ValerieB

Actor reflects on last days as Tony Soprano NEW YORK (AP) -- There was no decisive moment, no seismic shift, no ceremony when James Gandolfini put "The Sopranos" behind him. But he has. Comfortably. "I was told that it would be a transition," he says and shakes his head. "Not much. It's very calming to move on." Gandolfini, of course, had played gangster-in-therapy Tony Soprano -- earning raves, clout and unsought celebrity -- since the HBO drama premiered in January 1999. Now there's only one piece of unfinished business. The finale, which airs Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT, will bring to a close a saga as powerful and oddly relatable as anything ever seen on TV. This conclusion, however satisfying or disappointing, will surely leave "Sopranos" fans wanting more. But not Gandolfini. "The character has been with me for so long," he says, "it's a relief to let him go." No wonder. For 86 episodes, Gandolfini submerged himself in that fiendish, tormented character. He channeled the dark world of "Sopranos" creator David Chase. He was regularly summoned to his own psychic danger zone. All in all, the experience was "wearing," he says. There also was a physical toll. "The Sopranos" revolves around Tony, which meant Gandolfini had an exhausting workload. "But in a way, being tired helped me play the character. If the guy had to look good and be handsome and happy, the hours we worked would certainly not help. They helped ME a great deal," he laughs. "I was allowed to be grumpy and tired and look like (crap)." That was then. Whatever awaits Tony in the series-ender -- prison, death or some sort of escape -- Gandolfini has already laid him to rest. Time after time, Gandolfini felt the end at Silvercup Studios in Queens, and on locations such as Tony's home turf of northern New Jersey. All during April, members of the large "Sopranos" cast would shoot their last scene with him, then leave forever. Then he'd shoot a last scene with another cast member, who would disappear. "There wasn't any grand finale," he says. Or was there? Gandolfini suddenly remembers his last scene alongside Steven Van Zandt, who since the beginning played Tony's loyal consigliere Silvio. "This is no indication of my feelings toward anyone else, but, for some reason, that really hit me when he left. Wow!" Speaking to a reporter at HBO headquarters last week, Gandolfini, who recently signed a production deal with the network, was taking a break from screening footage for a documentary he's making about U.S. soldiers in Iraq who recover from near-fatal injuries. Dressed casually in short sleeves, chinos and running shoes, the 45-year-old actor is down-to-earth and deferential, yet remains a formidable presence even without Tony's cockiness and mobster cred. His voice, while reflecting his New Jersey background, is richer, more robust than Tony's astringent delivery. Though famously press-shy ever since "The Sopranos" blindsided him with stardom, Gandolfini has consented to this rare interview. Nursing coffee from a foam cup, he shares nearly an hour in agreeable give-and-take, only drawing the line when one too many questions delves into his acting technique: "Oh, please! Who gives a (crap)!" he scoffs. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be abrupt." He misses no chance to deflect credit toward his colleagues. "I might be in a lot of scenes, but the crew is in EVERY scene," he points out. "The crew is there 16 hours a day, every day. "And the cast totally propped me up in many scenes. After three or four scenes sometimes I was adrift, and because (the editor) could cut to such other good actors, they were there to help me." 'I had Muhammad Ali' It was a two-way street, according to Michael Imperioli, who played Tony's hothead nephew Christopher, now dead (thanks to Tony's cold-hearted intervention) after a car crash a few episodes ago. "Every time you go and do a scene with this guy," Imperioli said at the start of the season, "he manages to give 105 percent. That rubs off. That makes YOU work harder." "I had the greatest sparring partner in the world, I had Muhammad Ali," said Lorraine Bracco, who, as Tony's psychiatrist Dr. Melfi, went one-on-one with Gandolfini in their penetrating therapy scenes. "He cares what he does, and does it extremely well." Saying goodbye to the crew and his co-stars -- yes, that was hard, Gandolfini concedes, even if saying goodbye to Tony wasn't. Also hard: no more of those magnificent "Sopranos" scripts. "Good writing will bring you to places you don't even expect sometimes," he marvels, meaning himself, and how the material could catch him off guard and take him somewhere new, even as he was performing it. "It's a ride that I was along on, with everybody else," he says. And like everybody else, he can't help feeling appalled by Tony's brutish misbehavior. After shooting a scene where Tony did something despicable, Gandolfini would sometimes upbraid his own character. "I would shake my head and say, God, what a [expletive]!" Whereupon he helpfully substitutes his unpublishable outburst with a family friendly version: "What