Nicholas Pileggi
Nicholas Pileggi is an American author, screenwriter and journalist. He is the widower of director and journalist Nora Ephron. He wrote the 1985 non-fiction book Wiseguy and co-wrote the screenplay for Goodfellas, its 1990 film adaptation, for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Early life
Pileggi was born and raised in Brooklyn, the elder son of an Italian immigrant father, Nicola Pileggi from Calabria, a musician who played slide trombone in a cinema orchestra for silent films and subsequently also owned shoe stores, and an American-born mother, Susie.In the 1950s, he worked as a journalist for the Associated Press and New York magazine, specializing in crime reporting for more than three decades.
Career
Pileggi began his career as a journalist and had a profound interest in the Mafia. He is best known for writing Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas, and for writing Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas and the subsequent screenplay for Casino. The movie versions of both were directed and co-written by Martin Scorsese. Pileggi also co-wrote the screenplay for the film City Hall, starring Al Pacino. He served as an executive producer for American Gangster, a biographical crime film based on the career of drug lord Frank Lucas. He also authored Blye, Private Eye.He penned the forward to Frank Ragano's memoir Mob Lawyer. Pileggi co-wrote the pilot of the CBS television series Vegas, which first aired in September 2012.