The Sopranos Sessions

by Matt Zoller Seitz

  A: Were there thoughts of letting Ralphie keep his head through season five or six?

  D: No. I think it was enough with him. I remember Joey did a great job in the scene where he goes to the priest . . . I don’t mean just that scene, with the Rolling Stones lyric,11 but also when his son got hit with the arrow. That was like a different guy. It was a different actor. There was a tremendous amount of talent shown there. And I kind of felt that was the apex for that character. You remember that?

  A: Yeah. You feel great sympathy, and Tony’s put in this position where he has to be nice to the person he hates most in all the world, and he resents him for it—and then Pie-O-My dies and things go downhill.

  Going back to this idea of things being meant to be: when Tony’s beating Ralphie to death, he says, “She was a beautiful creature,” and later, in one of the final shots of the episode, Tony looking in the mirror, there’s Tracee’s photo taped to the mirror. How much of a clear line did you want to draw for the audience between “University” and this episode, and how much did you want them to think “This is about Tracee” versus “This is about the horse”?

  D: I don’t know, but I wanted to draw a line, and if people hadn’t seen it, I would’ve felt that I failed. And probably a lot of people didn’t see the line. If I really wanted, I would’ve [had Tony say], “Tracee was a beautiful creature,” but I didn’t do that, because I don’t think Tony knew what he was doing at that point.

  A: Did Ralphie burn down the stable?

  D: No.

  M: Wow. I never even considered that he didn’t burn it down.

  D: What did I tell Joey? Wait . . .

  I take that back! I think he did burn it down. That was the intention.

  A: That he did burn it down? Okay.

  D: The goat was in there, right?

  A: The goat made it out. When Tony looks at the corpse of Pie-O-My, you see the goat wandering around.

  D: Because it’s Joey and Satan, and Joey in the scene with the priest when he’s quoting Satanic lyrics, and then the goat—so yes, Ralphie definitely did it.

  M: Wow, this episode’s like a devil festival!

  D: You never got the devil thing with the goat?

  M: I never put it all together like that, no!

  D: The goat symbolism was definitely there in this episode, and Ralphie as Satan.

  M: Are you a religious person? Do you think there’s a God, a Heaven, a Hell, and all of that, like in the traditional Catholic way these characters would experience it?

  D: No, I don’t think there’s a Heaven and a Hell. It’s my hope that there’s something else, but I’m not comfortable talking about this. However, I will say that I’m very interested in religion. I’m interested in the stories, in human behavior as depicted in the Bible, ways in and out of human predicaments. I’m interested in this idea that people bottom out, and that’s when they go to God. It’s the Fundamentalist idea of it: you’ll come to Him when you’re down and out.

  A: The show features a number of clerical characters throughout the years: Father Phil, the immigrant priest Carmela goes to who tells her to “live on the good part” of what Tony earns, the Hasidic Jews in episode two, and when Christopher gets shot in season two, he has this vision of Hell.

  M: Theology students find this show interesting, I’ve learned.

  D: I didn’t know that! Why?

  M: Because they see strong religious and spiritual dimensions.

  D: Well, before I even started writing the show, when HBO said they wanted to do it and I was thinking about it, I thought to myself, “Maybe Tony becomes a Buddhist.” And I thought it was absurd, so I forgot about it. But I guess it kept pushing itself forward. The Ojibwe saying, “Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky” comes from a book I’d read, The Snow Leopard.12 I had read it and that made a big impression on me for that season, whichever one it was. It’s by Peter Matthiessen, who takes a trip to Nepal with a friend of his to look for the snow leopard, and it’s really all about Zen Buddhism. The Ojibwe quote and the other quotes I think we used comes from there.

  A: And then Kevin Finnerty gets slapped by a monk!

  D: I read in some book about Buddhism that a monk slapped a disciple like, “Wake up. Be here now.” That’s what that moment was really about.

  I’m searching for something. That’s what’s really going on here. That’s all I can really say.

