James Gandolfini: The Real Life of the Man Who Made Tony Soprano by Dan Bischoff Read Free Book Online

reporters did start to come around, James and the family stayed mute. Gandolfini gave very few interviews to the press—you could count the longish ones on one hand—and he insisted on his family’s privacy. Friends were asked to avoid the press, too.
    Even in 2001, when Donna Mancinelli first got him involved in the OctoberWoman Foundation annual dinners and Tony Soprano was almost as recognizable nationally as Colonel Sanders, he was still insisting on no press. The OctoberWoman Foundation became The Sopranos ’ pet New Jersey charity until the banking crash in 2008 forced the foundation to scale back its fund-raising. Some years, much of the regular cast, from Edie Falco and Michael Imperioli to Tony Sirico and Lorraine Bracco, would appear. The $1,000-a-plate dinners drew as many as a thousand people at their height, and Gandolfini would stand for hours signing autographs and thanking donors. But only HBO cameramen were ever allowed in. TV crews from as far away as Australia were turned down.
    Most of the people who knew Gandolfini say he and his sisters are just “very private.” Both Leta Gandolfini and Johanna Antonacci declined to be interviewed about their brother; some of his friends also declined, saying Jim had insisted on “almost an omerta ” when he was alive. And it’s true, whenever he could, Gandolfini dodged personal questions.
    The people at HBO who worked in publicity for The Sopranos or helped manage Gandolfini’s career say a celebrity press that often distorts reality out of aimless sensationalism would make anyone reticent. The family has denied the New York Post ’s account of his last meal, for instance, saying the long list of alcoholic drinks is wrong—the two piña coladas he ordered were actually nonalcoholic drinks for his thirteen-year-old son, and nobody would assign everything on a family bill to one person, anyway. The twenty-four-hour media cycle creates an endless series of factual mistakes and false spins.
    The fact that Gandolfini went through a painful divorce right in the middle of The Sopranos hoopla in 2002 no doubt encouraged him to batten down the hatches even more. Widely broadcast rumors of drug abuse and wild parties on the set were set off by the presettlement legal jousting, which in turn fed a popular perception that actors are the characters they play, especially when they play gangsters.
    Some of his Italian-American friends shrug and say Gandolfini was so Italian that reticence with strangers is part of the culture. A man is expected to cut a bella figura, dress nicely, show manners in public (“Don’t shame the family!”), but draw the drapes at home.
    There’s that Jersey Jinx to think about, too. The litany of friends and professional colleagues who say James Gandolfini was “a regular Jersey guy” is deafening, so much so that you wonder if he didn’t subscribe to some version of that “Nobody from Jersey ever gets credit for nothin’” syndrome. Stick your head up and they’ll chop it off. Safer to say you’re just like everybody else.
    Others say it’s more a function of when he achieved success. Coming late to movies, when he was thirty-two, and landing his first lead role, as Tony Soprano, when he was nearing forty, meant that the vast majority of Gandolfini’s life was spent outside of the media maelstrom. Young actors often develop a backstory for their offstage persona to help drive interest in their movies, usually one that underlines their stage presence. Jim never had to; by the same token, when he achieved fame, there was no embarrassing “Jimmy Leather” persona to live down, either. You can ask John “Cougar” Mellencamp about what that’s like.
    “I got successful at a late age, so I’m under no delusions about what all this is about,” Gandolfini himself said. “Well, I’m sure I have some delusions. But you know, basically, it’s a job. You work hard, and you get tired a little bit, but that’s all it is.” Being a