01x01 - Part 1

[bunniefuu]

- Rolling.

- Rolling.

And action.

Mr. Soprano?

Yeah.

Have a seat.

Okay.

Can you recall what

your first memory was?

Your actual first memory?

My actual first memory is a dream.

I guess my mother had these.

It's like a metal kind of a thing

with a curlicue.

The hand comes out from the wall

and you can hang a plant from it.

I was swinging from that thing.

That is my first memory, actually.

It really impressed me.

Maybe it was the first time

I remember a dream

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

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

You know, it's funny

how much I've forgotten.

When people remind me of things.

That make me laugh.

Like, I don't remember.

I don't remember doing that,

or I don't remember but yeah.

Cut!

I was born in Mount Vernon, New York,

right near the Bronx.

Then we moved to Jersey

when I was four.

My mother's family was from Jersey.

We moved to my

aunt's house in Boonton,

Revolutionary w*r town.

You can still see where

the furnaces were.

They made musket ba*ls.

There's a river that goes through it.

That's the town we used

when the character Vito

went to New Hampshire.

And I loved that town.

It was so mysterious.

I loved going into New York

at Christmas.

Rockefeller Center, the tree,

the whole thing blew my mind.

Huge toy department. Santa. Trains.

- You were on my lap five minutes ago.

- No, I wasn't.

Yes, you were.

Now you're going on Santa's List

and getting nothing!

f*ck you, Santa!

My father, I started begging him,

could we please go home down

the West Side Highway?

Because to the Lincoln Tunnel,

there were ships in the harbor

that the prow of the ship

was, like, over the road.

I couldn't get over it.

I wanted to see that.

I loved going through

the Meadowlands.

There's all these legends

that Jimmy Hoffa is buried out there.

Pennsylvania Station,

all that rubble was out there.

That's where The Sopranos,

we shot a lot of it there.

But anyway, we moved out

of my aunt's house

to Clifton, New Jersey,

kind of working-class,

larger kind of semi-city,

then moved to West Essex.

My father got this idea

to open a hardware store.

Next door was a Chinese restaurant.

See these Chinese guys

plucking chickens down there.

My parents weren't that fond

of the whole deal.

They liked Chinese food,

but didn't like being close

to the Chinese restaurant.

They sold that hardware store

and they bought

a Main Street hardware store

in a small town.

My father worked really hard

and they never got out

from behind the eight ball.

They were in business

for 35, 40 years.

It was k*lling them,

but they kept going.

They kept going.

Until my father was sick

and the whole thing sold

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

Whole life.

They just were not happy people.

My mother was very difficult,

but she functioned.

She worked, came home,

made us dinner,

but she was terrified

and angry at everybody.

You know, somebody

called here last night.

After dark.

Who?

You think I'd answer?

It was dark out.

And she was given to having

screaming nightmares.

Her family had ten girls

and two boys.

Parents had come over from Italy,

lived in Newark,

which was a big Italian,

big immigrant community.

We used to go down every

Saturday night for dinner.

They spoke no English.

And her father, my grandfather,

Vito Bucco,

he never learned English. He refused.

Not a nice guy.

Did you feel unappreciated by her?

- My mother?

- Yeah.

She had so many negative things

to say about me.

Very complex. My father too.

It was very strange.

I mean, appreciated

One time we were in the car

with my mother and father

and my cousin Johnny.

I forget what song was playing,

but I was tapping along with it.

He said, "He should be

playing the drums.

He's got a good sense

of rhythm."

She said, "Over my dead body.

That Gene Krupa was a drug addict!"

Speaking of crystal meth,

look at this wayo.

I did not feel appreciated,

that would never have

come into my mind.

Were you scared of her?

Were you scared

that she would explode?

Stop telling me how to live my life.

You just shut up.

I am nervous.

As a kid, I was fearful.

And then I became kind of a punk.

And that saved my life in a way.

I fell in with this group of guys.

Holy sh*t.

Bullies, wiseguys.

We got into switchblades,

leather armbands, cigarettes.

We got our driver's licenses,

it was all about cars

and girls and alcohol.

The drinking age in New York was 18,

Jersey was 21.

So we were constantly going there.

Upper East Side was kind of hip then,

and then the Village.

I remember coming back

from Manhattan,

and it was a car full of greasers

next to us,

and we started cursing at each other

and somehow scaling plates.

Somebody's mother's plates, I guess.

You know

This is in the Lincoln Tunnel.

All of us were drunk.

1964, I go to college down South,

Wake Forest in Winston-Salem,

North Carolina.

- Hated it.

- Why?

You're going to cut this.

Yeah, it was the South.

The Klan was really active

around where we were.

The big fraternity on campus

was inspired by Robert E. Lee.

It was a Baptist school.

Had to go to chapel twice a week.

No drinking, no dancing,

no card playing.

So why did I go there?

I got rejected at Princeton.

I got rejected at Dartmouth.

My best friend was going

to Wake Forest.

Because he was going there,

I went there.

And we both were miserable.

But fortunately, someone started

foreign film night.

That's where I saw Godard, Bergman,

Fellini, La Dolce Vita

Marcello, come here!

Hurry up.

8 1/2, just, I don't even think

I understood it.

I don't even think I knew

what a film director was.

But it just blew my mind.

A whole new universe.

I left Wake Forest and went to NYU,

and I saw Cul-de-sac

by Roman Polanski.

That's when I started thinking,

"Maybe I could do that."

It was the art of it

that was so engaging.

That's it.

October of 1965, my friend was

going to Bard College.

I went up there to take acid.

That was my first time.

I remember being on the banks

of the Hudson River,

two o'clock in the morning,

and I started saying,

"I want to make movies."

That was when the idea

first occurred to me, like,

actually pursue this somehow.

- Take your mark.

- And action.

Hey, Tony.

- You okay?

- How are you doing?

- Are you okay, David?

- Yeah.

Yeah, I'm just talking

my f*cking head off.

I can't believe it.

Just talking too much.

- No, man. It's good.

- No, it's not.

I really regret the amount of

f*cking verbiage from this morning.

Seriously, I don't know about this.

Who gives a sh*t?

- All these personal questions.

- People will give a sh*t.

It's like, as Tony says

Remember when is

the lowest form of conversation.

And I would leave now,

but I see what you've done,

all this stuff.

And, yeah, it was a round office.

It looks a lot like it.

I did say I'd do this.

But what I said was,

"Yeah, I'll be part of this

Sopranos documentary."

But I didn't realize it was

going to be about me.

