Crime is a little like a car crash. We don't want to be in one but we always slow down to have a stickybeak at someone else's misfortune.
Which is why the small screen (not so small these days, with giant TVs made by unpronounceable manufacturers) and the big screen (not so big these days, with the introduction of little cinemas for the sushi-eating, arthouse crowd) have always been dominated by crime stories.
With the introduction of streaming services and cable TV crime channels the appetite for mystery, murder and corruption can be satisfied 24 hours a day.
Often the crime shows mimic life, but crooks and cops can be influenced by the shows they watch. Some senior police were attracted to join after watching episodes of Homicide as kids and half Australia's mobsters have framed Godfather prints in their poolrooms.
The reverse is also true, with some actors taking their roles a tad too seriously. One old Homicide trouper had trouble separating drama from reality and after regular lengthy luncheons at a South Melbourne hotel he would try to impress female patrons half his age by pretending to be the real head of the Homicide Squad (often producing his prop gun to show he was pleased to see them).
The key to being a successful crook is to fly under the radar, avoiding police attention while making money that you pretend comes from a legitimate source.
Headlines, TV shows or movies are poison to a gangster, because a high profile in the underworld usually ends with a prison or death sentence.
The exception is Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read, who made a living as a celebrity gangster – ironic as Mark was a failure as a crook who was always getting caught. Read spent 23 years in various prisons and during his life of crime would be out of jail a matter of months before being rearrested.
Read was extremely violent and stood over other crooks both inside and outside prison. When I once asked him why he robbed drug dealers, he answered the question with a question. "How much money have you got in your pocket?"
I said around $20. He responded: "So I should rob you for 20 bucks and your second-hand Commodore and you'll go to the cops? Or I can torture a drug dealer and he'll give me six grand and tell no one. You do the maths."
You can question the morality but not the logic.
Back then Mark was motivated not by money (which was handy, for he rarely had much) but infamy. He said it wasn't the fastest gunslingers in the Wild West that were remembered but those who teamed up "with the drunken journos on the penny dreadfuls". Which is why back in the early 1990s he took to writing his thoughts on prison letterhead and sending them to me to be cobbled together in a little book that would be called Chopper from the Inside.
This was followed by many more books and the movie Chopper, which took years to get off the ground. At one point Russell Crowe was keen to play the lead but his asking price at the time was around $3 million, which was close to the budget for the whole project.
Meanwhile Mark believed Melbourne comedian Eric Bana was the man for the role. No one listened and why would they? Read was a criminal, not a talent scout.
After he appeared in The Castle, Bana was finally cast in the lead. After spending just two days with Read Bana, a natural mimic, picked up his speech patterns and mannerisms perfectly. Everyone loved it – except Read, who said: "The trouble is Bana does a better Chopper Read than I do."
Read turned himself into a brand and for the last 10 years of his life he "played" Chopper for the media or the paying public in the way the ailing Muhammad Ali would take up his boxing stance for the cameras.
Read died in 2013, a showman to the end. In his last (paid) interview he provided what he thought would be value for money by confessing to murders he didn't commit.
He is a household name to the extent the people who brought you Underbelly are now filming a two-part television movie on Chopper for Channel Nine. We visited the film set a few days ago to observe the action – it was inside a Melbourne strip club because it is apparently illegal to produce anything in the Underbelly franchise without a liberal dose of bare bosoms.
The production crew is largely the team from the original award-winning series on the Melbourne underworld war and they are aiming for a similar feel, best summed up as rock-and-roll meets reality.
The first series had an authentic flavour – little wonder when real Purana taskforce detectives appeared as extras in police scenes, much to the chagrin of trial judge Justice Betty King, who wondered why some of her star witnesses were moonlighting as support actors.
One critic was drug boss Carl Williams (killed in 2010). "I don't mind them telling the truth about me, but telling lies and painting me out like some dickhead who is brain-dead, well that's just bulls---," he complained.
(Disclosure: I was a consultant for the first series and both Chopper productions. I also appeared as an extra in one Underbelly. The camera loved me and I stole not only the scene but a ham and cheese sandwich from the snack trolley.)
In the new (and completely different) version of Chopper's story, the impressive Aaron Jeffery stars as Read and aims to capture not only the violence (forget the hype, the real Read had a legendary capacity to inflict and absorb pain) but also the humour of Australia's blackest stand-up standover man.
Jeffery did his own research on Read and spent time with prison officers who spent time with Chopper while he was doing time.
Bana captured Read in his physically imposing prime, while Jeffery has gained weight to play him as the former hitman going to seed.
While the public seemed to love Read's books – they were once the nation's most shoplifted paperback – there was a group of gangsters who despised them. They were as image-conscious as any ambitious starlet and hated that Read refused to treat them seriously.
One was the notorious Alphonse Gangitano (shot dead in 1998) who liked to be known as "the Black Prince of Lygon Street". Good-looking and erratic, Al ignored common sense to pose for photographs for The Age when he should have avoided publicity. He was so egotistical that when he saw his police mugshot he tried to have it replaced with a professionally taken portrait. His request was refused.
He thought they should make a movie on him starring Robert De Niro and was enraged when Read dubbed him "the Plastic Godfather" and accused him of having a wobbly bottom.
Lawyer-turned-mobster Mario Condello (murdered in 2006) once appeared in court in a gangster-chic camel overcoat and fetching white silk scarf as if he had stepped straight from the set of The Godfather.
And the cops have their favourites too. For years Armed Robbery Squad detectives loved Reservoir Dogs. Sadly they thought it was a documentary.
What the real characters watch:
Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton as a kid found Homicide fascinating and liked British police drama The Professionals, portraying a ruthless criminal intelligence unit.
Now likes the US black comedy crime drama Fargo and Narco, the story of the rise and fall of Colombian cocaine king Pablo Escobar: "Hugo Martinez (senior Colombian policeman) is a bit of a hero of mine."
Coroner Sara Hinchey became a lawyer because as a schoolgirl she loved the strong female lead in Carson's Law. She is a fan of Scandinavian series such as The Bridge and The Killing. Now she is into the Danish crime series Dicte: "It is about a really annoying crime reporter (is there such a thing?) and her relationship with the homicide squad."
Assistant Commissioner (Crime) Steve Fontana was another Homicide fan who progressed to NYPD Blue then Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He also enjoyed the original Blue Murder – the drama based on controversial (and now convicted killer) NSW detective Roger Rogerson.
Former Supreme Court justice John Coldrey says: "Given my day job I have always preferred untrue crime." He liked Midsomer Murders because of the "convoluted plots" and now watches Vera, the dishevelled British detective chief inspector with a keen eye for crime clues and none for fashion. "I like her style, or lack of it."
For Assistant Commissioner (Counter-terrorism) Ross Guenther it is the dark British series Luther: "I have run out of episodes."
Bernie "The Attorney" Balmer spent more time watching comedy as a kid (perhaps that is how he has maintained his sense of humour) and while he liked the Melbourne-based Underbelly shows, "it was a little like watching my career".
He usually steers away from crime shows: "It is too much like taking work home." Given a choice he veers to cooking shows such as that of Rick Stein, whose liberal use of butter may well be more deadly than a Carl Williams hitman.