A real-life TopGun Instructor shares his views on how realistic the flying scenes were in the TopGun: Maverick movie

 
 
I taught at TOPGUN, and the flying and dogfighting seen in the ‘Top Gun’ movies are pretty darn realistic
 

 

 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Guy Snodgrass, a former TOPGUN instructor and retired naval aviator who was also Communications Director and Chief Speechwriter for Secretary of Defense James Mattis. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

With the original “Top Gun” film from 1986 and 2022’s “Maverick” sequel, Hollywood and the producers did a phenomenal job. They worked in collaboration with the United States Navy, and all the flight scenes you see in both movies are pretty darn realistic.

When the pilots were ripping through canyons in “Maverick” to practice low-level flying and then popping up to release ordnance on target, all of those are things that we would train to do and would do in similar circumstances. Of course, everything else has quite a bit of Hollywood magic sprinkled on it. You don’t typically have a lot of love interests going on at TOPGUN. You’re not out on the beach playing football.

 

 

There are also a lot of liberties taken with the scenes of fights breaking out, too, like people getting in each other’s faces and yelling and screaming. There’s just not a lot of room for that in today’s military; it’s a very professional environment. There are disagreements, but you work through it as professionals.

 

As for which film is better at capturing TOPGUN, I suspect it would be a generational question. If you ask someone who was flying in the 1970s and 1980s, they might say the original is better because that was their time. Plus, the original has the F-14 Tomcat, and there’s a lot of nostalgia for that jet.

 

The second movie was great with the flight scenes, the camaraderie, and how they approached the mission. There’s still that Hollywood magic, like Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, who has been around for decades, being able to fly an F-14 against a Russian fifth-generation fighter and prevail. On that level, a fifth-generation fighter like Russia’s Su-57 is going to smoke the F-14 every single day and twice on Sunday.

But the person in the cockpit is the key element, and that’s what we really focus on at TOPGUN.

Becoming a TOPGUN instructor

Snodgrass said the application process is fairly straightforward but highly selective. Guy Snodgrass
I think in a lot of cases throughout my career, I was always attracted to trying to do the toughest things. And one of the pathways I could take after my time as a Navy fighter pilot was to go through TOPGUN.

 

That’s the path I wanted to pursue, so I could try and reach that pinnacle of fighter pilots in naval aviation.

But the most demanding part of being a TOPGUN instructor for me wasn’t the actual flying, like you see in “Top Gun” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” but the lecture process as an instructor.

Getting into TOPGUN is fairly straightforward. You’ve accumulated a body of work over your time in a flight squadron. You put in your application, you get letters of recommendations from pilots you’ve actively flown with, and typically your commanding officer from your unit will provide an independent evaluation.

Related stories

 

When I was an instructor, I saw the other side of this. Once you have all the applications, maybe 30 people for eight spots, there’s this cascade — we call it the waterfall — in how people get chosen. You go through all 30 individuals and determine who are the few, usually maybe four or five, that we want to stay as instructors. The remainder of the pool can now be picked by other schools, so it kind of cascades down from TOPGUN.

 

In my case, I was selected to be an instructor. I went through the course, which today takes about 12 weeks, and at the conclusion of that, I was selected.

A day in the life at TOPGUN

The daily schedule is hectic, but debriefs after flights are the best time to learn and grow. Guy Snodgrass
You’re typically an instructor at TOPGUN for two-and-a-half, maybe three years. You’re flying every single day, Monday through Friday, and in many cases, twice a day. We’d get up early, around 4:30am, for our first brief at base around 5:30am to 6:00am. You have some time to relax, grab your gear, get into the cockpit, and then there’s a 30-minute period to get the jet started and get all the systems online and ready for take off.

Depending on how dynamic your mission is — meaning how aggressive and fast you’re flying — you’ll likely be airborne for about an hour, doing basic flight maneuvers and the dogfighting you see in the “Top Gun” movies. A longer flying mission might be about an hour and a half.

