Oral History of The Sopranos

“I’m still in love with Edie,” says James Gandolfini of Edie Falco, the woman who played his television wife, Carmela, for six seasons on The Sopranos. “Of course, I love my wife, but I’m in love with Edie. I don’t know if I’m in love with Carmela or Edie or both. I’m in love with her.” Falco reveals a similar possessiveness over her HBO-wedded husband. “It was weird to sit down at a table read with the actresses playing Tony’s girlfriends. Occasionally I would get a sharp twinge at the back of my neck,” she recalls. “I’d have to kind of keep my bearings and remember, No, no, no, this is your job, and at home you have your life. Even years later, I remember when I saw Jim in God of Carnage on Broadway, and he was Marcia Gay Harden’s husband, and I had this ‘How come I have to be O.K. with this?’ kind of feeling.”

“In the five long years since the screen went black and The Sopranos went off the air, on June 10, 2007, there has grown up a kind of omertà around the show,” writes Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kashner in the April 2012 issue, in which he speaks to David Chase, along with many of the actors, producers, directors, and writers who have never before spoken so candidly, about what it felt like to be part of this extraordinary cultural phenomenon.

James Gandolfini never thought he’d get the part of Tony Soprano. “I thought that they would hire some good-looking guy,” he tells Kashner, “not George Clooney, but some Italian George Clooney, and that would be that.” Edie Falco says she was surprised she got the role of the Mob boss’s wife. “I would have cast me as Dr. Melfi, but, luckily, I was not in charge.” But she tells Kashner that she quickly took to the role of Carmela. “I immediately knew how she felt about things, the way she wanted to look.”

Drea de Matteo tells Kashner that Chase told her, “You don’t look Italian. You look like a hostess of a restaurant.” The actress, who would play Christopher Moltisanti’s girlfriend, Adriana, in the series, played a restaurant hostess in the pilot. “Later on I hated saying ‘Christopher’ with my accent. I would beg David to let me say ‘Chrissy’ because I felt like my accent sounded really, really fake. Now when I walk down the street, people say, ‘Just give me one Chris-ta-fuh.’”

The actors tell Kashner about the emotional toll inherent in playing such complex characters. “I had to suck the life out of myself to play her,” says Lorraine Bracco of her character, Dr. Jennifer Melfi. “I mean, I don’t think Dr. Melfi ever smiled. I wanted her repressed and sad. And she also had to pay attention to not give an inch with Tony, because he would have eaten her up. I wasn’t going to let that happen. So I had that strength, but emotionally I suffered.” James Gandolfini says he used to call the writers the vampires. “Say, what have the vampires come up with this week? What blood are they sucking this week?” he would ask.

Tony Sirico recalls pleading with Chase to not make him kill a woman when his character, Paulie Walnuts, was scripted to do just that. “David, I come from a tough neighborhood. If I go home and they see that I killed a woman, it’s going to make me look bad.” David would not change the script. “Here’s the thing. We did the scene,” Sirico recalls. “I had to smother her. First he wanted me to strangle her; I said, ‘No, I’m not putting my hands on her.’ He said, ‘Use the pillow.’ After it was all said and done, I went back to the neighborhood, and nobody said a word. They loved the show; they didn’t care what we did.”

According to writer and executive producer Terence Winter, who went on to create Boardwalk Empire, even real mobsters loved the show. “One F.B.I. agent told us early on that on Monday morning they would get to the F.B.I. office and all the agents would talk about The Sopranos,” he recalls. “Then they would listen to the wiretaps from that weekend, and it was all Mob guys talking about The Sopranos, having the same conversation about the show, but always from the flip side. We would hear back that real wiseguys used to think that we had somebody on the inside. They couldn’t believe how accurate the show was.”

Thanks to Vanity Fair

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Bronx Firefighter Arrested for Alleged Ties to Reputed Genovese Crime Family Sports-Betting Ring

A Bronx firefighter has been busted for his ties to an alleged $2 million-a-year, mob-run gambling and money-laundering ring.

Thomas McMahon, of Ladder Co. 38 in Belmont, was one of eight men charged by Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson with running a sports-betting ring tied to the Genovese crime family.

McMahon, 29, was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court along with reputed mob associates Joseph Sarcinella, 77, Frank Mastracchio, 56, Dominick Totino, 44, Dominick Pietranico, 81, Bruno Travositino, 81, and John D’Ambrosio, 54.

Sarcinella — a longtime reputed Genovese mobster who pleaded guilty to running a gambling operation in 2002 — was in charge of the betting ring, which was run out of a social club and two gambling wire rooms, according to prosecutors.

McMahon took bets for the Bronx ring, created accounts and worked as a runner, picking up money and disbursing winnings, according to the DA’s office. “McMahon is close with Mastracchio. He calls him his ‘uncle,’ ” a source told The Post.

Prosecutors said the ring, which had been under NYPD surveillance, collected more than $2 million on NFL, NBA and NHL bets between December 2009 and June 23, 2011.

