Tony's Crew
Article in the Star Ledger: by M.Z.S.
A business is only as good as its workforce. In the worlds of legit and illegal business, a few slackers and cheats can spoil it for everybody. On that score, Norht Jersey mob underboss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) has done pretty well. True, the Itlian-American mob is in decline, and last year he had some serious employee problems. A corrupt cop on his payroll, Vin Makazian (John Heard), couldn't stand the pressure of being a double agent and did a swan dive off the Route 1 bridge in Edison. A seeminly loyal fot soldier, Jimmy Altieri (Joe Badalucco), turned out to be a rat for the feds and had to be exterminated. Another seemingly loyal foot soldier, Big Pussy Bompensiero (Vincent Pastore), was suspected of being a rat, then disappeared mysteriously at the end of the season. Situations like this make it hard for a guy to earn a dishonest living.
Fortunately for Tony, there are at least a handful of guys in his crew he can count on during rough times. Nephew Chris Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) is a young hothead with one foot in the gangster world and the other in gangster movie fantasyland, but he's a loyal guy with initiative. Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico) is a graying, pumped-up killer who is as unflappable as he is crudely hilarious. And Silvio Dante (Steve Van Zandt), nightclub owner and freelance thug, is a genial party host and a solid celebrity impressionist. (His Pacino in "Godfather 3" is a killer - more entertaining that the movie, in Tony's opinion.)
The actors who play Tony's crew have built up an engaging rapport over the past season. Their group vibe is less reminiscent of wise guy crews in jittery, paraniod Scorsese movies, where anybody could be a killer or a victim, than of the tough guy adventure pictures that were so popular in the '60s. Films like "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Great Escape," where the hero surrounded himself with trustworthy, steely-eyed essentrics who had a specialty, performed it without fuss and carried their machismo with humor. "This crew is very, very tight," says Van Zandt, a New Jersey legend and neophyte actor who moonlights as a guitarist in a certain Garden State rocker's band. "Everybody gets along amazingly well on this show, but the guys I see the most are the main guys - Vinny (Pastore), Tony (Sirico), Jimmy (Gandolfini), and Mikey (Imperioli.)"
The easy interaction between the characters isn't faked. Van Zandt says. These burly character actors really do like each other. "From the start, we had the ability to just kind of make it up and go, you know? That's partly due to the fantastic writing. We had an ensemble feel right away. We just jelled. I htink we may even be a little better this year in terms of the interplay because the relationship between us is a year old. We're even more in sync with each other." The one complication this year is the fate of Vincent Pastore's Big Pussy, who was missing and feared dead or turned state's witness at the end of season one. To preserve the mystery of whether he's dead or alive (The Star Ledger knows but isn't squealing), HBO and the "Sopranos" crew are observing an oath of silence regarding this and other plot developments, and even declined media requests to interview Pastore. The tactic seems pretty silly considering Pastore has been prominentyl featured in season two ads and showed up at the premiere party Jan. 5 in Manhattan. But since when have mob rules made any sense?
"This is David's thing, so we're playing it his way," says Sirico. "All the characters are very different," says Sirico of Tony's crew. "Chris is a good kid - a lttle mixed up in the head, and he's into the drugs, but with a good heart. Paulie is a killer and he's also a sweetheart. If you ask him something, he's gonna be truthful with you. He's a loyalist in the family who is very happy where he is." Silvio Dante, saysSirico, "has got a million differnt things going on. He's got te carting services, he's got the clubs. Stevie does him so well. The minute Stevie puts that toupee on, he's like a Cagney. Every line he squeezes out, little bye little." Big Pussy seems outwardly brusque and vulgar, but in a pinch, he's as dependable as Paulie (unless he's gone stoolie; only season two will solve that mystery). Ex-record mogul Hesh Rabke (Jerry Adler), the lone Jew in an Italian milieu, is like a combination of Robert Duvall's consigliere, Tom Hagen, in "Godfather 1" and Eli Wallach's crafty Don Altobello in "Godfather 3" - a guy who is outside and insdie at the same time, and who travels in worlds the wise guys can't enter.
The actors agree that the minor characters on "The Sopranos" are just as complicated because of the writing, which asks audiences to understand and identify with evil people but not condone their behavior. The comparatively leisurely structure of the show also helps - 50 minutes to an hour, as opposed to 42 to 45 minutes for network dramas - with no neat resolutions at the end of each episode. This gives the actors room to breathe and stretch - to say things that aren't cleverly camouflaged exposition. The can have conversations about offbeat subjexts that don't necessarily advance the plot but are fun to listen to. Like Paulie Walnuts' lament that so many Italian inventions, like espresso and cappuccino, have been stolen and exploited by crafty non-Italians ("Again with the rape of the culture," grouses Big Pussy). And the running conversations about gangster movies, in which the "Godfather" pictures are refernced in shorthand as "One," "Two," and "Three."
"A lot of factors come together to make this a great show for actors," says Imperioli. "There's the time factor, which is part of it. But a much bigger part, I think, is that we're on cable, so we can have more freedom with what we say. I don't just mean the language, but also how the characters can pursue subjects that develop them as characters, without the writers having to worry that the advertisers are going to flip out or the audience is going to flip away." The actors are a mix of old pros and new faces. Van Zandt, an accomplished singer-songwriter and political activist and famous New Jerseyan, has never acted before this. Sirico and Pastore, both native Brooklynites, are familiar to fans of mob movies (they co-starred in HBO's "Gotti"). Adler is a versatile pro who played a murderous nighbor in Woody Allen's "Manhattan Murder Mystery" and Rabbi Schulman on "Norhtern Exposure" (on which David Chase was executive producer for two seasons).
Imperioli is the renaissance man of the group. He had a small but memorable role in one of the greatest gangster pictures, 1990's "Goodfellas," as a hapless lackey named Spider who got his toe blown off by Joe Pesci's pint-sized terror (Imperioli returned the favor last season when Chris had a temper tantrum in a bakery). And he has appeared in several Spike Lee movies, including "Clockers," and "Girl 6." But the Mount Vernon native is also an accomplished screenwriter who co-wrote Lee's 1998 drama "Summer of Sam" and also penned a season two episode of "The Sopranos." They have one thing in common: newfound celebrity, on a scale they never expected to fin as character actors.
"All of a sudden I can't take a train anymore," says SIRICO. "They've got a lot of gumption, people - they come right over to you and want five minutes. I've got to pull a hat on and pull my head underneath so nobody sees me. I'm getting carpal tunnel in my hand from singing autographs. "But don't get me wrong - everybody should have that kind of inconvenience. I'd do anything for David Chase. Twenty-eight years in the business, and I get discovered!"
Email: carmsoprano@aol.com