HBO Gets Married
To the Mob
Casting "The Sopranos," the latest critical jewel in HBO's original series crown (joining "OZ" and "Sex and the City"), posed several challenges for Casting Director Georgianne Walken and her partner, Sheila Jaffe. As Walken recalls, the contemporary tale of a New Jersey mob boss caught between personal and professional mid-life crises "was a New York project and we had to have New York actors, preferably Italian where indicated. The specificity of [creator-writer-producer] David Chase's character description was unusual, and so was looking for so many adult actors over 40.
"We began working in late '97 and David was actively involved in all the casting. We saw an enormous number of actors and I even discovered the Italian American Actors Union." Ninety percent of the predominately east coast cast members' names end in a vowel and several could play "Six Degrees" of Scorsese and Coppola with each other. From "Goodfellas" alone, "The Sopranos" ensemble includes Oscar-winner Lorraine Bracco, Michael Imperioli, Vincent Pastore, and Tony Sirico, while "The Godfather II" is represented by Dominic Chianese. James Gandolfini ("Get Shorty"), Edie Falco ("Copland"), Michael Rispoli ("Rounders"), John Ventimiglia ("Angela"), and Anthony DeSando ("Kiss Me Guido") round out the Italian contingent.
Notable among "The Sopranos" ' non-Italian cast regulars are four-time Emmy-winner Nancy Marchand (TV's "Lou Grant") and Stevie Van Zandt from The E Street Band (who attended the premiere with his "Boss" and " goomba" Bruce Springsteen). Van Zandt is one of Walken's casting coups: "Stevie hadn't really acted before," she explains, "but he's a natural as Silvio Dante"‹who entertains the "crew" with his Pacino/Godfather imitation. Upcoming episodes also promise John Heard as a corrupt cop and Jerry Adler as a Jewish gangster.
Old Tradition, New Twist
The glorification of outlaws is nothing new‹troubadours immortalized Robin Hood‹and for the last 70 years, movies have imprinted gangsters on our collective psyche, romanticizing real-life villains ("Al Capone," "Scarface"; 1931, 1983), while creating fictional composites like Francis Ford Coppola's classic screen versions of Mario Puzo's "The Godfather." The mob and its putative members invaded our homes as pop culture icons when "Wiseguys" began appearing on television. But TV has never before seen the likes of boss Tony Soprano and his two families‹the one involved in organized crime, some of whom are his relatives, and the one living in New Jersey, all of whom are his relatives. In the first episode, directed by Chase himself, anti-hero Tony says "the best is over...things are trending downwards," and he feels he got into the family "waste disposal" business too late. Is it any wonder Tony gets panic attacks and winds up seeing a psychiatrist (played by Bracco)? (Evidently, mobsters in therapy is an idea whose time has come‹"Analyse This," a New York comedy opening this spring, stars Robert DeNiro and Chazz Palminteri as two mugs under the care of shrink Billy Crystal.)
Riding the crest of rave reviews‹"TV's best new drama"/TV Guide; "...irresistibly winning concept" /The New York Times; "4****" /New York's Daily NewsChase ("Northern Exposure," "I'll Fly Away") has been singled out for special praise. "The Sopranos" is his most personal show‹he never actually lived in a quirky Alaskan town (since graduating from Stanford, he's lived in Los Angeles) and he wasn't part of the early Civil Rights movement in the South. But as a kid Chase did grow up in a small New Jersey town‹his grandfather "Americanized" the DeCesare family name before he was born‹and he's been a life-long fan of gangster movies from James Cagney in "Public Enemy" to everything Scorcese. "My thesis film was a gangster short," Chase tells Back Stage, laughing, "but it wasn't very good. With Tony Soprano, I wanted to expand on what we already knew about these guys‹to show the conflicts of both his family lives and get into his mental and spiritual side‹hell, I wanted to get into his soul!" Chase points out that Tony's predicament also speaks to the "dark zeitgeist" of the times worldwide, alluding to the current rise of Russian gangsters as an example.
Playing the role of Tony Soprano has also heaped critical praise on character actor Gandolfini (an American version of Gerard Depardieu), currently on the big screen in "A Civil Action." Back Stage spoke with him last November, at the tail end of the "Sopranos" shoot. Gandolfini began as a theatre actor, both Off-Off-Broadway and on ("A Streetcar Named Desire"), before Hollywood discovered his multiple talents. "I moved to Los Angeles for a year and a half to find work, but I like New York better," Gandolfini admits. "I grew up in New Jersey, about a half hour from where "Sopranos" is set, and so did David. I didn't really audition; we just had breakfast together and we talked and found we had a lot of things in common and that was it! His writing is so smart; it has so many levels and different situations‹the whole idea of a guy like Tony in therapy and taking Prozac and his relations with his mother and his children. It's written very close to life and that helps the acting, too. Of course, I'm not used to the pace of television, the number of pages of dialogue in a day with little or no rehearsal time, but you do the best you can."