McMahon faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted. The seven-year FDNY veteran was suspended without pay. An FDNY spokesman declined to comment on the arrest.McMahon could not be reached for comment.

Thanks to Jamie Schram and Douglas Montero

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Mob Daughter: The Mafia, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, and Me!

From Karen Gravano, a star of the hit VH1 reality show Mob Wives, comes a revealing memoir of a mafia childhood, where love and family come hand-in-hand with murder and betrayal.

Karen Gravano is the daughter of Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, once one of the mafia's most feared hit men. With nineteen confessed murders, the former Gambino Crime Family underboss—and John Gotti’s right-hand man—is the highest ranking gangster ever to turn State’s evidence and testify against members of his high-profile crime family.

But to Karen, Sammy Gravano was a sometimes elusive but always loving father figure. He was ever-present at the head of the dinner table. He made a living running a construction firm and several nightclubs. He stayed out late, and sometimes he didn’t come home at all. He hosted “secret” meetings at their house, and had countless whispered conversations with “business associates.” By the age of twelve, Karen knew he was a gangster. And as she grew up, while her peers worried about clothes and schoolwork, she was coming face-to-face with crime and murder. Gravano was nineteen years old when her father turned his back on the mob and cooperated with the Feds. The fabric of her family was ripped apart, and they were instantly rejected by the communities they grew up in.

This is the story of a daughter’s struggle to reconcile the image of her loving father with that of a murdering Mafioso, and how, in healing the rift between the two, she was able to forge a new life.

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Traveling Vice Lords Leader, Jason Auston, Convicted of Federal Narcotics Charges

The leader of a west side drug trafficking conspiracy operated by members and associates of the Traveling Vice Lords street gang was convicted by a jury last week of federal narcotics charges following a trial in U.S. District Court. Jason Austin, 29, of Chicago, was found guilty of conspiracy to possess and distribute heroin and five counts of distributing crack cocaine after several hours of deliberation late Wednesday and yesterday. The trial began Feb. 14.

Austin, who has been in federal custody since November 2010, faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison on each count. U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow set sentencing for June 29.

Austin and 30 other members and associates of the Traveling Vice Lords were arrested in November 2010 as part of Operation Blue Knight, which focused on around-the-clock retail street sales of crack cocaine and heroin in the area of Kedzie Avenue and Ohio Street, known as “KO.” Significant amounts of crack cocaine and heroin were seized during the two-year investigation, which the Chicago Police Department’s Organized Crime Division began in 2008 and the Federal Bureau of Investigation joined several months later.

The verdict was announced by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Garry McCarthy, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department; and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The investigation was conducted under the umbrella of U.S. Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), and with assistance from the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force (HIDTA).

The evidence at trial showed that Austin, also known as “J Rock,” conspired with others to distribute crack cocaine, known as “rocks,” and heroin, known as “blows,” to customers via hand-to-hand transactions in the “KO.” The heroin, named “Blue Magic,” alone accounted for as much as $8,000 a day in sales, between approximately 6 a.m. and 11 p.m., seven days a week. During the investigation, law enforcement officers repeatedly surveilled the conduct of co-conspirators at KO. Surveillance, often video recorded, observed hand-to-hand drug transactions, controlled purchases of narcotics by undercover Chicago police officers, and controlled purchases of narcotics by confidential sources.

The government is being represented by Assistant United States Attorneys Maribel Fernandez-Harvath and Matthew Madden.

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Legal Laboratory Uses Science To De-Stress America’s Courtrooms

Imagine your life or fortune is on the line in a courtroom in America and twelve jurors hold your fate in their hands? Easing that scary proposition out of the minds of people on trial is what led Jason Bloom to developing a path of taking the guesswork out of jury outcomes. Bloom says, “Juries are like icebergs - what you see above water is the demographics; age, ethnicity and gender. However, below the water are attitudes, life experiences and predispositions which are more predictive to the outcome of a case.”

His crystal ball has been put to the test in more than 350 cases as his company, Bloom Strategic Consulting, celebrates five years and an astonishing 90 percent accuracy rate. Bloom has become a modern-day Nostradamus taking the mystery out of the judicial process and easing clients fears so they don’t have to sit on pins and needles throughout the length of the case. His company profiles the jury through mock trials and focus groups to see what’s important and what’s not important to the men and women in the box. “What I’ve really learned and what’s still fascinating to me is that there is a gap probably the size of an ocean between what lawyers and witnesses want to tell juries and what these juries actually want to see, hear and care about towards making their ultimate decisions and rendering verdicts,” says Bloom.

Working on science and strategy not hunches also led Jason Bloom to build his own legal laboratory in Dallas, Texas, called TrialMode. It’s a state-of-the-art mock courtroom designed for realistic, trial-like examination of case strategy, fact patterns and witnesses the ultimate decision makers’ point of view.

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