Let me explain a little bit,

which is that

part of what interests me

about The Sopranos

was how it was personal to you.

That you had an idea,

which was an amalgam

of a lot of things

that you had lived through,

thought about.

Well, for years, everybody told me

that I had to write something

about my mother.

She was so out there and so funny.

My wife, Denise,

was the first one to say that.

And then everybody was saying,

"You gotta write something

about your mother."

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

and David Chase had a new show.

It was called Almost Grown,

and he wanted to meet writers.

So I met with David

on Ventura Boulevard,

some restaurant.

I got there first, of course,

and I see him coming in the door.

I think, "f*ck."

He just looked so dour.

You know what I mean?

He looked so miserable.

And he sat down,

and in probably ten minutes,

we were just laughing with tears

coming down our faces

because we were talking

about our mothers.

And so we became friends.

It was like that, you know?

And I said to him, "Here you are,

the most powerful man."

He, like, had the suits at Universal,

you know, crying and upset.

And you're this powerful man,

and your mother

makes you into a little

screaming gerbil or something.

And I said, "This is what

you should write about."

Robin said, "You should write a show

about your mother

and a TV producer."

And I thought,

"Who's going to watch that?"

But maybe if he was like

a really badass guy,

maybe that would work.

Was the bad guy already a mobster?

Yeah.

I wanted to get De Niro

and Anne Bancroft.

At first, I thought of it

as a feature.

It was the story that was

the first season.

It was about a mobster

who goes to a shrink

after having panic attacks.

Any thoughts at all

on why you blacked out?

I don't know.

Stress, maybe.

About what?

He's having problems with his uncle,

a feud of some kind.

You may run North Jersey,

but you don't run your Uncle Junior.

He puts his mother in a nursing home.

I don't see you tryin' to mix

with the other ladies,

or talk to the nice gents

I see walking around.

You're not making the most

of your opportunities.

What do you care?

Out of sight, out of mind.

His mother sides with his uncle

in this g*ng w*r.

Three of my capos have

their mothers in this place?

Instead of living in normal homes

with their sons

like human beings.

This must be some kind of

f*cking end move.

His mother conspires with

his uncle to have him k*lled.

a gangland execution gone awry.

And his shrink is the one

who helps him to understand that.

On the day before the sh**ting,

you said to me that

she kept going on, yet again,

about news stories of mothers

throwing their babies out of windows.

In the end, he suffocates her.

Ma, I know what you did.

Your only son.

But then I thought,

"That would work as a TV show."

We took it around

to all the networks:

Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC.

Nobody wanted it.

Les Moonves said,

"Script's very good, very funny."

"But he's going to see

a psychiatrist?

Are you married

to him taking Prozac?"

So I said, "Yeah, I guess you'd say

I'm married to it."

He said, "Well, then no."

So it was dead.

But then I started saying,

"Can't we go to HBO?"

Simply the best choice on TV.

We were finding our way

from the time I got there in '85.

Television, you know, was still,

at that time, the Big Three,

and four, if you count Fox.

We didn't look at them

so much as competition

as a mark for us to compare

ourselves against,

and we knew we needed

to be different.

What HBO was trying to do

was make a name for itself.

Boxing and movies was really

what HBO was known for.

The change moment

became The Sanders Show.

- Someone's been sitting in my chair.

- Maybe it's Mama Bear.

Talentless fat f*ck.

Just worry about the couch

and trying not to f*ck up.

It set a mark down that HBO

could do something different,

maybe better, than what's on

the broadcast networks.

We started trying to figure out,

can we get into the series business?

Oh, boy.

Schillinger's home.

We developed Oz.

He's not such a bad guy, Diane.

What drugs are you on?

And Sex and the City.

Basically, it was a style of working,

which was, like, let's find

really great storytellers

and let them do their thing.

So David came in

and I knew his résumé.

He was a real TV veteran

and had worked on some good things,

but hadn't really had success

with his own.

Denise and I, we got married.

This is 1968.

A couple of my uncles

took me aside and said,

"You have to get out of here.

You're not going to stay married

if you stay here."

Because they knew

what my parents were like,

and they really were talking

about my mother.

My wife wouldn't have

been able to take it.

My mother was just nuts.

So we left the night of our wedding

and started for California.

We cross the country,

and I get the word

that I get a fellowship

to film school.

Stanford University.

I remember somebody telling me

that the short version

of American history is,

the scum floats west.

When I got here,

I sort of understood it.

Alcatraz.

Some of the biggest boys

did time there.

Even Capone.

Got him for tax evasion

'cause they couldn't get him

for anything else.

Did 11 years and died

of the big S in 1947.

Of course, that was a long time ago.

I went to Stanford for two years.

I did a narrative for my thesis film,

The Rise and Fall of Bug Manousos.

We thought we were doing Godard.

I don't know what we thought

Godard was doing,

but we weren't doing it.

My name is Manousos.

I'm Greek, or of Greek descent.

However you want it.

Ma, the greatest little lady

that ever lived.

Let's dump this stiff

and get it over with.

Take that smile off your face,

sweetie pie.

You son of a b*tch!

Ma, they got me in the back.

After the two-year graduate program

and I was graduating,

a friend of mine and I

wrote a script.

And the writing teacher

sent it to this guy,

Roy Huggins,

who was a big TV producer.

But we kind of forgot about it.

Denise and I moved to LA,

rented an apartment,

and Denise got a job at a law firm.

And I started looking for work,

but I just couldn't get a job.

Finally, I did get a job

working for this outfit

called Clover Films.

These movies

Not ten kilometers from here,

there's a golf course

and a country club

surrounded by German guards.

Every German son-of-a-b*tch soldier

is to be k*lled.

One of the movies, we shot it

at a burned-out apartment complex

in Las Virgenes Canyon.

It was a German fort or something,

inhabited only now by these

German prostit*tes.

I had a very small part,

and I was supposed to be

the first assistant director,

but I had no idea what I was doing.

And the movie itself,

it was mostly soft-core

f*cking and sucking.

I did write a feature

for Clover Films

called Grave of the Vampire.

No! No!

Who are you?

I'm your son!

Your son conceived in a grave!

Yes.

It was insane.

Yes!

While I was there,

I heard that Roy Huggins,

who had read that script

from two years ago,

wanted to hire me

to write an episode.

So I got my first job in TV,

a series that was called

The Bold Ones: The Lawyers.

Everybody back east There it was.

There was my name on television.

But I didn't set my mind

to learning how to direct,

even though I wanted to be

a movie director.