  A: That episode is trailblazing in another way—you spend almost half of it dismembering and disposing of Ralphie, which has become a thing on TV now. What was interesting to you about showing the aftermath of his murder in that much detail in this particular case?

  D: I just thought it was an interesting ride to be with those two guys at night. You know, we had to go all the way to Pennsylvania to find the quarry. Growing up in New Jersey, I remember going swimming in quarries, and there weren’t any, but I just thought—look, I just loved Christopher, for one thing. I loved his scenes with Paulie, with Tony, and that was an extended Tony–Christopher thing, so I was just delighted by that.

  A: You said you loved writing for Christopher. This season has a lot of him, and Adriana as well.

  D: I also loved writing her, too.

  A: That was a small role that we’ve talked about: she was just an extra in the pilot, then she came back in and you made the character Christopher’s girlfriend. But I never anticipated Drea being able to do all the things she did over the course of seasons four and five. She goes from a small character who’s eye candy for Christopher to one of the most tragic characters on the show.

  D: And one of the most beloved.

  A: How did you figure out that you could give her more?

  D: I suppose we needed someone to deliver a line of exposition, and we’d think, “How are we going to get someone to deliver this line? Okay, well, Adriana’s in the room, give it to her. It can’t be this guy, because he’s in Cleveland—give it to Adriana.” Every little thing she did, she did really well. So her body of work, as it were, grew.

  She was extraordinary. Drea was really good. Very professional. Could really take direction and modulate a performance. Terrific. In season one, “A Hit Is a Hit,” that was the first one that she really featured heavily in, and I told her, “You’re gonna be a star,” and she was.

  A: The idea of the FBI putting Adriana in a vise—do you recall how that came up in the first place?

  D: It came from our research, that they approached wives and girlfriends and convinced them they’re doing a good thing if they rat the boyfriend out, so they always did it for the guy.

  A: Let’s talk about the FBI on this show. They’re not very competent over the run of the series. Most of their informants either die or just don’t give them anything useful. Was it just a matter of plot convenience—like if the FBI was actually good at their job, it makes telling the stories harder? Or did you just have a feeling that this was actually how it would be for a guy like Tony?

  D: Well, you know, we had FBI guys who were consultants. We got all that stuff from them, and they weren’t shy about the agency’s failings.

  My feeling is that it’s a never-ending battle against crime and corruption, and I was pointing that out. On and on it went, and they were both playing this strange game together. And then, when terrorism hit, that was a great thing for the Mob, because then Tony seemed like the best thing on earth compared to those guys!

  M: Is the sheer number of informants on The Sopranos reflective of how things actually are in organized crime?

  D: We were told they were all informants. I mean, obviously that’s an exaggeration to say they’re all informants, but a large percentage of them are. They’re informing so they don’t get busted, so they don’t go to jail.

  A: Let’s talk about Paulie this season. There was going to be an arc where he was actively working against Tony with Johnny Sack, but then Tony Sirico had to have back surgery and you couldn’t do it. Do
you remember much about how the season would’ve gone if Sirico had been more available?

  D: We hadn’t gotten that far. He had to go do that pretty early on. I had written that entire story chart, and I remember it was devastating when I heard about the surgery, because first Nancy went, and then in very short order, Tony got sick and couldn’t do what he was supposed to. So it was really tough.

  A: The season builds as Johnny tries to get Tony to team up with him to take on Carmine because he’s mad Carmine Jr. has returned and is usurping him—but nothing happens. Tony says that it’s too much trouble, let’s not do it. He pretty much comes out and says, “we’re anticlimaxing.” Why?

