The Many Saints of Newark: You'll Enjoy It Immensely

After all of these years -- 21 or 14, depending on whether you count from the beginning or the end -- The Sopranos is arguably still the best series ever on any kind of television screen.  What's beyond argument is that The Sopranos started it all, and opened the gates, paved the way, for all the great television that ensued on cable and streaming screens.

It certainly changed my life, all for the better, not only as a viewer but a media scholar thinking and writing about television.  The late David Lavery asked me to write an essay about The Sopranos just a few years into the series for an anthology he was putting together.  The result was "Naked Bodies, Three Showings a Week, No Commercials: The Sopranos as a Nuts-and-Bolts Triumph of Non-Network TV" in This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos published by Columbia University Press and Wallflower Press in 2002.   His next good idea was to organize a conference on The Sopranos, which I did at Fordham University with David and Douglas Howard's help in 2008.  Lots of important things came out of that conference, including a nice long interview with Dominic Chianese, and another anthology, The Essential Sopranos, chock full of essays, including my "The Sopranos and the Closure Junkies," published by University of Kentucky Press in 2011.  And just for good measure, I was interviewed for "Defining a Landmark," a documentary on The Sopranos included in The Sopranos: The Complete Series, brought out by HBO on blu-ray in 2014.

So now that we've got my creds out of the way, what about the movie?

Well, with The Many Saints of Newark, just up on HBO Max for the month of October, that 2014 package is no longer complete.  The two-hour movie thus had everything to lose for David Chase, if it didn't live up to the extraordinary series to which it has the temerity of being a prequel.  Anything short of loving it would have made it a disappointment.

And I just saw it, and I loved it.  For lots of reasons.

One of the great joys in seeing a prequel is getting to know the younger selves of characters you came to know and prize in their primary presentations.  Michael Gandolfini was an inspired choice to play Tony Soprano as a teenager.  Not only did he look and sound like the adult Tony played by his father James, Michael had a perfect presentation of lines, the mix of mischief and disappointment, and the beginning of that short fuse to anger that animated his father.

And Michael Gandolfini is by no means the only actor who delivered memorably recognizable performances in The Many Saints of Newark.  Among my favorites are John Magaro, whose young Silvio not only had the toupe (of course, and preceded by a comb over for his even younger self) but had the scowl and literally walked the walk as well as talked the talk.  The same for Corey Stoll as Uncle Jun, not the toupe (of course) but in every way the bespectacled uncle of Tony.  And Vera Farmiga was so convincing as Livia -- the intensity of her gaze, the angle of her head -- she was recognizable as Tony's mother before anyone spoke her name.

And there was great work in this movie as well by actors playing characters who weren't in the original series.  My favorite of these was Alessandro Nivola, who did a stand-out job as Dickie Moltisanti, Christopher's father.

Now as to the plot.  It was strong, believable, and fleshed out in classic Sopranos detail.  And there's a stunning revelation at the end, which I won't say anything about except it was thoroughly plausible given what we know of the character in later life on The Sopranos.   

I'll also mention that the movie was studded with gems of fine touches, like baby Christopher Moltisanti crying when he sees Tony as a pouty young boy (William Ludwig), and an old biddy remarking that some people think that newborns have knowledge of "the other side" (as Christopher in a narration from the grave reminds us earlier in the film, Tony killed him).  It was also a nice touch saving the iconic "Woke Up This Morning" for the closing rather than the opening of the movie, since the song was an entree to The Sopranos.

So here's my recommendation: If you've seen The Sopranos, see The Many Saints of Newark, you'll enjoy it immensely.  If you haven't seen The Sopranos, see the entire series, then see the prequel movie.  You'll enjoy it immensely.

James Gandolfini, Tony Soprano, and Hamlet

Stunning news that James Gandolfini died, at the young age of 51.  While there was considerable debate about whether his character Tony Soprano met his end in the finale of the series that Gandolfini's great acting helped build - I'm one who thought Tony lived - there can be no doubt about James Gandolfini.  One of the truly unfortunate things about real life in contrast to life on television is death is undebatable.