Right.

I did not Maybe I was

too embarrassed

to, like, ask the DP,

"How do you do that?"

"How do you do this?"

I kept trying to write features

for years after that,

and none of them got made.

I believe it was 1973.

Writers Guild went on strike,

and I had to go on picket duty

at Paramount Studios

right in front of the DeMille Gate.

And that was great.

I mean, just to be there.

It was like, these were all

professional writers

that I was on picket duty with.

And I got to really look forward

to picket duty

because it was starting to feel like

I really am in Hollywood.

And I met a guy named Paul Playdon,

the story editor

of Mission: Impossible.

I had no agent,

so Paul got me an agent.

I signed with his agency.

And when the strike was over,

there was a show called

The Magician with Bill Bixby,

and Bixby played a magician

who solved crimes

and defeated the bad guys

with scarves and hats.

Get back!

They brought me on as story editor.

And then I got on

to The Rockford Files.

I did I'll Fly Away.

And then I was on Northern Exposure.

So I was in the TV business.

The problem was,

you knew what the limits were,

but you were always testing them

and you would always fail.

It was the meetings

that were terrible,

the network meetings, what they

They had this unerring sense

that the reason

you were writing this,

the thing you love most about this,

was what they were going to go for.

So because I was used to network TV,

Sopranos was a mob show

where nobody got k*lled.

Because I thought they

wouldn't want that.

Then I realized all those

Jimmy Cagney gangster movies

The Godfather? Nobody got k*lled?

Why would you ever leave that out?

So I rewrote it to include a m*rder.

That's when HBO got really

interested in the show.

It wasn't just,

you got to put in a m*rder.

That had to be part of the story.

That had to be integral

to the narrative and to the culture.

We had a big meeting with David.

My impression was, okay,

this is a network guy,

but he's already showed us

in his writing

that he doesn't think

only like a traditional network guy.

And his take on the world,

you could tell immediately,

these characters,

it was like a second skin to him.

That was an easy yes

to make that pilot.

You want to take it from here or

In casting,

I don't react much at all.

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

- Really good.

- Thanks, guys.

"Thank you very much,"

and people leave.

Casting is a long process.

- Just begin?

- Whenever you're ready.

Next, I had a breakfast meeting.

I was called in to consult

by a garbage hauling

company I represent.

Big, what's the story

with Triboro Towers?

The site manager wants

to renew his contract.

Site manager wants to renew

his contract with d*ck.

The site manager wants to renew

his contract with d*ck.

The site manager, he wants to

renew his contract with d*ck.

But these Kolar brothers.

Let's try again.

Let me pick the energy up.

I'm very tired.

Yeah. The Kolar brothers.

They're some kind of

Czechoslovakian immigrants

or some sh*t.

They can save close to

a million a year

if the Kolars haul the trash

and not d*ck.

They pay us 40 times the monthly

for stealing your stop.

That's the thing, they won't.

They said that if they can tell

those commie bosses

back in Czechoslovakia

to go f*ck themselves,

he could f*cking tell us.

In Czech Republic too, we love pork.

You ever have our sausages?

I thought the only sausages

were Italian and Jimmy Dean.

You see what you learn when

you cross cultures?

My Uncle Uvzen doesn't know I came.

But if we make any progress,

I'll have to tell him.

Oh, we gotta make progress, "Email."

I mean, you know, we must

stop the madness.

The garbage business is changing.

We're the younger generation.

We have issues in common.

Garbage business is changing,

you know?

Younger generation.

We have issues in common.

Emil.

Where'd you go to high school?

Poland?

I'm not Polish.

What's Czechoslovakia? Isn't that

That's a type of Polack?

We came to this country

when I was nine.

I went to West Essex.

Yo, you used to play

my cousin Gregory in football.

- He went to Boonton.

- Where's the stuff?

Ah, yes.

The reason for the visit.

Got it all deployed for you.

Taste the wares, "Email."

Emil.

Cut! Yeah, we're good.

You know, the idea of

a series on HBO.

Back then, there was no prestige

attached to that.

To be really frank,

it was kind of

the bargain basement of TV.

It really was.

But I loved the character.

I thought the character

was really fun.

His name was Dean Moltisanti

when I first read the script.

I didn't know who David Chase was,

I'll be honest.

And I didn't know he was Italian

when I saw his name on the script,

which kind of made me think,

"Who's this guy?

Making a show about Italians

And he's not"

You know, Scorsese and Coppola

were Italian American.

But I worked really hard on it

and went in for David.

You know, David's very

he's poker-faced.

Michael came in and he was great,

but I played it completely straight.

Very good.

I walked out thinking,

"This ain't gonna happen.

Who cares? He's not even Italian.

What does he know?"

"Who the f*ck is this guy?

He's not even Italian. f*ck him."

But

- Who's there?

- You locked the door?

Seemed to me like we read

a hundred actresses.

This is a nursing home.

They all came in and they did

their crazy Italian mama thing.

You're not putting me in

a nursing home.

I've seen these women

in these nursing homes

babbling like idiots.

And it wasn't even close.

And because it was based

on my mother,

I knew how far away it was.

But then Nancy Marchand came in.

I knew her as Mrs. Pynchon,

the newspaper publisher in Lou Grant.

May I remind you, Mr. Grant,

this is not the New York Times.

I'm reminded of it

every time I pick it up.

So am I, sir, and I wish

we had their resources.

But the simple fact is, we don't.

If you want me to back off, I will.

Now, I didn't say that.

But I need you gentlemen to tell me

that we can win if we go to court.

- Should I slate it and all that?

- No.

Just thought, "This is crazy.

This isn't going to work."

But she opened her mouth and boom.

You're with active seniors

your own age.

They do things, they go places,

they go dancing.

I've seen these women

in these nursing homes

babbling like idiots.

Just eat your eggplant.

It was like And she just had it.

If your uncle has business

with Arthur,

and I don't even

want to know what it is,

then he knows what he's doing.

And I don't?

Well, all I know is

daughters are better at taking care

of their mothers than sons.

And I bought CDs

for a broken record.

Everybody always told me there

was no one like my mother.

But when all of my relatives

started watching the show,

they said, "My God,

that's Aunt Norma.

That's your mother."

I said, "No sh*t."

It was like she was channeling her.

I expect to see you tonight

at Anthony Junior's

birthday party with your baked ziti.

Only if I'm picked up

and I'm brought back home.

I don't drive

when they're predicting rain.

