Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos 1x1

1. - Rolling. - Rolling.

2. And action.

3. Mr. Soprano?

4. Yeah.

5. Have a seat.

6. Okay.

7. Can you recall what your first memory was?

8. Your actual first memory?

9. My actual first memory is a dream.

10. I guess my mother had these.

11. It's like a metal kind of a thing with a curlicue.

12. The hand comes out from the wall and you can hang a plant from it.

13. I was swinging from that thing.

14. That is my first memory, actually.

15. It really impressed me.

16. Maybe it was the first time I remember a dream

17. and I was going, "Wow, what was that?

18. What the hell's going on in my head?"

19. You know, it's funny how much I've forgotten.

20. When people remind me of things.

21. That make me laugh. Like, I don't remember.

22. I don't remember doing that, or I don't remember... but yeah.

23. Cut!

24. I was born in Mount Vernon, New York, right near the Bronx.

25. Then we moved to Jersey when I was four.

26. My mother's family was from Jersey.

27. We moved to my aunt's house in Boonton,

28. Revolutionary War town.

29. You can still see where the furnaces were.

30. They made musket balls. There's a river that goes through it.

31. That's the town we used

32. when the character Vito went to New Hampshire.

33. And I loved that town. It was so mysterious.

34. I loved going into New York at Christmas.

35. Rockefeller Center, the tree, the whole thing blew my mind.

36. Huge toy department. Santa. Trains.

37. - You were on my lap five minutes ago. - No, I wasn't.

38. Yes, you were.

39. Now you're going on Santa's List and getting nothing!

40. Fuck you, Santa!

41. My father, I started begging him,

42. could we please go home down the West Side Highway?

43. Because to the Lincoln Tunnel, there were ships in the harbor

44. that the prow of the ship was, like, over the road.

45. I couldn't get over it. I wanted to see that.

46. I loved going through the Meadowlands.

47. There's all these legends that Jimmy Hoffa is buried out there.

48. Pennsylvania Station, all that rubble was out there.

49. That's where The Sopranos, we shot a lot of it there.

50. But anyway, we moved out of my aunt's house

51. to Clifton, New Jersey, kind of working-class,

52. larger kind of semi-city, then moved to West Essex.

53. My father got this idea to open a hardware store.

54. Next door was a Chinese restaurant.

55. See these Chinese guys plucking chickens down there.

56. My parents weren't that fond of the whole deal.

57. They liked Chinese food, but didn't like being close

58. to the Chinese restaurant.

59. They sold that hardware store and they bought

60. a Main Street hardware store in a small town.

61. My father worked really hard

62. and they never got out from behind the eight ball.

63. They were in business for 35, 40 years.

64. It was killing them, but they kept going.

65. They kept going.

66. Until my father was sick and the whole thing sold

67. for $1,300 at a sheriff's auction.

68. Whole life.

69. They just were not happy people.

70. My mother was very difficult, but she functioned.

71. She worked, came home, made us dinner,

72. but she was terrified and angry at everybody.

73. You know, somebody called here last night.

74. After dark.

75. Who?

76. You think I'd answer? It was dark out.

77. And she was given to having screaming nightmares.

78. Her family had ten girls and two boys.

79. Parents had come over from Italy, lived in Newark,

80. which was a big Italian, big immigrant community.

81. We used to go down every Saturday night for dinner.

82. They spoke no English.

83. And her father, my grandfather, Vito Bucco,

84. he never learned English. He refused.

85. Not a nice guy.

86. Did you feel unappreciated by her?

87. - My mother? - Yeah.

88. She had so many negative things to say about me.

89. Very complex. My father too.

90. It was very strange.

91. I mean, appreciated...

92. One time we were in the car with my mother and father

93. and my cousin Johnny. I forget what song was playing,

94. but I was tapping along with it.

95. He said, "He should be playing the drums.

96. He's got a good sense of rhythm."

97. She said, "Over my dead body.

98. That Gene Krupa was a drug addict!"

99. Speaking of crystal meth, look at this wayo.

100. I did not feel appreciated,

101. that would never have come into my mind.

102. Were you scared of her?

103. Were you scared that she would explode?

104. Stop telling me how to live my life. You just shut up.

105. I am nervous. As a kid, I was fearful.

106. And then I became kind of a punk.

107. And that saved my life in a way.

108. I fell in with this group of guys.

109. Holy shit.

110. Bullies, wiseguys.

111. We got into switchblades, leather armbands, cigarettes.

112. We got our driver's licenses,

113. it was all about cars and girls and alcohol.

114. The drinking age in New York was 18, Jersey was 21.

115. So we were constantly going there.

116. Upper East Side was kind of hip then, and then the Village.

117. I remember coming back from Manhattan,

118. and it was a car full of greasers next to us,

119. and we started cursing at each other and somehow scaling plates.

120. Somebody's mother's plates, I guess. You know...

121. This is in the Lincoln Tunnel. All of us were drunk.

122. 1964, I go to college down South,

123. Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

124. - Hated it. - Why?

125. You're going to cut this.

126. Yeah, it was the South.

127. The Klan was really active around where we were.

128. The big fraternity on campus was inspired by Robert E. Lee.

129. It was a Baptist school. Had to go to chapel twice a week.

130. No drinking, no dancing, no card playing.

131. So why did I go there? I got rejected at Princeton.

132. I got rejected at Dartmouth.

133. My best friend was going to Wake Forest.

134. Because he was going there, I went there.

135. And we both were miserable.

136. But fortunately, someone started foreign film night.

137. That's where I saw Godard, Bergman,

138. Fellini, La Dolce Vita...

139. Marcello, come here!

140. Hurry up.

141. 81/2, just, I don't even think I understood it.

142. I don't even think I knew what a film director was.

143. But it just blew my mind.

144. A whole new universe.

145. I left Wake Forest and went to NYU,

146. and I saw Cul-de-sac by Roman Polanski.

147. That's when I started thinking,

148. "Maybe I could do that."

149. It was the art of it that was so engaging.

150. That's it.

151. October of 1965, my friend was going to Bard College.

152. I went up there to take acid. That was my first time.

153. I remember being on the banks of the Hudson River,

154. two o'clock in the morning, and I started saying,

155. "I want to make movies."

156. That was when the idea first occurred to me, like,

157. actually pursue this somehow.

158. - Take your mark. - And action.

159. Hey, Tony.

160. - You okay? - How are you doing?

161. - Are you okay, David? - Yeah.

162. Yeah, I'm just talking my fucking head off.

163. I can't believe it.

164. Just talking too much.

165. - No, man. It's good. - No, it's not.

166. I really regret the amount of fucking verbiage from this morning.

167. Seriously, I don't know about this. Who gives a shit?

168. - All these personal questions. - People will give a shit.

169. It's like, as Tony says...

170. Remember when is the lowest form of conversation.

171. And I would leave now,

172. but I see what you've done, all this stuff.

173. And, yeah, it was a round office.

174. It looks a lot like it.

175. I did say I'd do this.

176. But what I said was,

177. "Yeah, I'll be part of this Sopranos documentary."

178. But I didn't realize it was going to be about me.

179. Let me explain a little bit, which is that

180. part of what interests me about The Sopranos

181. was how it was personal to you.

182. That you had an idea,

183. which was an amalgam of a lot of things

184. that you had lived through, thought about.

