The TV Zone

"20/20" tomorrow night has a somewhat interesting (read: somewhat self-serving) interview with Lillo Brancato - convicted in January for his role in the murder of off-duty NYPD cop Daniel Enchautegui. The onetime "Sopranos" actor tells Chris Connelly that he was "noticably dopesick" the night of Enchautegui's murder and that "The crack cocaine was eating the heroin to the point where I...felt every ache and pain."

"I needed a fix."

(The accomplice, Steven Armento, 48, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole; Brancato got ten years for attempted burglary; he's already served three at Riker's.)

I've posted the full story from ABC on the jump. There's a lot of stuff here, including some quotes from "A Bronx Tale" co-star Chazz Palminteri, who says of Brancato's talent, "It was unbelievable. I mean, the kid just was a natural. I said, 'Listen to me right now. What you are given right now is an incredible opportunity. You have been hit by lightning.' I said, 'What happened to you is more rare than winning the Lotto. Do you understand that?"

Brancato admits that he was high during the filming of "A Bronx Tale" and during "The Sopranos;" you probably remember his character Matt Bevilaqua, who ran that pump and dump scheme for Christopha; Tony later shot him 21 times...

(Pix: David Greene, AP)

Continue reading "Lillo Brancato Speaks to ABC" »

The extraordinary ending on last week's "The Shield" has led some (ok, by some I mean "me") to ponder the ending of great TV shows, and why we - the dedicated if occasionally unbalanced fan - invest so much energy, thought and passion in that last screen shot.

Will the Meaning of Everything then become clear? Will a bolt of lightning, a clap of thunder, accompany a searing insight that says, " oh, so THAT'S what Vic was really all about."

Of course not., The final shot of "The Shield" was perfect because it captured Vic Mackey but also got him off the hook (sort of) for his manifold sins. Imagine: He forsakes immunity for his family, though of course his family had already happily forsaken him.

The ending of "The Sopranos?" It coulda ended with Tony raking leaves.

This interesting clip features David Chase surrounded by show stalwarts (including Edie Falco and Matthew Weiner) talking about an alternate ending - or rather a trick ending that might have been used instead, but otherwise was a red herring. As Chase points out, the rake scene did appear earlier in the finale, and it sparked much debate. Check out this website (The Chase Lounge) which goes into excruciating detail about how Chase foreshadowed Tony's bad end.

What would have been the meaning of the rake? What sort of leaves...? Why couldn't he hire a crew to do it for him...? Would the bear turn up? Would the tree fall on him?

Oh the questions, the questions we'll never have answers to.

Clip appears on the new DVD set ($400), and thanks to TVTattle.com for uncovering.

Rich people are different from you and me - they got money! (Ba dum...) And they got money to spend on stuff that I can't imagine spending it on. Case in point: Today's Christie's auction, wrapped a little while ago, in which a few dozen Tony Soprano et al costumes, clothes, shirts, pants, and other generally assorted wearable things, were sold for $187,800.

What went for the highest price, by FAR? Tony's blood-stained shirt and pants - the ones he was wearing when Uncle June came down the stairs in a fit of insane dementia, shot him and left him for dead, setting up that great multi-episode dream sequence where (among many other things) Tone was slapped around by monks at an elevator. This went for $43,800. If the cleaning person had washed off the clothes after this memorable scene, it probably woulda gone for $500.

That would be essere fottuto.

Don't you agree?

Got me to thinking: What would Pussy's talking fish head have gone for? (It wasn't on the block.) Those funky statues in Melfi's office? The fridge in the Soprano's kitchen? (An empty orange juice carton, proven to have been drained by Tony himself?) The newspapers in Tony's driveway?

My point: There are billions to be made here.

Here's the Christie's site with the full list. A hoot worth checking out.

Now, this is a nice story, and I'm sure "Sopranos" fans will agree: The old gang from The Best TV Drama Ever will hold a fund-raiser this Saturday night at the Mirage (on Merrick Ave. in Westbury...)

And who from the old gang? Pretty much all the major players, with an exception here and there: James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Robert Iler and Michael Imperioli will show up at the club at 10 p.m. - you can see them all, sitting in the VIP area. Go up. Shake hands. Get autographs.

The cause: To raise $50,000 - or more - for a pair of former colleagues on "The Sopranos." One is suffering from cancer; the other has recovered but is now suffering from financial hardship.

