Recently, James Lileks shared some thoughts on HBO with readers of NRO's Corner blog:

Ah, the vulgar, vulgar language of “Rome.” I’ll never recover from hearing Cicero shout “You Svck!” in the Senate.

For the Sopranos, it may have disabused people of the notion that mobsters wear bespoke suits and talk in hushed, careful voices in elegant, dimly-lit rooms while weddings take place on the lawn outside. Until the Sopranos, I thought all mobsters were either elegant figures who held power with calm repose, or colorful figures who spoke like Damon Runyan characters. Why, Gotti couldn’t have been a mobster – he used contractions!

The Sopranos’ revelation that mobsters dress poorly, cuss a lot and probably reek of cigarettes was hard to take, but I’m starting to believe it might be right.

In City Journal, Steven Malanga writes that the real New Jersey mob that inspired The Sopranos were even cruder, after watching "The now-forgotten Confessions of an Undercover Cop, a fascinating 1988 documentary, [which] traced the decline and fall of the very Jersey crew that inspired The Sopranos":

The investigation at the center of Confessions begins by chance, when a retired East Orange, New Jersey cop named Mike Russell is driving down Bloomfield Avenue in North Newark and sees two young guys attacking an older one. Russell goes to the aid of the older man, driving off the attackers. He discovers that the guy he’s helped is Andrew “Andy” Gerardo, now head of Boiardo’s old gang. Gerardo invites Russell into his hangout, a coffee shop on the avenue just a few steps from a monument to Christopher Columbus and the Italian American contribution to America. There, Russell meets other key members of the crew, who treat him like a hero and befriend him.

Russell then contacts a friend in the state police, who asks him to begin surveillance on the crew. Incredibly, the mobsters invite Russell to move his oil delivery business into a storefront adjoining their Newark headquarters, figuring he’s friendly, and from there the investigation takes off. But unbeknownst to the state police, Russell enlists a cameraman and begins his own videotaping of the Jersey crew, which provides most of the material for the HBO documentary.

The footage illustrates the gap between Hollywood and mobster reality. Like most celluloid gangsters, Tony Soprano’s crew carries itself with a certain “mob chic,” evident in everything from Silvio’s elaborately coiffed jet-black mane to Paulie’s meticulously delineated grey sideburns to the expensive Italian suits that Tony and the boys favor. Their headquarters is the baby boomer’s fantasy of bad-boy living, the Bada Bing strip club.

But the real-life evil is more banal. The Boot made his headquarters inside a candy shop on Roseville Avenue in North Newark, transformed by the time of Confessions into a rinky-dink pizzeria and dimly lit adjoining cocktail lounge called The Finish Line. One look inside The Finish Line and it’s clear that for this real mob crew, style took a back seat to earning money.

Most of the action that Russell investigates takes place in even less glamorous social clubs around North Newark—little more than storefronts sporting linoleum floors, faux wood paneling, folding chairs, and card tables. From these motley locations, which could be had cheaply in Newark once rising crime and white flight eroded the city’s retail base, the crew ran nightly card games that netted them about $1 million a week. The earnings were big, though these games were nothing like those in The Sopranos, where mob-run gambling sessions take place in hotel suites and occasionally feature big name “guest” players like Lawrence Taylor.

Confessions makes it clear that few real mobsters could ever score a bit part on The Sopranos or any other gangster show—they simply look too ordinary. The Confessions crew runs around North Newark in Bermuda shorts, white tee-shirts, and knee-high socks, or in cheap polyester slacks and Ban Lon shirts—a look that would never get you a photo shoot in Vanity Fair or on the cover of Cigar Aficionado, where James Gandolfini, who plays Tony Soprano, has appeared.

The investigation recounted in Confessions resulted in 48 indictments and more than 30 convictions or guilty pleas for gambling, loan sharking, and racketeering, which effectively broke the back of the Genovese family in Jersey. At the end of Confessions we see the crew making a “perp” walk as they head to court, and it’s clear just how unsympathetic and crude such mobsters really were—nothing like the strangely appealing Tony Soprano. As the reporters badger them for a statement, one of the crew’s top soldiers tells the newsmen: “Fugettaboutit. Go get a job.” That’s about the level of sophistication of the real mob.

Hollywood will no doubt continue to find new and innovative ways to package the Mafia, as Chase did brilliantly in his series. But for a sobering dose of reality, get your hands on a copy of Confessions of an Undercover Cop.

Sounds like great stuff, indeed. Maybe HBO could tack the 1988 documentary on as a bonus feature when the DVD version of the final season of their superstar fictional counterparts hits the steets.