185. Well, for years, everybody told me

186. that I had to write something about my mother.

187. She was so out there and so funny.

188. My wife, Denise, was the first one to say that.

189. And then everybody was saying,

190. "You gotta write something about your mother."

191. In like '88, I was looking for a job,

192. and David Chase had a new show.

193. It was called Almost Grown, and he wanted to meet writers.

194. So I met with David on Ventura Boulevard,

195. some restaurant.

196. I got there first, of course, and I see him coming in the door.

197. I think, "Fuck." He just looked so dour.

198. You know what I mean? He looked so miserable.

199. And he sat down, and in probably ten minutes,

200. we were just laughing with tears coming down our faces

201. because we were talking about our mothers.

202. And so we became friends. It was like that, you know?

203. And I said to him, "Here you are, the most powerful man."

204. He, like, had the suits at Universal,

205. you know, crying and upset.

206. And you're this powerful man,

207. and your mother makes you into a little

208. screaming gerbil or something.

209. And I said, "This is what you should write about."

210. Robin said, "You should write a show about your mother

211. and a TV producer."

212. And I thought, "Who's going to watch that?"

213. But maybe if he was like a really badass guy,

214. maybe that would work.

215. Was the bad guy already a mobster?

216. Yeah.

217. I wanted to get De Niro and Anne Bancroft.

218. At first, I thought of it as a feature.

219. It was the story that was the first season.

220. It was about a mobster who goes to a shrink

221. after having panic attacks.

222. Any thoughts at all on why you blacked out?

223. I don't know.

224. Stress, maybe.

225. About what?

226. He's having problems with his uncle, a feud of some kind.

227. You may run North Jersey, but you don't run your Uncle Junior.

228. He puts his mother in a nursing home.

229. I don't see you tryin' to mix with the other ladies,

230. or talk to the nice gents I see walking around.

231. You're not making the most of your opportunities.

232. What do you care?

233. Out of sight, out of mind.

234. His mother sides with his uncle in this gang war.

235. Three of my capos have their mothers in this place?

236. Instead of living in normal homes

237. with their sons

238. like human beings.

239. This must be some kind of fucking end move.

240. His mother conspires with his uncle to have him killed.

241. a gangland execution gone awry.

242. And his shrink is the one who helps him to understand that.

243. On the day before the shooting,

244. you said to me that she kept going on, yet again,

245. about news stories of mothers throwing their babies out of windows.

246. In the end, he suffocates her.

247. Ma, I know what you did. Your only son.

248. But then I thought, "That would work as a TV show."

249. We took it around to all the networks:

250. Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC.

251. Nobody wanted it.

252. Les Moonves said, "Script's very good, very funny."

253. "But he's going to see a psychiatrist?

254. Are you married to him taking Prozac?"

255. So I said, "Yeah, I guess you'd say I'm married to it."

256. He said, "Well, then... no."

257. So it was dead.

258. But then I started saying, "Can't we go to HBO?"

259. Simply the best choice on TV.

260. We were finding our way from the time I got there in '85.

261. Television, you know, was still,

262. at that time, the Big Three,

263. and four, if you count Fox.

264. We didn't look at them so much as competition

265. as a mark for us to compare ourselves against,

266. and we knew we needed to be different.

267. What HBO was trying to do

268. was make a name for itself.

269. Boxing and movies was really what HBO was known for.

270. The change moment became The Sanders Show.

271. - Someone's been sitting in my chair. - Maybe it's Mama Bear.

272. Talentless fat fuck.

273. Just worry about the couch and trying not to fuck up.

274. It set a mark down that HBO could do something different,

275. maybe better, than what's on the broadcast networks.

276. We started trying to figure out, can we get into the series business?

277. Oh, boy.

278. Schillinger's home.

279. We developed Oz.

280. He's not such a bad guy, Diane.

281. What drugs are you on?

282. And Sex and the City.

283. Basically, it was a style of working,

284. which was, like, let's find really great storytellers

285. and let them do their thing.

286. So David came in and I knew his résumé.

287. He was a real TV veteran

288. and had worked on some good things,

289. but hadn't really had success with his own.

290. Denise and I, we got married.

291. This is 1968.

292. A couple of my uncles took me aside and said,

293. "You have to get out of here.

294. You're not going to stay married if you stay here."

295. Because they knew what my parents were like,

296. and they really were talking about my mother.

297. My wife wouldn't have been able to take it.

298. My mother was just nuts.

299. So we left the night of our wedding

300. and started for California.

301. We cross the country, and I get the word

302. that I get a fellowship to film school.

303. Stanford University.

304. I remember somebody telling me

305. that the short version of American history is,

306. the scum floats west.

307. When I got here, I sort of understood it.

308. Alcatraz.

309. Some of the biggest boys did time there.

310. Even Capone.

311. Got him for tax evasion

312. 'cause they couldn't get him for anything else.

313. Did 11 years and died of the big S in 1947.

314. Of course, that was a long time ago.

315. I went to Stanford for two years.

316. I did a narrative for my thesis film,

317. The Rise and Fall of Bug Manousos.

318. We thought we were doing Godard.

319. I don't know what we thought Godard was doing,

320. but we weren't doing it.

321. My name is Manousos.

322. I'm Greek, or of Greek descent. However you want it.

323. Ma, the greatest little lady that ever lived.

324. Let's dump this stiff and get it over with.

325. Take that smile off your face, sweetie pie.

326. You son of a bitch!

327. Ma, they got me in the back.

328. After the two-year graduate program and I was graduating,

329. a friend of mine and I wrote a script.

330. And the writing teacher sent it to this guy,

331. Roy Huggins, who was a big TV producer.

332. But we kind of forgot about it.

333. Denise and I moved to LA,

334. rented an apartment,

335. and Denise got a job at a law firm.

336. And I started looking for work, but I just couldn't get a job.

337. Finally, I did get a job

338. working for this outfit called Clover Films.

339. These movies...

340. Not ten kilometers from here, there's a golf course

341. and a country club surrounded by German guards.

342. Every German son-of-a-bitch soldier is to be killed.

343. One of the movies, we shot it at a burned-out apartment complex

344. in Las Virgenes Canyon.

345. It was a German fort or something,

346. inhabited only now by these German prostitutes.

347. I had a very small part,

348. and I was supposed to be the first assistant director,

349. but I had no idea what I was doing.

350. And the movie itself,

351. it was mostly soft-core fucking and sucking.

352. I did write a feature for Clover Films

353. called Grave of the Vampire.

354. No! No!

355. Who are you?

356. I'm your son!

357. Your son conceived in a grave!

358. Yes.

359. It was insane.

360. Yes!

361. While I was there, I heard that Roy Huggins,

362. who had read that script from two years ago,

363. wanted to hire me to write an episode.

364. So I got my first job in TV,

365. a series that was called The Bold Ones: The Lawyers.

366. Everybody back east— There it was. There was my name on television.

367. But I didn't set my mind to learning how to direct,

368. even though I wanted to be a movie director.

369. Right.

370. I did not— Maybe I was too embarrassed

371. to, like, ask the DP, "How do you do that?"

372. "How do you do this?"

373. I kept trying to write features for years after that,

374. and none of them got made.

375. I believe it was 1973.

376. Writers Guild went on strike,

377. and I had to go on picket duty at Paramount Studios

378. right in front of the DeMille Gate.

