Word: sopranos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...lesson of Moesha is not whether gang banging or being a well-adjusted teen virgin fits the black experience. Both do. Both fit the white experience too, although no one would suggest that white characters must be either Tony Soprano or Dawson Leery. Representativeness--one show expected to carry a whole race--is the curse of minority-cast series when so few are on TV. City's unusualness as a drama is a big publicity boon but also a burden. "Minorities in the business are rooting like hell for this show," says Charles Holland, a black writer. "The stakes...
...notes. "That becomes kind of a strange loop." Thus, in the show, Silvio Dante (Steven Van Zandt) cracks up his Mob buddies with an Al Pacino impersonation from the maligned Godfather III ("Just when I thought I was out--they pull me back in!"), while family chief Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) expresses a preference for The Godfather II over the original. What characters, indeed. Like their real-life analogs, they know how to live their lives because they've seen them written out onscreen by soft-handed civilians like Chase. (Memo to the DeCavalcantes, by the way: Sorry...
Note the plural. Chase is the undisputed boss of The Sopranos, and its origins are highly personal. He says he based Tony Soprano's crafty, malevolent mother Livia (Nancy Marchand) on his own, now deceased mother. Yet this seamless series--more like a continuous movie--is the work of eight writers, including Chase, working from story arcs that he sketches each season. One of the writers, actor Michael Imperioli, not only is an accomplished screenwriter (Summer of Sam) but also plays a Soprano soldier who dreams of writing movies. Imperioli gave Chase a script on spec last season...
BILL PARCELLS Tuna missed: N.Y. weeps over Jets' move. Try joining Tony Soprano's crew...