The Sopranos Sessions

by Matt Zoller Seitz

  D: Here’s mine: I’m going to direct something, and people say to me, “Are you prepared to shoot scene forty-two?” and I say “Yeah, yeah.” Have you storyboarded it? “No, I don’t need to.” “Do you have a shot list?” “It’s not that big of a deal. I don’t need to shot-list it,” there’s a lot of that. Then, the day comes when I’m supposed to shoot it, and the truth is I’ve never even read the scene! I’m on set, and I kind of know what’s in the scene, it’s the first time I’ve heard about it, and I have no idea, and I’m in no way prepared!

  A: You’d used dreams before on the show, but you’d never done something on the level of “The Test Dream.” Had you been itching to do something like that before?

  D: There are a couple things I always wanted to do. One was to do an entire episode that was basically all dreams. It doesn’t really have a Luis Buñuelian20 feel to it at all, but Buñuel was one of my inspirations. The other thing I wanted to do was do an entire episode in the psychiatrist’s office with Tony and Melfi, which I decided to never do. I just don’t think it would have worked. People would’ve gotten bored.

  A: The dreams ride a delicate line between abstract imagery you can interpret however you want, and literal imagery that has to tell Tony something important, and that the audience can understand enough of to justify the journey. How do you figure out where that line is, and how much info has to be comprehensible in each of these dreams?

  D: You just go by what’s an entertaining storyline. You just feel your way through it. If it feels thrilling to you, then you do it. There’s ideas you get that are good, and some that are thrilling.

  A lot of the questions you guys ask is, “Why’d you do this? How’d this come to be?” But often, the answer is, “Merely to try it.” That’s why I was very lucky to be a part of that show. I had a lab. I knew that I was in a fortunate position, and that was part of what made me want to stick with the show. I just knew that the particular place we held in the culture was enough, and HBO economically strong enough, that I was probably going to get to do whatever I wanted to do, and that just doesn’t happen very often.

  Now, I’m sure people in the audience go, “Fuck you! What are we, lab rats?” But nothing goes forward unless people try things!

  Matt Weiner wrote that one. I don’t think he was too happy about getting the assignment.

  M: Why not?

  D: It’s hard! It’s really hard not to know what’s real and what isn’t in the show, and to write stuff that feels real but isn’t. Separating that is really difficult. What episode number was that, eleven?

  A: Yes, right before “Long Term Parking.”

  D: I think it probably came about out of desperation. We were running out of ideas.

  A: Meadow and Finn’s argument about the suitcase in “Unidentified Black Males” doesn’t consume as much of the episode as “Test Dream,” but it’s an argument that goes and goes and goes.

  D: It became more difficult writing for Meadow as time went on. She wasn’t a teenager anymore, and teenagers—you can hit tropes with them that always seem okay. But when she went to Columbia, I don’t know. What was she really doing there? Did you really believe she was there? All those thoughts went through my mind.

  The suitcase scene came about because Denise and I got married very young, and this was the way we used to fight. It was exactly like that: late at night, and I would be exhausted, all I wanted to do was go to bed, and I’d agree on anything. I just wanted to go to sleep! We never had a suitcase fight, but that was the kind of thing. “But you took out a suitcase!” “I know, but it doesn’t mean . . .” and it would go on until five o’clock in the morning! And apologizing wasn’t good enough.

  M: I wanted to ask you about immigrants, the episode where Tony B is staked in his massage parlor venture by his Korean boss, Mr. Kim. There are a lot of immigrants in this show. Obviously, the Italian Americans, but you’ve also got Poles, Russians, Koreans . . . what’s the fascination, and how does it tie in with these larger themes of people trying to change who they are?

  D: Well, it’s a show about America, and I was just overjoyed to be able to show that. It seemed to me at that time, if you wanted to do a garage mechanic, on a network show, that character would not be an Indian guy. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe they would’ve been fine with it, but I just never felt they would’ve been. And I just loved the diversity of New York and New Jersey, and being here, having Pakistani guys behind the gas pump, and auto mechanics, I just loved the diversity part of it. That simple. And The Sopranos itself is an immigrant story.

