The Sopranos: Created by David Chase

This groundbreaking new HBO series follows Tony Soprano as he lives the daily grind of middle management in the mob . . .

Tony Soprano's got a lot of stress in his life: his wife and daughter aren't getting along, his son gets into fights at school, his marriage is shaky, and his mother may need a nursing home. If that isn't enough, he has problems with his job and thinks he's being followed. So it's not a big deal that Tony would want to see a therapist, right? Maybe not to the rest of us. But then, Tony Soprano's not like the rest of us -- he's a made man in the New Jersey Mafia. And when a guy in Tony's profession breaches the company's confidentiality agreement, he's risking a lot more than unemployment.

Featuring . . .

James Gandolfini's extensive film credits include GET SHORTY, NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN, THE JUROR, and A CIVIL ACTION.

Lorraine Bracco was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for 1990's GOODFELLAS, and also appeared in THE BASKETBALL DIARIES and HACKERS among many other films.

Edie Falco can currently be seen on HBO in the drama series OZ; her other credits include the films COPLAND, LAWS OF GRAVITY and PRIVATE PARTS.

Michael Imperioli will appear in Spike Lee's next film, SUMMER OF SAM; his other credits include GOODFELLAS, CLOCKERS and GIRL 6.

Veteran stage actress Nancy Marchand won four Emmys for LOU GRANT. Her film credits include DEAR GOD and SABRINA.

CAST:

JERRY ADLER, LORRAINE BRACCO, DOMINIC CHIANESE, MICHELLE DECESARE, DREA DEMATTEO, ANTHONY DESANDO, EDIE FALCO, JAMES GANDOLFINI, ROBERT ILER, MICHAEL IMPERIOLI, NANCY MARCHAND, KATHERINE NARDUCCI, VINCENT PASTORE, MICHAEL RISPOLI, AL SAPIENZA, JAMIE LYNN SIGLER, TONY SIRICO, STEVEN VAN ZANDT, JOHN VENTIMIGLIA

Critical Acclaim for The Sopranos

It's heartbreaking. . . .how could you not like a man who is searching to do the right thing? Its 'Father Knows Best' for the milennium."
     - Lorraine Bracco, who plays Dr. Jennifer Melfi, as quoted in the Sunday New York Times, January 3, 1999

The season's best new drama, "The Sopranos" strikes an original, subtle chord of amusement tinged with menace.
      - TV Guide, January 9, 1999

Four stars to HBO's new series "The Sopranos." This is terrific stuff with a mobster and a dual life and psychiatrist and a family. It cuts a swath through almost every aspect of living, good and bad. You can laugh and shriek in the same episode, and I wholeheartedly recommend it…
     - Larry King, USA Today, January 18, 1999

"The Sopranos" is distinctive, absorbing and fresh. It's a mob opera for people who think they've had quite enough of the mob. And it's easily better than any new network drama series of the season so far.
   - Tom Shales, Washington Post, January 10, 1999

Not since Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman has there been a prime-time series so loopily insouciant, so tuned in to the American static, as if picking up its signals from a plate in Robin Williams' head.
   - John Leonard, New York Magazine, January 11, 1999

"The Sopranos," make no mistake, is the first truly great TV show of 1999.
   - Mike Duffy, Detroit Free Press, January 8, 1999

Hey, you got a problem with lovable murderers? Me, too. But "The Sopranos" is irresistible.
   - Judith Stone, Mirabella, January 1999

Steven Van Zandt's Acting Debut

Finally, there's the acting debut of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band member Stevie Van Zandt, with slicked-back hair and an Elvis sneer, as Silvio, one of Tony's loyal henchmen. Like everything else about "The Sopranos," from the soundtrack to the script, he's full of energy and surprises.
   - David Bianculli, New York Daily News, January 8, 1999