a jerk!" So what's the truth? Does he like this jerk who was part of him for so long? "I used to," he says. "But it's difficult toward the end. I think the thing with Christopher might have turned the corner." That was a soulless display: Fed up with his nephew's shortcomings, Tony pinched shut the nostrils of the gravely hurt Christopher, ensuring he would choke to death. But wait! Gandolfini thinks a moment, and more of Tony's recent misdeeds -- not homicidal, but clearly depraved -- come to mind: "Maybe the gambling thing with Hesh. And maybe the thing with Tony Sirico (as Paulie Walnuts) on the boat. "It's kind of one thing after another. Let's just say, it was a lot easier to like him in the beginning, than in the last few years." But back then, maybe it wasn't so easy for Gandolfini to like himself. Early on, he felt a stronger kinship with Tony, mostly stemming from "that infantile temper that I certainly possessed much more of when I was younger." Meanwhile, the writers fleshed out Tony by cribbing from Gandolfini -- in particular, his temper. "In the first year, maybe they would see that sometimes when I have anger, it's very funny. So they go with that. When I break something, it's funny. So they're gonna put it in again. And then I realize that I'm continually breaking things. So then I'm getting more angry because I have to continue breaking things. And then they decide, 'Well, we've broken enough (stuff).' "It was a learning process for all of us, I think." All in the service of David Chase's vision. Pantomiming the pull Chase exerted over him (like everything on "The Sopranos"), Gandolfini playfully hooks his index finger in the corner of his mouth as if he were a trout at the end of Chase's line. A decade ago, Gandolfini was certainly hooked when he read Chase's pilot script. A little-known character actor in his mid-30s (and the son of working-class parents who had grown up in Park Ridge, New Jersey), he knew Tony was a role he was born to play. He also realized the cards were stacked against a beefy, balding, little-known actor landing the role. But four years earlier, he'd made a brief appearance in Tony Scott's comically bloody thriller, "True Romance": a two-fisted confrontation with its star, Patricia Arquette. That performance won him his audition for Tony. "True Romance" was also Edie Falco's first peek at the actor with whom she would be wed cinematically as Tony's wife, Carmela. "I sort of knew the name James Gandolfini," Falco recalled. "Then I watched the film, and he's in a scene where he beats the living daylights out of a woman. I thought, 'Ohhhhhhh, OK. Welllll, let's see how THIS goes."' And how did it go? "It was maybe the most perfect working relationship," she said. Now it's over. One concluding episode, shrouded in secrecy, remains to be aired. The Soprano home has been struck from Studio X at Silvercup. And Gandolfini, now done with Tony, is looking ahead to other roles, perhaps as Ernest Hemingway in a film he's developing for HBO. "I don't even think I've proven myself, yet," he says. "The Tony character was from New Jersey, I'm from New Jersey -- there's not a lot of stretching going on, here." Then he pauses, reconsiders, gives himself some credit. "In some ways, there is." He shrugs. "In a LOT of ways. "But I have yet to begin the fight, I think." Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The Sopranos by Dick Cavett June 6, 2007, 8:22 pm ‘Sopranos’ Grief I welcome any advice anyone has about a certain problem: How is a person supposed to live without “The Sopranos”? Last Sunday’s penultimate episode gave me a vivid nightmare. A woman I know was unable to sleep at all after watching it. God knows what watching the ultimate one will do this weekend, on what we the devoted think of as Black Sunday. The great David Chase, who created it all, decided to pull the plug on his stately craft while her sails are still billowing, an action as rare in the world of television as a sincere compliment. Or a program as good as “The Sopranos.” I’m glad it’s only a rumor that he has had to increase security for himself against armed fans unable to accept the reality of the long-dreaded terminus. How can we fan(atic)s of the show express our boundless gratitude to Mr. Chase? Maybe we could all sign one huge “thank you” to him — a Hallmark card the size of New Jersey. Were this Japan, Chase-san would have long since been declared a Living National Treasure. Accusations of name-dropping are bred of envy, and I felt it strongly toward anyone who met or claimed to have met actors from the show — until, that is, I met actors from the show. I came bounding home some years ago to announce to my wife (the late Carrie Nye, an actress) that we could go to a party where there would be members of the cast. She declined: “They’re such fine actors, but I don’t want to know that they’re actors. I want them to remain those people.” Please resist envy, then, when I say that I have gotten to know and hang out with the sinfully talented Michael Imperioli (“Christopher,” Tony’s problem nephew, as well as the author of numerous episodes). Having dinner