Guilty TV Pleasures

by Libby Hellmann

Okay, I confess. I’ve become a TV junkie. I’m watching – and enjoying -- programs I never thought I would. Part of it has been the Chicago winter: I don’t remember ever spending this much time at home. Part of it is my effort to perfect the art of procrastination – I’m about 100 pages into a new novel, and rather than figure out what the book is really about, I'm staring at the tube. And part of it is that the shows are so available online. Or on DVDs. It’s much easier to watch an episode at 3 in the afternoon than to remember the night and the time it was originally scheduled.

So, with that… here’s what I’ve been looking at…

Lipstick Jungle: A Sex-in-the-City clone but with high-powered women, this isn’t a bad show. The women wear incredible clothes, they look fabulous, the men are sexy, and the story lines – well – they’re not new, but they’re palatable. At least on snowy afternoons. Turns out Brooke Shields can act, after all. Plus, Nico, who played Audrey on “24”, which we all know has been MIA this season, has helped stave off my “24” withdrawal symptoms.

Boston Legal: What a hoot! I love the satire. I love the acting. Even the plot lines, as hackneyed as they are, make me giggle. And William Shattner, James Spader, and Candace Bergen look like they’re having the time of their lives. This is just over-the-top fun.


Damages: Who said the serial thriller/melodrama is dead? Glenn Close did a great job, and the twists and turns, while predictable, were fun to watch.Nice digs too… the perfect starter apartment for the young couple, the great suburban mansion on the lake, the upscale New York coop.

Desperate Housewives: I’ll probably go back to it when it comes back, if only because my daughter and I used to watch it together. She’s in college now but usually calls during commercials. Sure, it’s campy, silly, unreal, and manipulative, but, for the most part, it’s pure escape. And their houses are always so clean.

Weeds: I’ve always thought Elizabeth Perkins was one of the most underrated actresses around. And who knew Kevin Nealon would be so good? Or Tanye Patano? The writing is razor sharp, especially when Heylia and Andy are around, the humor is just black enough, and every time Mary Louise Parker sips her frappachino, I really "get" Agrestic.

I’m also looking forward to the new season of The Shield… (does anyone know when it comes back?)… and, of course, 24 when it finally makes an appearance next season. I haven’t been great at watching The Wire, but I plan to catch up. And there are always reruns of The Sopranos.

What about you? ‘Fess up… what are your guilty TV pleasures?

Family Secrets -- Whose Family?

by Barbara D'Amato

A few weeks ago, The Chicago Tribune asked me to write a short piece on the Mob for the Perspectives section, because the Family Secrets gangsters trial was looming large in the news. In the piece, I mentioned the puzzling fact that people seem to love gangsters.

I live about four blocks from Holy Name Cathedral, where Hymie Weiss and four other men were gunned down in a mob hit in 1928. Visitors hearing that Holy Name is nearby, want to be walked over to see whether they can find the bullet holes in the cornerstone.

We have gangster bus tours in Chicago, and gangster-themed restaurants.

And this blog is called The Outfit, isn’t it?

In the Tribune piece I was interested in why we find these mobsters interesting and frequently funny, when they are really horrible people, killing pitilessly and often in gratuitously cruel ways. I asked for opinions.
Surprisingly, most of the emails I received did not respond to that question. Most were from people deeply troubled by what they saw as an enduring prejudice against Italians. Why make such a fuss about the Family Secrets trial, they asked. Why is The Sopranos so popular?

It’s certainly true that Italian gangsters are the mob characters of choice in movies and television. Even such non-Italian mobsters as Bugs Moran, Bugsy Siegel, and Hymie Weiss himself are seen as sort of honorary Italians. A lot of people don’t even realize that there were Irish mobs every bit as brutal and powerful as the Italians.

One man, a dentist, emailed me that he frequently tells patients that he is Sicilian, because he wants people to realize that there are hard-working, honest Sicilians who are not mobsters. This is sad.