The first wonderful surprise of the 1999 TV season is here, and it's "The Sopranos" (Sundays, 9-10 pm), HBO's new 13-week peek into the life of a New Jersey Mob family led by "waste management consultant" Tony Soprano (…James Gandolfini)…. The series is full of surprises, from its casting (Steven Van Zandt…makes a fine gangster) to its music (Elvis Costello's 'Complicated Shadows' and the Young Rascals 'You Better Run' explode the soundtrack) to its constantly unexpected shifts of dramatic tone.
   - Entertainment Weekly, January 15, 1999

Guitarist and Former E Streeter Steve Van Zandt makes a very Jersey, very Italian-American acting debut as one of Tony's henchmen.
   - Phil Gallo, Daily Variety, January 5, 1999

It shouldn't work, yet somehow it does. Shot on location in towns throughout Northern New Jersey, "The Sopranos" is a bittersweet domestic fable that plays like 'Everybody Loves Raymond' meets 'GoodFellas.' It's an absurdist comedy about criminal behavior and suburban life that gently mocks its targets while taking its characters and their emotions seriously.

Says former E Street Band member Steve Van Zandt, who plays a nightclub owner and low-level mobster named Silvio Dante, "I like to call it 'The Gangster Honeymooners.' "

Van Zandt, who immersed himself in books about mobsters to get in character, puts the gangster element in an even larger context.

"In the romantic version of the criminal lifestyle, there is always the suggestion that the gangster is the guy who breaks all the rules and gets away with it, at least for a while," Van Zandt says. "It's booze and broads and horses and dice and killing a guy if he gets in your way and not caring what anybody thinks of you. It's no wonder audiences love that kind of story.

"It's not just Italian-American gangsters," he continues. "It's Cagney and Bogart movies, it's westerns. America seems to have some kind of fascination with outlaws in general. Maybe it's because we were an outlaw nation to begin with. This nation was born of rebellion against authority, and in a weird way, that's what these characters represent. That image is very attractive to Americans. It's part of the national unconscious. It's practically in our genetic code."
  - Matt Zoller Seitz, Newark Star-Ledger, January 9, 1999

In the most unusual piece of casting, Stevie Van Zandt, a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, makes an impressive acting debut as Silvio Dante, a loyal member of Tony's crew.

"I used to listen to those Springsteen albums, and I'd look at his picture on the cover and say, 'boy, that guy's got an interesting look,' " Chase recalls. "[When] we were trying to cast this, I thought, Stevie Van Zandt is sort of like a little [Al] Pacino. So we found him, he came in to read, and he was great." (In the second episode, Van Zandt impersonates Pacino as the Godfather).

Van Zandt's Silvio - who favors loud silk shirts and conspicuous gold chains - runs the Ba Da Bing strip club but aspires to own a Copacanaba-type club.

"I saw him as a little bit of Frank Costello, a little bit of Bugsy Siegel," says Van Zandt, who is unrecognizable in the Elvis-style wig he wears for the role.

"The character is the hair, as far as I'm concerned," says Van Zandt. "That's the thing for me. When I look in the mirror, I gotta see the guy. I can't see me. To me, the hair - that's half the acting."
   - Virginia Rohan, The Bergen Record, January 10, 1999

Bruce Springsteen turned out for the Manhattan screening and party for the HBO dramedy series, which debuts 9 p.m. Sunday, because one of its stars is his old pal and E Street Band mate Steven Van Zandt.

"He was always entertaining us, "said Springsteen … "When he wasn't entertaining onstage, he was entertaining the band. It was nice to see that put to good use on the screen. He was terrific, and it was a lot of fun."
   - The Bergen Record, January 1999

Gandolfini grew up in New Jersey, Soprano's stomping ground. So did Chase, whose original family name is DeCesare. And so did Steve Van Zandt, former lead guitarist of the E Street Band. He plays a Soprano soldier. Van Zandt has never acted before, but Chase - after looking at Van Zandt's face on album covers over the years - decided the musician would make an excellent low-level hoodlum.

