This article was first published in the Den of Geek NYCC Special Edition Magazine.
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Goodfellasis celebrating its 25th anniversary.
The film is a classic movie in the gangster genre.
These wise guys pulled off the biggest haul of the Twentieth Century, the $6 million Lufthansa heist.
Like the younger generation, it was faster, brasher and louder.
All the gangsters got louder afterThe Godfather, they got so loud the feds had to shut them up.
Hill dropped dime on his partners in crime when he was facing a hefty sentence, and possible execution.
Hill, who was not a made man because he was half-Irish, broke the code of omerta.
Loose lips sink ships, the World War II generation was taught.
Americans got nothing on Sicilians.
You dont have to be in a crime family to distrust the cops.
Its part of our DNA, forged by centuries of betrayals.
Button men have kept their mouths buttoned for centuries.
That is, untilThe Godfathercame out and all the gangsters wanted to be Sonny Corleone.
No one ever wanted to be Fredo.
When I was 10 The Godfather Theme blasted out of car horns all over Bensonhurst.
When my aunts boyfriend got one she was livid.
Are you fucking advertising?
she screamed and you could hear his button pop.
Omerta means silence unto death, especially when talking to cops.
Cosa Nostra lasted as long as it did because Mafiosi are secretive.
But the tradition started long before that.
When I was a kid, my grandmother told me the story of The Night of Sicilian Vespers.
An outraged mob turned into an uprising, and finally a revolution that spread across Sicily.
The official version says the soldier was searching the woman for weapons on March 30, 1282.
The revolt spread across the island and even French monks and nuns were killed.
They killed the justiciar for western Sicily, John of Saint Remy, at the castle of Vicari.
It changed the face of the Mediterranean.
It ended in August 1302, with a treaty known as the Peace of Caltabellotta.
He had the same name as me and my father.
But he was a thick-headed pollack who, apparently, took his job too seriously.
He was allowed to live if he steered clear of the volcano.
He became a gravedigger, a real grave-digger.
Not the title used by some mob guys at the time.
The night of Sicilian vespers isnt in the movieThe Godfather.
A lot of people wanted to whack Bonanno after he letGay Talesetell his story inHonor Thy Father.
The Godfathertold the story of the Gallo-Profaci wars of the late fifties and early sixties.
The Gallo-Profaci Wars is the Beatles of true crime stories.
That phrase only went back to 1961 when Sally DAmbrosio iced Joe Jelly Gioelli.
Gallo was made for gangster cinema by gangster cinema.
Gallo was killed on his birthday on April 7, 1972 at Umbertos Clam House.
Even when he was playing a cop.
Thats a standup guy.
Gallo believed he was in line to head the Profaci family.
It became the Colombo family while Crazy Joe was in prison.
Colombo created the Italian-American Civil Rights League to strong arm production onThe Godfather.
The Mafia was the face of American Crime in the 20th Century.
It came to prominence because of an inside informant.
The MafiaCamorra War started after Giosue Gallucci and his son were killed on May 17, 1915.
The cops got Ralph Daniello to rat on the Brooklyn Navy Street gang.
He lipped off about 23 murders and that was the end of the Camorra in New York.
You cant buy that kind of advertising.
Im sure members of the Camorra wish that ad never ran.
The Mafia operates as a social unit, mixing business with pleasure and with family.
Bonanno considered himself the father of his family.
In the Mafia everything kicks up to the top.
The Camorra is structured vertically.
The Mafia survived as long as it did because it was a secret organization.
The RICO bill was named after Edward G. Robinsons character inLittle Caesar(1931).
Omerta couldnt stand against that.
Most people blame heroin for the demise of the mafia.
But the movies had as much to do with it.
Hollywood would know nothing about the mob if it werent for the rats.
Without the testimony of Reles, there would be no record of the Jewish mobs.
No record of Murder Inc.
The legend of Dutch Shultz would have been lost to the ages.
Abe Kid Twist Reles was born in Brooklyn in 1906.
Reles was a master with the ice pick.
He was 32 when he ratted out his hitmen brethren in 1940 to beat the death penalty.
Reles fell out of a hotel window in Coney Island while under the watchful eyes of the police.
Some say he was pulling a prank.
Others say he was pushed.
Either way, he never got to trial.
He was ruthless, witty and totally sociopathic in a role decades before its time.
Reles came up through the Jewish mobs.
He wasnt the last to turn states evidence to beat a rap.
Joe Valachi is probably the best known mob informant.
Everything anyone knew about the structure of the mafia in the 60s was because of him.
He was the poster child for rats even before Charles Bronson played him inThe Valachi Papers.
Valachi sang all sorts of tunes in 1963, including the first song about the American Mafia.
Valachi was a soldier in the Lucchese and Genovese crime families.
Valachi died in prison in 1971 with a $100,000 contract still out on him.
Joseph The Animal Barboza gave up New Englands Patriarca crime family in 1967.
It later came out that he made up a lot of it.
He was shot in 1976 in San Francisco.
He gave evidence on both families and disappeared into Witness Protection Program.
He died in New York in 2000.
Cops were also emboldened by the film, which they saw as a glamorizing an affront to society.
They circumvented due process often to get criminals to flip.
The new generation wasnt as stand up as their predecessors.
One of the best-known and highest-ranking informants was Salvatore Sammy the Bull Gravano.
Gravano and Gotti were both arrested at their own Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy.
His testimony against the Teflon Don stuck.
Gravano had his face fixed and went into the Witness Protection Program.
But he got popped for dealing ecstasy and was housed in a federal pen.
Gravano always believed Puzo must have known good people.
Massino succeeded Carmine Galante and was credited with turning the Bonanno family around.
The Bonanno family boss wore a wire to get dope on his successor Vincent Basciano.
Thats as bad as it gets in the mob.
The indignity wasnt enough.
Massino was sentenced to life in prison in June 2005.
Massino had his own personal Luca Brasi, Tony Aiello, also obviously influenced by the film.
He also gave up the Mafia Cops Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito.
But their stories pale in comparison to the alleged duplicity of James Joseph Whitey Bulger.
There are stories that Whitey was giving it up to feds for years.
But Bulger wasnt exactly a rat.
He maintains, to this day, that he was using the feds to do his dirty work.
That would make him a genius.
Hed been tipped off by his FBI handler John Connolly.
Johnny Depp plays him in his new movieBlack Mass.Jack Nicholsonplayed a version of him in ScorsesesThe Departed.
Goodfellasis based on the testimony of Henry Hill.
The half-Irish, half-Italian gangster was born in Brooklyn in 1943 and did work for the Lucchese crime family.
Hill also ratted as a preemptive measure.
He was arrested for drug trafficking in 1980 and figured there was a contract out on him.
He gave evidence that led to 50 convictions.
He entered the Witness Protection Program but was kicked out for staying in the life.
Hill gave further evidence to Nicholas Pillaggi for the bookWiseguy, which Scorsese turned intoGoodfellas.
Hollywood celebrates the rats.
Without the fink we wouldnt know anything about the Mafia.
One of the greatest mob rat films of all time isOn The Waterfront.
When he was given an honorary Oscar, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese stood up for him.
It also separated the Sicilians from the Napolitan.
The Sicilian curse va Napoli is older than any mattress holed up on President Street.
Sicilians keep their traps shut at all times, like Johnny Tightlips onThe Simpsons.
The families of the Dapper Don John Gotti and Al Capone came from Naples.
Capone loved watching movies that depicted him.
The Godfathergave them bragging rights and led to the rat generation.
Sometimes its best to let sleeping fishes lie.