with him (and his wife) had no effect whatever of the kind my wife refused to risk. There he was, a day later, on the show: Christopher again. Moving, scary and certainly no one I had ever met. The magic of acting. This year, Michael got me onto the set and I was in hog heaven. Getting to rub shoulders with cast members and lucky souls like wardrobe people and best boys who got to be there every day, and magic names I knew from the screen credits like Brad Grey — all of it a most heady experience. I stayed long and late and left feeling like a kid coming back from the circus, with nothing to look forward to but home and school. I don’t know how to relate, nor what to say, to people who gave the show a pass because they “didn’t want to see another crime show.” I suppose it’s possible to lead a full life without ever having known what is meant by “Bada Bing” or “Big Pussy” or “Uncle Junior” or “Dr. Melfi,” but I’m not sure. I doubt that such willfully self-deprived souls would welcome my sympathy. But, my God, what they missed. If I were artistic commissar it would have been required viewing. (I feel much sorrier for those who sampled it and found nothing to admire. They are beyond hope.) I gave DVDs of the show’s first season to a very intelligent, well-educated, couple I know. They are high-toned people. They scorn television. To shut me up, they agreed to watch at least part of the first show late one afternoon. They tolerated, with a snicker, my suggestion that as in the potato chip commercial, they couldn’t watch just one episode. They later confessed that they barely moved as both dinner and bedtime came and went before they could make themselves shut it off. A special Emmy should be awarded for the casting. There was not a dud in the carload. And no one was ever just a type. They were whole, intricately complex people and we got to peer into their lives and personalities to a degree I’ve never seen achieved before. I don’t know enough about camera technique, cutting and editing skills to be able to explain why the violence was, strange to say, better violence than you get elsewhere. It was cruelly and sometimes repellently real. You got a solid, visceral punch. Where else would a man, having stomped and kicked the head of his victim, look down later during his therapy session and remove a bloody tooth with some clinging gum tissue from his cuff? You wouldn’t say it was funny, but it was handled in such a way that it was not entirely unfunny. Maybe the show’s trickiest accomplishment was the way it made characters clearly deserving of hate be so sympathetic. You could not only find yourself liking an evil character, but having fun feeling guilty about it. How could you not feel a tug at your heart when a tough and disreputable gangster, Pauly Walnuts (Tony Sirico), confesses to having sought professional help? (“Right now we’re working on my coping skills.”) I found it rewarding to watch each episode a second time. Subtleties of both dialogue and acting were often missed on a single viewing. I’m afraid, by the way, that I have no patience with pressure groups of the kind that have arisen from time to time, wanting “The Sopranos” killed because it gave a bad name to Italian-Americans; implying, they felt, that all folks from Italy are gangsters. It doesn’t, of course, and couldn’t. But it reminds me of when the same problem came up with the highly popular “The Untouchables.”? Why, it was demanded, must all the crooks have Italian names? Since the show dealt with real figures, it would have been a bit silly to change Al Capone’s name to, say, Al Hollinshed. (A great comedy writer, the late Jack Douglas, offered a solution. When asked about this, he said, “Why not get the gangsters to change their names?”) The fact that James Gandolfini wasn’t necessarily the first or only choice for the role of Tony is scary. And Edie Falco has confessed that she almost didn’t get the part of Carmela; not because she wasn’t good enough but because she almost didn’t go to the casting appointment: “I’d been four other places that day and I was tired and it sounded like a show about singers and⋯.” As she admits, what she got was, simply, “the part of a lifetime.” Gandolfini and Falco. These two gifted actors created a classic dramatic couple. I see them as no less than the Lunt and Fontanne of their particular artistic world. (I can hear the uninitiated saying, “Get hold of yourself, Cavett.” Let ‘em.) Well, it’s nearly closing time in the gardens of New Jersey. The “Sopranos” Web site is full of speculation by fans. Will Tony die in the final episode? (If the show ends but he doesn’t, where does that leave him? And us?) Will David Chase ever reveal the formula for such a smashing success? And could it be as simple as: perfect writing, casting, acting, directing, costuming, lighting and editing? And make-up? Having to make do without any new episodes of what, in the fullness of time, will be judged to be the Mt. Everest of television achievement is a chilling prospect. If only there were a rehab place to deal with us, the addicted ones. Or, maybe, some kind of “Sopranos” Nicorettes?

