James Andrew Miller - Tinderbox: HBOs Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers

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for my mother, Leatrice Weiss-Miller,

with love, gratitude, and

the promise to always remember

HBO was what it was because of its outward grace,

in spite of its inward turmoil.

Like any great actor.

FORMER HBO EXECUTIVE

Although Chris Albrecht owned a beautiful Mediterranean-style house in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, for his East Coast sojourns HBO rented its CEO a showpiece apartment in Midtown Manhattans Museum Towers, not far from Radio City Music Hall. In the late spring of 2003, Albrecht played host there to more than a dozen invited friends and associates for an urgent meeting, one that concerned the pay networks most important show, and one of the most celebrated dramas everThe Sopranos. Then in its fourth season, The Sopranos was proving immensely popular with audiences and was in the process of becoming as much a watershed for television as Citizen Kane had been for motion pictures.

And yet the show that had come shockingly close to never existing in the first place was, at that moment, on the cusp of collapse.

David Chase, auteur of the series, had originally written the pilot script for the Fox television network, but after a short flirtation Fox executives passed on the project, condemning it to turnaround, that limbo from which many a series or film has failed to return. HBO came on board shortly thereafter, however, and produced a pilot. After it was shot and edited, the pilot was test-marketed in several cities, to a tepid response. Most broadcast networks confronting such a meager reaction would likely have passed on the pilot then and there. At HBO, where things were done differently, Albrecht and colleague Carolyn Straussfully supported by HBO CEO Jeff Bewkesdecided to go with their guts rather than succumb to the research. The Sopranos was ordered to series.

At this point, the shows leading man, James Gandolfini, was a little-known character actor who tended to disappear artfully into his rolessome of them, appropriate to his size, heavies. Whether he was playing a ruthless mob henchman in True Romance or a bearded Southern stuntman in Get Shorty, his work had not been wildly auspicious or lavishly praised by critics. Nevertheless, Chasewho had earlier considered actor Michael Rispoli and musician Steven Van Zandt for the lead role (both men would end up in the seriesas Jackie Aprile and Silvio Dante, respectively)personally picked Gandolfini as his guy because he passed the real world test. Simply put, he looked the part. Casting Gandolfini turned out to be a stroke of brilliance. When, on January 10, 1999, The Sopranos premiered with Gandolfini, then thirty-eight, in the plum role of Tony, the Soprano paterfamilias, the actor would soon find himself aglow in the brightest spotlight of his career. The series didnt start with that big a bang commercially, but then, in episode five of that first seasonwhen Tony strangled and sent an old nemesis to hell while touring potential colleges with his teenage daughter, Meadowsomething on the show clicked confidently into place. Gandolfinis life would never be the same and, arguably, neither would television.

The Sopranosfor anyone who was in a coma or visiting other planets at the timeis a drama about the double life of Anthony Tony Soprano, husband and father to an upper-middle-class family in suburban New Jersey and, simultaneously, capo di tutti i capi to another sort of family, organized-crime division. For both Tonys, the times they were a-changin; a series of panic attacks rattles his world, compelling him to secretly consult a psychiatrist, brilliantly played by Lorraine Bracco. They have lots to talk about, including the fact that Tonys Machiavellian mother and his sinister uncle Junior figure prominently in the crime familys operations. Real-life realities would impose themselves on the narrative; Nancy Marchand, the veteran character actress cast as Tonys mother, who served as one of the shows most essential arteries, became very, very sick, and ultimately died, at the end of season two. But by that time Chase, who ran the show tirelessly, had been hard at work creating countless new dimensions to his magnum opus, expanding it to a much larger scale than previously envisioned. The New York Times would call The Sopranos the greatest work of American popular culture of the last quarter century. As a result, even more weight was placed on Tonys, and Gandolfinis, shoulders.

To say that Gandolfini rose to the occasion would be putting it mildly. His complex, nuanced, and inspired performance demonstrated remarkable range, not just over the course of the series, or any one episode, but often within a scene, a confrontation, even a single moment, that seemed to transcend mere acting. No matter how despicable Tonys behavior appeared on the surface, Gandolfini was so persuasive and affectingwhether conveying Tonys rage, passion, or some fleeting flash of guiltthat the audience never turned its back on him. In a troubling age of antiheroes, Tony Soprano was royalty. His eyes told a million tales, and his performance elevated him to the upper echelon of American actors. He adapted handily to the series widened scope, its growth from intimate portrait to rich, blood-splattered tapestry, and he was enormously instrumental in making The Sopranos an epochal cultural eventunofficially the start of what some would call televisions second golden age. Whether thats true or not, it was a golden age of Gandolfini.

Jimmy, to his friends, wasnt just the lead actor in a cast of character actorsadroit professionals allbut was also the leader of the surrogate family that evolved off-screen. Gandolfini set the tone, not by asserting star clout on the set, but because his fellow actors shared great respect and admiration for him as both artist and friend. He returned their affection with a sincerity that embraced deeds as well as words, typically declining interview requests from the press until reassured that another cast member would be included to share the limelight. Gandolfini was so patient with clamoring fans that he didnt even balk when one of them asked to shake his hand as he stood at a mens room urinal.

Gandolfinis worldview soon exceeded the boundaries of show business. He became, for instance, deeply involved in the plight of battle-scarred veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, even to the point of later producing a documentary about their struggles, conducting many of the interviews himself. When playing Tony, though, Gandolfini underwent an awe-inspiring facial and bodily transformation; the lovable pussycat turned into a ruthless and philandering gangster. Somehow it seemed beyond acting, beyond even intuitive skills; Jimmy became Tony, an actor of unimpeachable credibility.

Theres no way of knowing if