Cosa Nostra News

Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas by Glenn Kenny, which we finally got around to perusing, includes many fascinating tidbits about the acclaimed 1990 Martin Scorsese film as well as the real-life Luchese wiseguys and associates on whom the film was based. We also learned the answer to something we have long wondered about: Why did Scorsese change the names of the characters?  “You got money for that fcking commercial of yours. You don't got my money? You don't got my fckin' money?”  According to Made Men, Robert De Niro’s approach to the role of Jimmy Burke —renamed Conway—the Irish-American gangster with ties to the Luchese crime family through his association with Luchese capo Paul Vario , renamed Cicero for the film—included the kind of painstaking, multifaceted preparatory work for which the New Yorker has long been known.  De Niro’s copy of the Goodfellas script—which is part of the De Niro archives at the Ransom Center at the University of Texas —includes handwritt...

Seth Ferranti's blog, Gorilla Convict , features an interview with Daniel Simone, author of The Lufthansa Heist: Behind the Six-Million-Dollar Cash Haul That Shook the World . The interview is comprehensive and intriguing. Ferranti himself is intriguing... He earned a master’s degree, got married, launched a writing career and founded a publishing house, all from behind bars. He's accomplished more inside than I ever will outside! But seriously, Seth did over 20 years on a bullshit rap.

A recent  WSJ.com  report noted that, despite stronger federal laws and the long parade of mob turncoats waiting to testify in court, New York's five Cosa Nostra families have managed to hold on, regroup and rebuild. They have survived, law enforcement officials and mob experts said, because of their "persistence and ability to adapt," the article noted. In fact, the New York Mafia "has quietly staged a comeback and is now more powerful than it has been in years," Richard Frankel, special agent in charge of the Criminal Division for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office, told the WSJ. The Mafia's obituary seem to be written about every few years. The king of all examples: In an uncharacteristic blunder, noted mob author Nicholas Pileggi wrote an article for New York magazine titled "The Decline and Fall of the Mafia" -- in 1970! The fact is, the American Cosa Nostra was organized specifically to perpetuate its...