More than one genius contributed to The Sopranos on HBO.  Conception and production by David Chase, production and writing by Matthew Weiner, and many more.   And while the words that an actor says are rarely his or her own - being supplied by the writer - the way that the actor delivers the words makes all the difference.  In Gandolfini's case, he brought that mixture of brutal and tender, of lethal mobster and caring family man, that defined Tony Soprano and made the series as revolutionary as it was.

Books have written about why The Sopranos was such a pathbreaking series, some in part by me.  I hosted a scholarly conference about The Sopranos at Fordham University in May 2008, organized by David Lavery, Doug Howard, and me.  The gist is that prior to The Sopranos, television was unwilling to take a chance on a narrative about a mobster who could kill an adversary one hour and return to his family to worry about how his kids were doing in school the next.   We saw that in the movies, in The Godfather trilogy, for sure.   But not on television.

And the result changed everything - for cable shows like Dexter on Showtime, for House of Cards on Netflix, and much more.   We live now in a new golden age of television, and that age started with The Sopronos, brought to life by the breathtaking acting of James Gandolfini.

The person is no longer with us.   But the character he created will live along with Hamlet forever.

See also A Conversation with Dominic Chianese for more on James Gandolfini.


                                                       


#SFWApro

A Conversation with Dominic Chianese, The Sopranos Uncle Junior: The Complete Video

Dominic Chianese talks to Paul Levinson and David Lavery ... mostly about The Sopranos, a little about The Godfather, and his life as an actor ... May 23, 2008, The Sopranos: A Wake, conference at Fordham University


transcript of the interview

see also

The Sopranos and Hamlet

The Sopranos and the Closure-Junkies

The Sopranos, or the Tiger?

The Sopranos Ninth of Nine: The Anti-Ending Ending

The Sopranos as a Nuts-and-Bolts Triumph of Non-Network TV my 2002 article

also -
Sopranos Symposium at Fordham University, May 22-25, 2008: Final Program

The Sopranos Podcasts - listen to reviews and analyses



And coming in Summer 2011: The Essential Sopranos Reader  (University of Kentucky Press) ... papers and essays from the May 2008 Sopranos Symposium at Fordham University

A Conversation with Dominic Chianese - The Sopranos' Uncle Junior

Here, at last, is a more or less verbatim transcript of the interview that David Lavery and I conducted with Dominic Chianese - Uncle Junior of The Sopranos - at The Sopranos: A Wake Conference at Fordham University in New York City on May 23, 2008. The conversation also includes 24 questions from the audience. Thanks to Giselle Isner for the transcription.   (April 21, 2011: Video now posted of the complete conversation - see it here.)

A Conversation with Dominic Chianese - The Sopranos' Uncle Junior
Pope Auditorium, Fordham University, Lincoln Center campus
Conference: The Sopranos: A Wake
May 23, 2008
 
Chianese:  Dominic Chianese
Levinson:  Paul Levinson
Lavery:  David Lavery
AM:  audience members
 
Levinson:  Welcome to Fordham University and our conference on “The Sopranos: A Wake.” For those of you who may not know me, my name is Paul Levinson. I’m Chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies. In fact, I’m ending my second and final term as Chair and I can’t think of any better way to end it than doing a conference like this and in fact this very panel that you’re soon going to hear, with the two people seated at the table.

Let me introduce you to probably the lesser known person, [audience laughter] but certainly a very significant person, and actually he is someone who helped put together most of this conference. In fact he was here with me and the other people who put together this conference back in September 2002, when we had a little vest pocket conference on The Sopranos. His name is David Lavery, and he [audience applause]…He certainly deserves a round of applause. He has edited two books about The Sopranos. One of which I am especially fond of because an essay of mine is in there, but the other book is pretty good too. I would say there’s probably no one in the world who knows more about television - not just The Sopranos, but Lost, Buffy, Heroes - than David Lavery. So I am very happy that David is here with us.