My emailers tell me that jokes are constantly made in their presence about Italian gangsters, Sicilians especially. And to a certain extent, I believe it’s true that ethnic slurs against these people are seen as okay in the way that slurs against the Irish, blacks, Hispanics, or Jews are not.

Yes, there are movies, and I suppose some TV shows, about Irish, Jewish, black, or Hispanic gangsters. But they don’t seem to be part of the nudge-nudge, chuckle-chuckle culture in the way the Italians are. And the characters mostly are not intended to be funny—or made fun of, either.

I don’t really have much of a personal problem with this, having married my Italian last name. In fact, I grew up in a town so WASPy that I had never met an Italian until I went to college.

But I am curious.

So, I have two questions:

What is the reason people are so fascinated by the Mafia and appear to find it so cute?

Second, is it true, as these emailers say, that prejudice against Italians is okay, in a way that jokes and slurs about other ethnic groups are not? Does PC not apply to Sicilians? Are Italians the last ethnic group people can laugh at without fear of being non-PC?

The Godfather--Part N+1

The real Outfit is on trial now, down at the Federal building on Dearborn. Four men, including Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, are charged with 18 murders; the fifth defendant, former Chicago police officer Anthony Doyle, is included in the indictment because he (allegedly) protected the four from police scrutiny. In their opening remarks, the prosecution told the jury to put The Godfather and The Sopranos out of their minds--these men weren't entertainers, they weren't glamorous, they were murderers.

Most of the victims were involved in the Outfit--a hitman and hitwoman were murdered, another high-ranking Outfit member killed when he was going to turn state's evidence, and so on. It's hard not to think of it as made-for-TV melodrama.

These are frightening people to cross--so much so that a journalist I know refused to go to Eagle River, Wisconsin, where part of the extended Chicago Family vacations, to investigate an alleged murder of a bartender there who allegedly mocked a senior Family member. Glenn had interviewed and written extensively about many scary people; this was the only assignment he ever turned down, but he has a son in frail health and couldn't afford to risk turning him into an orphan without medical insurance.

So why do we glamorize the Mob so much? Why do we love all those movies like Pulp Fiction and the Godfather that celebrate slaughter? Any hunches?

by Sara Paretsky

Endings

No… this isn’t about book endings (Marcus did that last January). Or about the ending of The Sopranos (Kevin did that the other day). Or the season finale of The Shield(only one more season? Please say it isn’t so!)

It’s about real-life endings. And it’s somewhat personal, so if you’d rather not go there, stop reading now.

My youngest child graduated from high school a few days ago. Two months from now she’ll be off to college. A major phase of her life– and mine – will be ending, and while I’m not sure what to expect, I do know the house will be quieter. And emptier. (My son already goes to law school.)

My 13-year-old Beagle – has Cushings Disease. He’s on medication, but his old age, plus the complications of the disease have taken their toll. He can’t get comfortable in any position for long, he’s losing his hair, and he won’t go down steps. We still take walks every day, but aside from those, he doesn’t do much but sleep. I know we are closer to the end than the beginning

I went to my high school reunion last month. It was a big one, and the night before I had dinner with my high school boyfriend. He was my first love -- the one you still have a soft spot for. I listened to his story, which includes three marriages, three kids, working and traveling all over the world. While it was enjoyable, it made me realize how far apart we’d grown, and how many connections to my past have ended.

I’m about two chapters away from finishing my sixth novel. It’s just the first draft, but the story has been told. The rush of figuring out how it’s going to unfold is over. Now it’s down to mechanics: good prose, suspense, believability. After living with this book for over a year, it’s an ending of a special kind -- you writers know what I’m talking about. I’m already feeling a void, a detachment, which will only disappear when I throw myself into a new story.