You might be dogfighting against an instructor or using the gun on the plane to strafe the target on the ground or drop bombs from high or low altitude, putting what you learn in the classroom towards practical application.

 

Then you’re becoming an expert in air-to-ground delivery and doing multiplane exercises, flying with one other plane to start and then you extend outwards with three other planes for pretty involved missions, dodging simulated surface-to-air missiles, fighting your way in and dropping weapons, then fighting your way out.

Back on the ground, you get out of your gear, get some downtime, and then start the debrief. The debriefs are epic because they typically last anywhere from three-and-a-half to five hours.

These sessions can go for a very long time because you’re learning lessons from what you just flew. We would always say that the debrief is the most important because that’s where you’re learning your lessons and able to call them out in a real, tangible way so that you can apply them moving forward.

After debrief, you’ll probably have an hour break and then do another flight and repeat the cycle. You typically head home around 10:00 pm, maybe 10:30 pm.

 

What they don’t show in the movies

Both “Top Gun” movies have their Hollywood magic, but they’re surprisingly realistic. Guy Snodgrass
As an instructor, you go through the entirety of the process, and after everyone else finishes training and graduates, you stay and become a subject matter expert for some element of teachings at TOPGUN. Mine was air-to-air mission planning, so being in charge of long-range aerial combat.

Then you have six months to prepare, study, and practice to give this lecture on your area. You get eight practice lessons to receive feedback. In my case, it was a four-and-a-half hour long lecture, hundreds of presentation slides, and it had to be completely from memory. They don’t let you look at your slides, and you can’t use notes.

That’s the biggest thing, the most demanding part for me wasn’t the actual flying, but the lecture process and being able to do it completely from memory. But once I passed that, I was a fully qualified instructor and continued to learn and instruct throughout the remainder of my time.
Teaching and leading your subject matter area lecture is the most difficult part, Snodgrass said. Guy Snodgrass
The most rewarding part of being a TOPGUN instructor was the personal relationships you form with the people around you, who are also dedicated to trying to achieve their best potential. There’s a competitive air because everyone wants to try to be the best, but mostly there’s camaraderie.

 

I also got to meet these students as they came through, interacting with the future of naval aviation, future leaders who are going to continue to grow for the remainder of their career and assume positions of greater authority. As an instructor, you’re having a real direct influence and ability there.

 

Content retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.com/topgun-instructor-movies-flying-dogfighting-pretty-realistic-2024-3?amp.

The movie Morgan Freeman “begged” Clint Eastwood to direct

The movie Morgan Freeman "begged" Clint Eastwood to direct

(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Stills)
Film » Cutting Room Floor

The movie Morgan Freeman “begged” Clint Eastwood to direct

Thomas Leatham@leafcine
Mon 26 February 2024 16:15, UK

There’s a deep mutual respect and admiration that runs through the friendship and creative partnership of Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood. Both figures have established themselves as true icons of American cinema, though Eastwood’s history in the film industry goes further back.

With a profound understanding of one another’s craft, Eastwood and Freeman have collaborated on a handful of occasions. In fact, in a number of Eastwood’s later movies as a director, he’s cast Freeman, beginning with 1992’s revisionist western Unforgiven, which is certainly one of his best.

Twelve years later, Freeman again turned up in Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, proving their professional connection. By the time Freeman gave his third performance for Eastwood, he actually had to convince the director to take on the project. Freeman explained this incident whilst also giving praise to Eastwood’s prowess behind the camera.

“I think Clint is an actor’s director,” Freeman once told RTE. “He doesn’t direct actors. He directs movies. He hires actors, and it’s your job. And I love that about him that you establish your own character; you play it and do what the scene calls for. [He’ll] have the scene set up.”

“Cameras will be where we want them to be,” Freeman added. “Lights will be where we want them to be. And go for it. “He never says action, and he never says cut. He’s his own person on a movie set. Wonderful.” Perhaps this sense of acting freedom on Eastwood’s sets comes from his own history as an actor and his understanding of their needs.