And sitting next to David is someone who was born in the Bronx in 1931. Actually I was born in the Bronx too just a few years after that - not that many years after that. He may look familiar to you because in The Godfather II, you may recall that tall sinister figure, Johnny Ola [applause], but of course he’s probably far better known, in addition to that role and other distinguished roles over the years, for the part he played in The Sopranos as Uncle Junior [applause], otherwise known as Corrado Soprano.

And when I was speaking to Bob Milang the other day, when he called me and we were discussing Uncle Junior coming to this conference, I said to him I thought that that character in many ways was the heart and soul of the show. It was such a wonderful show, there were so many important characters, but there was something about the Junior character that brought out aspects of the show that no other character did. Now the actor has a name other than Uncle Junior, and his name is Dominic Chianese, so we are going to have an interview with Dominic ... well, really not so much of an interview, more a discussion in which both David and I will ask questions and I encourage Dominic to answer however he pleases, however short or long because far be it from me to ever tell Dominic what to do, but then, you know, we want to this to be a group experience as well, so we will leave a lot of time for all of you to ask questions. By the way, we do have another member of The Sopranos cast here in the audience, Katalin Pota. You may remember Lilliana [applause]... She played the housekeeper on The Sopranos, so we’re glad to have her here as well. All right, let's then go to the discussion. I am going to sit down right at that table, and I’ll ask the first question and we’ll see how it goes.
 
Why don’t we start at the end if that’s okay. One of the things that struck me with the final season of The Sopranos was the diminished role that Uncle Junior had on that show, and I was wondering if you could perhaps speak to that. How did you feel about approaching that as an actor? Were you disappointed in that? Did you think the story called for that?
 
Chianese:  You speak specifically about the ending?
 
Levinson:  Yes, we can talk specifically about the very last minutes of the show, and also the whole final season.
 
Chianese:  The final season…well I think the ending is a good indication of, I think of what David [Chase] was trying to write, in my opinion. I noticed that when we read the script, the final script, we were amazed at the quietness of the ending. However, when all the actors read the final script, there was no indication that there would be a blackout for maybe 15 or 20 seconds. We just thought they’d end up having an ice cream soda and onion rings together, and that was it. Finito, complete, you know. Even David said, “Why not?” So we were all surprised when the blackout came. My wife and I thought, of course, we had lost television. But, my daughter pointed something out to me, which I think is very interesting. David – the greater genius that he is – he may put clues sometimes, and we don’t realize it. If you remember, she told me….I haven’t checked on it, but if you go home and check on the jukebox that he was playing at the table,  it had a song in it – “Don’t Stop Believing,” or something like that. There was a “B” side to that. Does anybody know what the title of the “B” side was?
 
Audience member #1:  “Any Way You Want It”
 
Chianese:  “Any Way You Want It.” [audience laughter] I think maybe that’s David’s motive or something, his idea or his motive for putting it in, and that struck me as something David possibly would do. Any way you want it. You make the idea. A lot of teenagers come up to me and got mad at me, and said “why don’t you kill him?” What am I gonna say?  [audience laughter]
 
Lavery:  Paul started at the end. I would like to go back to start at the beginning. Could you reflect or remember anything about the casting, about how you were actually cast in the show?

Dominic Chianese (Uncle Junior) at Sopranos Conference at Fordham University

Paul Levinson, Dominic Chianese, and David Lavery at the high point of The Sopranos: A Wake, a scholarly consideration of The Sopranos, at Fordham University, May 22-24, with more than fifty scholarly papers. (Photo by Kim Akass)

Read the complete transcript of the Dominic Chianese interview!

Complete conference program, with links to reviews and articles about the conference in the media...

And here's another photograph of Dominic Chianese and me at The Sopranos Conference, by Ken Rivers.