From the December 5, 2004 issue of The Bergen Record

Italian-Americans: We're not all married to the mob
By Jim Beckerman

America was named after an Italian. It was discovered - arguably - by an Italian. It owes some of its greatest cultural achievements, from Toscanini to lobster Florentine, to Italians.

But America sure has a funny way of saying "grazie."

"Bums, bimbos and buffoons," is how John Marino of the National Italian-American Foundation sums up the stereotyping of Italians in the media.

He might have added "mobsters" - a particularly galling stereotype to many Italian-Americans, and one that was much on the minds of the 300 people who registered for "Real Stories: Discrimination and Defamation in the History of Italian-Americans," a Saturday symposium sponsored by the foundation at Seton Hall University.

"My mother came from a family of 10, and she came to America and had 10 children," said actor Joe Piscopo, one of the speakers. "Not one was even marginally connected with organized crime."

Piscopo and actor Tony Lo Bianco, representing the entertainment business, joined a panel of academics and activists for an afternoon of lively, sometimes heated discussion about the American media's treatment of Italians. Not good, almost everyone agreed.

"Popular American culture is fascinated with the Mafia mystique," said Angelo C. Morresi, an attorney and activist for Italian-American causes. "And Hollywood is going to continue to produce this product as long as it sells."

The topic has been on the front-burner yet again with the October release of "Shark Tale," the DreamWorks animated film featuring an undersea Mafiosi voiced by, among others, Robert De Niro.

It joins a long line of movies and TV shows, including "The Sopranos" and "The Godfather," that go back at least as far as the original 1932 "Scarface," that have been condemned for their negative stereotypes of Italian-Americans. Activists have argued that such images have repercussions in real life - from kids who are taunted at school to adults who might be considered risky hires because their last names end in vowels.

"Italian-Americans as a group have been pretty successful," Morresi said. "But the reality is their achievements could have been much greater, but for the stereotyping."

Of course, such Mafia images have great allure - to Italians as much as anyone, judging from the fact that directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, and actors like De Niro, Al Pacino and James Gandolfini, have had a hand in perpetuating them.

The true appeal of Mafia sagas like "The Godfather" and "The Sopranos," Marino said, is the picture of the Italian family - a big, warm, all-protecting unit whose big meals, big celebrations and close relationships are what most of us crave.

That really is what an Italian family is like, he said. It's just that, in 99 cases out of 100, they're not involved in organized crime.

"Shows like 'The Sopranos,' for example, take all the values of real Italian-Americans - the meals, the relatives, all the cultural attributes that are positive - and then infuse them with a criminal story line," Marino said.

So why aren't such everyday Italian families featured in movies? A number of Italian entertainment figures are asking just that question - and are prepared to do something about it.

Piscopo for instance. The onetime "Saturday Night Live" comedian is playing a different role now: cultural advocate.

"I believe you have to put your money where your mouth is," said Piscopo, a former Bergen County resident.

His company Avellino Productions, named after the district of Naples where his family came from, is raising money to film such scripts as "Bloomfield Avenue" about an Italian-American family surviving the 1960s Newark riots, and "Joey Benefit," a comedy about an entertainer, modeled on and played by Piscopo, who is unable to turn down a charity event.

"We need to do a lot less complaining, and a lot more creating," said Jerome Bongiorno, a Newark filmmaker whose feature "Little Kings," made independently on a $75,000 budget, has been making the festival rounds. The film, about three Italian-American brothers and their complicated relationships with women is something like an Italian "Hannah and Her Sisters," he said.

"We need to make positive films, and they need to be financed by Italian-Americans," said his wife and co-filmmaker Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno. "We need to make commercial, mainstream, intelligent films that will compete with all these negative ideas."