None of these are earth-shattering events. They’re the kind of passages we all enter and exit in life. And I’m not overly sad or depressed about them, since I know endings are also beginnings. I’ll be living in a house that actually stays clean for a few hours… enjoying the freedom to eat ice cream for dinner… meeting new people… starting a new book. Already the possibilities are materializing like a rosy summer dawn. And yet part of me wants to stay in that dusky purple hour of evening just a little while longer, watching the light fade into night.

What’s been the most difficult ending for you to navigate? How’d you get through it?

Everybody Wants a Thrill

By Kevin Guilfoile

Lots of people have asked me what I thought of The Sopranos finale last night. Many of those people are angry. Like them, I had been expecting something different from the show and so I went to bed not certain how I felt about it. When I woke up this morning (no A3 reference intended) I realized the profound statement Sopranos creator David Chase had just made about storytelling and I was sure that I loved it.

In fiction characters live their lives episodically. We drop in at a particular point and drop out at a particular point and everything that happens in between ties up nicely along the way. Presumably the characters get up the day after the story ends with blank slates. No worries, no debts, no obligations until the next episode starts. It's a manipulation done to satisfy us. Real life, we all know, is a lot messier and a lot weirder.

[BEGIN SOPRANOS SPOILERS]

In the final scene Chase pulls out every manipulative trick in the filmmaker's bag. The two strangers in the restaurant are doing nothing suspicious and there is no reason to think they have designs on Tony except that Chase keeps cutting back to them. Outside Meadow is having trouble parking. Perhaps this happens every time she tries to parallel park but Chase keeps returning to it and suddenly it's ominous. One of the strangers gets up and walks into the bathroom. Anyone who has seen The Godfather knows there's always a gun hidden in the restaurant toilet and we just saw Phil Leotardo killed in front of his wife and grandchildren. The automatic symmetry creator in our heads is already storyboarding the next cut. It's a brilliant scene.

Much has been made about the fact that Journey's Don't Stop Believin' is playing in the restaurant at the time. Some think it's ironic and we're supposed to assume the worst after the screen goes black. Others try to sap meaning from the song's title. But it's obvious why Chase chose it:

Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

There is no place to end this story. Endings are arbitrary and artificial. It doesn't matter if Tony is about to be whacked in front of Carm and the kids, or if they will just finish a quiet meal and go home. Either way it's not an end to the story, it's middle. The Sopranos was all middle, riddled since the series premiere with red herrings and slow parts and unresolved storylines. Our lives are all middle, too. We never get many answers, and the real story just goes on and on and on and on.

[END SPOILERS]

It goes on this month in a federal courtroom where "the last big Outfit trial in Chicago history" begins. Among the 14 defendants will be reputed former boss Joey "The Clown" Lombardo (not to be confused with fictional New York boss Phil Leotardo). Lombardo is alleged to be a brutal gangster who ordered the killings of even close friends including the father of his own godson. A famous cut-up, Lombardo is employing a bizarre defense, claiming that he was never really a part of the mob and even if he was he voluntarily left that life a long time ago. To bolster that claim, Lombardo's attorneys will show the jury a full page newspaper ad that Lombardo took out in the early nineties daring anyone who saw him associating with mobsters to call his parole officer. Um, yeah, no one took him up on that.

One of the main witnesses for the prosecution is former Outfit hit man Frank Cullotta. Cullotta's been a federal informant for over two decades and unlike Lombardo he flaunts his long ago connections. In one of the most bizarre turns in mob (or mob movie) history, Cullotta actually played himself in Martin Scorcese's film Casino, graphically reenacting his 1979 murder of barber union head Jerry Lisner. (Cullotta was also the inspiration for another character in Casino, Frank Marino. Marino was played by Frank Vincent, who by the way played Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos.)

During a Saturday break from the Printers Row Book Fair we were sitting at Kasey's Tavern on Dearborn, just blocks from the skyscraping correctional facility where Lombardo is awaiting trial, and I told Cullotta's story to CJ Box. He shook his head and said, "If you tried to put that in a novel you'd never get away with it."

And David Chase knows it.