it's definitely one of my favorites for the "vibe" and the memories!

Thanks for clearing that up....who are you??? he's a really nice guy who happens to do the booking at yoshi's!

van zant said in an interview i read today that the ending is definitely controversial!! would we expect otherwise?!?

i'm happy to say that i go to see ernie as often as possible. luckily, since we both live in the l.a. area, it's fairly often! he's wonderful!

i think i remember his being a big (in those days!) bonus baby. i also knew his wife in the '60s, i believe. very sad to hear this news.

profoundly true, JSngry!! RIP, Mr. Childers.

you are in for an incredible treat! i probably won't see them again until august and i'm in mourning over it!

That's a well lit ear. pardon the pun, but what a good ear it was!

You're right, but I don't recall that I went into much detail. My main problem is that while I love vintage Sonny Rollins and in principle have to admit the possibility of there being good-to-excellent Rollins-influenced tenormen, when guys start to come up with some of Rollins's very specific/personal chortles, burps, and guffaws (as I think Tabackin does; in fact, LT not only imitates but also often exaggerates them), I run from the room with my hair on fire. Now it would be possible, of course, though difficult, to do what I think LT does as a sort of further humorous/ironic commentary on Rollins's own fairly extreme (and again quite personal) tendencies in that direction. But what I hear from LT and some other Rollins-drenched guys from his and later generations sounds to me like puppetry -- not that it's easy to do, but I feel like I'm listening to someone snatch away another unique man's living breath. I'd say BTW that this is not true, or not true to the same degree or in the same way, of most Trane disciples of however many generations -- while problems certainly lie in wait for them, the problem of speaking so directly in another man's voice is not high among them because I think Trane's "cry" was to some considerable degree generic (I mean that positively, as though Trane's voice were both personal and also inherently that of many or even a multitude, a la the bare-breasted woman at the barricades in Delacroix's famous painting; the same might be said of Young or Hawkins [though for somewhat different reasons in both cases, but Rollins' voice, when it gets emotionally specific in the way I have in mind. is not at all generic IMO]). An example of a Rollins-drenched guy who usually doesn't give me that "stealing the living breath" feeling would be Ralph LaLama. Among younger players, an interesting case is Grant Stewart -- who has considerable melodic and rhythmic gifts but can at times get too close for my tastes to specific Rollins-esque emotive figures; and now that I've stumbled aross that phrase, "emotive figures," perhaps that's the gist of what I have in mind. Rollins came up with and handled such figures in a way that I think was both new to jazz and unique to himself, in that these emotive figures not only were highly (almost luridly) emotive but also were quite self-consciously/knowingly (and usually humorously/ironically) so, such that the play between those figures and the rest of his musical-emotional vocabulary was a key part of his language. Can't think of many Rollins-influenced guys who have much a clue there. Actually, Archie Shepp probably did for a hot minute. And Ed Wilkerson Jr. does. while i thoroughly enjoyed your comments and certainly agree with some of them, i would humbly suggest that perhaps you need to listen to more of lew or perhaps more recent lew.