Jeff Marchetti - "Petey" and long associated with the show in a number of back-stage roles - is organizing the benefit, and said a little while ago that the cast wants to help "one of our most beloved prop guys, who's been on the [show from the beginning]. His name is Anthony B., but he wanted to remain nameless. He's battling lymphoma and nobody knew about it, [until] a month and a half after we wrapped...Everybody loves the guy because we are absolutely a true family and we're gonna support him in every possible way we can."

Marchetti said the goal is to also raise money for another former colleague on the show, as well as a childhood friend of his - both who had been ill.

According to Jeff and the Mirage's website, all the major players will be at the club but Marchetti said as many as twenty are scheduled to show up.

More details: Cover is $20 though the cast will hold a private party from 8 to 10, and to join that: $1250 per couple, according to Marchetti (who says to go to einnonmedia@aol.com to confirm.)

Yup, it's no secret "Sopranos" cast and crew have been pretty tight over the years while Gandolfini has gone out of his way countless times to help people behind the camera. This makes countless-and-one.

It’s been rough, these last few months, surviving without any new episodes of The Sopranos. Starting on December 6, LIFESKOOL TV will be offering some palliative care. The new On-Demand series, Steve Schirripa’s Hungry, follows Tony’s portly lieutenant as he explores Italian food in New York. (On Cablevision, LIFESKOOL is Channel 502.) The first episode finds Schirripa musing about meatballs and then repairing, attractive young woman in tow, to Rao’s of East Harlem where he is greeted by the legendary restaurant’s owner, Frank Pellegrino (whom Soprano’s fans will recognize as FBI agent Frank Cubitosi).

Pellegrino walks Schirripa through the meatball recipe, then serves the finished dish (with spaghetti) to great acclaim.

Schirripa is a genuinely charming presence and he seems moderately conversant in cooking. Future episodes will find him at the Veniero’s pastry shop in the East Village, Peasant in Little Italy and L&B; Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn, among other Noo Yawk locations.

Is there anything left to say about "The Sopranos" ending?

Of course there is. There will always be. That's the genius of it (even though I STILL don’t like it): Without resolution, there is endless speculation, and anyone's speculation can be right and anyone's can be wrong. It's kind of what - and please forgive the highfalutin' reference here - physicists might refer to as a Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle paradox applied to my favorite TV show: Tony either lived or Tony died, or he's alive AND dead at the same time. (There's another famous physicist paradox called Shroedinger's Cat, which means that a cat hidden inside a box is both alive AND dead...and what this means…oh forget it.)

If I haven't turned you off thoroughly at this point, then read on. Last week, "American Gangster" premiered – how’s that for a segue! - and there's an actor who appears here but who also labors in the long shadows of Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. (He plays McCann, opposite Josh Brolin's Trupo.) That would be Bobby Funaro - a terrific character actor who also appeared over the years in "Sopranos" as Eugene Pontecorvo, a harrowing member of Christopher's crew who inherited a million bucks from his aunt and decided he wanted out of the family. Tony said no way, and Gene began cooperating with the Feds. Finally, realizing there was no way out of his predicament, he killed himself in the episode entitled "Members Only." Bobby Funaro – in other words – soared in one of the finest episodes of maybe the greatest “Sopranos” season. It was also a pivotal episode, and here’s why:

Whachoo looking at? Funaro: Scary guy, fine actor.

“Members Only” was not only the premiere episode of the final season, but it also mirrored some elements of the finale as well, including the (famous) moment when someone wanders in to the diner wearing a "Members Only" jacket. Signifying? That there's no way out for Tony e la sua famiglia.

Whether he's alive or dead, his fate is an endless loop. There is simply no escape from this peculiar kind of hell.

Anyway, I had a long chat with Funaro recently; he's a good guy, smart, and like a lot (if not all) "Sopranos'" regulars harbors - I suspect – just the slightest ambivalence about starring in the greatest drama in TV history. His – their - professional fortunes will be forged by “The Sopranos” from this day forward. That's good, but also troubling (if from now on, the only roles they can get are mobster ones…)

We had along talk about his recent career (he starred in an off-off-Broadway production, called "The Lady Swims Today"), his hometown (Brooklyn/ Coney Island), and his future (he's using - what else? - the Internet to market himself. Here's the official website.)

So, Bobby, your thoughts on The Ending? "I enjoyed the ambiguity....and it gave it that kind of twist that was open ended. It was thrilling to watch [and] I was rooting for Tony, that he didn't get killed and that he pulled through the whole thing. He's a survivor, the ultimate carnivore. He's one of the guys that gets by. A lot of people wanted some sort of finish, but even David Chase said, 'how can I kill this guy...? He gave the audience such a thrill...’ But if you look at crime, it goes on.