  D: Failure of imagination. [Laughs] We were having troubles, too. I was off dealing with some kinds of problems when Robin and Mitch were off writing “Whitecaps,” and it was taking a lot of attention and a lot of my thought process as we went into that episode. . . . By the time we got to “Calling All Cars,” we were in a little bit of trouble. I think we were tired, and we’d written all the other episodes, and we didn’t really have anything good for that one. It might’ve been one of the ones Paulie was supposed to be big in and then he wasn’t. Doing dreams that much, I think, was a gamble—doing that much of a dream thing. And I think we were kind of written out, and people were tired, and I think I was already looking forward to “Whitecaps,” because it was one I was supposed to write myself, and I wasn’t focused as much on the others, although I wrote a lot of “Calling All Cars.”

  A: In that episode, the title comes from the fact that Tony’s quit therapy and Melfi puts in the red alert call to Elliot. What was it like doing at least half a season of the show without that relationship?

  D: I don’t think the show suffered at all. I think it was interesting without it. I think the reason we stopped it is because that trope was getting to be a little bit tired: “How much longer is this gangster gonna keep going to this psychiatrist?”

  A: Did you give any thought to her not coming back?

  D: Yes.

  A: What made you decide you didn’t want to lose her?

  D: An entanglement of personal feelings and the needs of the show.

  M: What were the needs of the show? People just liked her and would have complained if she got cut? Or something else?

  D: Maybe Tony was changing. Maybe that’s what it was. And I needed to have somebody to take us through that.

  See, I say that Tony was changing, and I agree with that. But I don’t agree when people say, “Tony got darker and darker.”

  What do you guys think? Do you think Tony got darker and darker?

  A: I think some of his behavior is worse at the end. He does things that he wouldn’t have done early on. In “Irregular Around the Margins,” I think he would’ve had sex with Adriana if Phil Leotardo hadn’t knocked on the door, for instance, which is not something he might’ve done at the beginning of the show. In season six, the stuff with Hesh in “Chasing It”—there’s a scene in season one where he goes out of his way to pay Hesh money he’s owed and is so happy to do it, but by the end of the show, he’s thinking about whacking Hesh just to get out of having to pay him.

  M: And this is a big one for me: Do you think the Tony of season one would’ve casually murdered Christopher? I mean, I know there’s obviously plot circumstances contributing to that, but to me, that was like—I thought I couldn’t be shocked anymore, but that shocked me, because he was seizing an opportunity.

  D: It wasn’t just an opportunity, though; it was something he felt had to be done. It’s true that the Tony of season one wouldn’t have murdered Christopher. But was season six Christopher the same guy as he was in season one? He’s an endless junkie with all his bullshit and all his sensitivities who knows a lot more about the Family business than he did in season one. By that point, Tony has a lot more to lose.

  M: How do you think Tony changed over the course of the show?

  D: He was sharper, smarter, more experienced. He was a better gang boss. I think raising his children had made things difficult. I think he’d learned a lot from raising them. I think Tony was getting a different view of human nature.

  And I hate to say this, but maybe he was less good-humored, which does happen as life goes on, by and large. As I recall it, Tony seemed to have less fun. Jim brought a lot of fun to that character, a lot of teasing, ballbusting fun. That wicked smile. Tony was more serious, I think, as time went on.

  A: Was that you making it more serious, or Jim?

  D: Maybe both.

  A: Physically, Jim got bigger. You watch the Tony in the credits versus the Tony who stumbles out of the woods like the bear—

  D: Tony, in the pilot, is a kid. He was very young! You didn’t question it at the time, I guess, because it was all right. But he was a much older man near the end.

  A: One of the things I noticed that’s much clearer in the sound design of later seasons—you hear Tony breathing a lot!

  D: That wasn’t intentional. That was just him breathing.

  A: A casting question: at the end of season three, we first meet Agent Deborah Ciccerone, and she’s played by Fairuza Balk. The show comes back and she’s played by Lola Glaudini. Not only did you recast her, but you did something I don’t think you did with any other instance of recasting: you went back and reshot the one scene with her in season three, so anyone who watches the show now only sees Lola. Why was this instance different than some of the others, like when Paul Schulze replaced Michael Santoro as Father Phil after the pilot?

  D: Because by then we could afford to do it. I could make HBO pay for it.