379. And that was great. I mean, just to be there.

380. It was like, these were all professional writers

381. that I was on picket duty with.

382. And I got to really look forward to picket duty

383. because it was starting to feel like I really am in Hollywood.

384. And I met a guy named Paul Playdon,

385. the story editor of Mission: Impossible.

386. I had no agent, so Paul got me an agent.

387. I signed with his agency.

388. And when the strike was over,

389. there was a show called The Magician with Bill Bixby,

390. and Bixby played a magician who solved crimes

391. and defeated the bad guys with scarves and hats.

392. Get back!

393. They brought me on as story editor.

394. And then I got on to The Rockford Files.

395. I did I'll Fly Away.

396. And then I was on Northern Exposure.

397. So I was in the TV business.

398. The problem was, you knew what the limits were,

399. but you were always testing them and you would always fail.

400. It was the meetings that were terrible,

401. the network meetings, what they...

402. They had this unerring sense

403. that the reason you were writing this,

404. the thing you love most about this,

405. was what they were going to go for.

406. So because I was used to network TV,

407. Sopranos was a mob show where nobody got killed.

408. Because I thought they wouldn't want that.

409. Then I realized all those Jimmy Cagney gangster movies...

410. The Godfather? Nobody got killed?

411. Why would you ever leave that out?

412. So I rewrote it to include a murder.

413. That's when HBO got really interested in the show.

414. It wasn't just, you got to put in a murder.

415. That had to be part of the story.

416. That had to be integral to the narrative and to the culture.

417. We had a big meeting with David.

418. My impression was, okay, this is a network guy,

419. but he's already showed us in his writing

420. that he doesn't think only like a traditional network guy.

421. And his take on the world,

422. you could tell immediately, these characters,

423. it was like a second skin to him.

424. That was an easy yes to make that pilot.

425. You want to take it from here or...

426. In casting, I don't react much at all.

427. I say, "Oh, that's very good."

428. - Really good. - Thanks, guys.

429. "Thank you very much," and people leave.

430. Casting is a long process.

431. - Just begin? - Whenever you're ready.

432. Next, I had a breakfast meeting. I was called in to consult

433. by a garbage hauling company I represent.

434. Big, what's the story with Triboro Towers?

435. The site manager wants to renew his contract.

436. Site manager wants to renew his contract with Dick.

437. The site manager wants to renew his contract with Dick.

438. The site manager, he wants to renew his contract with Dick.

439. But these Kolar brothers.

440. Let's try again. Let me pick the energy up.

441. I'm very tired.

442. Yeah. The Kolar brothers.

443. They're some kind of Czechoslovakian immigrants

444. or some shit.

445. They can save close to a million a year

446. if the Kolars haul the trash and not Dick.

447. They pay us 40 times the monthly for stealing your stop.

448. That's the thing, they won't.

449. They said that if they can tell those commie bosses

450. back in Czechoslovakia to go fuck themselves,

451. he could fucking tell us.

452. In Czech Republic too, we love pork.

453. You ever have our sausages?

454. I thought the only sausages were Italian and Jimmy Dean.

455. You see what you learn when you cross cultures?

456. My Uncle Uvzen doesn't know I came.

457. But if we make any progress, I'll have to tell him.

458. Oh, we gotta make progress, "Email."

459. I mean, you know, we must stop the madness.

460. The garbage business is changing.

461. We're the younger generation. We have issues in common.

462. Garbage business is changing, you know?

463. Younger generation. We have issues in common.

464. Emil.

465. Where'd you go to high school? Poland?

466. I'm not Polish.

467. What's Czechoslovakia? Isn't that...

468. That's a type of Polack?

469. We came to this country when I was nine.

470. I went to West Essex.

471. Yo, you used to play my cousin Gregory in football.

472. - He went to Boonton. - Where's the stuff?

473. Ah, yes.

474. The reason for the visit.

475. Got it all deployed for you.

476. Taste the wares, "Email."

477. Emil.

478. Cut! Yeah, we're good.

479. You know, the idea of a series on HBO.

480. Back then, there was no prestige attached to that.

481. To be really frank,

482. it was kind of the bargain basement of TV.

483. It really was.

484. But I loved the character.

485. I thought the character was really fun.

486. His name was Dean Moltisanti when I first read the script.

487. I didn't know who David Chase was, I'll be honest.

488. And I didn't know he was Italian when I saw his name on the script,

489. which kind of made me think, "Who's this guy?

490. Making a show about Italians And he's not..."

491. You know, Scorsese and Coppola were Italian American.

492. But I worked really hard on it and went in for David.

493. You know, David's very— he's poker-faced.

494. Michael came in and he was great, but I played it completely straight.

495. Very good.

496. I walked out thinking, "This ain't gonna happen.

497. Who cares? He's not even Italian. What does he know?"

498. "Who the fuck is this guy? He's not even Italian. Fuck him."

499. But...

500. - Who's there? - You locked the door?

501. Seemed to me like we read a hundred actresses.

502. This is a nursing home.

503. They all came in and they did their crazy Italian mama thing.

504. You're not putting me in a nursing home.

505. I've seen these women in these nursing homes

506. babbling like idiots.

507. And it wasn't even close.

508. And because it was based on my mother,

509. I knew how far away it was.

510. But then Nancy Marchand came in.

511. I knew her as Mrs. Pynchon,

512. the newspaper publisher in Lou Grant.

513. May I remind you, Mr. Grant, this is not the New York Times.

514. I'm reminded of it every time I pick it up.

515. So am I, sir, and I wish we had their resources.

516. But the simple fact is, we don't.

517. If you want me to back off, I will.

518. Now, I didn't say that.

519. But I need you gentlemen to tell me

520. that we can win if we go to court.

521. - Should I slate it and all that? - No.

522. Just thought, "This is crazy. This isn't going to work."

523. But she opened her mouth and... boom.

524. You're with active seniors your own age.

525. They do things, they go places, they go dancing.

526. I've seen these women in these nursing homes

527. babbling like idiots.

528. Just eat your eggplant.

529. It was like— And she just had it.

530. If your uncle has business with Arthur,

531. and I don't even want to know what it is,

532. then he knows what he's doing.

533. And I don't?

534. Well, all I know is

535. daughters are better at taking care of their mothers than sons.

536. And I bought CDs for a broken record.

537. Everybody always told me there was no one like my mother.

538. But when all of my relatives started watching the show,

539. they said, "My God, that's Aunt Norma.

540. That's your mother." I said, "No shit."

541. It was like she was channeling her.

542. I expect to see you tonight at Anthony Junior's

543. birthday party with your baked ziti.

544. Only if I'm picked up and I'm brought back home.

545. I don't drive when they're predicting rain.

546. All of my career, pretty much in my career,

547. I have played the tasteful lady.

548. And I really appreciate playing

549. this kind of harridan

550. because I never get a chance to do that.

551. It's good for you to drive.

552. Use it or lose it. I got to go to work.

553. Sure.

554. Run off.

555. I don't have...

556. When I went in initially,

557. I was auditioning for about five different roles.

558. Who was that woman tonight?

559. I read for Tony Soprano's mistress.

560. What, you were redoing the garbage dump?

561. So don't treat me like a child.

562. I know there's something more intimate.

563. Who was that woman tonight at the restaurant?

564. You better not be messing with that hat.

565. In the end, they went with someone else.

566. Very good.

567. But David liked me.

568. I think he just liked the fact that I was Italian,

569. and maybe I was cute.