i agree with the above wholeheartedly! i have been a fan of lew's for the past 30+ years.

thanks for the heads-up. i'm going to check it out 'cause i love me some wayne escoffery. just saw him with the mingus group last week.

P.S. My son is convinced, and I believe he's right, that the two Muslim guys that the FBI is asking Tony about are really undercover FBI agents, and that the whole thing is a sting operation that will end up with Tony being nailed on terrorism charges. As you'll recall, Tony, through Christopher, did sell them weapons; now the FBI is establishing that Tony himself thinks they're terrorists. A tunnel closed at both ends. I like this because one of Tony's chief advantages over his mob rivals is that he's smarter than they are as well as being at least as brutal. Well, here, trying to be too smart, he'll outsmart himself -- perhaps. please tell your son that that is an extremely interesting p.s.!!!

thanks so much for posting this, j.h. deeley. i'm afraid that i would never recognize herbie from the pictures posted as i hadn't seen him since the '60s in ny. i'm sure he'd say the same about me! i'm very sorry to hear about his passing. so glad to hear that he remained active since i lost track of him.

thanks, catesta. thought maybe they were going to celebrate memorial day early!!

does anyone here know what herbie had been doing in recent years?

Some work places are not like that, though. My law firm isn't. It would be quite literally unbearable to have this group of people talking about my musical taste all the time. Trust me--no one would want to be the constant topic of ignorant conversation by a group of attorneys, paralegals and legal secretaries. There is something uniquely corrosive about legal people, something that sucks the soul out of you if you get too close. And I like most of these people! My wife has commented on the same thing, that law firm parties are like visiting a ring of hell. They can't help it. so sorry to admit that i know just what you're talking about!!

the above article certainly sounds like good news! not surprising that something like this should happen to him, especially after the stress he must have endured re katrina! get well soon, mr. diddley!

I also work in a law firm and music, while not specifically forbidden in a written policy, would never be played here. A few people over the years have liked jazz, not many. One tried to convert others to jazz and was always met with awkward, embarassing silence and inappropriate comments. One of the clients talks often of his love of Duke Ellington and this is often cited as evidence of his unbelievably weird nature by people who work here. Best to keep it to yourself, in a law firm--and that applies not just to a love of jazz. are you, by any chance, down the hall from me?!?

i think all of you are quite fortunate to be able to play music in your office space! i work in a law firm and the only music i've ever heard here is just barely audible.

no, this was much further east on highland avenue, south of the hollywood bowl. I thought Highland is a North/South road. it is north/south. i was referring to it being further east from the one on sunset blvd!

no, this was much further east on highland avenue, south of the hollywood bowl.

it's good that you bring her up - she must already feel like Dewey Redman with her daughter being discussed here all the time... (Monday Michiru is her (and Mariano's) daughter, or am I making this up (?)) You got that right. .. but I kindof doubt she's reading our discussions here! i'm pretty certain that toshiko is not lurking here BUT she is introduced often in japan as "monday mirchiru's mother" and she's, of course, a very big celeb in her own right there!