All of my career,

pretty much in my career,

I have played the tasteful lady.

And I really appreciate playing

this kind of harridan

because I never get a chance

to do that.

It's good for you to drive.

Use it or lose it.

I got to go to work.

Sure.

Run off.

I don't have

When I went in initially,

I was auditioning for about

five different roles.

Who was that woman tonight?

I read for Tony Soprano's mistress.

What, you were redoing

the garbage dump?

So don't treat me like a child.

I know there's something

more intimate.

Who was that woman

tonight at the restaurant?

You better not be

messing with that hat.

In the end,

they went with someone else.

Very good.

But David liked me.

I think he just liked the fact

that I was Italian,

and maybe I was cute.

But I didn't know that it had

anything to do with being Italian.

I thought it was about opera singers.

This is unacceptable.

I had an 8:00 reservation

I made two weeks ago.

As I explained,

people are not leaving their tables.

There are five parties ahead of you.

I don't think I read

for the hostess part.

That was a phone call,

"Would you want to play this part?"

And I said, "Sure."

But I couldn't say

my one f*cking line.

Mr. Borglund, they're setting up

your table right now.

Because I was so nervous

to be around Lorraine

after Goodfellas.

Karen. So I was with Karen!

I was dying!

Look, he started to touch me.

He started to grab me.

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

I hit him back, and then

he got really angry.

Lorraine was the only thing we had

that resembled a star

because of Goodfellas

and a couple other movies.

But at first, the casting people

brought her in for Carmela.

Carmela was definitely

something that HBO

and him had discussed,

but I went in wanting Dr. Melfi.

And David was a little taken back.

"Why do you want to play Melfi?"

I said, "Well, because

I'm a different woman

than I was years ago

when I was Karen Hill

in Goodfellas.

I don't really want to play

that part again.

Dr. Melfi intrigues me.

I've been in therapy."

- You had been in therapy?

- Absolutely.

And so David and I talked

a lot about therapy,

and I think that we've never seen

an Italian educated woman.

That pleases me.

And I don't think Tony would talk

to anybody that's not Italian.

So with that,

Dr. Melfi.

I said, "Okay, but you're

going to have to sit still

with your hands in your lap.

Keep your voice down."

- Okay, David?

- Yeah.

Okay. I got it.

Great. Good.

You know, I would always

have to work on

tamping down all my lightness.

And I would try to bury Lorraine

so that Melfi would come out

in a very different way

than who I am.

It was very far from me.

I'm not Melfi at all anywhere.

Anxiety attacks are legitimate

psychiatric emergencies.

- Suppose you were driving a car.

- Let me tell you something.

Today everybody goes

to shrinks and counselors.

They're getting on

Sally Jessy Raphael,

talking about their problems.

What happened to Gary Cooper?

The strong, silent type?

He was an American.

This guy wasn't in touch

with his feelings.

He just did what he had to do.

We were casting Tony.

We started in Los Angeles,

then moved to New York.

We read a whole lot of people,

and it just wasn't happening.

Vaffanculo, eh?

But then I had asked Steven Van Zandt

to read for Tony.

There he was, a rock and roll star.

This carried a lot of sh*t with me.

I used to play those

Springsteen albums

and look at this

little Italian guy and say,

"Who is that?

Kind of looks like Pacino."

For the record, tonight,

I want to say that there was

absolutely nothing

unusual about the way

The Rascals dressed.

But what happened was,

right before casting,

my wife and I were watching

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,

and there's Steven Van Zandt

inducting The Rascals.

Nothing strange about that.

Dressed in a Rascals costume.

The first time I saw The Rascals

was the Keyport Roller Drome

in Keyport, New Jersey.

That's right.

No, it was no Fillmores.

There was no arenas in those days.

Rock and roll played skating rinks

where it belonged.

I said to her, "This guy

has got to be in the show."

And the way rock is selling,

we may be back in

skating rinks next year,

I don't know, but

I get a lot of scripts for music,

not for acting.

I wasn't an actor.

And David Chase calls, you know.

I get on the phone.

What was that first

conversation like?

Well, it was a little weird

because he says,

"What do you think?"

I said, "Well, I think

it's great script.

What kind of music

are you thinking of?"

He says, "No, we want

you to be in it."

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

I mean, I thought,

isn't that kind of a prerequisite

for this whole TV thing? You know?

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

You just don't know it yet."

You know?

So I said, "All right, well,

maybe destiny is speaking here."

Ah, let me tell you something.

Everybody these days is going

to shrinks and counselors.

They're all on Sally Jessy Raphael

telling everybody their problems.

Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?

You know, the strong, silent type.

That was an American.

He wasn't in touch with his feelings.

He did what he had to do.

And those people knew

once they got Gary Cooper

in touch with his feelings,

they would never

be able to shut him up.

Dysfunction this, dysfunction that,

dysfunction vaffanculo.

His reading was good.

I'd never seen anything

like that, really.

And I thought, "Well, yeah,

that could be Tony Soprano."

But in the end,

I guess HBO tells David,

"Look, he's okay.

But we're not going to depend on

some guy who never acted before."

He says, "All right,

well, in that case,

I'll write you in a part

that doesn't exist."

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

- This guy's really

- And action.

Sandrine.

This table drinks on the house

all night.

But he didn't write in

an underboss specifically,

or a consigliere.

I was just more or less a club owner

at that first moment.

Let's do that one more time.

It was very difficult

to find a guy for Tony.

Let me tell you something.

Today everybody goes

to shrinks and counselors.

They go on Sally Jessy Raphael

and they talk about their problems.

Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?

The strong, silent type.

That was an American.

He wasn't in touch with his feelings.

He just did what he had to do.

What they didn't know

was once they got

Gary Cooper

in touch with his feelings,

they wouldn't be able to shut him up.

Dysfunction this, dysfunction that,

dysfunction vaffanculo.

Another guy who came close

was Michael Rispoli.

That was excellent.

But then, finally, we found Jim.

I got a call.

David Chase wanted to meet

at 8:30 in the morning.

I was like, oh.

Just his choice of having

a breakfast instead of

put me off right away.

I don't know why.

But we had a good time.

We laughed about our families

and our mothers.

So, then I auditioned.

And the first audition, I stopped

halfway through and I said,

"This sucks.

I'm not doing it right.

If you want me to come back,

I'll come back

and do it differently."

He left in the middle

of the first audition.

Walked out.

Doing his Van Morrison thing.

"This is sh*t.

I'm not doing this right," and left.

But we thought he was great.