"All my music was political after I left the band; I was trying to learn who I was," says Van Zandt. "In a way, it's the same process with acting. You're trying to discover who you are."
  - Gene Mustain, Satellite Direct, January 1999

INTERVIEWS

Asbury Park Press, January 8, 1999

By KELLY-JANE COTTER

THE SOPRANOS: A dramatic series starring Steven Van Zandt, James Gandolfini, Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco and Nancy Marchand

Premieres 9 to 10 p.m. Sunday on HBO

Most people know Steven Van Zandt as Miami Steve from the E Street Band or as the man who kick-started the rock world's anti-apartheid movement with "Sun City."

On Sunday, HBO viewers will see a much different side of Steven Van Zandt. The Jersey Shore music scene veteran portrays Silvio Dante in the mobster series "The Sopranos."

The man who sang "I ain't gonna play Sun City" with defiance and hope is the same man who, in "The Sopranos," will utter lines such as these:       "It's none of my business, but down at the club, the word is your Uncle Junior is gonna whack Pussy Malenga."

How did a nice guy like Van Zandt get mixed up with all these wise guys?

"I don't know, I just had a feel for this character," said Van Zandt. "I knew who this guy was. I just had to transform myself. I read books about the Mafia. I didn't have to rewatch 'The Godfather' because I've practically got it memorized."

But Bruce Springsteen need not worry about losing a guitarist for his summer reunion tour with the E Street Band: Van Zandt said he's looking forward to it. "I think we're starting with some dates in Europe," Van Zandt said, "but we'll be back in America when shooting for the second season begins in June."

He also said he has no aspirations in TV or film beyond "The Sopranos."

"I don't know what else I could do," he said. "I'd never even thought about it. Then (the series' director) David Chase called me out of the blue. He'd followed my music through the years and I guess he saw something in that character for me. When I read it, I really liked the writing and decided to try it."

Van Zandt makes Silvio Dante an appealing character despite his dubious profession. Dante likes nicely cut suits and Al Pacino (in fact, Van Zandt does a credible Pacino impression as a running joke in the series). Dante is a crony of Tony Soprano, the tormented, middle-aged protagonist of the series. These North Jersey mobsters are children or grandchildren of immigrants -- they feel the tug of the Old Country and its culture, but they have grown up and flourished in suburban America. They're also "born in the '50s" baby boomers -- introspective, idealistic, narcissistic and ambitious -- and parents of millennial teens.

"The difference with this show is that it emphasizes the home life," Van Zandt said. "It shows Tony at home with the kids. It shows us going to soccer games with the kids. My particular character is a throwback. He doesn't acknowledge current music; and, like Tony Soprano, he's disgusted with the way the mob has lost its inner ethics."

"The Sopranos" premieres from 9 to 10 p.m. on HBO this Sunday, and runs for 12 additional Sundays. Reruns air at 11 p.m. Tuesdays.

The series also stars James Gandolfini (of the current John Travolta movie "A Civil Action") as Tony Soprano; Lorraine Bracco ("GoodFellas") as Tony's psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi; Edie Falco (HBO's "Oz") as Tony's wife, Carmela; Nancy Marchand ("Lou Grant") as Tony's mother, Livia; and Michael Imperioli ("GoodFellas") as Tony's nephew Christopher, an aspiring mobster.

Shooting for the second season of "The Sopranos" is scheduled to begin in June, during the domestic leg of the E Street Band's tour, but Van Zandt said he'll be able to coordinate the two projects.

"It's gonna be a little bit complicated," Van Zandt said, "but we're supposed to be in America most of the season and 'The Sopranos' is all shot on location in Northern Jersey -- Lodi, Belleville and so forth."

But just like the characters in "The Sopranos" who try to mix mob business with a suburban lifestyle, the members of the E Street Band are going to have to try to strike a balance between an international tour and the normal constraints of home life.

"First of all, I'm gonna have to go back and rehearse," Van Zandt said.   "And also, I have a wife and a dog. It's not as simple as it used to be."

