by Larry Brody
I admit it. I read The New York Times. The online edition, of course, but probably not for the reason most other people do. I read the NYT because I can count on its presentation of the latest news in our current dystopia to be calmly, reassuringly unsensationalistic.
In other words, my carefully supervised pulse rate and blood pressure stay low.
As a former co-worker with a guy named David Chase and a huge fan of his masterpiece The Sopranos, I found NYT especially reassuring today thanks to a promotional article by Dave Itzkoff about the soon to be released The Many Saints of Newark, described by Itzkoff as:
a period crime drama that casts [Michael Gandolfini] as a precocious teenage troublemaker named Tony Soprano….
What did I love so much about the article? Let me put it this way. The first three times I typed the quote above because I was replacing Itzkoff’s “him” with the name of the actor I didn’t type “Michael Gandolfini.” Instead I typed:
Michael Soprano
The Soprano crime family is very real to me. Clearly, I’ve missed the hell out of them, a fact I didn’t realize until I saw the picture of Michael Gandolfini that’s at the top of this post. Today I raided my meager pension for enough shekels to join HBO Max so I can sit back contentedly and watch the film as many times as I want starting October 1st.
Oh shit, wait, as soon as I wrote that last sentence I felt my pulse start to race. Looks like I may be spinning into orbit – but I’ll be back on the ground in time to see the film, I absolutely guarantee it.
David Chase, HBO Max, NYT, and especially Michael Soprano Gandolfini, I raise my steaming cup of morning decaf to you all, while saying in my best Tony Soprano voice, “Hey, fuckers, this better be good.”
Read “Michael Gandolfini and the Riddle of Tony Soprano” by David Itzkoff here
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