Eastwood is also largely known for directing projects that he himself stars in, but there’s one film from his catalogue that Freeman actually played a large hand in getting the director to take on. “I begged him to direct Invictus,” Freeman noted. “It’s one of the few movies he directed that he wasn’t in.”

Eastwood’s 2009 biographical sports film Invictus sees Freeman play Nelson Mandela and focus on how he used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to bring together the nation of South Africa following years of racial tension and apartheid. Matt Damon plays Francois Pienaar, the Springboks’ captain, who tries to lead his team to victory.

Freeman and Eastwood had already worked twice together before InvictusUnforgiven in 1992 and Million Dollar Baby in 2004 – but it was perhaps the biographical sports drama for which Freeman earned the most acclaim, including a ‘Best Actor’ nomination at the Academy Awards.

Check out the trailer for Invictus below.

Related Topics

Clint EastwoodMorgan Freeman

Content retrieved from: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/movie-morgan-freeman-begged-clint-eastwood/#:~:text=Freeman%20and%20Eastwood%20had%20already,nomination%20at%20the%20Academy%20Awards..

Sexy Beast – Films for the Lads

Today’s clip is from the classic, Sexy Beast which is probably one of the most underrated films with great performances from Ben Kingsley, Ian Mcshane and Ray Winstone. It’s one of those films with only a few locations but some very entertaining dialogue.

We start off with the scenes with Ben Kingsley and Ray Winstone. In the first scene we have Kingsley’s character Don Logan trying to convince Winstone’s character Gary ‘Gal’ Dove to come out of retirement and do one last job.

Interviews for the Lads – Frank Harper

He has been in classics such as The Football Factory, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Rise of the Foot Soldier, to name a few over a career spanning over 35 years. Frank Harper talks about how he first got into acting, his first acting jobs, films that influenced his career, the fights in The Football Factory, how he took Denzel Washington to The Old Den at Millwall to watch them play Leeds, what it was like to play convicted murderer Jack Whomes, his directing career and more.

The Business

Frankie is sent from London to Spain to make a delivery to Charlie, who likes the kid and shows him the ropes including the use of guns and drugs. Frankie likes the sun, pools and the cute, bikini clad girls and stays in Spain.

The Business is a 2005 crime film written and directed by Nick Love. The film stars Danny DyerTamer Hassan and Roland Manookian, all of whom were in Love’s previous film The Football FactoryGeoff Bell and Georgina Chapman also appear. The plot of The Business follows the Greek tragedy-like rise and fall of a young cockney‘s career within a drug importing business run by a group of British expatriate fugitive criminals living on the Costa del Sol in Spain.

The film is narrated by Frankie, a young everyman living in South East London during the Thatcher era of the 1980s specifically 1984, with little hope of ever making anything of himself, yet he dreams of “being somebody” and escaping his lonely, dreary lifestyle. After severely beating his mother’s abusive boyfriend, he becomes a fugitive, and through family connections escapes to the Costa del Sol. His job there is to deliver a bag containing money to “Playboy Charlie”, a suave expat and fugitive who runs his own nightclub. Impressed by Frankie’s honesty in not opening the bag, Charlie takes a liking to Frankie, introduces him to his business associates, including the psychopathic Sammy, and invites him to remain in Spain and work as his driver. Frankie discovers that Charlie and his associates are in fact the “Peckham Four”, wanted for armed robbery back in Britain. However, Frankie decides he prefers the excitement, wealth, status, and luxury that Charlie’s gang offers, as opposed to his previous unremarkable life in London. Frankie therefore joins Charlie in the business of smuggling hashish across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco.

Plot

The film then follows the rise-and-fall pattern common to many gangster films, showing first the criminals living the high life as their cannabis trade is booming, and then their downfall as greed and paranoia introduce conflict between them, and eventually split them up. Tensions amid the group are exacerbated by the mutual attraction between Frankie and Sammy’s wife Carly. Charlie and Frankie decide to go into business alone, importing cocaine instead of cannabis through drop-offs from Colombian aeroplanes, but this fails to resolve their problems. Not only do both men become increasingly addicted to the drug itself, but their new smuggling attracts the ire of the local mayor, who had previously been happy to ignore the cannabis trade but warned them not to import cocaine. After discovering that Frankie and Charlie have entered the cocaine trade, the mayor cracks down on their gang and shuts down their businesses. A subsequent assassination attempt on the mayor’s life proves unsuccessful, and leads to the beheading of one of the gang’s affiliates.