Playing With A New Gang;Van Zandt Tries Gig On HBO Series

The Arizona Republic, January 10, 1999

By: DAVE WALKER

Were he not real, Miami Steve Van Zandt could've been one of the oddball Jersey Shore characters who populated Bruce Springsteen's early songs. As his head wear evolved from fedoras to berets to ever-present bandanas (worn gypsy-style for every type of social occasion), Van Zandt's role in the Springsteen legend grew ever larger.

Playing impeccable guitar and yowling harmony vocals, Van Zandt was a key member of the E Street Band, the mythic musical ensemble that accompanied Springsteen to superstardom. However, over the past decade or so, after Born in the U.S.A.'s huge success and global stadium tour, Springsteen carefully downsized his own career, and his buddy Van Zandt all but vanished.

An E Street reunion tour is in the works for later this year, and Van Zandt will be on board. But he's also participating in what is sure to be one of 1999's entertainment highlights. In the brilliant new 13-hour HBO miniseries, The Sopranos, Van Zandt plays Silvio Dante, a lesser mobster who aspires to be more than the colorful manager of a Jersey girlie joint.

Wearing a greasy rug, Van Zandt, who's never acted outside of rock videos, holds his own as a member of a powerful ensemble cast.

How did such a thing happen?

"Basically, I got a phone call at the office," said Van Zandt, in a recent telephone interview. "We get calls now and then, usually music, occasionally for something like acting. I never even considered acting. Someone called the office. We said, 'Send the script.'

"We were totally prepared to ignore it, like we usually do. But I read it and I said, Jesus, this is good. I went down for the hell of it and read for them and they liked it and they had me read for HBO on the West Coast."

And that was that. No, actually, that was not that. It never is.

The Sopranos script found its way to Van Zandt because David Chase, the series' creator and executive producer, had followed Van Zandt's music career since the E Street days, and he was charmed by a speech Van Zandt gave during the 1997 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, which were televised on a cable-TV network.

Introducing the band The Young Rascals, Van Zandt all but stole the show with a colorful riff on New Jersey, Italians and blue-eyed soul.

"A lot of them get very solemn, as it should be," Van Zandt said of speeches by Hall of Fame presenters. "But I knew there was room for some humor, and I put together five minutes, a humorous take on the whole Rascals thing, on the New Jersey thing and all that. It was actually quite funny, I must say."

"I think it put him over the edge," Van Zandt said of Chase. "Somehow, he connected that up with being an actor, which is quite a stretch. He somehow saw something."

In a separate interview, Chase confirmed the story.

"I used to see his picture in those band photos all the time," Chase said. "I always thought to myself, 'Oh, this guy looks real interesting.' He always reminded me of Al Pacino in those pictures.

"I was a fan, and then I stumbled across him doing this speech about The Rascals. Obviously, he has a presence. He was very funny. He was very Jersey. I'm from Jersey, and I responded very strongly to the whole statement."

Although Van Zandt left the E Street Band just as Born in the U.S.A. reached peak popularity, he was never far from the Jersey Shore musically. He wrote and produced charming R&B records by another Jersey export, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, whose records sated Springsteen fans during the long years between Boss albums.

During his solo career, leading a band called Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, he dropped even a little more out of sight. His band veered toward global-vision political anthems, not exactly a path toward commercial gold. So, it was a bit of pretty symmetry that The Rascals induction speech - another thread of Jersey-based music - was what ultimately brought Van Zandt to his new role in The Sopranos.

According to Chase, Van Zandt actually created Silvio Dante, whom Chase then wrote into the story. The rocker-turned-actor (who said he's never had an acting class) found that changing his appearance helped him get into character.

"The biggest thing was the hair thing," said Van Zandt. "That's also part of the fun. It's so different, most people would not recognize me."

Once cast, he began to further prepare for the role. Just studying E Street Band photos from The River era would've been a good start. Instead, Van Zandt "went back and watched every mob movie, from The Public Enemy on," he said. "I read every mob book again. I found out where those guys shop and got the clothes right, and the jewelry and the hair and everything.