So our casting directors

got him to come to my house,

and he read the scene

and it was like, you know

Bang.

Let me tell you something.

Nowadays, everybody's gotta

go to shrinks and counselors,

and go on Sally Jessy Raphael

and talk about their problems.

Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?

The strong, silent type.

That was an American.

He didn't worry about his feelings,

he just did what he had to do.

What they didn't know

was if they got Gary Cooper

to talk about his feelings,

they wouldn't be able to shut him up.

'Cause dysfunction this,

dysfunction that,

and dysfunction vaffanculo.

It was just pretty obvious

when Jim did it,

he was Tony.

You know, sometimes

life is good.

Life is often good.

Regaleali, for example.

We had cast everybody,

but we didn't have a Carmela yet.

Carmela

Something I got to confess.

Edie, we did the audition

right before sh**ting.

What are you doing?

Getting my wine in position

to throw in your damn face.

You're always with the drama.

Go ahead and confess already.

Get it over with.

She did the scene from the pilot

where he tells her

that he's taking Prozac.

I'm on Prozac.

Oh, my God.

I've been seeing a therapist.

Oh, my God.

I think that's great.

I think that's so wonderful.

I think that's so gutsy.

- It was like, wow, this is it.

- I think that's very wonderful.

Did you think I was

Hannibal Lecture before?

It's great.

Psychology doesn't address the soul.

That's something else.

But this is a start.

This is something.

I'm gonna shut up.

I'll shut up now.

I definitely knew who this woman was.

And I was sure

I would never get cast because

my experience up to that point

had been that,

you know, if you're being cast

as an Italian American,

you've got to look a certain way.

And I felt like there were

other women

that looked more that way

and were cast

more often that way.

But I went and auditioned,

and the next day they called

and said, "You got the part."

And I thought, "It's one of

these fly-by-night productions."

You know? Cast it, sh**t it.

Mark.

Mark.

Somebody gonna say action or what?

And action.

You know, Grandma,

this place is pretty neat.

What goes on behind there?

Very good!

Did you call that guy

at Tribeca Towers?

DAVID CHASE: Wait until I give you

the cue for the line.

Action.

Girls, you gotta have more than

just cranberry juice for breakfast.

Cut. Good.

DAVID CHASE: Action.

What the hell's the name

of the place?

DAVID CHASE: Triboro Towers.

Jesus.

Action.

Look

Anybody for ice cream?

DAVID CHASE: Line.

Did you call that guy

down at Triboro Towers

about the hauling contract?

Cut. Let's go again right away.

Right out of the gate, did he say

he wanted to direct it?

Yes. That was the next big decision.

We didn't know a lot about

what we were doing,

so we didn't want to give

anybody that much control.

He was going to be the

showrunner-writer-producer,

but if he was going to direct it,

then it was really

going to be his vision.

But it was clear when David

was talking about it

that it lived so much

in his heart and soul

and in his head

that we were like, "We gotta."

Let's let him direct it.

Action.

Every year on this date

since you were itty-bitty,

Mom and Meadow get all dolled up,

drive into New York Plaza Hotel

for tea

The scene where Carmela goes

to get her daughter

to bring her to the Plaza.

I have too much homework.

Meadow, it's our little tradition.

We always have so much fun.

Tell you the truth,

I've felt it was dumb

since I was eight.

I just go because you like it.

I remember something about

David's directing of that scene

Cut. Good.

that made me realize

this is personal to him.

He's speaking about something

that may have really happened

Action.

or something he was really

going through

with his wife and daughter

at that time.

But I remember thinking,

"Oh, this isn't just a director.

This is personal."

You have something

you want to say to me?

Mom, do you have any idea

how much it means

to actually go skiing in Aspen?

I mean, do you think that's

going to happen every year?

Like lame tea and scones

at the Plaza Hotel?

Goodbye.

Close my door, please.

And cut.

- Cut.

- Good.

Were you nervous about

sh**ting the pilot?

Thinking, this is my opportunity now

to be a director?

Yeah. Sure, I was nervous, yeah.

I mean, I had directed

some before that,

but, yeah, I was very nervous.

I depended on

Alik Sakharov a lot, DP.

I remember it was the first

or second week of prep on the pilot.

David would walk into the office,

put his feet up,

look out the window,

and just like gray mood.

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

"I don't know who's going

to f*cking watch this sh*t."

It's a good script, bro.

You know? It's a good script.

I distinctly remember, he said

we don't want to do

another television project.

Let's just break all the rules.

I didn't want TV coverage.

Coverage is the most boring

f*cking thing in the world.

Typically, it would be a master,

two overs, and two close-ups.

So basically you fracture the scene

into smithereens.

It wasn't cinematic at all.

We talked about Bertolucci.

We talked about Coppola up the wazoo.

You know, Godfather.

We talked about Martin Scorsese.

We talked about Polanski.

With Chinatown, the language of it

was very close to how we wanted

to present Sopranos.

The scene where Jake Gittes

drives his car through

the orange orchard

Hold it right there!

That was the model for a scene

where Tony and Chris

chase this guy

in front of this office building.

as*h*le!

Tony!

Wait up!

Then I said, "Okay, I want to take

the camera inside."

Two guys are working in there

when this goes by them,

and they jump.

People were like,

"What's that got to do with it?"

But it worked well.

And then it just basically

breaks into handheld mode

when Tony is out of the car

and he just pummels this guy.

- You all right?

- My leg is broken.

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

I'll give you a f*cking bone,

you prick.

Where's my f*cking money?

- Cut.

- That was my fault.

- I didn't wait long enough.

- Let's do one more.

When you're doing TV,

it's one scene

right after another one.

So you have to learn

to prepare very quickly.

- In one scene, you'll be

- Hey, old man. Happy birthday.

talking to your son,

the next scene

you'll be beating somebody up,

and the next scene you'll be

making love to your wife.

And so it's this constant

change of emotions

all through the day,

and you have to be able

to shift quickly.

What are you talking about?

We discussed this.

Mr. Soprano?

Lorraine and Jim.

We rehearsed for three days

right before we shot.

But look, this sh*t I'm telling you?

It will all blow over.

Just stop for a second.

For him, it was like,

what's your attitude

in a psychiatrist's office?

There was a lot of things

he wasn't used to.

It's okay. It's not a big deal.

It's just me.

Should we cut?

And I'm not It's my fault.

My concentration.

I shouldn't say that. Hi.

Have you ever had any personal

experience with psychoanalysis?

Yeah.

In other words,

you're not just making it up.