570. But I didn't know that it had anything to do with being Italian.

571. I thought it was about opera singers.

572. This is unacceptable.

573. I had an 8:00 reservation I made two weeks ago.

574. As I explained, people are not leaving their tables.

575. There are five parties ahead of you.

576. I don't think I read for the hostess part.

577. That was a phone call,

578. "Would you want to play this part?" And I said, "Sure."

579. But I couldn't say my one fucking line.

580. Mr. Borglund, they're setting up your table right now.

581. Because I was so nervous to be around Lorraine

582. after Goodfellas.

583. Karen. So I was with Karen!

584. I was dying!

585. Look, he started to touch me. He started to grab me.

586. I told him to stop. He didn't stop.

587. I hit him back, and then he got really angry.

588. Lorraine was the only thing we had that resembled a star

589. because of Goodfellas and a couple other movies.

590. But at first, the casting people brought her in for Carmela.

591. Carmela was definitely something that HBO

592. and him had discussed,

593. but I went in wanting Dr. Melfi.

594. And David was a little taken back.

595. "Why do you want to play Melfi?"

596. I said, "Well, because I'm a different woman

597. than I was years ago

598. when I was Karen Hill in Goodfellas.

599. I don't really want to play that part again.

600. Dr. Melfi intrigues me. I've been in therapy."

601. - You had been in therapy? - Absolutely.

602. And so David and I talked a lot about therapy,

603. and I think that we've never seen an Italian educated woman.

604. That pleases me.

605. And I don't think Tony would talk to anybody that's not Italian.

606. So with that,

607. Dr. Melfi.

608. I said, "Okay, but you're going to have to sit still

609. with your hands in your lap.

610. Keep your voice down."

611. - Okay, David? - Yeah.

612. Okay. I got it.

613. Great. Good.

614. You know, I would always have to work on

615. tamping down all my lightness.

616. And I would try to bury Lorraine

617. so that Melfi would come out

618. in a very different way than who I am.

619. It was very far from me.

620. I'm not Melfi at all anywhere.

621. Anxiety attacks are legitimate psychiatric emergencies.

622. - Suppose you were driving a car. - Let me tell you something.

623. Today everybody goes to shrinks and counselors.

624. They're getting on Sally Jessy Raphael,

625. talking about their problems.

626. What happened to Gary Cooper?

627. The strong, silent type?

628. He was an American.

629. This guy wasn't in touch with his feelings.

630. He just did what he had to do.

631. We were casting Tony.

632. We started in Los Angeles, then moved to New York.

633. We read a whole lot of people, and it just wasn't happening.

634. Vaffanculo, eh?

635. But then I had asked Steven Van Zandt to read for Tony.

636. There he was, a rock and roll star.

637. This carried a lot of shit with me.

638. I used to play those Springsteen albums

639. and look at this little Italian guy and say,

640. "Who is that? Kind of looks like Pacino."

641. For the record, tonight,

642. I want to say that there was absolutely nothing

643. unusual about the way The Rascals dressed.

644. But what happened was, right before casting,

645. my wife and I were watching Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,

646. and there's Steven Van Zandt inducting The Rascals.

647. Nothing strange about that.

648. Dressed in a Rascals costume.

649. The first time I saw The Rascals

650. was the Keyport Roller Drome in Keyport, New Jersey.

651. That's right.

652. No, it was no Fillmores.

653. There was no arenas in those days.

654. Rock and roll played skating rinks where it belonged.

655. I said to her, "This guy has got to be in the show."

656. And the way rock is selling,

657. we may be back in skating rinks next year,

658. I don't know, but...

659. I get a lot of scripts for music, not for acting.

660. I wasn't an actor.

661. And David Chase calls, you know.

662. I get on the phone.

663. What was that first conversation like?

664. Well, it was a little weird because he says,

665. "What do you think?"

666. I said, "Well, I think it's great script.

667. What kind of music are you thinking of?"

668. He says, "No, we want you to be in it."

669. I said, "I'm not an actor."

670. I mean, I thought, isn't that kind of a prerequisite

671. for this whole TV thing? You know?

672. And he says, "Yes, you are an actor.

673. You just don't know it yet." You know?

674. So I said, "All right, well,

675. maybe destiny is speaking here."

676. Ah, let me tell you something.

677. Everybody these days is going to shrinks and counselors.

678. They're all on Sally Jessy Raphael telling everybody their problems.

679. Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?

680. You know, the strong, silent type.

681. That was an American.

682. He wasn't in touch with his feelings. He did what he had to do.

683. And those people knew

684. once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings,

685. they would never be able to shut him up.

686. Dysfunction this, dysfunction that,

687. dysfunction vaffanculo.

688. His reading was good.

689. I'd never seen anything like that, really.

690. And I thought, "Well, yeah, that could be Tony Soprano."

691. But in the end, I guess HBO tells David,

692. "Look, he's okay.

693. But we're not going to depend on some guy who never acted before."

694. He says, "All right, well, in that case,

695. I'll write you in a part that doesn't exist."

696. I'm like, wow, this guy's crazy.

697. - This guy's really... - And action.

698. Sandrine.

699. This table drinks on the house all night.

700. But he didn't write in an underboss specifically,

701. or a consigliere.

702. I was just more or less a club owner at that first moment.

703. Let's do that one more time.

704. It was very difficult to find a guy for Tony.

705. Let me tell you something.

706. Today everybody goes to shrinks and counselors.

707. They go on Sally Jessy Raphael and they talk about their problems.

708. Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?

709. The strong, silent type. That was an American.

710. He wasn't in touch with his feelings. He just did what he had to do.

711. What they didn't know was once they got

712. Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings,

713. they wouldn't be able to shut him up.

714. Dysfunction this, dysfunction that, dysfunction vaffanculo.

715. Another guy who came close was Michael Rispoli.

716. That was excellent.

717. But then, finally, we found Jim.

718. I got a call.

719. David Chase wanted to meet at 8:30 in the morning.

720. I was like, oh.

721. Just his choice of having a breakfast instead of...

722. put me off right away. I don't know why.

723. But we had a good time.

724. We laughed about our families and our mothers.

725. So, then I auditioned.

726. And the first audition, I stopped halfway through and I said,

727. "This sucks. I'm not doing it right.

728. If you want me to come back, I'll come back

729. and do it differently."

730. He left in the middle of the first audition.

731. Walked out.

732. Doing his Van Morrison thing.

733. "This is shit. I'm not doing this right, " and left.

734. But we thought he was great.

735. So our casting directors got him to come to my house,

736. and he read the scene and it was like, you know...

737. Bang.

738. Let me tell you something.

739. Nowadays, everybody's gotta go to shrinks and counselors,

740. and go on Sally Jessy Raphael and talk about their problems.

741. Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?

742. The strong, silent type.

743. That was an American.

744. He didn't worry about his feelings, he just did what he had to do.

745. What they didn't know

746. was if they got Gary Cooper to talk about his feelings,

747. they wouldn't be able to shut him up.

748. 'Cause dysfunction this, dysfunction that,

749. and dysfunction vaffanculo.

750. It was just pretty obvious when Jim did it,

751. he was Tony.

752. You know, sometimes...

753. life is good.

