THE Sopranos thread

[littletedwest]

[Kepler-186]

[Carradona]

Chrissy was one lucky bastard!

[Section_31]

Mrs was doing supply at a Catholic school recently and reconned the regular teacher was gay.

 

Me "tell him there's nothing gay about hell, that's what father always says."

[Kevin D]

1 hour ago, Section_31 said:

Mrs was doing supply at a Catholic school recently and reconned the regular teacher was gay.

 

Me "tell him there's nothing gay about hell, that's what father always says."

If I was in a band, I’d either call it “Nicholas Sabotka’s girlfriends breasts” or “Phil Leotardo’s wife”.

 

I’m not 100% sure.

[Walter Sobchak]

Watching Godfather Part 2.

 

Shamefully, only just realised after all these years, that Jonny Ola is Uncle June.

 

I was so far behind in the race I actually thought I was winning.

[littletedwest]

Suzanne Shepherd who played carmelas mum died yesterday.

[Kevin D]

 

[Kevin D]

 

[littletedwest]

I commented on Dan grimaldis picture on Instagram and got a love reaction. I'm also friends with Robert funaro who played Eugene on Facebook as well as the actress who played the hooore who Ralph killed.

 

I'm surprised I wasn't invited to the reunion 

[VladimirIlyich]

13 hours ago, littletedwest said:

I commented on Dan grimaldis picture on Instagram and got a love reaction. I'm also friends with Robert funaro who played Eugene on Facebook as well as the actress who played the hooore who Ralph killed.

 

I'm surprised I wasn't invited to the reunion 

This is what happened to Gary Cooper.

[Section_31]

13 hours ago, littletedwest said:

I commented on Dan grimaldis picture on Instagram and got a love reaction. I'm also friends with Robert funaro who played Eugene on Facebook as well as the actress who played the hooore who Ralph killed.

 

I'm surprised I wasn't invited to the reunion 

 

Awesome, I find it hilarious that he's a maths professor.

 

"If you don't get your thesis to me by Friday they'll be scraping your niples off these fine, leather seats. It won't be cinematic."

[Kevin D]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sopranos-creator-david-chase-the-streaming-giants-are-killing-off-tv-f0bhf68zj
 

David Chase is sitting at home in Los Angeles in front of blood-red walls. Sunlight streams through a window, so he stands up to close the blinds. Now suitably hugged by claret and darkness, he talks about The Sopranos, his violent, funny, caustic, moving and endlessly rewatchable crime drama, which first aired a quarter of a century ago (January 10, 1999, to be precise) and, over the course of six series and 86 episodes, changed TV permanently.

“Some people, it seems, are obsessed by it,” he says when I ask him how much he enjoys revisiting his finest moment. Chase, 78, used to watch his show when it was originally shown every Sunday night, but has barely been back since. “Still, it’s been gratifying to see people hold an interest. How could that be anything but pleasing to the ego, to your place in the human race?”

In 1999 The Sopranos was a simple, brilliant twist on a well-trodden genre. Take the Italian-American mafia, beloved in The Godfather and Goodfellas, but turn their stories into a TV series that focuses, yes, on the murdering, but just as much on the Mob boss Tony Soprano’s family and his sessions with a therapist. Feelings were as important as “fuggedaboutit” — no wonder it is often labelled the best show in history, the one that ushered in the so-called golden age of TV.

However, as The Sopranos toasts its 25th birthday, its creator is in no mood to party. For reasons we will get to, Chase feels that everything he fought for to freshen up TV is hurtling back to where it was. “Yes, this is the 25th anniversary, so of course it’s a celebration,” he says, not sounding celebratory at all. “But perhaps we shouldn’t look at it like that. Maybe we should look at it like a funeral.” He means a funeral for the type of show that was synonymous with The Sopranos — The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men and so on.

“That was a blip,” he says with a sigh. “A 25-year blip. And to be clear, I’m not talking only about The Sopranos, but a lot of other hugely talented people out there who I feel increasingly bad for.”

To get into what he means let us head back to the start — 1999, when The Sopranos was a breath of fresh air. Back then, TV was advert-driven and formulaic. However, thanks to the subscription service HBO, Chase was able to run uninterrupted episodes at an hour a piece. It allowed TV to feel as ambitious as cinema.