You know what it feels like.

I've been in some of those rooms,

not for long periods, but

But you know what it feels like.

Yes, but, you know,

I don't think when I started

the series I did.

I think that led me right into it.

- That pushed you into it?

- Yeah. Oh, definitely.

Was it research or was it real?

- No, it was real.

- It was real.

It was a cry for help.

No, it was

Ah, yeah. Uh-huh, sure.

Yeah, hose him down.

- Would you like a Kleenex?

- Nah, f*ck that.

You're getting me

hot and sweaty, doc.

Jim had never been in therapy.

Action.

So that was fun to kind of lead him,

push him,

manipulate him, in a way.

There are some very intimate moments.

Yes, which is why I loved it.

Which is why I wanted Melfi.

I thought he was more intimate

with me than with anybody.

And I loved that.

Mark.

You have strong feelings about this.

Let me tell you something.

I have a semester and a half

of college,

so I understand Freud.

I understand therapy as a concept,

but in my world, it does not go down.

Could I be happier? Yeah.

Yeah. Who couldn't?

Cut.

Action!

Jim had his own way

of becoming Tony Soprano.

He understood the character.

There was a scene where Chris

was off sulking,

so Tony goes up to him and says

Enough of this sh*t,

what's wrong with you?

In the script, what I had written in

or had imagined was,

is Tony going, "Hey!"

That was what I was picturing.

I'll f*cking k*ll you.

But Gandolfini yanked him

out of his chair.

That came out of nowhere.

That wasn't in the script.

And cut. f*cking great.

But it was mostly,

I would give direction,

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

Action.

I would do some stupid f*cking thing.

And he later told my wife, he said,

"You know that pilot?

I just copied the way David behaves."

Cut.

In the beginning, I do remember

Jimmy would say, like,

"How does David know

so much about me?"

Maybe there were similarities

in the cultural upbringing.

David grew up in New Jersey,

Jimmy grew up in New Jersey.

Italian households, you know,

just a lot of similarities.

It just fit.

Everything seemed to fit, you know?

David grew up in New Jersey,

so he can take a lot of things

from real life,

which you would never think

would work,

but he makes them work.

It was not, like, slam dunk.

I mean, it was a very strange pilot.

Blatantly uncommercial, frankly.

Hey, kids. Come here!

They're trying to fly!

The babies, they're trying to fly!

- The basic premise

- Look, they're trying to fly.

A bunch of ducks come

into a boss's pool.

The ducks leave.

He has a nervous breakdown.

Do you feel depressed?

Since the ducks left,

I guess.

The ducks that preceded

your losing consciousness.

Let's talk about them.

This is the premise of a hit show?

Nobody really expected it

to even be picked up.

Dr. Cusamano put me in the hospital,

gave me every kind of test.

They tested the pilot in four places:

Connecticut, Dallas,

and two other I forget.

And surprisingly enough,

it tested best in Connecticut.

This is f*cked up.

Of course, it's loaded

with Italians

And it's near New Jersey.

New Jersey, yeah.

You cannot accept a gift like that

from Tony Soprano.

- No way.

- Listen to me, Charmaine.

They said that testing had shown

that Charmaine Bucco,

Artie's wife, was the moral center

of the show.

And we should focus more on her.

But the tickets were comps.

Tony is a labor leader.

Arthur, please, grow up.

Does the mind not rebel

in any possible scenario

under which dentists are sending

the Don of New Jersey,

first class on a Norwegian steamship?

Come on, Arthur,

somebody donated their

kneecaps for those tickets.

And she was great. Kathy was great.

But that's not what

the show was about.

And it just took forever.

It was ten months

before you guys greenlit it.

It was a long time.

'Cause this was a big jump.

Because that's the deal you're making

with a showrunner.

You're saying, "Okay, I'm going

to give you millions of dollars,

and we're going to take

a number of years

and we're going to create something.

And do I trust you?"

They finally said yes.

And I got to tell you,

I just feel so grateful for that.

You're not getting me

into a nursing home.

I mean, I was at the end

of my career, really.

I was actually finally going to quit

working in television

and go to work

writing features on spec.

Then Sopranos came up.

It was like I had been in the middle

of a terrible ocean.

- Ma.

- No.

Anthony, people come here to die.

And I had landed on a desert island,

a beautiful palm-covered island.

I thought, "My life is saved."

Oh my God!

Somebody get a doctor.

So what happened

with you and The Sopranos,

it was like HBO said,

"Go for it, man."

They trust the instincts

of the creator.

That was the amazing thing

that happened.

I guess I had the right concept,

and they decided to trust me.

The morning of the day I got sick,

I'd been thinking.

It's good to be in something

from the ground floor.

I came too late for that. I know.

But lately I'm getting the feeling

that I came in at the end.

The best is over.

Many Americans, I think,

feel that way.

I think about my father.

He never reached the heights like me.

But in a lot of ways,

he had it better.

He had his people.

They had their standards.

They had pride.

Today, what do we got?

When I wrote the beginning

of the pilot,

what I was talking about was America.

I just had a sense that things

were really going downhill.

Everything's for sale here.

Everything is for sale.

And also,

the comic part of it for me was that

Americans had gotten

so materialistic and so selfish

that it made a mob boss sick.

I wanna know why there's zero growth

in this family's receipts.

Where's the f*cking money?

You're supposed to be earners.

Each of you,

go to your people on the street,

crack some f*cking heads,

create some f*cking

earners out there.

Sil, break it down for them.

What two businesses have

traditionally been recession-proof

since time immemorial?

Certain aspects of show business

and our thing.

You know, you do a mob story,

of course you're doing a mob story.

But there's also the element

of corruption and business,

like anything to make a buck.

- Where's the rest of the money?

- It's everywhere.

The whole idea of both

that it's the American dream

and the American nightmare,

all at once.

It was about money and death.

- And they're related somehow.

- Right.

You better give me your jewelry.

It was capitalism

in the rawest sense.

They know we can't produce receipts.

You want them stealing from us?

And it was on television,

which was the instrument

that capitalism used to sell.

- A new Dodge.

- Camel.

- Jell-O.

- Kodak.

What I thought

from the very beginning was,

okay, here we are,

this is now 50 years we're doing TV.

And people are being sold something

every 15 minutes,

would mean a hard sell.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,

bullshit.

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

a face comes on and says something.

It has an effect on us.

And it was all about

money, money, money.

Just so you understand

that I have to charge you

for the missed session.

All right. Fine.