"At that point, I looked in the mirror and saw the guy. There he is. So, it's physically different, and that really helps me.

"People think I'm joking when I say I'm not good enough to go to acting class.

"You figure out who the guy is and just be him. That's the only method I can come up with."

A lifetime of dealing with nightclub owners and entertainment industry figures also prepared Van Zandt for portraying a wise guy.

"If you're Italian-American and you grow up in New Jersey, and you know people in the entertainment business, there's always somebody who knows somebody who could be a model for this particular character type," he said.

The result, Van Zandt said, is a guy who, despite his flaws, has redeeming qualities. (Ambition, for one, and an appreciation for the arts, especially Godfather movies.) But is his character a guy Steve Van Zandt might hang out with?

"I don't know about hanging out with him," Van Zandt said. "He's different from me. He's much more orderly. He's got a bit of Frank Costello and Bugsy Siegel in him. He wants to rise above the gangster stuff. He has one pinkie in the entertainment world. It's the lowest possible level - he runs a strip club - but he has fantasies about running a Copacabana, and that's where he's heading.

"At the same time, he's a tough guy who does all the other stuff he has to do. Even though he does some strong-arm stuff, that's not what he enjoys."

One of the things Van Zandt may have to do this year is juggle shooting The Sopranos' second season with his duties in the reunited E Street Band.

HBO has already ordered a half-season's worth of scripts, and, given the quality of the series so far, it would be nuts not to go forward. Shooting would start in midsummer, by which time the Springsteen tour will presumably be well down Thunder Road.

"If we're in this country during the filming of my second season, hopefully I won't miss any of those episodes," Van Zandt said. "I think that the tour schedule will probably be revealed in the next week or two."

As for the band's lineup, he said, "I'm in for sure, and it looks like everybody's going to be in."

Including, he believes, drummer Max Weinberg, who leads the Late Night band for Conan O'Brien.

"Max and Conan are still working their thing out, which is complicated," he said.

As Van Zandt's life may be, should the acting thing work out. His experience with The Sopranos was "nothing but good," he said. "There were no bad vibes, there were no (jerks) in the cast, and I'm told that's really rare.

"This was an extremely enjoyable experience. So much so that if something else comes along, I'll look at it. But I don't really care if I do anything else. Plus, now, with the E Street reunion thing going on, I'm not going to have a lot of time anyway."

Mob Mentality: Decked out in Gold Chains and Pompadour, Stevie Van Zandt makes his acting debut as a Mafia Member in 'The Sopranos'

The Bergen Record, January 27, 1999

By: VIRGINIA ROHAN

Many actors are disciples of Konstantin Stanislavsky's method.

Stevie Van Zandt takes a less-traveled thespian route. Let's call it the Sy Sperling approach.

"It's the hair that's doing the acting, not me,"Van Zandt says of his role in "The Sopranos,"HBO's new hit Mafia series. "The character is the hair, as far as I'm concerned. When I look in the mirror, I have to see this guy. I can't see me. And the hair is this guy."

It's hard to keep a straight face when Van Zandt says this, a couple of months before the Jan. 10 premiere of "Sopranos," in which the noted musician makes his colorful acting debut.

During a lunch break on this fall afternoon, the longtime guitarist of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, known for his trademark do-rag head covers, is eating a catered craft-service meal in a church basement in Kearny. He's dressed in his "Sopranos" garb, that Emmy-caliber, customized pompadour hairpiece, "The fun part of this is, nobody recognizes me," Van Zandt says, as well as a silk shirt with splotchy purple flowers and lots of heavy gold chains.

"The hair and the clothes, it's kind of a throwback,"says the 48-year-old Van Zandt, whose Silvio Dante character is a loyal soldier and friend of New Jersey mobster Tony Soprano. "Eventually, what we're pointing toward is Silvio owning a Copacabana-type club with big bands and the whole thing.

"He wants to carry on into the legitimate world of entertainment, if we can call the entertainment world legitimate,"he says with a chuckle.

