Nicholas Pileggi’s 1985 true-crime novel, Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, tells the story of former mob associate-turned-informant Henry Hill, from his childhood as an aspiring criminal to his days in the Witness Protection Program. Prior to helping the FBI take down his old Mafia buddies, Hill was involved with everything from armed robbery to murder to drug trafficking. Pileggi spent years interviewing Hill in preparation for his book, opting to get the facts straight from the horse’s mouth instead of relying on second-hand information. “He was sort of a soldier in Napoleon’s army,” Pileggi told NPR in 2011. “And I said, ‘You know, if you’re going to do a book about Napoleon, it might be interesting to see that world from the point of view of the soldier.’”
After the success of Wiseguy, Pileggi helped Martin Scorsese adapt the book into a hit movie titled Goodfellas. Released in 1990, it stars Ray Liotta as Hill, and features Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Paul Sorvino as Hill’s mob pals (whose names were slightly altered for the screen). The movie ends with Hill settling into his new life in witness protection, lamenting that he has to live out the rest of his days like a “schnook.” Goodfellas opened at number one and went on to be a major award winner, but despite Hill having some wild experiences following the events of the film, Hollywood never felt the need to squeeze a sequel out of it—officially, anyway.
That doesn’t mean we didn’t get to see more of Hill’s story play out on screen, however. In fact, a month before Goodfellas hit theaters, Warner Bros. (the same company that released Scorsese’s film) put out a movie that basically serves as a follow-up to it. Entitled My Blue Heaven, the film follows Steve Martin as ex-mobster Vinnie Antonelli, who—get this—is trying to adjust to life in the Witness Protection Program, but can’t seem to avoid falling back into his old habits. As you could’ve probably guessed by Martin’s presence, My Blue Heaven is a comedy, and Martin gives the exact kind of goofy performance you’d expect him to, though the plot is very much based on Hill’s life after the mob.
So how did a comedic semi-sequel to Goodfellas manage to get released before the first part of the story did? As it turns out, Pileggi’s wife, Nora Ephron, wrote the script for the movie and based it on her own conversations with Hill. As Hill explained in his 2004 memoir, Gangsters and Goodfellas: The Mob, Witness Protection, and Life on the Run, sometimes Ephron would answer the phone when he’d call up Pileggi, and he’d talk to her instead. “Meanwhile, she was picking my brain for a script she was writing. I had no idea. She was on the other end taking notes,” he wrote in the book. “When I saw it I flipped because she used some of the stuff I had told her on the phone for her movie scenes.”
Take a look at the trailer for My Blue Heaven below.
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