Fine, here. Here you go.

- As it was said in the show.

- This is what it's all about.

m*therf*cking, c*ck-sucking money.

Here.

And now we had no more commercials.

We were on HBO.

Everywhere I'd gone prior to that,

of all the networks,

"Where do you want to sh**t it?"

I said, "New Jersey."

"What do you want to do that for?"

I said, "I believe it belongs there."

"It's going to be a lot of money.

I don't know what for."

Then when I went to HBO, they said,

"Now, it says here

it takes place in New Jersey.

You're going to sh**t it

in New Jersey, right?"

I was like,

"Oh my God, I'm in heaven."

Really, I felt like,

f*ck the whole past 30 years.

This is it.

A broadcast network

would sh**t it in LA

and do second unit in Jersey

and find, you know, locations

that they could double

to create that wonderful

suspension of disbelief illusion.

"Oh, I'm really in Jersey."

We'll keep right on going,

sh**ting in the rain.

I like it when it's cloudy

because the colors get nice

and saturated and rich.

We got into this idea of

looking for locations

not because they were locations.

We got to find places

that have character

that could basically

parallel our characters. Right?

All we need to do now is bring

the camera and sh**t it.

For rehearsal, please.

Well, we actually shot

all the interiors in Queens.

And all the exteriors,

I forbade any exterior shots

to be shot anyplace but New Jersey

because I wanted it to be realistic.

I knew New Jersey really well.

For example, the Meadowlands,

the combination of really

heavy industry

and the largest urban wilderness

in the world.

Marty Scorsese doesn't like the show.

Says, "I don't get it.

It's like all these trees and sh*t."

All mob things before that

had been Manhattan or Brooklyn.

And I knew there was a mob presence

in New Jersey.

Kids whose fathers were

heavy bookmakers, loan sharks.

Where the Soprano house was,

that was the town that we moved to

when I was in eighth grade.

There was a lot of woods and ponds.

At the same time, some guy

got blown up in his garage.

Start his car

So I knew about all that,

and I thought,

"I think it'll actually work."

It gave it an entirely

different look.

And I think it was

kind of a different culture.

Tony was a suburbanite,

Tony and Carmela.

This says "with pulp."

You like it with pulp.

Not this much.

I like the one that says "some pulp."

The f*ck was that for?

I'll write you up a list.

- New game.

- He's got a regular family, kids.

- Attagirl, Mead!

- His daughter plays soccer.

Brick wall!

He loves his wife very much.

I think she

she's the strength of the family,

pretty much.

He's just got a regular life.

His job is the Mafia.

That's his job.

It's not fair.

He's got a regular family

on top of it,

which creates as many problems,

if not more,

as the other job.

When you're choosing projects,

what are the most

important factors for you?

What comes first?

The writing, the writing,

the writing

So when you got picked up for series,

then you had to put together

a writers' room.

Was that a difficult process

in terms of

figuring out how you're going to work

with a bunch of other writers?

Yes and no.

I had worked rooms before,

so I knew what to expect.

But this one was

going to be different.

I was in a mood where I just

wasn't going to accept TV writing.

I kept thinking,

"God, we're free here.

Let's really dig down into this."

Let's think about it.

I came on for episode, I guess, two,

you know, after the pilot.

He talked about what he had,

which was an arc for the season,

which he always came in with.

But nothing beyond that.

Now, because of movie people

coming into the business,

you have to have five years' worth.

You have to tell them everything

and know everything.

And we didn't know anything.

As a matter of fact,

in the very beginning,

David said, "If this doesn't work,

that's it for me."

And forgive me, HBO,

but they were nowhere

at that point.

It was an elephant graveyard,

and they didn't know

if it would work either.

But they just gave us

complete freedom.

It was our little artistic

experience.

That's what it felt like.

Quiet, please.

It was a lot of hard work,

a lot of hours.

The hours were brutal.

And writers were on the set.

So it was, you know, from dawn

Good morning. You're late.

Where you been? Sleeping?

until you'd see the towers

coming back from New Jersey

at around 3:00 in the morning.

Maybe you'd sleep for seven hours

and it'd all start again.

But when you're that age

or you're working like that,

what else is there to do?

So we all worked like that, you know.

It was the most fun you can imagine.

For everyone.

I'm proud of it.

Still my favorite line

of the whole series.

- "Hasidim but I don't believe 'em"?

- No.

- My favorite line was

- 900 Jews held their own

against 15,000 Roman soldiers.

"The Romans, where are they today?"

And Robin wrote this line

- You're looking at 'em, as*h*le.

- That's great.

That's great. It was great.

In episode four,

when we were trying to find

Chris's girlfriend,

we brought Drea de Matteo

back in to read.

Where'd you park?

In back, there.

I ain't crossing that.

No one followed me.

Adriana, you wouldn't know

if they did.

Oh, yeah, like Tony Soprano's

hiding in my back seat.

You are so paranoid.

Bring the car right here.

I know.

He's in disguise.

That could be him.

Hey, Tony. Or maybe

She got it because

it said in the script, "ow."

But she said

Ow-ah!

- Get over here.

- Let go of me!

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

You're hired.

That was great.

- That was great.

- Thank you.

I heard the nurse say you made

number two in your pants.

- Is that what happened?

- Get the car.

That stuff is sort of my specialty

because I was from Queens,

even though I tried to

leave that behind.

But, I mean, all the girls

in my neighborhood,

it's all the Italian girls.

You gotta talk like this.

Don't f*ck around.

Everything has got to be

ten syllables.

I'm really f*cking doing it.

And it's all thanks to you.

I couldn't do the accent

without the nails.

I couldn't do half of it

without the hair and makeup.

Why don't you forget about working

and be with me?

Oh, yeah, and be one of those wives

like Carmela Soprano?

Breastfeed a bunch of rug rats

then spend the rest of your life

at the gym,

just you and your stretch marks.

You're right.

My cousin's always had a brain,

but what does she use it for?

A husband who can't even tell you

where the money comes from.

You know, just the whole way

David set that story up,

and then seeing the next episodes

that would come after,

I was mind-blown.

I would call my mom from payphone

and read her the entire script.

You'd publish a script.

It would only come out

right when it was being filmed,

pretty much.

The crew would be reading it.

You know what I mean?

They were reading it.

They wanted to know.

They took pleasure and joy in it.

When we went back

and started sh**ting season one,

it was really then

when you started seeing

the next few scripts

that I realized, whoa!

This is really

genius and complex.

You know? And really risky.