754. Life is often good.

755. Regaleali, for example.

756. We had cast everybody,

757. but we didn't have a Carmela yet.

758. Carmela...

759. Something I got to confess.

760. Edie, we did the audition right before shooting.

761. What are you doing?

762. Getting my wine in position to throw in your damn face.

763. You're always with the drama.

764. Go ahead and confess already. Get it over with.

765. She did the scene from the pilot

766. where he tells her that he's taking Prozac.

767. I'm on Prozac.

768. Oh, my God.

769. I've been seeing a therapist.

770. Oh, my God.

771. I think that's great.

772. I think that's so wonderful. I think that's so gutsy.

773. - It was like, wow, this is it. - I think that's very wonderful.

774. Did you think I was Hannibal Lecture before?

775. It's great. Psychology doesn't address the soul.

776. That's something else. But this is a start.

777. This is something. I'm gonna shut up.

778. I'll shut up now.

779. I definitely knew who this woman was.

780. And I was sure I would never get cast because

781. my experience up to that point had been that,

782. you know, if you're being cast as an Italian American,

783. you've got to look a certain way.

784. And I felt like there were other women

785. that looked more that way

786. and were cast more often that way.

787. But I went and auditioned,

788. and the next day they called and said, "You got the part."

789. And I thought, "It's one of these fly-by-night productions."

790. You know? Cast it, shoot it.

791. Mark.

792. Mark.

793. Somebody gonna say action or what?

794. And action.

795. You know, Grandma, this place is pretty neat.

796. What goes on behind there?

797. Very good!

798. Did you call that guy at Tribeca Towers?

799. Wait until I give you the cue for the line.

800. Action.

801. Girls, you gotta have more than just cranberry juice for breakfast.

802. Cut. Good.

803. Action.

804. What the hell's the name of the place?

805. Triboro Towers.

806. Jesus.

807. Action.

808. Look...

809. Anybody for ice cream?

810. Line.

811. Did you call that guy down at Triboro Towers

812. about the hauling contract?

813. Cut. Let's go again right away.

814. Right out of the gate, did he say he wanted to direct it?

815. Yes. That was the next big decision.

816. We didn't know a lot about what we were doing,

817. so we didn't want to give anybody that much control.

818. He was going to be the showrunner-writer-producer,

819. but if he was going to direct it,

820. then it was really going to be his vision.

821. But it was clear when David was talking about it

822. that it lived so much in his heart and soul

823. and in his head

824. that we were like, "We gotta."

825. Let's let him direct it.

826. Action.

827. Every year on this date since you were itty-bitty,

828. Mom and Meadow get all dolled up,

829. drive into New York Plaza Hotel for tea...

830. The scene where Carmela goes to get her daughter

831. to bring her to the Plaza.

832. I have too much homework.

833. Meadow, it's our little tradition.

834. We always have so much fun.

835. Tell you the truth,

836. I've felt it was dumb since I was eight.

837. I just go because you like it.

838. I remember something about David's directing of that scene...

839. Cut. Good.

840. that made me realize this is personal to him.

841. He's speaking about something that may have really happened...

842. Action.

843. or something he was really going through

844. with his wife and daughter at that time.

845. But I remember thinking, "Oh, this isn't just a director.

846. This is personal."

847. You have something you want to say to me?

848. Mom, do you have any idea how much it means

849. to actually go skiing in Aspen?

850. I mean, do you think that's going to happen every year?

851. Like lame tea and scones at the Plaza Hotel?

852. Goodbye.

853. Close my door, please.

854. And cut.

855. - Cut. - Good.

856. Were you nervous about shooting the pilot?

857. Thinking, this is my opportunity now to be a director?

858. Yeah. Sure, I was nervous, yeah.

859. I mean, I had directed some before that,

860. but, yeah, I was very nervous.

861. I depended on Alik Sakharov a lot, DP.

862. I remember it was the first or second week of prep on the pilot.

863. David would walk into the office, put his feet up,

864. look out the window,

865. and just like gray mood.

866. You were like, "Dave, what's up?"

867. "I don't know who's going to fucking watch this shit."

868. It's a good script, bro. You know? It's a good script.

869. I distinctly remember, he said

870. we don't want to do another television project.

871. Let's just break all the rules.

872. I didn't want TV coverage.

873. Coverage is the most boring fucking thing in the world.

874. Typically, it would be a master,

875. two overs, and two close-ups.

876. So basically you fracture the scene into smithereens.

877. It wasn't cinematic at all.

878. We talked about Bertolucci. We talked about Coppola up the wazoo.

879. You know, Godfather. We talked about Martin Scorsese.

880. We talked about Polanski.

881. With Chinatown, the language of it

882. was very close to how we wanted to present Sopranos.

883. The scene where Jake Gittes

884. drives his car through the orange orchard...

885. Hold it right there!

886. That was the model for a scene where Tony and Chris

887. chase this guy in front of this office building.

888. Asshole!

889. Tony!

890. Wait up!

891. Then I said, "Okay, I want to take the camera inside."

892. Two guys are working in there when this goes by them,

893. and they jump.

894. People were like,

895. "What's that got to do with it?" But it worked well.

896. And then it just basically breaks into handheld mode

897. when Tony is out of the car and he just pummels this guy.

898. - You all right? - My leg is broken.

899. So in it, there's a lot of Chinatown.

900. I'll give you a fucking bone, you prick.

901. Where's my fucking money?

902. - Cut. - That was my fault.

903. - I didn't wait long enough. - Let's do one more.

904. When you're doing TV,

905. it's one scene right after another one.

906. So you have to learn to prepare very quickly.

907. - In one scene, you'll be... - Hey, old man. Happy birthday.

908. talking to your son,

909. the next scene you'll be beating somebody up,

910. and the next scene you'll be making love to your wife.

911. And so it's this constant change of emotions

912. all through the day,

913. and you have to be able to shift quickly.

914. What are you talking about? We discussed this.

915. Mr. Soprano?

916. Lorraine and Jim.

917. We rehearsed for three days right before we shot.

918. But look, this shit I'm telling you?

919. It will all blow over.

920. Just stop for a second.

921. For him, it was like,

922. what's your attitude in a psychiatrist's office?

923. There was a lot of things he wasn't used to.

924. It's okay. It's not a big deal. It's just me.

925. Should we cut?

926. And I'm not— It's my fault.

927. My concentration.

928. I shouldn't say that. Hi.

929. Have you ever had any personal experience with psychoanalysis?

930. Yeah.

931. In other words, you're not just making it up.

932. You know what it feels like.

933. I've been in some of those rooms, not for long periods, but...

934. But you know what it feels like.

935. Yes, but, you know,

936. I don't think when I started the series I did.

937. I think that led me right into it.

938. - That pushed you into it? - Yeah. Oh, definitely.

939. Was it research or was it real?

940. - No, it was real. - It was real.

941. It was a cry for help.

942. No, it was...

943. Ah, yeah. Uh-huh, sure.

944. Yeah, hose him down.

945. - Would you like a Kleenex? - Nah, fuck that.

946. You're getting me hot and sweaty, doc.

947. Jim had never been in therapy.

948. Action.

949. So that was fun to kind of lead him, push him,

950. manipulate him, in a way.

