The Sopranos Documentary

Woke up this morning...

Actually, the first time I saw "The Sopranos" was in the morning, just before noon on a Saturday, with the curtains drawn, I heard the opening notes of that Alabama 3 song and...

I've watched "Breaking Bad," never made it through "The Wire," and there's nothing like "The Sopranos." I've never seen suburban life depicted so accurately, with the hippest rock soundtrack to boot. Remember the Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" after Tony whips Janice into a frenzy? That's not the original, that's the remake from the double album "To The Bone," which you can't find on streaming services, it's another album lost to the sands of time, but the next morning I riffled through hundreds of CDs to find it, to hear it.

That was the power of "The Sopranos."

Or when Meadow said her parents should take away her gasoline credit card as punishment... They thought it was a big deal, but she had them snookered.

America is a suburban nation. Not a rural nation, not a city nation, but a suburban nation. Its consciousness is based on those who grew up in single family dwellings with a yard, who went to the local public or Catholic school, who played Little League and grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. This is our shared experience. And "The Sopranos" represented that. We may not have been gangsters, but we knew about living outside the metropolis, knowing that there were bigger people in the city, but to us our world was everything.

And America is about friends. Your "posse" in hip-hop language. Some people set the world on fire, ironically the bigger you are, the more people you know but the fewer friends you've got. You need sharp elbows to make it to the top. But it's this context amongst us that grounds us, keeps us together. Tony had his crew. You had...

This was 1999. Just when we all started to sing that Prince song in anticipation of the millennium. AOL was rampant, but broadband was not. If you wanted to know what was going on, if you wanted a date, you had to leave the house. It was the last hurrah for not only the century, but a certain way of life.

And then all hell broke loose.

It started in the music business. They talk about the dot com era, but that was really about fly by night companies looking to make a buck, but Napster was ground-breaking, nothing was the same thereafter. Not only in music, but the culture at large. Disruption became the word. Everything was up for grabs.

And now twenty five years later our nation is unrecognizable. We're wired, we're linked, but the system short circuits. We're no longer connected. But one thing is for sure, if you want to know which way the wind blows, you watch a TV show. A streaming TV show.

And probably not on HBO.

But HBO had been pushing the envelope with original series. Hipsters knew about "Larry Sanders," they were broken in by "Dream On." "Sex and the City" burgeoned after the breakthrough of "The Sopranos," when people hungered for more and found Carrie and her friends in "The Sopranos" time slot. But "Sex and the City" was a fantasy, "The Sopranos" was reality.

"The Sopranos" movie was a dud. And the documentary explains why, without saying a thing. It lacked the writers' room, that had tiredly batted around stories for years. And James Gandolfini.

The strange thing about this documentary is you can see the acting.

At this point, everybody considers themselves an actor. Become a big enough musical star and you'll get a role. But the pros have trained. They've got to get into the headspace. We see this again and again in the doc. How Gandolfini pushes and pushes himself. And if you're looking for gossip, you'll get a tidbit when David Chase says he wasn't surprised by Jim's death. We had no idea how far gone Gandolfini was. You had to be on the inside. Which is the same today, we think we know everything, oftentimes we know nothing.

David Chase. He's Italian. Originally it was "Chianese." And they show his life from then to now. Growing up in New Jersey with an insane mother. That's the theme of the documentary, mothers. That's the point of connection amongst everybody involved. Shrink 101. Everybody tells you to get over it, but Chase can't, most can't.

Hopefully you wake up one day and realize your mom's the problem. You've got to get yourself out from under. Which is what Chase does, he moves to the west coast, where he says the scum flows, or so he's heard. He moves to the Bay Area to go to graduate school at Stanford, and then goes south to Tinseltown.

But he can't leave his mother behind.

He has success in TV when really he wants to make movies, and he's got this project about his mother and mobsters and...

No one wants to buy it.

That's the difference between yesterday and today. If they don't like it, oftentimes you can do it yourself. And there are more outlets buying. But having said that, we're past Peak TV, and even Netflix is tightening the strings and going for broad-based rather than niche.

But the suits know nothing. They never did. Barry Diller may have come up with "The Movie of the Week," but the executives can never make the product. It used to be in the music business they were hands off, they knew they weren't musical, but it's always been this way in visual entertainment, everybody's an expert. But they've got no idea what really resonates with the public. Which is visceral. They're afraid of the public, they're second-guessing the public, but it takes an artistic visionary to get it right.

Like David Chase. He fought for his way. The nuances were important. They didn't want Tony to kill that rat when Meadow goes to look at college. As for the deaths... You knew nobody was forever, everybody was up for grabs. It's when they whacked Big Pussy that you realized this.

So I didn't expect this documentary to be great, I held off watching it for fear of disappointment. Another return to the graveyard.

But that's not what it is. Credit Alex Gibney, his documentaries are always a cut above.

But I'm watching the first episode and I'm reminded of what once was. And although I'm nostalgic, I'm not looking through rose-colored glasses. The show really was that good.

I'm not one to watch anything over. I like the element of surprise. After that, it's no longer new. There are no do-overs in life, why should there be in art? But when the scenes unfolded on the screen...

I was brought right back there.

But one of the most interesting things is the actors have aged. Michael Imperioli has gray hair. As does Lorraine Bracco. No one seems to have succumbed to the pressures of Hollywood, they have not gotten plastic surgery in a failed effort o appear young. It's only worked for Susan Sarandon, everybody else's visage is off, everybody knows, but no one admits it. You cannot turn back the hands of time. You can only go forward.

And you'll learn a lot about the making of the series. About making TV. People have no idea what a grind it is.

But mostly you will be returned to New Jersey. Your spiritual home.

Despite Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bongiovi, people outside the area have no idea how derided New Jersey is, still. Connecticut, New York, fine. New Jersey? Laughable. Second-rate.

What you've got here is the underdogs who got out from under to tell their truth, which turned out to be our truth.

I would hope we could return to the well, that we could have another show as good as "The Sopranos," but we never got another Beatles, never mind another "Godfather" I or "II."

Entertainment is America's foremost export. And if you're paying attention, you know that the internet and streaming services have undercut this in music. Now there is more regional talent. That spreads beyond borders. The days of U.S. and U.K. domination are done.

And they're making better TV series than ever around the world, the Danes and Israelis especially, but it's American visual entertainment that still dominates.

However it is faltering. "The Sopranos" killed movies. It was better than movies. If you wanted real life, grit, you turned on the flat screen, the theatre was for fantasy. As for the vaunted filmmakers of the day, neither Spielberg nor Scorsese have ever made anything as good as "The Sopranos." Spielberg makes spectacle. Scorsese has always had a problem with story. Image and moments, but story? That was in "The Sopranos." That's the nature of television, story is superior to image.

Woke up this morning, and I did not get a gun, but I just had to tell you. If you were a fan of "The Sopranos" this is a must-see. This is the college reunion you dream of attending. These are three-dimensional people you know so well, at least on screen. In real life they were different, you can see this.

And in the tsunami of product and hype we heard about this documentary for a week or two, and now crickets. That's the way it always is. The promotional complex does not know how to do it otherwise. But in truth, today most projects marinate in the public consciousness, are spread by word of mouth, taking ever longer to break through.

Just like "The Sopranos" itself. It was not an overnight hit. First and foremost, not everybody had HBO. It took the entire season for word to spread. And then...

It became America's story.

But it's not true. That's what you learn during the doc. It was just another TV show.

Only it's not.


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