Gustave Reininger

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Gustave V. Reininger

Crime Story. The executive producer was Michael Mann. Crime Story was based on the Mafia in Chicago, or "The Outfit," and how it got off the streets and into the boardrooms of Las Vegas casinos. The show premiered with a two-hour pilot movie, which had been exhibited theatrically, and was watched by over 30 million viewers. Crime Story then was scheduled to follow Miami Vice on Friday nights and continued to attract a record number of viewers.[3]

Gustave Reininger with Dr. Pietro Pietrini, neurologist

Reininger was a former international investment banker on Wall Street, who had caught Mann's attention with a screenplay he wrote about arson investigators, as well as a French-language thriller co-written and produced by him, starring Dennis Hopper. Mann's agent managed to get in touch with Reininger while he was traveling incognito in the Mayan Highlands of Guatemala, along with a Catholic bishop who supported liberation theology.[citation needed]

Reininger researched Crime Story by winning the confidence of Detective William Hanhardt who put him in touch with undercover officers in the Chicago Police Department. They sent him on meetings with organized crime figures. Reininger risked wearing a body microphone and recorder. After visiting the crime scene of a gruesome gang slaying of bookmaker Al Brown, Reininger backed off his Mafia interviews.[citation needed]

In a June 1986 press conference, Mann said that the first season of the show would go from Chicago in 1963 to Las Vegas in 1980. He said, "It's a serial in the sense that we have continuing stories, and in that sense the show is one big novel." Mann and Reininger's inspiration for the 1963-1980 arc came from their mutual admiration of the 15½ hour television film, Berlin Alexanderplatz, by German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder'. Mann said, "The pace of our story is like the speed of light compared to that, but that's the idea - if you put it all together at the end you've got one hell of a 22-hour movie."[citation needed]

NBC chief

atomic bomb test area. An A-Bomb explodes, presumably obliterating Luca and Taglia, in one of the most memorable cliffhangers in television history, leaving viewers wondering whether they were dead or alive, just as the show's creator were wondering if the series itself was dead or alive with NBC. Viewers were surprised to learn in the fall the series had returned to be permanently based in Las Vegas.[citation needed
]

The principal characters are based on the real-life head of the Chicago anti-mob unit, Det. William Hanhardt and on Chicago mobster Anthony Spilotro.

Reininger was

Federal Court in Las Vegas as an unwilling material witness for Spilotro, who was alleging that the only way Reininger could have written scripts and the series "Bible" was by having access to Federal wiretaps of Spilotro. Reininger in turn discovered that his New York phones were being monitored. Reininger was served Spilotro's subpoena, and given a deadly warning, in a New York hotel bar by now infamous Hollywood private detective Anthony Pellicano, who in 2006 was imprisoned for illegal wiretapping, blackmail and harassment while representing notable entertainment figures.[citation needed
]

Spilotro returned home to Chicago and was brutally murdered along with his brother Michael, and buried in an

Zurich, Switzerland, did not have to testify.[citation needed
]

Subsequently, Martin Scorsese directed and produced his movie Casino loosely basing it on elements of Crime Story, which was recognized at the Casino premiere as an inspiration. Crime Story was the prototypes for today's arc-driven television series, such as 24 and The Sopranos that have continuing story lines over multiple episodes.[citation needed]

Recent work

Reininger was the director-producer of the feature documentary Corso: The Last Beat about the life of beat poet Gregory Corso.

Background

Reininger grew up in

St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati in 1968.[4][5] He graduated from University of Chicago, studying Economics and English literature. His prose was published in college literary magazines.[citation needed
]

Reininger was an International Investment Banker with Chemical – Chase Bank, (now

Monrovia, Liberia.[citation needed
]

At night, Reininger re-wrote scripts for producer Howard Zucker. Among them, Francis Coppola's 5th Coin, a script on Macau’s Formula One race.

While working in Paris on a bank assignment Reininger co-produced a French Language thriller starring

Jules et Jim) and Joseph Cotten (Citizen Kane.)[citation needed
]

Reininger then migrated to working at

Crime Story, Reininger was a contributor to Michael Mann's Miami Vice and Robbery Homicide Division. Reininger has worked with directors Sydney Pollack, Penny Marshall, Paul Verhoeven and other notable filmmakers.[citation needed
]

References

  1. ^ Houston, Lynda (January 9, 1989). "Gustave Reininger, 61". The Cincinnati Enquirer. p. A-9 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ "Gustave V. Reininger". Dignity Memorial. Retrieved 2019-07-25.
  3. ^ Smith, Nadine (2019-03-25). "Crime Story Set the Stage for the Last 3 Decades of Prestige Crime Dramas". Vulture. Retrieved 2024-04-10.
  4. ^ Gargano, Jason (2009-02-04). "The Heart of a Beat". Cincinnati CityBeat. Vol. 15, no. 14. Lightborne Publishing. p. 41. Archived from the original on 2009-02-10. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
  5. ^ "Alumni Spotlight". St. Xavier High School Magazine. Cincinnati. July 2013. p. 21 – via Issuu.
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