David, he always says,

"Television in the past

was always about

making you feel good."

Cop shows.

Why are cop shows so great?

Because at the end of the day,

the bad guy gets put in jail.

You know, there's some kind of order

to the universe.

There's some kind of justice.

David was all about the opposite.

Are you in the Mafia?

- Am I in the what?

- Whatever you call it.

Organized crime.

That's total crap. Who told you that?

Dad, I've lived in the house

all my life.

I've seen police come with warrants.

I've seen you going out at

three in the morning.

So you've never seen Doc Cusamano

go out at three in the morning

on a call?

Did the Cusamano kids ever find

$50,000 in Krugerrands

and a .45 automatic while they

were hunting for Easter eggs?

I'm in the waste management business.

Everybody immediately assumes

you're mobbed up.

It's a stereotype and it's offensive.

You're the last person

I would want to perpetuate it.

Fine.

There is no Mafia.

When they saw the fifth episode,

HBO said, "You've created

one of the most dynamic

characters in television history,

and you're going to blow it all."

What the f*ck?

I think I just saw Fabian Petrulio.

- Refresh my memory.

- What's he, before your time?

Made guy flipped about ten years ago

and he got busted for peddling H.

Rat f*ck took out a lot of people.

A lot of people from our outfit.

He went into the witness

protection program

then they kicked him out.

I am your soldier, Antonio.

This is my duty.

Like we're always talking about.

The way this went down,

this is my call.

I got to vouch for this myself.

Jimmy says hello from hell, you f*ck!

I brought it up in the script.

And the answer was,

you're gonna feel differently

when you see it.

Good morning, rat.

Who are you? What is this?

Don't make me laugh, you pimp!

You f*ck!

Teddy, there must be

something we can do.

Tony, it's Tony, you f*ck.

Know how much trouble you're in?

You took an oath and you broke it.

And then when we saw it,

it was even

more troublesome

than I thought in the script.

Please, Tony. I'm begging you.

Jimmy says hello from hell, you f*ck!

Chris says, "I'm seeing it now

and how gruesome it is.

And we're going to lose everything.

People, they're going to hate him."

Could you have a criminal,

a k*ller, as your lead?

Can you have an antihero in the lead?

That was the big debate.

My big objection

was that the audience

was really going to not like Tony,

and that we hadn't earned that yet.

I mean, this was just

the fifth episode.

I said, "Chris, think about it."

How'd it go?

They got a 48 to 52 male-female

ratio, which is great.

He's up there in Maine,

and he sees this rat.

He's a captain in a mob crew.

If he doesn't k*ll that guy,

people are going to lose faith in him

or interest in him completely.

So if Tony doesn't k*ll this guy,

he's full of sh*t.

And then the whole show

is full of sh*t.

And I thought,

"Well, that makes sense."

I said to Dave,

"Here's the problem.

Like, this was a bad guy.

So let's find ways to give Tony

a little bit more justification."

David made some adjustments

to the victim.

He became a more menacing figure

than he had initially started.

Where we all got down to

is, like, look,

Chris and I are not going

to write it, direct it.

So at the end of the day, I think,

when you hit that kind of impasse

with a show creator,

you kind of have to go with them.

Better.

They left us alone completely,

and there was

some weird stuff we did.

Whoa, Junior!

"Whoa, Junior," what?

One of the episodes about Dominic.

Uncle Jun's in the muff.

- He loves to

- What?

you know, go down on women.

Oh, did I say muff? I meant rough.

65-year-old man,

this is what the whole

episode's about.

I'm reading this thing going,

"We can't do this."

What's that smell?

- And we did it.

- Did you go to a sushi bar?

- The f*ck's he talking about?

- I don't know.

I thought you were

a baccalà man, Uncle Jun.

What are you doing eating sushi?

You f*cking run off at the mouth.

South of the border, down Mexico way

Season one was shot

in the summer of '98

and went on the air

in January of '99.

We thought we did a great job.

We thought it was

something really special.

But are people going to watch?

- Mike, what's your last name?

- Imperioli.

And that was a big question.

Are people going to watch this on TV?

- You know, violence

- Snaky m*therf*cker!

profanity, nudity.

Oh, Marone.

It's time for your sponge bath.

Is there a place for that

on television?

I thought it would

take eight or ten shows

before people just got used to it

because it was so different.

It was so different, you know? No.

Within two, three weeks,

it was a hit.

Right from the beginning,

the reviews were psychotically great.

The Times said it was

the greatest work

of pop culture in the 20th century.

It was like that.

Like, really over the top,

to the point where

Saturday Night Live did a spoof.

The San Francisco Examiner says,

"The Sopranos is so good

that I'm afraid

to look away from the screen

while it's on

for fear that it will disappear

and I'll be forced to k*ll myself."

The Chicago Tribune predicts,

"The Sopranos will one day

replace oxygen as the thing

we breathe in order to stay alive."

The Houston Chronicle says,

"Compared to the guy who created

The Sopranos,

Michelangelo is a douchebag."

The reviews came out

and they were all, like, raves.

Except for one guy from Miami.

And some other critic said,

"We don't know where his body is.

He's in a barrel somewhere

in Miami Bay."

Or something like that.

Salute.

It got so successful and so popular,

the best thing about it

was that people were having

pizza parties

and watching the show.

To think that people are out there

eating Italian food

and drinking Italian wine

and watching this, family groups.

I just, I mean, it's getting me

choked up thinking about it now.

Every Sunday night, man.

It was Soprano night.

Everybody shut the f*ck up.

We're eating mozzarella

and prosciutto

and we're gonna watch this thing.

We caught lightning in a bottle.

You know, the chemistry

between the cast,

the writing, the filmmaking.

Come on. Get inside.

- It better be open.

- Forget the umbrella.

Artie, thank Christ!

The Sopranos really

changed television.

What are you doing, Ton?

Where people realized, oh,

you can be challenging.

Look at that f*cking lovesick

pygmy over there.

Push the envelope.

You saved our friggin' lives here.

It's beautiful, Artie. Thank you.

It really redefined what people

are willing,

and what people want

to watch at home.

Ah, f*ck!

Hey!

You said "frig."

Now wait a minute.

I'd like to propose a toast.

To my family.

Someday soon, you're gonna have

families of your own.

And if you're lucky,

you'll remember the little moments.

Like this.

That were good.

Cheers.

The first season

set everything in motion.

But there was an enormous

amount of pressure on David.

He set the bar really high

and you gotta surpass it every year.

This was only the beginning.