Funaro said there was a screening for cast and crew at the HBO building, and people later gathered at the Hard Rock Cafe for a party. "When I walked out, I was surrounded by the press and everyone was looking for a reaction. I was one of the first to walk out...It was kind of surreal. I said 'I loved it [the ending] and the press was like, ‘get outta here! We wanted to hear that you hated it...’[Chase and producers] told us don't even try to defend it, and we shouldn't have to defend it because it ends the way it ends...”

He said Peter Bogdanovich (Dr. Elliot Kupferberg) offered the best defense: If "you look at the final scene [with] all those symbols of America, that's a whole collection of who we are...that there isn't any security, there isn't any sanctuary for anyone…We have this sense that as we grow up in TV world and watch TV, that there's always a happy ending. But when you get to be an adult, there’s something entirely different. You’re really hungry the next day - happiness is ephemeral, short-lived. Tony's happiness? It's there one second, but look what’s around him? The guy with the Members Only jacket...You can never get out of there. The last scene at first suggests that he has it all back together, but he doesn't have it all back together at all."

“Sopranos” creator David Chase has finally spoken out about his controversial send-off to the HBO series. The comments appear in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly and are excerpted from Chase’s upcoming “The Sopranos: The Complete Book.”

Was he surprised by the reaction to the final episode?

“No,” he says. “We knew there would be people who liked it and would try to go with it and other people who would be perplexed by it and shut their minds to it. This just felt like the right ending.”

Chase says he didn’t expect people to be so angered about the ending:

“We didn’t expect them to be that --- for that long. It’s one thing to be deeply involved with a television show. It’s another to be so involved that all you do is sit on a couch and watch it. It seemed that those people were just looking for an excuse to be --- off. There was a war going on that week and attempted terror attacks in London. But these people were talking about onion rings.”

Many fans have developed their own elaborate theories – like the one that says Chase was re-creating the Last Supper, but he insists there is no puzzle to be solved.

“There are no esoteric clues in there. No Da Vinci Code. Everything that pertains to that episode was in that episode. And it was in the episode before that and the one before that and seasons before this one and so on. There had been indications of what the end is like.”

About 12 million people watched Sunday night's finale of "The Sopranos," reports Television Week here.

That made it the year's most-viewed episode -- yet this season was still the series' lowest-rated in years, said the trade publication.

Sunday night's cut-to-black ending nonetheless stirred "Sopranos" fans enough that the flood of would-be online commenters temporarily crashed HBO's chat boards, where viewers are debating still whether the series' controversial conclusion was brilliant or insulting.

Newsday readers are discussing their reactions by clicking the Comments links below.

I'm not in the habit of re-directing readers over to other papers, but if you read anything else on "The Sopranos" non-final-finale today, may I suggest Alan Sepinwall's terrific wrap in the Newark Star-Ledger? Alan - a fine critic under normal circumstances - is something of the Godfather of "Soprano" critics, and a guy who has studied the show as carefully and as thoughtfully as anyone I know. Today he has THE scoop: A prearranged interview with David Chase, that gets into a lot of things (with the exception of the final scene.)

Here's the URL - http://blog.nj.com/alltv/2007/06/david_chase_speaks.html.

Plenty of headlines here, but Chase doesn't debunk the idea of a movie. Under the heading "never say never," here's the entire section of the piece on that subject:

"I don't think about (a movie) much," he says. "I never say never. An idea could pop into my head where I would go, 'Wow, that would make a great movie,' but I doubt it.

"I'm not being coy," he adds. "If something appeared that really made a good 'Sopranos' movie and you could invest in it and everybody else wanted to do it, I would do it. But I think we've kind of said it and done it."

Another problem: over the last season, Chase killed so many key characters. He's toyed with the idea of "going back to a day in 2006 that you didn't see, but then (Tony's children) would be older than they were then and you would know that Tony doesn't get killed. It's got problems."

There's a lot more and no need to spoil - just go and read. But Chase does debunk the theory (one part of which I fell for as well) that all the characters in the diner had grudges against Tony. The theory had plenty of problems, but vacuums tend to suck in all kinds of information indiscriminately. Anyway, forget the theory. Time to make up new ones.

Kudos to Sepinwall on this wrap and his coverage of TV's greatest drama all season.

Newsday readers don't seem so hot to trot about last night's "Sopranos" (non-)wrapup. By noon Monday, almost half the 4,000-plus who'd already voted in our online poll called it TV's worst finale ever.