When Chase talks about making The Sopranos he mentions Elvis Costello and specifically his song Radio Radio. “I wanna bite the hand that feeds me/ I wanna bite that hand so badly/ I want to make them wish they’d never seen me” it goes, and while Costello was railing against commercial radio, Chase took his lyrics to inspire a fight against TV networks.

“It is exactly how I felt,” he says about Costello’s words. “And I succeeded too — I made them regret all their decades of stupidity and greed. Back then the networks were in an artistic pit. A shithole. The process was repulsive. In meetings these people would always ask to take out the one thing that made an episode worth doing. I should have quit.”

Chase was in his fifties, angry, frustrated and depressed. He was a jobbing writer, but wanted to make movies. “I had written at least ten screenplays, though,” he says. “And none succeeded. It was apartheid. If you were a TV writer you couldn’t drink the water in pictures.” As an alternative to the big screen he started to write The Sopranos only for his pilot to be rejected too, by leading networks such as Fox.

“I should have known that a real mafia wiseguy show would not happen on US TV,” he scoffs. “If you think your grandmother is risk-averse you should meet network people.” Why did these channels not commission The Sopranos? “Well, I could’ve done an idiotic Mob show, a watered-down Godfather, but why would you cut its balls off yourself? On a network I could not do out-there Italian characters, and there was sex, violence and bad language. It was never going to happen.”

 

Chase shakes his head. Did anyone who had turned The Sopranos down ever apologise? “Never,” Chase says, shrugging. “That’s typical Hollywood. They never take responsibility, but load responsibility on to the talent and bury them in guilt for not ‘getting’ it.”

 

Then came HBO and its bold, adult TV. It is hard to overstate the impact the channel had. In 1997 it made the prison drama Oz and, free from the puritanical control of ad money, loaded up on the R-rated content — draw a straight line from that to Game of Thrones. Oz, though, was small fry compared with the impact of The Sopranos. Chase loved the lack of ads as much as being allowed to have his characters kill and curse. “I had the best job in Hollywood.” It was total freedom and for a while the small screen good times kept coming, with Netflix, Prime Video and Apple TV+.

Chase, however, thinks that era is over. Which brings us back to the funeral. “We’re going back to where I was,” he says. He takes a breath. “They’re going to have commercials.” He’s right, adverts are back — on Netflix and Prime Video. “And I’ve already been told to dumb it down.” 
 

He talks about a show he has tried to make with the young screenwriter Hannah Fidell, about a high-end prostitute forced into witness protection. They are on their third draft and fifth meeting and have been told “the unfortunate truth” that it’s too complex. “Who is this all really for?” he groans. “I guess the stockholders?

“As the human race goes on,” he continues, “we are more into multitasking. Your phone is just one symptom, but who can really focus? Your mother could be dying and you are by her hospital bed taking calls. We seem to be confused and audiences can’t keep their minds on things, so we can’t make anything that makes too much sense, takes our attention and requires an audience to focus. And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were.”

It is a timely point — there is a real concern among TV execs that, given a choice between their phones and the TV, viewers will choose the former. Hence Chase’s mention of dumbing down. The thinking is that if viewers can follow something very simple and look at their phone at the same time, they will be happy. It is TV that allows for the use of a second screen — something unthinkable when watching The Sopranos.

 

And if anyone brings up Succession as a counter to Chase, remember that that show started six years ago. “So, it is a funeral,” Chase says. “Something is dying.”

 

Chase barely watches TV now. He saw Mad Men(Matthew Weiner, who worked on The Sopranos, wrote it) and Boardwalk Empire (Terence Winter, who worked on The Sopranos, wrote it), but none of those other long-form classics. “I don’t know why,” he says, a little sadly. “You try to live your life and there have been illnesses in my family that have taken energy away.”

