David Chase remembers Tony Sirico.
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Tony Siricos authenticity was not an act.
Sirico died last week at 79 after nearly five decades as a screen actor.
David Chase asked if he could share some stories about him.
I offer my deepest condolences on your loss.I offer my deepest condolences onyourloss.
The loss of Tony is your loss as much as mine.
We all loved him.
He was one of a kind.
I was thinking about him the day before he died.
He was a reason for the success of the show.
Not the main reason or the only reason, but he was really important.
I mean, it wasallhysterical.
Any scene with two of those guys together was hysterical.
Tony and Michael were one of the great comedy teams.
I can do that standing on my head.
Its like a couple of days here.[Laughs.]
His delivery of that was just great.
Another one I like is him ranting about shoelaces.
You ever go to tie your shoes and you notice the end of your laces are wet?
Come on, why would they be wet?
And then praising womens bathroom maintenance: So clean you could eat maple walnut ice cream off the toilet.Ohhh!
His part in the pilot was small.
Do you even remember what it was?
Hey, T Dick Barone wants to see ya.
One of them was that Tony read for Uncle Junior.
What do you want first?
He said, Gimme the bad news.
I said, The bad news is, we went with somebody else for Junior.
What do you think?
And he said yes.
And thats how he ended up with one line in the pilot.
We would have been foolish not to have given him as much material as we could justify.
And that was a pretty dramatic story line.
There was something subconscious that Tony had, the way he approached things.
I cant explain what it was.
Im not sure he understood it himself.
Im not sure that he even knew that he had it.
You know, he used to direct the other actors.On set?Yes!
What would he say?No, no, listen to me: Say it likethis!
Did they complain?Not really.
Well, a few people did.
But not that many.
What was his relationship like withJames Gandolfini?He and Jim were close.
They went to Iraq together during the war, to visit the troops.
Jim just wanted to go over there, for the troops, and Tony wanted to go with him.
And so they went.
What was it like talking to Tony about the role of Paulie?
What kind of questions did he ask?He never asked me anything!
At least I cant remember him ever asking me anything.
[Laughs] He wasnt the kind of actor who had a lot of questions about his character!
I will say, Tony was part of one of the greatest casts of all time.
It was certainly the greatest cast Ive ever worked with, and Ive worked with some incredible casts.
But he was the only one who ever asked me to have a line changed.
And I did it.
What was the line?Another character was talking about Paulie, and they said he was a bully.
Tony didnt like that.
He asked me to take the word bully out of there.
Whatd you change it to?I dont recall.
The important thing is, he didnt like that word.
He didnt like it at all.
Given his past, maybe the word struck a nerve.Yeah.
I wonder if that had something to do with why he was so sensitive about it.
Maybe hehadbeen a bully as a young man.
Flexing his muscles, you know.
He looked the part.
He would put on disguises and rob card games and rob drug dealers.
He told me one time that he never went to Manhattan until he was 18 years old.
He was from Brooklyn, so he stayed in Brooklyn.
He told me, We said to the owner, Were taking over this bar now.
You go into the back, sit down and shut up.
And they took over that bar.
People always ask me, What is it like killing a character off?
Its difficult, because it means they arent gonna be on the show anymore.
It was never easy for me.
It certainly wasnt pleasant.
One of the actors who was really, really into it was Al Sapienza.
When he found out his character was going, he tried to find a way out of it.
Well, maybe I could do this.
Maybe I could do that.
Sapienza was just about ready to cry.
He was that upset.
[Laughs] Remember when is the lowest form of conversation.
And now here we are, doing remember when!
[Laughs]
But now Im thinking about Tony and Michael again.
That scene where the two of them kill the waiter who comes out complaining about the tip they left!
Thats supposed to be funny, and you gotta laugh.
The act is not funny.
The two characters and their reactions are whats funny.
They act like its a perfectly normal thing for a couple of guys whove just had dinner to do.
Tony Sirico was a master at playing that kind of moment.
Paulie didnt have that kind of awareness.
Paulie wasnt like Tony Soprano, who was fully self-aware and tormented as a result.
Paulie didnt even have the level of self-awareness of somebody like Christopher or Big Pussy.Youre right about that.
And now youre making me think about the scene where Paulie gets the painting of Tony on the horse.
[Laughs] Tonys disturbed by it when he sees it.
He goes, What thefuck?
Hes angry about it.
But to Paulie, its a tribute.
He loves Tony.Yeah, he does.
Ill tell you one last story about Tony.
Now, we didnt give every single one of the guys a different gift.
Wed settle on one gift and that would be the gift.
I remember I found a miniature Colt .45, a beautiful thing.
We found a Beretta.
And nobody ever said thank you!
I just got tired of that, so after a while I didnt give them anything.
Anyway, one time we made a CD of the music from the show.
All of the music.
It was a four-CD set.
And Sirico says to me, You know what you shoulda done?
Remember when you used to do stuff like give us cuff links?
Thats what you shoulda done!
I said, You never said shit about that!
And we fucking never gotshitfrom you!
He looked like he was gonna cry.
Two days later, there was a delivery.
It was from a store downtown.
Some kind of expensive Italian gift shop.
There was a Roman or Italian feel to everything in it.
And it was from him!
I find myself picturing Tony in the afterlife.
That never happens to me when somebody dies!
But I picture Tony in the afterlife.
What is he doing?Just being himself.
I picture other people reacting to him, the way that you and I used to react to him.
Theyre laughing, but theyre also kind of put off.
What is he wearing?A tracksuit.
