Hello, welcome to best case, worst case.

This is Jim Clementi, retired FBI profile of former an extra city prosecutor and writer,

producer of criminal minds and flu beer on Audible.

I'm with me today.

It's a lovely.

Maureen O'Connell, 25-year veteran of the FBI and a Southside Chicagoan.

And we have a very special guest coming back for our second episode.

With us today is the man, the myth, the legend.

Joe Bastogne, a.k.a. Donny Brasco, a.m. FBI agent, worked undercover most of my career, but spent six years undercover with the New York Mafia.

And you did an amazing job and we've been talking about it last week. And I want to talk a little bit about Donnie Grasco, the movie. Can you tell us how that happened and how it felt and how accurate it was?

Yeah, actually, you know, you guys know, you don't work a case thinking that you're going to do a book or a movie.

And I had a good friend that actually I went to high school with Lou Di Jima,

who became one of the top casting directors out in L.A. during the day.

And we would keep in touch, and then one day I just disappeared.

And I hadn't seen Lou or talked to him for six years.

So I'm in a courtroom.

My first trial, my first day in the courtroom and I look out and I see Lou in the courtroom

because it had been into papers.

Right. He gives me, you know, give me a call.

So I give him a call and he says, hey, he said, you know,

you got one hell of a story. You ought to do a book. And I said, Lou, I can't do a book. I'm still

on the job. Plus, who cares? He said, you can read the papers? He said, everybody cares.

...