Dante currently runs the none-too-respectable Ba Da Bing Club, where the Soprano gang casually conducts Mafia business, seemingly oblivious to the nearly naked women slithering around poles in the background.

The ratings and raves for" Sopranos" have been so great that the cable network, in what it's calling "the fastest pickup in HBO history," has already renewed the dramedy for another 13 episodes.

"The reaction has been absolutely incredible,"Van Zandt says on the telephone two weeks after his big debut."The show is very different, a little complex, and when something seems to be accepted to this level, it's a pleasant surprise."

According to HBO, there's such viewer demand for new episodes (10 remain this season) that it hopes to start the second season early, in October, rather than January.

While this is great news, it will surely complicate the life of Van Zandt, who expected this week to have his first rehearsal for the E Street reunion tour, slated to begin in April in Europe.

"We're gonna be back in this country at the same time that 'Sopranos' is filming a second season, in June,"Van Zandt says."I'm just going to fly back and forth."

Van Zandt, mind you, had no inclination to act until "Sopranos" dropped out of the heavens. While casting "Sopranos," creator David Chase ("I'll Fly Away"), a North Caldwell native, remembered Van Zandt's "interesting look" from a mid-Seventies E Street album cover.

"I thought, Stevie Van Zandt is sort of like a little Pacino," Chase recalls. (In the second episode, Van Zandt did an impersonation of Al Pacino in "Godfather III"). After getting a call "out of the blue," from Chase, Van Zandt agreed to look at the project. "Shockingly, the script was really good,"says Van Zandt, who came in to read for Chase and for HBO. "If David Chase thought I could do it, I figured I could do it."

The fact that the series was shooting all over New Jersey was also an enticement for Van Zandt, who lives mostly in Manhattan these days.

Not that he doesn't have Jersey connections. The Boston-born Van Zandt moved as a youngster to Middletown in Monmouth County. And at 17, he made a fateful move to Asbury Park. ("Actually, we made more of that town than the town made of us," he says.). Before his stint with the E Street Band, Van Zandt, whose nicknames have included Little Steven and Miami Steve, formed Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes with Southside Johnny Lyon in 1974.

After he left the E Street band in the mid-Eighties, Van Zandt had a couple of solo albums, and numerous songwriting and production credits.

"I think being an autobiographical songwriter was helpful to acting, because you're always trying to discover the truth about yourself, and some of the same things apply to acting," Van Zandt says.

To prepare for his " Sopranos" role, he "watched every gangster movie ever made, especially Cagney's." He sees Dante as a little bit Bugsy Siegel and a dash of Frank Costello.

"He {Dante} was probably a lot more dangerous when he was young, though he still occasionally has a temper," Van Zandt says. "The humor of the show is that the temper comes out not in the gangster business so much as when they're watching their kids play soccer."

When he signed on for  Sopranos," Van Zandt was not sure how the rest of the cast would react to an acting novice tackling such a plum role. Mindful of the high unemployment among professional actors, the remarkably self-deprecating Van Zandt says, "The one thing I felt good about was that David more or less created the character for me. So I wasn't taking somebody's job."

As it turned out, the entire cast treated him "like we were brothers forever," he says.

The feeling, apparently, was mutual.

"Oh, man, Stevie's great,"says James Gandolfini, the Park Ridge-bred actor who plays Tony Soprano. "He's smart. He's funny. He loves what he's doing. And you can watch him learning, watch him get better."

Van Zandt's still not sure if he'll seek some dramatic coaching.

"My wife actually has been taking acting lessons for years. I use some of the things she tells me, and things I've read," he says. "But a lot of what she tells me I don't get. I don't think I'm good enough to take classes yet."

The E Street reunion tour aside, Van Zandt says he's "not really interested so much in the music business anymore."

Does this mean "Sopranos" will be the start of a whole new midlife career?

"You never know," Van Zandt says. "If I don't do anything other than this, and this hopefully goes for years, I would be fine with that.