  A: You didn’t win the best drama series Emmy until season five. Do you feel like you should’ve gotten it sooner?

  D: Yeah, I did. To tell you the truth, I think there was a lot of jealousy. I think there was a lot of moral posturing. I think there was a lot of anti–New York sentiment, you know—Writers Guild East and Writers Guild West, all that stuff. That tension doesn’t exist anymore, as far as I know. But it was all those things.

  They thought the DPs [directors of photography] from New York couldn’t be as good as the ones from Los Angeles. Our DPs got screwed. They were so good, and they never got anything. I thought the fact that our title sequence never got anything—come on! At that time, it was really revolutionary! I’ve thought a lot about that.

  I think there was probably a certain amount of . . . Puritanism, also. I mean, look what TV had been like. It was so vanilla. All of a sudden, the Academy is being asked to give an award to something that was not. At that time, I actually thought we never should have gotten the Emmy. I thought, “This show is an outlaw show and should stay an outlaw show.”

  One time I wasn’t going to go, the year of 9/11. I wasn’t going to go because of 9/11, but also this other thing, and I told [then–HBO CEO] Jeff Bewkes I wasn’t going to go, and he gave me a lecture. He said, “Part of your job is showing up at these things!” [Laughs]

  Session Six:

  “Fuck you guys.”

  In which a conversation about the penultimate season takes a very unexpected turn into Holsten’s.

  MATT: You see this batch of episodes, from “Members Only” through “Kaisha,” as being a complete, stand-alone season?

  DAVID: Yes.

  ALAN: And the other nine are its own separate thing?

  D: Yes. Seven seasons.

  A: But contractually, it was considered one season to avoid giving too many people raises?

  D: That’s exactly right. The actors, specifically.

  M: What did having Junior shoot Tony do for the story, for Tony, for Junior? What did that give you as a writer?

  D: Well, it gave us a whole other look at Tony, and a whole bunch of different stories that we never would’ve had. I think the best thing to come out of it was the two shows about the alternate universe, or whatever you want to call it, though I shouldn’t call it that. [Laughs] It’s not a dream, but I guess you could actually say the alternate universe. . . . I was really proud of those two episodes. We never would’ve had anything like that, obviously. They also gave us a lot of Junior, which I always liked.

  It came about because our friend and director John Patterson was sick with cancer, and he was dying. He told Denise and I, or his daughter told us, that he was brought to Cedars-Sinai hospital and he was making these big statements from the show: “Where am I? Who am I? Where am I going?” That’s what brought the whole thing about. That’s where we got the idea.

  I’d read The Snow Leopard, so a lot of things from that book are in those episodes, like the monks and the Ojibwe saying.

  A: If you look at the saying, it’s almost a fancy way of saying “Poor you.”

  D: Yes, it is. [But] I took it as a very . . . inspiring, supportive statement, not so much “poor you,” but the fact that there is some force carrying me across the sky. I really liked that thought. And in our house in France, when I was reading that book, we had a cliff on our property that was about, I don’t know, 200 feet above the river. It was the
top of a mountain or something, and all these nice breezes were coming back and forth. It was like country, the woods. The combination of those two things was very pungent for me.

  A: You follow the arc of Tony being shot and recovering in the hospital with the wedding of Allegra Sacrimoni, which is maybe the most overtly Godfather-flavored episode you ever did.

  D: Usually we did funerals, this time we did a wedding. Johnny breaking down and crying was very interesting to me. I like that character, and I thought Vince was very good. And just this image of power that he was trying to exert, spending all that money on the wedding; “half a rock,” as Tony called it.

  A: When Johnny Sack breaks down crying, that is essentially the end of Johnny as the boss of New York. Was it just you needing to move him out of the way because he and Tony got along a little too well and the war with New York had to happen, or did you feel you’d just used up the character?