He sighs when we talk about James Gandolfini, who played Tony Soprano and died in 2013. It meant a lot to Chase to get the actor’s son, Michael, to star in his film prequel to The Sopranos, The Many Saints of Newark, in 2021, but James could have been one of the greats. I ask if there are other actors from the show who he is surprised did not make more of their careers. “Yes,” he states bluntly, adding that he does not want to name them because that would be saying those actors failed. “But some made bad choices,” he pipes up unprompted. “Drea de Matteo made a couple of mistakes.” De Matteo was a firecracker as tragic Adriana. “She’s fantastic.”

We end, as most interviews with Americans will this year, on Donald Trump. Chase does not think that Tony Soprano “would give a shit about the election”, but that Trump is such a huge figure he couldn’t ignore him. In the very first episode of The Sopranos Tony complains to his shrink about America going downhill. “I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end,” he says — and he does not mean the mafia: he means his country.

“And that’s how I felt,” Chase says of the words he gave Soprano, echoing his own views. “Something was wrong with the America I’d grown up in. America used to be respected. We were the breath of fresh air in the 1940s and 1950s; a beacon of democracy. But I thought television, advertising and materialism were killing us.”

However, 25 years on — with Trump — if he thought America was in trouble in 1999, what does Chase think of the country right now? “Well, the cat’s out of the bag,” he begins, “about the race problem, and how much of our white population hates our black population. That had been kept quiet since the 1960s.”

 

He pauses, building up to an ending as stirring as the one he wrote for his show, the controversial finale in which Soprano probably dies. “This is my theory about Trump,” says the man who once changed TV. “Americans were so used to looking at their TVs and seeing bullshit — bullshit, lies, hype, salesmanship. Just bullshit. That was their life and then this guy comes along who personifies that all. They’re used to that. They can’t tell the difference. And they want it. They want it.”

 

[Kevin D]

https://www.mensjournal.com/news/james-gandolfini-personal-struggles-sopranos-mark-kamine-on-location-book
 

That book details an instance in which Gandolfini went missing right before he was to appear on a live Golden Globes telecast to present an award alongside Patricia Arquette. He was found on the lawn in front of the venue, "making snow angels on the lawn, so inebriated that he didn’t seem to notice the absence of snow," Miller wrote.

[VladimirIlyich]

3 minutes ago, Kevin D said:

https://www.mensjournal.com/news/james-gandolfini-personal-struggles-sopranos-mark-kamine-on-location-book
 

That book details an instance in which Gandolfini went missing right before he was to appear on a live Golden Globes telecast to present an award alongside Patricia Arquette. He was found on the lawn in front of the venue, "making snow angels on the lawn, so inebriated that he didn’t seem to notice the absence of snow," Miller wrote.

He's gone. Get over it.

[Section_31]

Read a thing in the behind the scenes book about when they were filming in Naples and someone lifted Gandolfini's wallet. There was a kid who was guiding the cast and crew around and he took Gandolfini and a few of the cast with him to some rough estate in Naples, he shouted who his uncle was and then the thief came out and handed the wallet back and the kid gave him a slap.

[VladimirIlyich]

6 hours ago, Section_31 said:

Read a thing in the behind the scenes book about when they were filming in Naples and someone lifted Gandolfini's wallet. There was a kid who was guiding the cast and crew around and he took Gandolfini and a few of the cast with him to some rough estate in Naples, he shouted who his uncle was and then the thief came out and handed the wallet back and the kid gave him a slap.

The real Boss showing the acting Boss how it's done.

[Section_31]

7 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

The real Boss showing the acting Boss how it's done.

 

When my uncle was in the Navy he was family liaison at the base in naples and they had to deal with the mob the way you would the gas or water company. He said someone stole the lemon tree from the base once and he told the mob, the mob picked him up and took him to a van which was on fire, it was the van of the guy who'd stolen it, the fire brigade and coppers were just stood next to it chewing the fat.

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

I imagine that this has already been posted in here? Funny, either way.

[VladimirIlyich]

14 hours ago, Section_31 said:

 

When my uncle was in the Navy he was family liaison at the base in naples and they had to deal with the mob the way you would the gas or water company. He said someone stole the lemon tree from the base once and he told the mob, the mob picked him up and took him to a van which was on fire, it was the van of the guy who'd stolen it, the fire brigade and coppers were just stood next to it chewing the fat.

Brutal. 