Six months later, Frankie and Charlie are homeless thugs, reduced to stealing in order to survive. While organising a disappointing reunion party at Charlie’s old bar, now run by Frankie’s friend Sonny, Frankie meets Carly again and decides to make one last deal. He invites Sammy in on a pick-up, but while both intend to betray the other, Carly had given Sammy a pistol. Sammy tries to shoot Frankie, but this proves unsuccessful as his pistol was handed to him with an empty magazine, unbeknownst to Sammy. Frankie in turn attacks Sammy with a rock; the fight then ends abruptly as Sammy is fatally shot by Spanish Navy patrolmen while Frankie escapes through a sewage pipe and emerges to meet Carly, who was responsible for handing Sammy his unloaded gun. Preparing to leave town with Carly, Frankie discovers that she is plotting against him as well when he finds another pistol in her handbag amongst their money; Frankie knocks her unconscious and drives off triumphantly into the sunset on his own.

The ending reveals that Sonny cleaned up his act and continued to run Charlie’s old bar, which he did successfully, whilst Charlie was reduced to working as a bouncer. The theatrical ending also reveals that “Carly went back to her parents’ house in Penge“, “Sammy went to Hell” and “Frankie went to Hollywood“.

Courtesy of Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Business_(film)

Facts for the Lads

The DVD features an alternate ending where Frankie meets Carly at the border. There she promptly tells the border guard where to find drugs in Frankie’s car.

Quotes for the Lads

My old man wrote me a letter from prison once. It said if you don’t want to end up in here, stay away from crime, women and drugs. Trouble is, that don’t leave you much else to do, does it?

Quentin Tarantino didn’t want Johnny Depp to star in ‘Pulp Fiction’

Quentin Tarantino

While Reservoir Dogs was a stunning debut feature, it was his 1994 film Pulp Fiction that truly transformed Quentin Tarantino into a bonafide global icon. Often cited as the perfect postmodern film, Pulp Fiction revitalised the American filmmaking landscape and influenced the ’90s more than any other cinematic work.

Starring the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, John Travolta and Uma Thurman, Pulp Fiction is a sprawling exploration of Los Angeles’ seedy underbelly. Delving deep into a dark world of crime and violence, the film paints a complex portrait of one of the most mythologised cities in the world.

During a recent appearance on the 2 Bears, 1 Cave podcast where he discussed his new TV show, Tarantino was also asked about the initial casting process for Pulp Fiction. The director addressed the internet rumours about his first choices for the iconic roles.

Tarantino said: “On the internet, there’s a thing floating around about my wish list of the cast of Pulp Fiction. I didn’t know exactly who I wanted to play this part or that part, so I wrote a giant list with a ton of names. I wanted to get them all pre-approved, and I didn’t know if it was gonna work out or if I would vibe with the person or if they would even do a good job. I just wanted to get them approved.”

One studio executive – Mike Medavoy – wanted Tarantino to cast Johnny Depp for the role of Pumpkin, which eventually went to Tim Roth. Tarantino asked Medavoy: “Do you think Johnny Depp playing the role of Pumpkin in this movie, which is the opening scene and the closing scene that’s it, do you think that will add that much to the box office? Him playing that role?” According to Tarantino, Medavoy replied: “It won’t add a dime, but it would make me feel better.”

Source: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/quentin-tarantino-johnny-depp-pulp-fiction/?amp

The Real-Life Goodfellas – The Story Behind The Movie

These are the stories behind the real men and women whose lives were depicted in the movie Goodfellas.