951. There are some very intimate moments.

952. Yes, which is why I loved it.

953. Which is why I wanted Melfi.

954. I thought he was more intimate with me than with anybody.

955. And I loved that.

956. Mark.

957. You have strong feelings about this.

958. Let me tell you something.

959. I have a semester and a half of college,

960. so I understand Freud.

961. I understand therapy as a concept, but in my world, it does not go down.

962. Could I be happier? Yeah.

963. Yeah. Who couldn't?

964. Cut.

965. Action!

966. Jim had his own way of becoming Tony Soprano.

967. He understood the character.

968. There was a scene where Chris was off sulking,

969. so Tony goes up to him and says...

970. Enough of this shit, what's wrong with you?

971. In the script, what I had written in

972. or had imagined was, is Tony going, "Hey!"

973. That was what I was picturing.

974. I'll fucking kill you.

975. But Gandolfini yanked him out of his chair.

976. That came out of nowhere. That wasn't in the script.

977. And cut. Fucking great.

978. But it was mostly, I would give direction,

979. and he'd say, "Well, you do it."

980. Action.

981. I would do some stupid fucking thing.

982. And he later told my wife, he said, "You know that pilot?

983. I just copied the way David behaves."

984. Cut.

985. In the beginning, I do remember Jimmy would say, like,

986. "How does David know so much about me?"

987. Maybe there were similarities in the cultural upbringing.

988. David grew up in New Jersey,

989. Jimmy grew up in New Jersey.

990. Italian households, you know, just a lot of similarities.

991. It just fit. Everything seemed to fit, you know?

992. David grew up in New Jersey,

993. so he can take a lot of things from real life,

994. which you would never think would work,

995. but he makes them work.

996. It was not, like, slam dunk.

997. I mean, it was a very strange pilot.

998. Blatantly uncommercial, frankly.

999. Hey, kids. Come here!

1000. They're trying to fly!

1001. The babies, they're trying to fly!

1002. - The basic premise... - Look, they're trying to fly.

1003. A bunch of ducks come into a boss's pool.

1004. The ducks leave. He has a nervous breakdown.

1005. Do you feel depressed?

1006. Since the ducks left,

1007. I guess.

1008. The ducks that preceded your losing consciousness.

1009. Let's talk about them.

1010. This is the premise of a hit show?

1011. Nobody really expected it to even be picked up.

1012. Dr. Cusamano put me in the hospital,

1013. gave me every kind of test.

1014. They tested the pilot in four places:

1015. Connecticut, Dallas, and two other I forget.

1016. And surprisingly enough, it tested best in Connecticut.

1017. This is fucked up.

1018. Of course, it's loaded with Italians...

1019. And it's near New Jersey.

1020. New Jersey, yeah.

1021. You cannot accept a gift like that from Tony Soprano.

1022. - No way. - Listen to me, Charmaine.

1023. They said that testing had shown that Charmaine Bucco,

1024. Artie's wife, was the moral center of the show.

1025. And we should focus more on her.

1026. But the tickets were comps.

1027. Tony is a labor leader.

1028. Arthur, please, grow up.

1029. Does the mind not rebel in any possible scenario

1030. under which dentists are sending the Don of New Jersey,

1031. first class on a Norwegian steamship?

1032. Come on, Arthur,

1033. somebody donated their kneecaps for those tickets.

1034. And she was great. Kathy was great.

1035. But that's not what the show was about.

1036. And it just took forever.

1037. It was ten months before you guys greenlit it.

1038. It was a long time. 'Cause this was a big jump.

1039. Because that's the deal you're making with a showrunner.

1040. You're saying, "Okay, I'm going to give you millions of dollars,

1041. and we're going to take a number of years

1042. and we're going to create something. And do I trust you?"

1043. They finally said yes.

1044. And I got to tell you, I just feel so grateful for that.

1045. You're not getting me into a nursing home.

1046. I mean, I was at the end of my career, really.

1047. I was actually finally going to quit working in television

1048. and go to work writing features on spec.

1049. Then Sopranos came up.

1050. It was like I had been in the middle of a terrible ocean.

1051. - Ma. - No.

1052. Anthony, people come here to die.

1053. And I had landed on a desert island,

1054. a beautiful palm-covered island.

1055. I thought, "My life is saved."

1056. Oh my God!

1057. Somebody get a doctor.

1058. So what happened with you and The Sopranos,

1059. it was like HBO said, "Go for it, man."

1060. They trust the instincts of the creator.

1061. That was the amazing thing that happened.

1062. I guess I had the right concept,

1063. and they decided to trust me.

1064. The morning of the day I got sick, I'd been thinking.

1065. It's good to be in something from the ground floor.

1066. I came too late for that. I know.

1067. But lately I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end.

1068. The best is over.

1069. Many Americans, I think, feel that way.

1070. I think about my father.

1071. He never reached the heights like me.

1072. But in a lot of ways, he had it better.

1073. He had his people.

1074. They had their standards. They had pride.

1075. Today, what do we got?

1076. When I wrote the beginning of the pilot,

1077. what I was talking about was America.

1078. I just had a sense that things were really going downhill.

1079. Everything's for sale here.

1080. Everything is for sale.

1081. And also,

1082. the comic part of it for me was that

1083. Americans had gotten so materialistic and so selfish

1084. that it made a mob boss sick.

1085. I wanna know why there's zero growth in this family's receipts.

1086. Where's the fucking money?

1087. You're supposed to be earners.

1088. Each of you, go to your people on the street,

1089. crack some fucking heads,

1090. create some fucking earners out there.

1091. Sil, break it down for them.

1092. What two businesses have traditionally been recession-proof

1093. since time immemorial?

1094. Certain aspects of show business and our thing.

1095. You know, you do a mob story, of course you're doing a mob story.

1096. But there's also the element of corruption and business,

1097. like anything to make a buck.

1098. - Where's the rest of the money? - It's everywhere.

1099. The whole idea of both that it's the American dream

1100. and the American nightmare, all at once.

1101. It was about money and death.

1102. - And they're related somehow. - Right.

1103. You better give me your jewelry.

1104. It was capitalism in the rawest sense.

1105. They know we can't produce receipts. You want them stealing from us?

1106. And it was on television,

1107. which was the instrument that capitalism used to sell.

1108. - A new Dodge. - Camel.

1109. - Jell-O. - Kodak.

1110. What I thought from the very beginning was,

1111. okay, here we are,

1112. this is now 50 years we're doing TV.

1113. And people are being sold something

1114. every 15 minutes,

1115. would mean... a hard sell.

1116. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

1117. And we're so used to, on that screen,

1118. a face comes on and says something.

1119. It has an effect on us.

1120. And it was all about money, money, money.

1121. Just so you understand

1122. that I have to charge you for the missed session.

1123. All right. Fine.

1124. Fine, here. Here you go.

1125. - As it was said in the show. - This is what it's all about.

1126. Motherfucking, cock-sucking money.

1127. Here.

1128. And now we had no more commercials.

1129. We were on HBO.

1130. Everywhere I'd gone prior to that, of all the networks,

1131. "Where do you want to shoot it?" I said, "New Jersey."

1132. "What do you want to do that for?"

1133. I said, "I believe it belongs there."

1134. "It's going to be a lot of money. I don't know what for."

1135. Then when I went to HBO, they said,

1136. "Now, it says here it takes place in New Jersey.

