John Hagedorn's "The Insane Chicago Way," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Insane Chicago Way: The Daring Plan by Chicago Gangs to Create a Spanish Mafia by John M. Hagedorn.

The entry begins:

In$ane was the product of a unique collaboration between the author and an Outfit (Chicago’s mafia) solider, Sal Martino. Sal was the godfather of the C-Note$, the Outfit’s minor league team. Sal fondly called the five C-Note leaders he mentored, “Two Dagos, Two Spics, and a Hillbilly.” With Sal’s encouragement, the C-Note$ joined a secret “Spanish mafia,” Spanish Growth & Development, that had goals of controlling violence, organizing crime, and corrupting police. In$ane is a tragedy of how SGD rose and collapsed in a bloody “war of the families.” Since I’m not a movie buff, I asked Sal to write how he’d produce a movie base on the book. Here is what he wrote:The film would open in 1989, focusing on five guys, Dominick, Sammy, Joey Bags, Mo-Mo, and Lucky, as they grow up in and around an area known as “The Patch,” in Chicago’s Little Italy.

Mo-Mo (Freddy Rodriguez) is a college student by day and a gangster by night, Joey Bags (Benjamin Bratt) is a high ranking old school gang member with ties to organized crime; Lucky (Stephen...[read on]

Learn more about The Insane Chicago Way at the University of Chicago Press website.

My Book, The Movie: The Insane Chicago Way.

--Marshal Zeringue