filmbriefs
Screenwriter

Nicholas Pileggi

2
briefs
13:00
average
26 min
in total
On film.briefs2
13:00

Casino

Martin Scorsese · 1995

Martin Scorsese's 1995 film, adapted with Nicholas Pileggi from Pileggi's nonfiction book, follows Sam 'Ace' Rothstein, sent by the Chicago Outfit to run the fictional Tangiers casino, as his marriage to hustler Ginger McKenna and his friendship with volatile enforcer Nicky Santoro both collapse around him. Based closely on the real skimming operation run through Las Vegas's Stardust casino in the 1970s, and shot largely inside the actual Riviera casino rather than on built sets, the 178-minute film grossed $116 million against a $50 million budget and earned Sharon Stone an Academy Award nomination.

13:00

Goodfellas

Martin Scorsese · 1990

Martin Scorsese's 1990 account of Henry Hill's rise and fall inside the Lucchese crime family, adapted from Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy. Told through overlapping narration and a compressed, accelerating style, it follows money, loyalty and violence as the daily business of a life Hill first found glamorous and eventually could not escape.