‘Sopranos’ Cast Reunites at Tribeca Film Festival for ‘Wise Guy’ Documentary as Michael Imperioli Says ‘The Show Is Much Better Than I Remember’
The cast and creative team behind “The Sopranos” reunited at the Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday night to celebrate the series’ 25th anniversary.
They gathered to premiere Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary, “Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos,” which screened to a packed house at the Beacon Theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on Thursday night. The two-hour, 40-minute documentary begins with the opening scene of “The Sopranos” driving into New Jersey. This time, show creator and showrunner David Chase is in the passenger seat. Throughout the documentary, Chase is interviewed by Gibney in a reenactment of Dr. Melfi’s psychiatrist’s office. Chase shares stories about his childhood in New Jersey in an Italian-American family and how his own experiences with his mother influenced the show.
Chase explains that he originally pitched “The Sopranos” as a series, but HBO was the only one interested in picking it up. The show would, of course, run for six seasons and become one of the most successful series in television history. “This is the GOAT of TV series,” Gibney says.
“I was so lucky to work with these guys, and today I really saw what kind of family this is,” Chase says of reuniting with the cast. “Where would we be without the word ‘fuck?’”
The audition tapes in the documentary are truly a fascinating behind-the-scenes treat for any “Sopranos” fan. When discussing the casting process, Gibney asked Chase if his eyes “lit up” when he found James Gandolfini to play Tony. “It didn’t really,” Chase replied.
“Not really, because [Gandolfini] didn’t want to do it, and he didn’t come to the audition, and it was hard,” Chase continued. “Steven Van Zandt read the script for the role, and I was sitting in a room with a rock and roll star. I was like, ‘Oh my God,’ and not only that — he came to my hometown to get clothes where John Gotti got his gangster clothes, and he wore them to the audition, and I was like, ‘This is the guy,’ and it didn’t work out that way.”
Gibney asked Edie Falco what the hardest part about playing Tony’s wife, Carmela Soprano. “I don’t think it was hard,” Falco said. “From very early on, Jim and I fell into a relationship that felt like we had been through it 20 years ago, just like Tony and Carmela did. So even the difficult things became easy.”
Mad Men creator and showrunner Matthew Weiner said he wrote the first episode of “Mad Men” before joining “The Sopranos” as a writer, and the experience he had working with Chase changed his approach to “Mad Men.”
“There were seven years between writing the first episode and writing the second, and in four and a half years, I was on ‘The Sopranos,’” Weiner said. “I’m still overwhelmed, I can’t believe it. “I joined [‘The Sopranos’] in Season 5. It was the biggest thing in the entire universe, [the cast] didn’t even know how big it was anymore, and [Chase] was so devastated that I was actually a cheerleader. I was like, ‘You know, everyone loves this.’” Michael Imperioli arrived at the panel fashionably late and was greeted with cheers from the audience. “The show is so much better than I remember,” he said. “With some distance, how well-produced it is at every level of the filmmaking process… it’s remarkable how great it is and how well it holds up over time.”