  D: We’d just used him up. Maybe they were too close, in a way? I thought it would be harder for Tony to have a warm relationship with Phil.

  A: Before Junior shoots Tony, the bulk of the premiere is a Eugene Pontecorvo short story, which puts a spotlight on Robert Funaro. Here’s someone who’s been around since season three but you haven’t done a whole lot with. Now you’re building the premiere of your penultimate season around this guy.

  D: It just seemed like a natural to me. He’s a good actor, Bobby [Funaro].

  M: Eugene and his wife come into this inheritance and have the chance to go to Florida, and he basically asks, “Hey, can I get out of this thing?” Would a mobster really ask that? Wouldn’t he know the answer would be no? Or is he just going for broke?

  D: I don’t think so. I’ve heard since then that there are guys who have left, retired.

  M: Then you have Vito, which is a more elaborate working-through of an idea of a guy who realizes this life is not for him anymore and wants out.

  A: Vito’s Dartford storyline really begins in “Unidentified Black Males,” where we find out Vito is gay. That was Joe Gannascoli’s idea. How often did actors pitch stories to you?

  D: Never.

  A: That was the only time that happened?

  D: Probably not the only time, but it happened very seldom. I had read . . . maybe in the Star-Ledger, about a gangster who was potentially or probably gay, something like that, and it just interested me because gayness is not what they usually are projecting. And also, I often felt about that culture that there is something very feminine about it. These guys hang around all day cooking and playing cards, gossiping, like fifteen-year-old girls. I often felt that aspect was very strong, and I wondered what it meant. So when Joe came through with that, I thought, “Let’s explore that.”

  A: It’s so completely unlike anything the show had done before. How did you shape the story of Vito, and what was the response like from the writers, actors, everybody?

  D: Well, I remember Tony Sirico wasn’t crazy about it. [Laughs]

  M: So, his distress in those scenes where he’s complaining about Vito is not really acting?

  D: Not really, no. It’s a tough question to answer because, how can I put this . . . there were certain tensions on that set, and certain people were liked more than others. I don’t think that character’s arc helped Joe Gannascoli with his popularity on set, maybe also because he brought that story to us.

  M: So, there was resentment of pulling him deep off the bench and giving him something to do?

  D: Yeah, I think that had a lot to do with it.

  A: There was a lot of negative response about the storyline set in Dartford. Do you think that’s just a case of there being a certain flavor of Sopranos viewers who are just not going to be interested in that story no matter how you tell it?

  D: I think that audiences didn’t find Vito a compelling character, no matter what he did. They’d say like, “Who cares about this guy?” If we’d done it with Paulie or Silvio, it would’ve probably been a whole different thing.

  M: Oh my God, if Paulie realized he was gay, Tony Sirico would have an Emmy! [Laughter]

  D: He probably would’ve quit!

  M: “I’m feeling strange feelings, T.”

  A: Did Tony ever object to stories you gave him?

  D: Do you remember the one about three o’clock?

  A: Yeah, “From Where to Eternity,” when Christopher’s in the hospital.

  D: He was concerned about his hair being messed up. He didn’t want to wake up and have his hair be all astray. That was the limit! [Laughs] I think Tony really grew. I think he really grew into the things he would and wouldn’t do. And I think he grew about things in life, too, like, what was going on on the set, or in the story. What it took to play that, what it meant, I think all that was important to him. He wasn’t saying as many things like, “I’m not gonna do that,” or “I’m not gonna play that scene with that guy.” He was all in.

  A: Tell us about Robert Iler’s growth as an actor, and what was interesting about this particular moment of AJ’s life that you chronicled over these final two seasons.

  D: He was becoming a man, but you can tell me, people just didn’t like that kid, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know why. He was not an empowered teenager like they’re usually portrayed nowadays. They hated AJ, and I thought he was a really good, confused, young person.

  A: He goes through such a transformation as he keeps trying on these identities and forgetting about them. Every couple episodes it’s a new AJ. It’s a very volatile time in his life.

