Orchard Press Online
Mystery Magazine
June 7, 2002
 |
CRIME BEAT
by Paul Davis |
Copyright © 2002 Paul Davis. All rights reserved.
Goodfellas Don't Sue Goodfellas
Joseph
Bonanno, the former boss of one of New York’s five La Cosa Nostra’s original
crime families died last month of heart failure. He was 97.
Bonanno was often sited with being the model for the Vito Corleone
character in “The Godfather” novel and the subsequent trilogy of films. Like
Bonanno, Corleone had a “Joe College” son who reluctantly joined his father
in the organized crime business. Like Bonanno, Corleone took on the other crime
families in New York, although Bonnano, unlike Corleone, lost and was exiled to
Arizona (where law enforcement officials have always maintained he continued to
be involved in crime activities). Bonanno, like Vito Corleone in the novel and
the movies, died of natural causes. Unlike most mob bosses in fact and in
fiction, Bonanno did not die in prison or in a hail of bullets.
“The Godfather,” although highly romanticized, is a fictionalized
sociological study of organized crime’s history in America. Nearly all of the
major events in the Mario Puzo novel and Francis Ford Coppola’s film trilogy
were based on real events in crime history. Puzo freely admitted that he never
knew any mob guys and he said he based his novel entirely on research. It is
perhaps a testimony to Puzo’s skill as a novelist that real mob guys never
truly believed that. Many of them believed he had a highly placed mob source.
Over the years I heard from a number of law enforcement officials who
complain that “The Godfather” and the other mob books and movies glamorize
crime. From “The Godfather” to “The Sopranos,” novels, movies and TV
programs have often presented the gangster as a tragic, romantic and even
sympathetic figure. Told from the criminal’s point of view, the stories are
accurate in the sense that the gangsters see themselves in this manner.
I once had a discussion with the assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of
organized crime in the Philadelphia area. He did not agree with my assessment of
“Goodfellas,” which I said was the most realistic film portrayal of
organized crime. He felt that audiences liked the actor Joe Pesci in the film,
as he was funny and charming and they failed to realize that these criminals
were vicious and murderous. I countered by saying that I’ve found some of the
real guys to be funny, charming and even generous. And I’ve also seen them
quickly turn vicious, cold and heartless – just as Joe Pesci and Robert DiNiro
portrayed them on the screen.
They can be good friends and good company - unless you owe them money or
you have something they want. Serial killers and con artists have also been
known to be quite charming.
Being part Italian and born and raised in a predominately
Italian-American neighborhood in South Philly - the hub of the
Philadelphia-South Jersey mob - I was well aware of organized crime at an early
age. I lived just around the corner from the home of the long-time Philadelphia
mob boss, Angelo Bruno. He was killed in front of that very same home in 1980,
sparking a two-decade leadership struggle that would result in many more
murders.
I was also a neighbor of Richard Zappile, the former Philadelphia chief
of detectives who fought the mob and went on to become the first deputy police
commissioner. Yes, Virginia, there
are Italian-Americans involved in organized crime, but there are also many
Italian-Americans on the other side of the law as well.
In my late teens and 20s, I was a regular at the clubs and bars owned and
frequented by mob guys. Many of my childhood friends went on to dapple in the
rackets, and as a writer, I went on to cover organized crime. I’ve known more
than a few of the funny, violent and tragic characters that populate “Mean
Streets” and “Goodfellas.”
Director Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” is a powerfully stylistic
cinematic telling of a true crime story. Based on Nicholas Pileggi’s true
crime book “Wise Guy,” the film chronicles Henry Hill’s low-level life of
crime. Hill would end up as a witness against his mob mentors in crime, one of
whom was James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, the leader of a crew that carried out
the robbery of the Lufthansa Air Cargo Terminal at Kennedy Airport in 1978.
Millions of dollars were stolen and more than a dozen of the perpetrators were
later murdered by Burke.
“Mean Streets” is Scorsese’s earlier crime film that dealt with
young mob guys in the old New York neighborhood. The film is an artful and
accurate portrayal of what George Anastasia, the veteran Philadelphia Inquirer
crime reporter, called the “dark side” of Italian-American life.
About four years ago, I went to see Anastasia, who had just published an
account of the Philadelphia organized crime family, called “The Goodfella
Tapes: The True Story of How the FBI Recorded a Mob War and Brought Down a Mafia
Don.”
Anastasia made an appearance at Borders bookstore in Center City
Philadelphia, read passages from his book and fielded questions from the crowd
of about 30 people. The true crime book is about how the FBI secretly recorded
an internecine mob war and brought down the local crime boss.
Like his two previous outstanding books on the Philly mob, “Blood and
Honor” and “Mobfather,” South Philadelphia is featured so prominently in
“The Goodfella Tapes,” that it’s practically a character.
“The Philadelphia mob is probably the most dysfunctional crime family
in America,” I recall Anastasia saying. “It’s kind of “The Simpsons”
of the underworld.”
How it got that way, he said, is what the
book is all about. Anastasia talked about the 1993-95 mob war in and around
South Philadelphia, noting that one failed hit man used the wrong size shells in
a shotgun (which was right out of Jimmy Breslin’s novel “The Gang That
Couldn’t Shoot Straight”) and how another mob guy called off a hit because
he had to report to his parole officer. Anastasia explained that one side was
old world Sicilian and the other side was born and bred South Philadelphians,
the offspring of the previous mob leadership.
And the Feds got it all down on tape. A minor
gambling investigation led to the bugging of a law office in New Jersey, where
the mob guys met secretly (and they thought safely) to discuss mob gossip,
philosophy and tactics. Over the course of two years, the FBI recorded 2,000
conversations.
“Goodfellas don’t sue goodfellas …
goodfellas kill goodfellas,” one mob guy advised a potential litigant as the
FBI listened in. The book offers a good number of other insightful comments as
well.
Anastasia said he became interested in organized crime having been born in South Philly and the fact his grandfather came from Sicily. “I was fascinated because it’s the dark side of the Italian-American experience,” Anastasia said.
He began covering crime when he was assigned
by the Inquirer to cover Atlantic City at the time of the gambling referendum in
1976. There was much talk about keeping the mob out, but as Anastasia noted,
they were already there. He later covered more and more mob-related stories.
I asked him how he responded to criticism from Italians that his
extensive coverage of the “dark side” as he put it, offered a negative image
of Italians, the vast majority of whom were not criminals.
“These guys are taking the positive values
of the Italian-American experience; honor, family and loyalty and bastardizing
them for their own end. I think you should shine a light on that,” he said.
On the other hand, Anastasia said he took
great pride in the positive contributions that Italians have made to this
country and to the world.
In his Playboy interview Scorsese offered an interesting side note
to his crime films. He said that Henry Hill told him that he once convinced his
friend’s father to go and see a certain movie. The father, Paul Vario, a capo
in the Lucchese crime family, never went to the movies, but agreed to see
“Mean Streets’ at Hill’s urging. Vario, who would years later be portrayed
by Paul Sorvino in Scorsese’s film “Goodfellas,” liked “Mean Streets”
and instructed his entire crew to go and see it.
“It’s about us,” Vario said succinctly.
Contact the Author - daviswrite@aol.com