[Kevin D]

https://www.slashfilm.com/1508209/every-person-tony-soprano-killed-the-sopranos/
 

Believe it or not, "The Sopranos" just turned 25. Yes, 25 years ago, the medium of TV changed forever when David Chase's mafia series kicked off what we think of today as the "peak TV era." The impact and influence of "The Sopranos" cannot be overstated — without "The Sopranos," the TV landscape as we know it for the last 25 years would not exist. There would be no "Mad Men," no "Breaking Bad," no "Succession." Watching "The Sopranos" now, you can see the influence on the two-plus decade's worth of shows to come. 

 

While "The Sopranos" started off strong, the common consensus is that the show really became the juggernaut that we know it as in the fifth episode of season 1, titled "College." Why? Because that was the first episode we saw Tony Soprano whack someone. While it seems commonplace now to have an unlikable protagonist leading a show, in 1999, when the episode in question first aired, it was considered a big risk. Here was the lead character, the guy we're supposed to be rooting for, brutally strangling someone to death. It was unheard of, and it changed the face of TV. 

Throughout the course of the series, Tony would continue to kill people. While he would frequently order hits, he also wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Which brings us to this list, which breaks down every person Tony Soprano killed throughout "The Sopranos." 

 

Willie Overall (Season 6, Episode 15, Remember When)

 

While "College" is the first time we, the audience, see Tony Soprano kill someone, his first canonical hit is seen in the season 6 episode "Remember When." In this episode, we learn that the first person Tony killed was a bookie named Willie Overall. We don't know a whole lot about Willie, just that he was in trouble with the DiMeo crime family. As a result, in 1982, a young Tony Soprano was ordered to kill him. This hit helped Tony "make his bones," or, in other words, resulted in the young Soprano becoming a made man. Willie's murder resurfaces in season 6 when a criminal informant (or a rat, if you will) leads the FBI to discover Willie's buried body. This causes Tony to go into hiding in Miami briefly, but eventually, the murder is pinned on someone else. 

 

 

Fabian Febby Petrulio (Season 1, Episode 5, College)

 

This is it — the killing that changed the show. According to creator David Chase, HBO executives balked when they learned that Tony Soprano would be seen brutally strangling someone to death. Chase, however, stuck to his guns and insisted the killing be in the episode. The results speak for themselves — "College" is often hailed as one of the best episodes of the show. In the episode, Tony is taking his daughter Meadow on a tour of colleges. During the trip, he happens to spot Fabian "Febby" Petrulio, a former wiseguy now in witness protection. Eventually, Tony tracks Febby down and strangles him to death with an extension cord. It's a nasty, unpleasant sequence, and firmly establishes who and what Tony Soprano is as a character. TV would never be the same. 

 

Chucky Signore (Season 1, Episode 13, I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano)

 

This is my personal favorite killing on the list just because of how absurd it is. When Tony learns that soldier Chucky Signore is conspiring with Tony's Uncle Junior against him, he does what any self-respecting mobster would do: he hides a gun in a giant fish. As the sequence plays out, Chucky is on his boat at a dock when Tony strolls up, holding a gigantic fish, catching Chucky off guard. Before Chucky knows what's happening, Tony pulls a gun from inside the fish's mouth and proceeds to shoot Chucky to death with it. Why, exactly, Tony felt the need to go through with this theatricality is unclear and feels slightly out of character, but who cares? It's funny! In fact, it's the only "funny" kill on this list.

 

Matthew Bevilaqua (Season 2, Episode 9, From Where to Eternity)

 

In season 2, we're introduced to low-level goons Matthew Bevilaqua and Sean Gismonte. Both of these idiots get it in their heads that the way to rise in the ranks of the mob is to whack Tony's nephew Christopher. The hit doesn't go according to plan, though — while Christopher is shot and badly injured, he manages to kill Sean during the scuffle. Matthew Bevilaqua gets away, only to eventually be caught. Once captured, he's shot to death by Tony (with a little help from Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero; more on him in a moment). Like most of "The Sopranos" deaths (except that fish-related one I just mentioned), the killing is very unpleasant, with the terrified Matthew begging for his mother right before Tony kills him. 

