found more loyalty, more honor, in the wiseguy neighborhoods and hangouts than I did in police headquarters. The bad guys respected Louie Eppolito. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the good guys.” What incredible irony.

  The book concludes: “On December 14, 1989, Detective Second Grade Louis John Eppolito retired with full honors.

  “The New York City Police Department had finally managed to rid itself of one of its worthiest cops.”

  Such indignation! Anyway, Louis, or Louie, found more than just loyalty and honor in wiseguy neighborhoods; he found employment as a hit man.

  He was convicted in 2006 of executing eight murders for Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso of the Lucchese crime family. He died in November of 2019, in prison.

  Mafia Cop remains in print as a mass-market paperback. There is no new foreword or afterword to update the reader or correct Eppolito’s disgraceful (but also mordantly funny, if you think about it in a certain way) self-mythologizing. Instead, there’s a block of text at the top of the front cover reading: “The book by the ex-NYPD detective whose recent arrest for multiple counts of murder made national headlines.” Yeah, they did.

  THE WISEGUY COOKBOOK: MY FAVORITE RECIPES FROM MY LIFE AS A GOODFELLA TO COOKING ON THE RUN, HENRY HILL AND PRISCILLA DAVIS (FOREWORD BY NICHOLAS PILEGGI), 2002, New American Library

  Possibly the most practically valuable book that Hill ever put his name on. It contains nearly 200 discrete recipes, all detailed and coherent, and several that are genuinely daunting. And yes, “Michael’s Favorite Ziti with Meat Sauce” is among them. Hill and Davis dot the book with anecdotes recounting an epicure’s education from the US Army to prison to Hollywood. I don’t know if Outsider Cookbooks is a genre, but if it is, this ought to be considered one of the best.

  The difficulty of obtaining arugula in Middle America is once again addressed. If only Hill had lived to see Whole Foods. (Well, since the company was founded in 1980, he actually did, but not so much as he’d be able to appreciate its eventual transformative effect on grocery shopping nationwide.)

  A GOODFELLAS GUIDE TO NEW YORK, HENRY HILL WITH BYRON SCHRECKENGOST, 2003, Three Rivers Press

  An underwhelming follow-up to the cookbook. It’s also pretty clear that poor Mr. Schreckengost did most of the heavy lifting. A lot of the book is formatted as a genuine guide, in the mode of Zagat’s restaurant books, with addresses, and in the case of hotels and restaurants, indications in dollar signs of how expensive they are/were (a better than good number of the spots celebrated here have disappeared in the past decade and a half). There are some reaches, too, as in the late chapter (or “floor,” as the never-not-cutesy volume would have it) “For the Little Goodfellas and Fellettes,” which recommends the late unlamented sci-fi bistro Mars 2112 and the Queens Wildlife Center Sheep-Shearing Weekend. Abutting this chapter is the grisly “Unwritten Rules for the Street, Written” (the “14th Floor”—they even skip the 13th floor, how about that?), which includes the subsection “Best Ways to Hide a Corpse.” (“7. Cement Boots. A classic.”) Don’t worry, though, a disclaimer at the beginning of these lists says, “DO not take the following lists literally. Although they come from years of experience, trial and error, this guide is meant to be a humorous take on the subject, not an actual guide for killing, robbing, intimidating, maiming, or causing discomfort to yourself or others.” Okay.

  Mr. Schreckengost has since migrated to the spirits industry.

  GANGSTERS AND GOODFELLAS: THE MOB, WITNESS PROTECTION AND LIFE ON THE RUN, HENRY HILL AS TOLD TO GUS RUSSO, 2004, M. Evans

  As freewheelingly entertaining as it is self-aggrandizing, Hill’s unofficial sequel to Wiseguy backtracks to the early ’60s and elaborates on some of the first book’s Greatest Hits before moving on to tales tall and sometimes true. Among these are accounts of how helpful he was to Ed McDonald, and how he was sent to Italy to testify in a trial involving legendary Italian financier/crime boss Michele Sindona. This really happened.

  The book is replete with mooky groaners. “When I met Jimmy Burke in 1964 [sic], he practically owned New York’s Kennedy Airport. If you ask me, they named the place after the wrong Irishman.” OH! as Andrew Dice Clay said. In the final chapters, he goes into his fight against the Son of Sam laws, his never-resolving problems with drugs and drink, and so on. Of his relationship with Howard Stern, he writes, “The trouble is, I usually call when I’ve fallen off the wagon and feel like I want to talk to somebody.” After reeling off a list of celebrity friends (“People like Bobby De Niro, Ray Liotta, Melanie Griffith...”) he says, “I’m still amazed that all these people want to meet me. Some are close friends, but others just want to schmooze. I just want to make money.”

  On his relationship with his children, Hill avers, “The kids are fine with me.”

  ON THE RUN: ESCAPING A MAFIA CHILDHOOD, GREGG AND GINA HILL, 2004, Penguin/Random House

  Not so fast there, Henry. This harrowing book, told in a plain, blunt style that mostly conveys the emotional and physical exhaustion of its authors after having lived through the events recounted, is like a punch to the gut. Especially if you’ve spent a lot of time rolling with Henry Hill’s bullshit. Gregg and Gina, both born in the late ’60s, alternate in the telling, which begins in the 1970s and ends after the publication of the Pileggi book. The film isn’t discussed. I’ve drawn upon this book for corroboration of/elaboration on some of the events depicted in the movie. Here’s Gregg talking about an encounter that inspired the final scene between Karen and Jimmy in the movie: “When my father was in the Nassau County jail after the raid in Rockville Center, Uncle Jimmy tried to sell her some blank T-shirts for the silk-screening business. The shirts were supposedly in an empty storefront in a warehouse district in Queens, and Jimmy was standing on the sidewalk telling her where to go, telling her he had great stuff for her. She got spooked—something in Jimmy’s tone, the way he was smiling at her—and ran to her car. She knew too much. She could say too much. To Uncle Jimmy, a friend for twenty years, she’d become almost as much of a liability as my father. He would have killed her that day. She believes that, and I do, too. It was business, like getting fired, only more permanent.”

  Henry Hill is almost entirely stripped of charm in this account, a heedless drunk and drug addict and a wife beater. His presence alone is enough of a pall over the kids’ lives. But even with a better father, going through high school while in the witness protection program would be a challenge. The procession of pushy friends and humiliating admissions goaded out of Gregg and Gina is almost unbearable.

  In the February 2, 2000, edition of the New York Post, four years before On the Run’s publication, an item on page six announced, “Scorsese Tied to Goodfell
as’ Sequel.”

  The legendary moviemaker has inked a deal with Disney to film the story of mob turncoat Henry Hill’s kids, who grew up in the witness protection program, Scorsese spokeswoman Marion Billings told the Post.