An interview with Nicholas Pileggi, the writer of Goodfellas and Casino:
To attempt storytelling on such a grand scale Pileggi had to excavate hard into the facts of the genesis of Las
Vegas. "I am a journalist at heart," he says. "I have no imagination. When you are free from a story that happened it has the freedom to go anywhere and I am no good out there in Nabokov-land..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/feb/03/nicholas-pileggi-vegas-nora-ephron
A. Bouazza