Real Life Goodfellas

Few would deny that Goodfellas has become a classic, and Martin Scorsese, in making it, arguably produced the ultimate gangster picture and set the bar pretty high. But Goodfellas is so much more than just a mob movie. It is also one of the best satires of the American dream, a rise-and-fall movie, a tragedy, and a comedy.

One of the aspects of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas that has elevated the film to the classic status it holds today is the intense realism of its depictions of the life in the Mafia. This realism largely stems from the fact that, unlike films such as The Godfather and Once Upon A Time In America, Goodfellas is based on a true story of one gangster, his associates, and one of the most daring heists in American history.

The story comes courtesy of the 1986 nonfiction bestseller Wiseguy that detailed the life of Lucchese crime family associate Henry Hill, as well as his comrades like James “Jimmy The Gent” Burke and Thomas DeSimone, and their involvement in the infamous Lufthansa heist.

This was, at the time, the largest robbery ever committed on U.S. soil. Eleven mobsters, mainly associates of the Lucchese crime family, stole $5.875 million (more than $20 million today) in cash and jewels from a vault at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Here are the true stories of the people who carried out this heist as well as countless other crimes that helped make Goodfellas the crime classic it is today.

Henry Hill

Henry Hill Mugshot

Henry Hill, the central character in Goodfellas (played by Ray Liotta), was born in 1943 to an Irish-American father and a Sicilian-American mother in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York.

It was a neighborhood filled with Mafiosos and Hill admired them all from a young age. At just 14, Hill dropped out of school to start working for Paul Vario, a capo in the Lucchese crime family, and thus became a member of the infamous Vario crew. Hill started out just picking up money from local rackets and bringing them to the boss, but his responsibilities quickly escalated.

He began to get involved in arson, assault, and credit card fraud. After returning from a short military stint in the early 1960s, Hill returned to a life of crime. Though his Irish blood meant that he could never be a made man, he nevertheless became a highly active associate of the Lucchese family.

Among Hill’s closest compatriots at this time was fellow Lucchese family associate and friend of Paul Vario, James Burke. After years of truck hijacking, arson, and other crimes (including extortion, for which he served time in the 1970s), Hill and Burke played major roles in orchestrating the Lufthansa heist in 1978.

At the same time, Hill was involved in a point-shaving racket with the 1978-79 Boston College basketball team and ran a major narcotics operation in which he sold marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and quaaludes wholesale.

It was the drugs that brought Hill’s downfall when he was arrested on trafficking charges in April 1980. Initially, he wouldn’t fold to police interrogators, but amid growing suspicions that some of his own associates were planning to kill him in fear that he might put them in legal trouble, Hill began to talk.

In fact, it was Hill’s testimony about the Lufthansa heist that brought the arrests of many of the other men involved — and became the basis for Wiseguy, and thus Goodfellas.

After testifying, Hill was placed in the Witness Protection Program but was kicked out of after repeatedly revealing his true identity to others. He was, nonetheless, never tracked down and killed by his former associates, but instead died of complications related to heart disease on June 12, 2012, the day after his 69th birthday.

 

James Burke a.k.a. “Jimmy The Gent”

Jimmy The Gent

James Burke, played by Robert De Niro as “Jimmy Conway” in the film, was the principal architect of the Lufthansa heist.

 

Soon after he was born — in 1931, to an Irish immigrant single mother in New York — Burke was placed into foster care and shifted from orphanages to foster homes and back throughout his childhood. He suffered sexual and physical abuse from these caretakers, with one of his foster fathers even dying in a car crash because he was reaching back to hit Burke. The man’s widow blamed Burke for the accident and beat him for it until the child was moved on to his next stop.

Like Henry Hill, Burke’s Irish-American heritage made it impossible for him to become a “made man,” but by the 1950s, he had become a major player in the South Ozone Park and East New York criminal underworld with Paul Vario’s crew, earning his nickname “Jimmy The Gent” for his practice of tipping the drivers of the trucks that he stole.