  A: Did you ever have the temptation to get some more HBO money go full George Lucas and be like, “Let’s go back and reshoot all the things I didn’t like, like CGI Livia”?

  D: I wish we could’ve done that! We never did, though.

  A: The one other thing we need to talk about in season four is “Christopher.” How do you feel about that episode?

  D: Not our strongest, but I have a lot of personal feelings attached to it. You know, from my days on The Rockford Files, I was stung by that stuff. We had to call gangsters “Mr. Anderson,” you know? And “Joey Olsen.” I was just really, really tired of the hypocrisy of all those anti-Italian anti-defamation [accusations], and I was tired of the fact that our people weren’t allowed to march in Columbus Day parades13 or be involved in various charities, which I thought was really the worst. So however “Christopher” went down, I felt I had accomplished my point.

  Do I think it’s a good episode? There’s funny stuff in it, good stuff.

  A: The last scene with Tony and Silvio in the car arguing about Frankie Valli is great. I wonder what it would be like though, because Terry told me something which I assumed was the case, which was that it was going to be a Paulie episode, because he was always the one stuck up on cultural pride, but Tony Sirico was off having surgery so it became a Silvio episode.

  D: Yeah, and it’s really not a Silvio issue.

  M: It doesn’t seem like something he’d obsess over.

  D: No, and when it blends in with what you know about Stevie Van Zandt, who was involved in South Africa and all that,14 you can’t help having that influence you.

  M: If I say, “Season four of The Sopranos” to you, what’s the first thing you think of?

  D: What the hell is that? [Laughs]

  Session Five:

  “There was no plan B.”

  Adriana goes into the woods, the Class of 2004 causes trouble, and Tony has a long dream.

  [Chase sits down and immediately wants to address the end of the prior interview]

  DAVID: There was an important thing that happened [at the end of season four], which is that I thought I had more to give The Sopranos. I wasn’t ready to give up. I was feeling really good, and I wanted to keep doing it.

  ALAN: Was it before, during, or after season five that Chris Albrecht said to start thinking about wrapping things up? And did his directive factor into t
he plotting of season five?

  D: I think it did, yeah. We would do two more seasons. At the end of season four, I felt I had two more seasons in me.15

  A: How was writing the show and telling these stories different without Carmela and Melfi in Tony’s life as much? Did the show feel different to you?

  D: No, it didn’t feel different. Of course it was different having him not live in the house, but the work on the show wasn’t different.

  A: Did you ever consider a version where Carmela did not take him back?

  D: I don’t believe we did. They were just really good together, and that relationship just really interested me. And I wanted to see more of it. I wanted to see more of what it was like after the breakup. Turns out it wasn’t that much different!

  A: One of the things that has been common to a lot of the shows that have followed is this idea that there’s a male antihero at the center of it, and there’s a wife whose actions are not as objectionably bad as her husband’s, but the wife turns into the audience’s punching bag and they hate her for standing up to her husband. My recollection is that Edie and Carmela did not get nearly as much of that reaction as others.

  D: No, they didn’t.

  A: What immunized Carmela?

  D: Carmela was strong, she was tough. She seemed highly intelligent. Something also tells me it had something to do with Edie being a superb actress. So it was . . . all the little details.

  A: Why did you make Mr. Wegler Carmela’s first sex partner after Tony?

  D: Well, I think she had this desire to be an intellectual. She had the book club and the movie club and all that. And Mr. Wegler was so different from Tony, who has read Sun Tzu, or claims to have.

  A: Carmela thinks she’s going to have this affair with this guy, but at a certain point he starts judging her as the Mob wife who’s using him, and then she realizes, “No matter where I go, people will always assume this of me,” and that starts her on the path back to Tony.

  D: That’s a bleak storyline. That she wouldn’t be accepted as herself or as a regular person, she’d always be identified with this Mob thing, which has a lot to do with her finally reconciling to herself that she has no choice.