  D: Think about that kid’s parenting, his upbringing! His father is a depressed gangster! That’s not even to talk about the DNA part of it! I never understood why they were so down on him.

  A: I think people didn’t like that he seemed weak. As we’ve talked about, there was a part of the audience that liked Tony, and liked watching him go in and kick ass and take names, and he’s got this son who’s very realistically portrayed as confused and whiny.

  D: I think Anthony takes after Tony more. If you talk about being weak, you could make the case that Tony Soprano is a big baby.

  M: He certainly does assume an absolute worst-case scenario whenever he doesn’t get what he wants, like his mom. They’re both willing to climb up on the cross and nail themselves to it immediately.

  D: Like his creator, actually. I always think of the worst-case scenario. [Laughs] I do!

  A: Going back to the “Seven Souls” montage, it ends with Adriana in the spec house, and as we’ve talked about, there were all these people saying, “We didn’t see her die on camera! Maybe she’s still alive!” Was that inspired in any way—

  D: By the fact that people refused to believe she was dead? No.

  A: You’ve had ghosts visit characters before. Adriana comes in at the very beginning of the season, and then again when Roe and Carmela visit Paris.

  M: She visits Carmela twice. It’s interesting. Carmela obviously feels very guilty about her.

  D: Carmela must know on some level, I think, what Tony did.

  M: Where did the Paris trip come from? What was accomplished by doing that?

  D: My favorite thing about that is when she sees the Eiffel Tower and it’s like the thing Tony saw [in his coma]. I gotta be honest, I loved that. Why did she go to Paris? Originally, she was going to go to Rome. I think she was going to go with somebody . . .

  A: Back in season two.21

  D: She’s a suffering person, and how much fun did Carmela have? It just seemed like going to Paris was something she would want to do. She’s seeing people who have no idea who Tony Soprano is, who she is, about where New Jersey is, about the Mafia. It’s a whole other world.

  M: What role has Paris played in your life?

  D: My connection to Paris starts with Casablanca. I probably saw it for the first time when I was in my early twenties, and it was not the kind of movie I would’ve been interested in before then, because it was a romance. Denise’s mother was French, and she spoke really good Fr
ench. We used to go to French films all the time, like Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, all those guys, you name it. I just loved those movies. They were really special to us. And those guys loved Paris, so they made it look really lovable.

  So, in 1977, we went to Paris for the first time, and it was the first time either of us had been out of this country. And I don’t know about you, but when I got there, I said to myself, “I’ve been to this place before. I don’t know this city, but I’ve been here before.” It reminded me of New York, which it isn’t like at all except maybe some of the architecture a little bit. We were just crazy about it. Then we wanted to buy a house in France, and people would ask, “Why not Italy?” and I’d say, “We love France more, her mother was French, and blah blah blah.”

  Carmela’s feelings about Paris are my feelings about Paris. For Carmela to be in a place that goes back two thousand years would be a real eye-opener, and that’s what it does for her. Travel expands your horizons. There’s a reason Paris is, or was, the number one destination in the world. I also feel it’s a very feminine city.

  M: When Carm talks to Roe, there’s a scene that really jumped out at me, which is when she talks about that sense of history. It was very moving to me when I watched the scene again for this book. I don’t remember being so taken by it the first time. I guess maybe because I’m older now, her line about how all this just washes away . . . she’s really torn up by this. I thought about the ending of the show, and this idea that life is precious and can be taken from us at any moment. I don’t know if I’m reaching here—

  D: I don’t think you are. That’s what she said, right? “But in the end it just gets washed away. All of it just—just gets washed away.” And it washes away more here than it does there. I mean, you know what it’s like in the United States, when a building gets too old, they knock it down. They don’t do that in Paris.

  What did you guys think of “Cold Stones”?

  M: When Vito is leaving New Hampshire and going back to New York I felt this dread in the pit of my stomach, because I knew the first time I watched the episode that he wouldn’t make it out, but this time I knew how he died, and I felt so bad for him, knowing what was coming. I felt bad for everybody this season.