Despite his nickname, Burke was known for his extreme violence. In 1962, for example, his fiancée told him that she was being harassed by an ex-boyfriend. On the wedding day, the police found the remains of the man cut up in a dozen pieces in his own car.

Burke is also thought to be the one who ordered, and possibly carried out, the murders of most of the men involved in the Lufthansa heist.

Soon after, following Henry Hill’s testimony in 1982, Burke was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for his involvement in the 1978–79 Boston College basketball point shaving scandal. While in prison, Burke was convicted of a previous murder he had committed and received another life sentence. He died in prison due to lung cancer in 1996.

Karen Hill

Karen Hill

Karen Hill — Henry’s wife, played by Lorraine Bracco in the film — was born Karen Friedman in New York City in 1946. Soon after her birth, her family moved to Long Island where she was raised in the Five Towns area.

 

She first met Henry through mutual friends while she was working at a dental office in New York. The pair’s first meeting — at the Villa Capra, a restaurant owned by notorious mobster “Frankie The Wop” — was a double date involving Paul Vario’s son, Paul Jr. (not Thomas DeSimone, as depicted in the film).

At first, Karen said that the date was disastrous and that Henry even stood her up on her second date, only further lowering her opinion of him. However, following a number of lavish dates after these initial fiascos, the two became a couple.

Karen and Henry eloped to North Carolina in 1965 when she was just 19, but eventually had a large Jewish ceremony back home to appease her parents. Soon after, they had two children, Gregg and Gina, and lived together with Karen’s parents before moving into their own place as Henry’s status rose within Vario’s crew.

But things turned sour when Henry went to prison on extortion charges in the 1970s. In his memoirs, Henry claims that, during this time, Karen was sleeping with Vario. When Henry faced prison again, on drug charges in 1980, he instead testified for the government, entered the Witness Protection Program, and took Karen and their kids along with him.

Eventually, however, Karen and Henry divorced in 1989, though it was not finalized until 2001.

Since then, she has remarried and lived under an alias due to the exposure from Wiseguy and Goodfellas.

Thomas DeSimone

 

Tommyd Henry Hill

Perhaps the most likable character in Goodfellas and unquestionably one of the most famous villains in film history is Tommy DeVito (played by Joe Pesci). In real life, he was known by the name Thomas DeSimone. Nicknamed “Two-Gun Tommy” or “Tommy D,”however, DeSimone was an imposing man who stood 6’2″ and weighed 225 pounds. DeSimone too stepped into the world of crime early in his life, joining Paul Vario’s crew in 1965, and according to Henry Hill, he committed his first murder two years later, when he was only 17 years old.however, His courage and determination were widely known in Mafia circles, but it was his short temper that would bring him a lot of trouble throughout his life. He was a “pure psychopath,” according to Henry Hill.

Joe Pesci portrayed Tommy DeVito (based on Thomas DeSimone) in “Goodfellas.”

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1950 to a deeply-rooted Mafia family, DeSimone soon after moved to New York City with his family.

DeSimone’s extended family included feared mobsters like a grandfather and an uncle who were both bosses of a Los Angeles crime family in the 1920s and 1950s, respectively. DeSimone also had two brothers that were associates of the powerful Gambino crime family in New York, one of which was murdered by the family for allegedly cooperating with authorities.

The weight of his brother’s reputation left DeSimone with something to prove, causing him to frequently lash out at others with violence. Finally, his sister, Phyllis, was a mistress of Jimmy Burke. Through this connection, Burke brought DeSimone on as a member of the Vario crew.

In the testimony used for the book Wiseguy, Henry Hill recalls that when he first met DeSimone, he was “a skinny kid who was wearing a wiseguy suit and a pencil mustache.” But at the age of 17, DeSimone committed his first murder. He shot a random pedestrian walking past him and Hill. He reportedly told Hill, “Hey, Henry, watch this.” before shooting the man in the head with a .38 pistol.

According to Hill, DeSimone relished the idea of killing people, his murderous tendencies aided by the fact that he was very often high on cocaine.