 

Salvatore Big Pussy Bonpensiero (Season 2, Episode 13, Funhouse)

 

One of the more personal Tony Soprano kills arrives in "Funhouse," the second season finale. Throughout the course of the season, we learn that Tony's trusted friend Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero has become an FBI informant. Tony seemingly knows this, or at least suspects it, earlier in the season, but he doesn't become certain of the betrayal until he experiences a series of fever dreams brought on by food poisoning. Finally ready to act, Tony and fellow wiseguys Silvio and Paulie take Big Pussy out to sea on a boat, confront him about his betrayal, and then shoot him to death. They then weigh the body down and dump it overboard. This killing haunts Tony throughout the rest of the show, and what appears to be Big Pussy's ghost even briefly pops up in the season 3 episode "Proshai, Livushka." 

 

Ralph Cifaretto (Season 4, Episode 9, Whoever Did This)

One of the most detestable characters "The Sopranos" ever introduced was Ralph Cifaretto, a brutal capo quick with a joke (and who has an almost unhealthy obsession with the movie "Gladiator"). Two things lead to Ralphie's death. First, he violently beats a young woman to death. The young woman was a dancer at the Bada-Bing, the strip club that serves as a base of operations for the Sopranos crew. The dancer, Tracee, had become somewhat close to Tony, and her death upsets him. Later, Ralph adopts a winning racehorse and Tony becomes fond of the animal. A fire in the stable leads to the death of the horse, named Pie-O-My, and Tony suspects that Ralph started the fire for insurance money. Tony confronts Ralph with this, Ralph denies it, and eventually, a fight breaks out — a fight that ends with Tony strangling Ralphie to death while bemoaning Ralph killed an "innocent creature." Is Tony talking about Pie-O-My or Tracee as he kills Ralphie? You decide. As for Ralphie, he ends up dismembered. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. 

 

Tony Blundetto (Season 5, Episode 13, All Due Respect)

Season 5 introduces us to Tony's cousin, Tony Blundetto, who has just been released from jail. Throughout the season, Tony B. tries to walk the straight and narrow but eventually falls back into the criminal lifestyle. Because of this, Tony B. ends up killing two New York mobsters, including the brother of high-ranking NY member Phil Leotardo. The sentence for such an act is death, and while Tony Soprano at first wants to protect his cousin, he realizes that he has to make things right or else his own crew will be in trouble. He also realizes that if Tony B. is captured by Phil and the NY mobsters, he'll be tortured to death. Tony Soprano's solution: he shoots Tony B. in the face with a shotgun.

 

 

Christopher Moltisanti (Season 6, Episode 18, Kennedy and Heidi)

Arguably the most shocking death in "Sopranos" history, the final on-screen kill courtesy of Tony Soprano arrives in the final season. Throughout the series, one of the people Tony was closest to was his "nephew" (technically his cousin-in-law) Christopher Moltisanti. Christopher struggled with addiction throughout the series, and in the season 6 episode "Kennedy and Hedi," a car accident badly injures him. Bleeding and hurt, Christopher confesses to Tony, who was also in the car, that he's using drugs again. Seemingly fed up with his nephew, Tony takes it upon himself to smother the young man to death and blame his demise on the car accident. It's shocking and underscores what a monster Tony Soprano ultimately is, no matter how likable he may seem sometimes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Kevin D]

 

[Section_31]

 

[Redder Lurtz]

Just started rewatching. This from S1 E5:

 

 

[Redder Lurtz]

Yeah, Ginny Sack told Gabriella she needed a bigger house.

 

Ginny Sacrimoni? What she needs is her own zip code.

 

New Jersey's a small state, she moves in she could tip it over.

 

I like a woman you can grab onto something.

 

You grab onto Ginny Sacrimoni, your fucking hands will disappear.

 

She's so fat, her blood type is ragu.

 

She's so fat, she goes camping, the bears have to hide their food.

 

When Ginny hauls ass, she's got ta make two trips.

 

Two guys could fuck her at the same time and still never meet.

 

Oh, Johnny!

 

Fuck who? What? What's so funny?

 

Nothing, we're just talking about one of the girls.