1137. You're going to shoot it in New Jersey, right?"

1138. I was like, "Oh my God, I'm in heaven."

1139. Really, I felt like, fuck the whole past 30 years.

1140. This is it.

1141. A broadcast network would shoot it in LA

1142. and do second unit in Jersey

1143. and find, you know, locations that they could double

1144. to create that wonderful suspension of disbelief illusion.

1145. "Oh, I'm really in Jersey."

1146. We'll keep right on going, shooting in the rain.

1147. I like it when it's cloudy

1148. because the colors get nice and saturated and rich.

1149. We got into this idea of looking for locations

1150. not because they were locations.

1151. We got to find places that have character

1152. that could basically parallel our characters. Right?

1153. All we need to do now is bring the camera and shoot it.

1154. For rehearsal, please.

1155. Well, we actually shot all the interiors in Queens.

1156. And all the exteriors,

1157. I forbade any exterior shots to be shot anyplace but New Jersey

1158. because I wanted it to be realistic.

1159. I knew New Jersey really well.

1160. For example, the Meadowlands,

1161. the combination of really heavy industry

1162. and the largest urban wilderness in the world.

1163. Marty Scorsese doesn't like the show.

1164. Says, "I don't get it. It's like all these trees and shit."

1165. All mob things before that had been Manhattan or Brooklyn.

1166. And I knew there was a mob presence in New Jersey.

1167. Kids whose fathers were heavy bookmakers, loan sharks.

1168. Where the Soprano house was,

1169. that was the town that we moved to when I was in eighth grade.

1170. There was a lot of woods and ponds.

1171. At the same time, some guy got blown up in his garage.

1172. Start his car...

1173. So I knew about all that, and I thought,

1174. "I think it'll actually work."

1175. It gave it an entirely different look.

1176. And I think it was kind of a different culture.

1177. Tony was a suburbanite, Tony and Carmela.

1178. This says "with pulp."

1179. You like it with pulp.

1180. Not this much.

1181. I like the one that says "some pulp."

1182. The fuck was that for?

1183. I'll write you up a list.

1184. - New game. - He's got a regular family, kids.

1185. - Attagirl, Mead! - His daughter plays soccer.

1186. Brick wall!

1187. He loves his wife very much.

1188. I think she...

1189. she's the strength of the family, pretty much.

1190. He's just got a regular life.

1191. His job is the Mafia.

1192. That's his job.

1193. It's not fair.

1194. He's got a regular family on top of it,

1195. which creates as many problems, if not more,

1196. as the other job.

1197. When you're choosing projects,

1198. what are the most important factors for you?

1199. What comes first?

1200. The writing, the writing, the writing...

1201. So when you got picked up for series,

1202. then you had to put together a writers' room.

1203. Was that a difficult process in terms of

1204. figuring out how you're going to work with a bunch of other writers?

1205. Yes and no. I had worked rooms before,

1206. so I knew what to expect.

1207. But this one was going to be different.

1208. I was in a mood where I just wasn't going to accept TV writing.

1209. I kept thinking, "God, we're free here.

1210. Let's really dig down into this."

1211. Let's think about it.

1212. I came on for episode, I guess, two,

1213. you know, after the pilot.

1214. He talked about what he had,

1215. which was an arc for the season, which he always came in with.

1216. But nothing beyond that.

1217. Now, because of movie people coming into the business,

1218. you have to have five years' worth.

1219. You have to tell them everything and know everything.

1220. And we didn't know anything.

1221. As a matter of fact, in the very beginning,

1222. David said, "If this doesn't work, that's it for me."

1223. And forgive me, HBO,

1224. but they were nowhere at that point.

1225. It was an elephant graveyard,

1226. and they didn't know if it would work either.

1227. But they just gave us complete freedom.

1228. It was our little artistic experience.

1229. That's what it felt like.

1230. Quiet, please.

1231. It was a lot of hard work, a lot of hours.

1232. The hours were brutal. And writers were on the set.

1233. So it was, you know, from dawn...

1234. Good morning. You're late.

1235. Where you been? Sleeping?

1236. until you'd see the towers coming back from New Jersey

1237. at around 3:00 in the morning.

1238. Maybe you'd sleep for seven hours and it'd all start again.

1239. But when you're that age or you're working like that,

1240. what else is there to do?

1241. So we all worked like that, you know.

1242. It was the most fun you can imagine.

1243. For everyone.

1244. I'm proud of it.

1245. Still my favorite line of the whole series.

1246. - "Hasidim but I don't believe 'em"? - No.

1247. - My favorite line was— - 900 Jews held their own

1248. against 15,000 Roman soldiers.

1249. "The Romans, where are they today?"

1250. And Robin wrote this line...

1251. - You're looking at 'em, asshole. - That's great.

1252. That's great. It was great.

1253. In episode four,

1254. when we were trying to find Chris's girlfriend,

1255. we brought Drea de Matteo back in to read.

1256. Where'd you park?

1257. In back, there.

1258. I ain't crossing that.

1259. No one followed me.

1260. Adriana, you wouldn't know if they did.

1261. Oh, yeah, like Tony Soprano's hiding in my back seat.

1262. You are so paranoid.

1263. Bring the car right here.

1264. I know.

1265. He's in disguise.

1266. That could be him.

1267. Hey, Tony. Or maybe...

1268. She got it because it said in the script, "ow."

1269. But she said...

1270. Ow-ah!

1271. - Get over here. - Let go of me!

1272. "Ow-ah!" Like that. That was it.

1273. You're hired.

1274. That was great.

1275. - That was great. - Thank you.

1276. I heard the nurse say you made number two in your pants.

1277. - Is that what happened? - Get the car.

1278. That stuff is sort of my specialty because I was from Queens,

1279. even though I tried to leave that behind.

1280. But, I mean, all the girls in my neighborhood,

1281. it's all the Italian girls.

1282. You gotta talk like this.

1283. Don't fuck around.

1284. Everything has got to be ten syllables.

1285. I'm really fucking doing it.

1286. And it's all thanks to you.

1287. I couldn't do the accent without the nails.

1288. I couldn't do half of it without the hair and makeup.

1289. Why don't you forget about working and be with me?

1290. Oh, yeah, and be one of those wives like Carmela Soprano?

1291. Breastfeed a bunch of rug rats

1292. then spend the rest of your life at the gym,

1293. just you and your stretch marks.

1294. You're right.

1295. My cousin's always had a brain, but what does she use it for?

1296. A husband who can't even tell you where the money comes from.

1297. You know, just the whole way David set that story up,

1298. and then seeing the next episodes that would come after,

1299. I was mind-blown.

1300. I would call my mom from payphone and read her the entire script.

1301. You'd publish a script. It would only come out

1302. right when it was being filmed, pretty much.

1303. The crew would be reading it. You know what I mean?

1304. They were reading it. They wanted to know.

1305. They took pleasure and joy in it.

1306. When we went back and started shooting season one,

1307. it was really then when you started seeing

1308. the next few scripts that I realized, whoa!

1309. This is really

1310. genius and complex.

1311. You know? And really risky.

1312. David, he always says, "Television in the past

1313. was always about making you feel good."

1314. Cop shows. Why are cop shows so great?

1315. Because at the end of the day, the bad guy gets put in jail.

1316. You know, there's some kind of order to the universe.

1317. There's some kind of justice.

1318. David was all about the opposite.

1319. Are you in the Mafia?

1320. - Am I in the what? - Whatever you call it.