Perhaps DeSimone’s most brutal murder came in 1970, during a welcome home party for formerly imprisoned William “Billy Batts” Bentvena, a made man in the Gambino family. DeSimone became enraged over a snide comment that Bentvena made about DeSimone having once been a shoeshine boy. A couple of weeks later, because of the shoeshine comment as well as the fact that Burke had taken over Bentvena’s loan shark operation while the latter was in prison and didn’t want to relinquish it, Burke and DeSimone plotted to kill Bentvena.

Burke invited Bentvena to a bar owned by Hill for a night of drinking with the Vario crew. Burke got Bentvena drunk and then held him down while DeSimone beat him with a pistol. Thinking he was dead, Burke, Hill, and DeSimone placed him in the trunk of their car and drove away. After hearing sounds from the trunk, DeSimone and Burke realized that he was not yet dead, then beat and stabbed him to death before burying his body under a dog kennel.

Eight years later, during the Lufthansa heist, DeSimone acted as one of the key gunmen who collected the money. Then, following the robbery, he also carried out the killing of Parnell “Stacks” Edwards, a criminal associate that the thieves had hired to dispose of the truck used in the heist, but who had failed to do so.

DeSimone’s efforts were about to pay off in 1979 as he was told he was about to become a made man of the Lucchese Family. However, instead of becoming a made man, he got a bullet in the head after the Gambino family and Lucchese family decided to liquidate him because he had killed Billy Batts of the Gambino family, a made man.

In 1979, almost a year after the heist, DeSimone was declared missing.Hill further alleged that DeSimone was handed over to the Gambinos by Vario, who had learned that DeSimone had attempted to rape Karen Hill, Henry’s wife and Vario’s mistress.

Paul Vario

Paul Vario Mugshot

At the head of the operation responsible for many of the crimes committed by Thomas DeSimone, Henry Hill, and James Burke was Paul Vario, renamed “Paul Cicero” and played by Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas.

Vario was born in New York City in 1914 and began getting himself into legal trouble from an early age. By the time he was an adult, Vario was an experienced criminal, and at 6’3″, an imposing figure. His involvement in racketeering and loan-sharking led him into the Lucchese crime family, with which he became a made man and eventually a crew leader (“capo”).

With this crew and other associates, Vario gained control of most organized crime in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, near what is now known as John F. Kennedy International Airport, a major source of income for Vario’s crew.

Vario would rob the airport, extort its employees, and use his union connections to block federal investigators. And when Jimmy Burke came to Vario with the plans for the Lufthansa heist at the airport, it was ultimately Vario who had to approve it.

Not merely a boss who approved criminal activities without getting his own hands dirty, Vario himself was known to be a violent man. When a waiter accidentally spilled wine on his wife at a restaurant, for example, Vario sent men with baseball bats to beat the restaurant’s staff later that night.

In the end, Vario was arrested based on Hill’s testimony that Vario had defrauded the government by creating a fictitious job that would ensure Hill’s release from prison. Vario died in prison of a heart attack in 1988.

William Bentvena a.k.a. “Billy Batts”

Billy Batts Henry Hill

William “Billy Batts” Bentvena was born in 1921 in New York City and was raised in the same part of east Brooklyn as Henry Hill. In Goodfellas, Bentvena is only referred to by his nickname and is played by Frank Vincent.

 

Like his compatriots in the neighborhood, Bentvena became involved in crime at a young age, and by 1951 he was an associate of the Gambino crime family.

Unlike Henry Hill, Bentvena was a full-blooded Italian-American, and as such was able to become a made man. He reached this rank in 1961 and began carrying out hits as a street soldier with infamous mobster John Gotti.

He was arrested in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1964 while conducting a drug deal for the Gambino family and was sentenced to six years in prison. While Bentvena was in prison, Burke took over his loanshark operation.

Upon Bentvena’s release, Burke and DeSimone murdered him rather than give back the loanshark operation.

 

Content retrieved from: https://offtheclothboff.com/category/outlaws-gangsters-robbers/mobsters/.

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