And nearly as many expect the tale to continue in a feature film.

You can still add your vote here.

The best thing about the Sopranos finale was using the Vanilla Fudge's version of "You Keep Me Hangin' On" as the background music in several of the scenes. It's one of the coolest pseudo-pyschedelic songs ever recorded.

Yeah, I'm praising a 40-year-old song as the best part of the Sopranos finale because that's the only thing that moved me.

I mean, yeah, I know this is the "year of you" and all that, but David Chase's sneaky ending -- fade to black, you make up your own ending, was just a little too slick. Maybe Tony and family got whacked by the guy at the counter. Maybe they didn't. This is what we waited for?

David Chase, you kept us hanging on... but you never set us free, babe. Just playing with our hearts.

What did you think? Post your thoughts here

During its 17 seasons, “Law & Order” has employed hundreds of New York-based actors in various guest roles. And among those hundreds are a handful of performers who have also appeared on a certain New Jersey-set mob drama that ends Sunday night.

With this is mind, the programming poobahs at TNT, home of “Law & Order” reruns, have come up with a pretty neat idea: Starting at 2 p.m. Monday, the channel will run a 12-episode marathon of “Law & Orders” featuring actors who have appeared on “The Sopranos.”

Here’s the rundown:

2 p.m. “I.D.,” with Aida Turturro (Janice) and Jerry Adler (Hesh). The cops tackle identifying a corpse left in an elevator.

3 p.m. “Grief,” with Edie Falco (Carmela)– A reluctant witness affects the case of two rape victims in custodial care.

4 p.m. “DWB,” with John Ventimiglia (Artie) – The detectives uncover a shocking twist while investigating the beating of a black man.

5 p.m. “Trade This,” with Vincent Curatola (Johnny Sack) – The murder of a stockbroker points to organized crime when a hired hit man kills the prime suspect.

6 p.m. “Deep Vote,” with Dan Grimaldi (Patsy Parisi) – A political reporter is the target of a murder plot.

7 p.m. “Everybody Loves Raimondo’s,” with Joseph R. Gannascoli (Vito) and Ray Abruzzo (Little Carmine) – Two men are gunned down at an exclusive restaurant.

8 p.m. “Sects,” with Robert Funaro (Eugene)– Police and prosecutors go after a fanatical cult leader who encourages sex with children among her followers.

9 p.m. “Publish and Perish,” with Michael Imperioli (Christopher)– The police investigate the link between a powerful police commissioner and the murder of a porn actress and a maverick publisher.

10 p.m. “Hindsight,” also with Imperioli, in his “L&O;” role as Det. Nick Falco. He’s investigated after a woman he spent the night with turns up dead.

11 p.m. “Shadow,” with Dominic Chianese (Uncle Junior) – The murder of a bail bondsman looks fairly routine until the chance words of the chief suspect uncovers possible case-fixing.

Midnight “Juvenile,” with Frank Vincent (Phil) – The investigation into the shooting of a newspaper columnist leads to a murder case from two decades earlier.

1 a.m. “Deadbeat,” with Vincent Pastore (Big Pussy) and Sharon Angela (Rosalie Aprile)– The murder of a deadbeat father whose son is dying of leukemia presents a moral dilemma

I think it’s a reasonable assumption that given his many personality flaws on display this season, Christopher Moltisanti would not make it to “The Sopranos” finale.

Still, it was a shocking to see — SPOILER ALERT -- Chrissie being suffocated to death Sunday night by Tony while the pair lay injured in the wreck of the SUV drug-addled Chris had driven off the highway and down a ravine. Maybe Tony was performing a mercy killing to end his nephew’s physical suffering or maybe he finally realized that Christopher was a junkie who could never be trusted.

Tony survived to live another day. Although as is the case with “The Sopranos” this season, the remainder of the episode seriously went off the rails. Tony went to Vegas alone, hooked up with a hot college girl, did peyote with her, which forced the viewers to endure several pseudo-heavy scenes that seemed lifted from the tripping sequence of some bad ‘60s LSD-exploitation flick.

We think, though, that Tony will emerge from his funk — and come back more vicious than ever, determined to totally wipe out Phil and his crew.

Perhaps that’s wishful thinking... The way things are going, Tony may last be seen heading off to a commune in the woods of Oregon.

What did you think of this pivotal episode? Any theories about Christopher’s death? And of course the mother of all questions (the Livia of all questions, if you will) — what is going to happen to Tony?

Your answers are eagerly awaited.