1321. Organized crime.

1322. That's total crap. Who told you that?

1323. Dad, I've lived in the house all my life.

1324. I've seen police come with warrants.

1325. I've seen you going out at three in the morning.

1326. So you've never seen Doc Cusamano

1327. go out at three in the morning on a call?

1328. Did the Cusamano kids ever find $50,000 in Krugerrands

1329. and a.45 automatic while they were hunting for Easter eggs?

1330. I'm in the waste management business.

1331. Everybody immediately assumes you're mobbed up.

1332. It's a stereotype and it's offensive.

1333. You're the last person I would want to perpetuate it.

1334. Fine.

1335. There is no Mafia.

1336. When they saw the fifth episode,

1337. HBO said, "You've created one of the most dynamic

1338. characters in television history,

1339. and you're going to blow it all."

1340. What the fuck?

1341. I think I just saw Fabian Petrulio.

1342. - Refresh my memory. - What's he, before your time?

1343. Made guy flipped about ten years ago and he got busted for peddling H.

1344. Rat fuck took out a lot of people.

1345. A lot of people from our outfit.

1346. He went into the witness protection program

1347. then they kicked him out.

1348. I am your soldier, Antonio.

1349. This is my duty. Like we're always talking about.

1350. The way this went down,

1351. this is my call.

1352. I got to vouch for this myself.

1353. Jimmy says hello from hell, you fuck!

1354. I brought it up in the script.

1355. And the answer was,

1356. you're gonna feel differently when you see it.

1357. Good morning, rat.

1358. Who are you? What is this?

1359. Don't make me laugh, you pimp! You fuck!

1360. Teddy, there must be something we can do.

1361. Tony, it's Tony, you fuck. Know how much trouble you're in?

1362. You took an oath and you broke it.

1363. And then when we saw it,

1364. it was even

1365. more troublesome than I thought in the script.

1366. Please, Tony. I'm begging you.

1367. Jimmy says hello from hell, you fuck!

1368. Chris says, "I'm seeing it now and how gruesome it is.

1369. And we're going to lose everything.

1370. People, they're going to hate him."

1371. Could you have a criminal, a killer, as your lead?

1372. Can you have an antihero in the lead? That was the big debate.

1373. My big objection was that the audience

1374. was really going to not like Tony,

1375. and that we hadn't earned that yet.

1376. I mean, this was just the fifth episode.

1377. I said, "Chris, think about it."

1378. How'd it go?

1379. They got a 48 to 52 male-female ratio, which is great.

1380. He's up there in Maine,

1381. and he sees this rat.

1382. He's a captain in a mob crew.

1383. If he doesn't kill that guy,

1384. people are going to lose faith in him or interest in him completely.

1385. So if Tony doesn't kill this guy,

1386. he's full of shit.

1387. And then the whole show is full of shit.

1388. And I thought, "Well, that makes sense."

1389. I said to Dave, "Here's the problem.

1390. Like, this was a bad guy.

1391. So let's find ways to give Tony a little bit more justification."

1392. David made some adjustments to the victim.

1393. He became a more menacing figure

1394. than he had initially started.

1395. Where we all got down to is, like, look,

1396. Chris and I are not going to write it, direct it.

1397. So at the end of the day, I think,

1398. when you hit that kind of impasse with a show creator,

1399. you kind of have to go with them.

1400. Better.

1401. They left us alone completely,

1402. and there was some weird stuff we did.

1403. Whoa, Junior!

1404. "Whoa, Junior," what?

1405. One of the episodes about Dominic.

1406. Uncle Jun's in the muff.

1407. - He loves to... - What?

1408. you know, go down on women.

1409. Oh, did I say muff? I meant rough.

1410. 65-year-old man,

1411. this is what the whole episode's about.

1412. I'm reading this thing going, "We can't do this."

1413. What's that smell?

1414. - And we did it. - Did you go to a sushi bar?

1415. - The fuck's he talking about? - I don't know.

1416. I thought you were a baccalà man, Uncle Jun.

1417. What are you doing eating sushi?

1418. You fucking run off at the mouth.

1419. South of the border, down Mexico way

1420. Season one was shot in the summer of '98

1421. and went on the air in January of '99.

1422. We thought we did a great job.

1423. We thought it was something really special.

1424. But are people going to watch?

1425. - Mike, what's your last name? - Imperioli.

1426. And that was a big question.

1427. Are people going to watch this on TV?

1428. - You know, violence... - Snaky motherfucker!

1429. profanity, nudity.

1430. Oh, Marone.

1431. It's time for your sponge bath.

1432. Is there a place for that on television?

1433. I thought it would take eight or ten shows

1434. before people just got used to it because it was so different.

1435. It was so different, you know? No.

1436. Within two, three weeks, it was a hit.

1437. Right from the beginning, the reviews were psychotically great.

1438. The Times said it was the greatest work

1439. of pop culture in the 20th century. It was like that.

1440. Like, really over the top,

1441. to the point where Saturday Night Live did a spoof.

1442. The San Francisco Examiner says,

1443. "The Sopranos is so good that I'm afraid

1444. to look away from the screen while it's on

1445. for fear that it will disappear and I'll be forced to kill myself."

1446. The Chicago Tribune predicts, "The Sopranos will one day

1447. replace oxygen as the thing we breathe in order to stay alive."

1448. The Houston Chronicle says,

1449. "Compared to the guy who created The Sopranos,

1450. Michelangelo is a douchebag."

1451. The reviews came out and they were all, like, raves.

1452. Except for one guy from Miami.

1453. And some other critic said, "We don't know where his body is.

1454. He's in a barrel somewhere in Miami Bay."

1455. Or something like that.

1456. Salute.

1457. It got so successful and so popular,

1458. the best thing about it

1459. was that people were having pizza parties

1460. and watching the show.

1461. To think that people are out there eating Italian food

1462. and drinking Italian wine

1463. and watching this, family groups.

1464. I just, I mean, it's getting me choked up thinking about it now.

1465. Every Sunday night, man.

1466. It was Soprano night. Everybody shut the fuck up.

1467. We're eating mozzarella and prosciutto

1468. and we're gonna watch this thing.

1469. We caught lightning in a bottle.

1470. You know, the chemistry between the cast,

1471. the writing, the filmmaking.

1472. Come on. Get inside.

1473. - It better be open. - Forget the umbrella.

1474. Artie, thank Christ!

1475. The Sopranos really changed television.

1476. What are you doing, Ton?

1477. Where people realized, oh, you can be challenging.

1478. Look at that fucking lovesick pygmy over there.

1479. Push the envelope.

1480. You saved our friggin' lives here.

1481. It's beautiful, Artie. Thank you.

1482. It really redefined what people are willing,

1483. and what people want to watch at home.

1484. Ah, fuck!

1485. Hey!

1486. You said "frig."

1487. Now wait a minute.

1488. I'd like to propose a toast.

1489. To my family.

1490. Someday soon, you're gonna have families of your own.

1491. And if you're lucky,

1492. you'll remember the little moments.

1493. Like this.

1494. That were good.

1495. Cheers.

1496. The first season set everything in motion.

1497. But there was an enormous amount of pressure on David.

1498. He set the bar really high

1499. and you gotta surpass it every year.

1500. This was only the beginning.