Just stopped.... believin'.

[captainsblog]

The news wasn't a total shock, but the timing was.

Eleanor and I had just finished the third-last of the Nurse Jackie eps we've been marathoning for the past week. I came down the hall, and there was the news all over Teh Interwebs:

James Gandolfini. Dead of a massive MI while vacationing in Italy. All of 51 years old.

Yes, I saw every Sopranos episode. Somehow, the past Jacks or two reminded me a lot of his Tony persona- because Edie Falco, now playing the lead in her own premium cable series, has really grown into new layers of that character in this current season, and, more than ever, is So Not Carmela.  So that got me remembering those earlier seasons- was she second or third billed in the credits as Tony drove through the tunnel? (Third, after Lorraine Bracco.)  The image of him, in that SUV, the music playing, the Jersey countryside going by,.... and of course that obnoxious cigar in his mouth.

Smoking's bad for ya, Ton.

But Jim Gandolfini was not Tony- although that's what, and who, he will forever be remembered for.  Except, maybe, by me.  I will forever remember this scene, from an obscure little indy I only discovered when seeing an autographed movie poster for it on a back-office wall in Rochester's Little Theatre last year (his co-star Mimi Kennedy is from Rochester; she's the one who signed it).

Watch this, with him as general rather than capo, and tell me you're thinking one lick of the Bada Bing:

Centanni, James. You only made it a year past the halfway mark, but your work and your families (real and screen) will live on forever.

Comments

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

If you liked In the Loop-- as I do and will be watching again in a few minutes in tribute-- then you should check out The Thick of It which is the universe In the Loop sort of inhabits. (You'll see why it's 'sort of' when you see the series).