Word: wiseguy
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...WISEGUY, Pileggi...
...development. Hill forms no permanent friendships and makes no future plans. Everything is for the moment, and associates, even those who gave him a hand, are betrayed for the sake of the bigger payoff, the easier deal. Only at home is life a chore. "You'll find that most wiseguy wives do their own housework, no matter how rich they are," Hill tells Pileggi, "because strangers can't be trusted to keep their mouths shut." Modern wiseguys who cannot keep their mouths shut are dealt with in a style that has not changed since the '30s. He describes a friend...
...blunders, its lack of intelligence and trust. And then there is the source of Hill's current misery. "I'm an average nobody," he complains. "I get to live the rest of my life like a shnook." Pileggi draws no moral, but it is obvious that for a wiseguy, life as a shnook is almost worse than death by piano wire...
...hitching rides on passing spacecraft, snacking at duty-free shops on distant planets and encountering such diverse creatures as a lost tribe of ballpoint pens mislaid by former owners, and a race of marketing executives who, despite 573 committee meetings, have still not discovered the wheel ("All right, Mr. Wiseguy . . . you tell us what color it should be"). To Dent's surprise, earth has somehow escaped destruction, but all the dol phins have mysteriously disappeared. The book's title, in fact, is their farewell message. He sets out to find them, making new friends, notably a lady whose feet...
...difficult to say exactly what makes Murray such a funny comedian, and what makes his new movie. Stripes, such an enjoyable film. His acting abilities are limited, to say the least, and his juvenile, sarcastic-wiseguy routine is about all he has to go with. And he goes with it relentlessly--often with little subtlety or variation, but it is perhaps more a strength than a weakness. Bill Murray's humor comes at you with the reliability of a Quarter Pounder with cheese--you know exactly what you're going to get when you order it, and you're usually...