And Gandolfini's best is astonishing! A single episode might find Tony treading the fine line between cruel mobster, concerned father, confused son, and even overly conscientious foster parent to a family of migrant ducks that breed in his pool. The actor is lavish in his praise of fellow cast members: "Lorraine, Edie,and Michael [Imperioli] are the best; Mike Rispoli and I worked together on "The Juror"; Dominic's a legend; Stevie's always in a good mood, and, of course, Nancy is the queen. But," he reveals, laughing, "she's got a mouth like a trooper, so she fits right in. Quite a few of our cast members have been in some quality independent films. I haven't been offered many indies," he notes, "and I'd like to do some, but not right now," he adds hastily. "I've been working steadily for two years and this shoot's been almost six months, with some 15-hour days, so I' m taking a little break, just checking out my options."
SUBHEAD: The Women
In her makeup chair, being de-wigged after a long day's shoot, Nancy Marchand fully embodies Gandolfini's earlier description, exclaiming, "They do treat me like a F‹-ing queen!" So how did Marchand, who's always played what she describes as "tasteful ladies," wind up as Livia, the dour, disapproving, reclusive, bathrobe-wearing matriarch of the Soprano family? "It was the one part they hadn't cast after looking on both coasts," Casting Director Walken remembers. "We all knew how wide Nancy's range is from her stage work, so she went in to read wearing no makeup and as David says, "Bang, she nailed it.' " Marchand laughs, gleefully agreeing, " I went in bare-faced and gave them a little jolt. It's such a meaty role‹remember Caligula's mother, Livia, in "I, Claudius?' The names are not just a coincidence," she reveals with a knowing smile. A dialogue sample: "I shoulda' kept my mouth shut like a mute, then everybody woulda' been happy."
But while her dialogue can be transcribed, Marchand's catalogue of scalding looks and withering glances must be seen to be appreciated. "I love to act," she confesses, "but I'm getting a little long in tooth for theatre." (She played the gawky girl opposite Rod Steiger in the original 1953 television version of Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty," and her most recent stage appearance was in '97, Off-Broadway, as Lady Bracknell in "The Importance of Being Earnest.") "I especially love the whole idea of doing something I've never done before; it's great fun. The days can run long, so I' m a bit relieved the shoot is almost over, but I certainly hope it gets picked up for another season."
So does Edie Falco, possibly the busiest of all the "Sopranos" cast members. "This is the best job I've ever had!" she enthuses, sitting in her two-room trailer parked outside Silvercup Studios in Astoria. "I've changed clothes in the back of a van on indie film shoots and I've been around the TV block, too." Before "OZ"‹in which she plays a tough female guard in an all-male prison‹she did a couple of pilots. "I played Marge Gunderson on the CBS "Fargo' pilot," Falco says, "so I learned never to start counting my eggs. Acting is what I've done my whole life and I have no other training to fall back on. I used to cut out audition notices from Back Stage and paste them in my little book, and I'd use those auditions for practice during years of waitressing and unemployment. Then here comes this fantastic script and we actually shoot it from June to November! Carmela is like a lot of women in my family‹caring, demonstrative, very supportive of her husband, but also judgmental. It's a strange situation; you want to sympathize with her but it's a little like "The Godfather' meets "Married With Children.' "
"Sopranos" actually came along at the highest point of Falco's career. Already a regular on "OZ," she had just created the role of Terry in Warren Leight's prizewinning play "Sideman," which moved‹twice‹from Off-Broadway to Broadway. "It was my fantasy that they'd push back the "Sideman move,' so I could do both‹the idea of saying "no' to work is so foreign to me‹but the way "Sopranos' shoots, with locations in New Jersey and interiors out here in Astoria, I had to give up going to Broadway with "Sideman,' in case I'd be stuck on the New Jersey turnpike at curtain time." Ironically, right after the shoot ended, she got a call saying that her replacement, Wendy Makenna, was pregnant; so Falco made her long-awaited Broadway debut the night after the "Sopranos" ' premiere. With her new film, "Judy Berlin," premiering at Sundance this month and the "OZ" series gearing up for more episodes, Falco is one very happy actress. "I have nothing to complain about; I'm having a career I could never have imagined."
The early Emmy buzz on "Sopranos" is phenomenal and a second season seems a sure thing. As creator David Chase told Back Stage, "When actors of this caliber work together in an ensemble, they find ways to enrich their characters. This show is best when dealing with the characters‹all the gang stuff is really just the background of their lives‹and there's so much more story to tell. You know, the networks loved the original pitch, but they got frightened off, finding the actual scripts "too dark and strange.' But now it's not just TV‹it's HBO!"
