The Sopranos Was Actually Based on Real-Life Crime Family (And They Loved the Show)
The Mafia series was much more realistic than many viewers thought.
The creator of The Sopranos, David Chase, has wanted to do one thing all his life – make movies. He always considered television to be a second-rate cinematic art.
He even hoped that HBO would not like the pilot of the series, then Chase would shoot another 20 minutes, send the resulting movie to the Cannes Film Festival and never return to these characters. But history decreed otherwise.
The Sopranos' 86-hour run became a cinematic milestone that made the HBO badge an indicator of exceptional quality.
The mafia family of The Sopranos has become immortalized in the hearts of millions of viewers. The story of Italian-American crime family leader Tony Soprano defied classic crime movie clichés.
David Chase did not focus on gangster showdowns and shootouts, but on the complex relationships within the Soprano family.
It is believed that the Italian clan DeCavalcante, with a rich criminal history, became the prototype of the Soprano family.
Since 1910, members of the crime family have controlled the drug trade in the state of New Jersey, dealt in weapons, operated casinos and robbed banks.
In the 1970s, aging boss Simone DeCavalcante, aka Sam the Plumber, was replaced by Giovanni Riggi, aka the Eagle, the future Tony Soprano.
John the Eagle was a typical representative of the "old school" gangsters. Educated, diplomatic, and dressed in an elegant classic suit, Giovanni inherited his boss's manners.
But behind the pretense of decency was a true predator – cruel, cunning, and ruthless. Riggi successfully led the DeCavalcante clan until his death in 2015.
Giovanni Riggi's eventful work served as valuable material for David Chase in the creation of The Sopranos.
From childhood he admired robbers and criminals. Later, Chase romanticized the images of crime in cinema.
The show turned out to be so authentic that real gangsters liked it, and Vanity Fair revealed that FBI agents listening to mafia phone conversations heard praise and suspicions that among the show's creators there is definitely "a guy on the inside" who helps the scriptwriters make the show so similar to what happens in real life.
Source: Vanity Fair