Now everyone knows that Tony Soprano was last seen in a booth at Holsten’s ice cream parlor on June 10, 2007. But what a 14-year-old video that just got released to the public this morning presupposes is… maybe he wasn’t?
In 2010, NBA superstar LeBron James was entering free agency for the first time in his legendary career, and the New York Knicks were one of several teams with dreams of signing him. Knicks executives put together what they thought would be a surefire recruitment plan, centered on a video where various New York celebrities pitched LeBron on coming to play at Madison Square Garden. As legend had it, two of those celebrities were The Sopranos stars James Gandolfini and Edie Falco, who got back into character as Tony and Carmela one last time.
Finally, the legend has proven to be fact. In all the time since the Knicks tried and failed to bring King James to MSG, many people have heard about the video, but no one outside the top echelon of the Knicks organization at the time had actually seen it. But reporter Pablo Torre’s podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out unearthed the video and today showed the entire thing, piece-by-piece, in an episode where he watches it with well-known Knicks fans Jason Concepcion and Rob Perez. The whole episode is 45 minutes long, but we’ve cued it up to Tony and Carmela’s appearance:
This part of the video raises many more questions than it answers:
1. Why would Gandolfini — a die-hard Knicks fan who talked his old co-star into appearing with him and who conceived the idea for the scene — think that the best premise would be for Tony and Carmela to now be in the witness protection program?
2. If Tony and Carmela were actually placed into witness protection, why would the U.S. Marshals put them a 40-minute drive away from their McMansion in a city where the chance of him being spotted by one of his vengeful former colleagues would be incredibly high? Even with the mountain man beard Gandolfini wore at the time, he had one of the most unmistakable faces in the tri-state area.
3. How exactly does Tony know LeBron James well enough to help him find a place to move to in the city? In the penultimate Sopranos episode, we saw him briefly chat up then-Jets coach Eric Mangini, but that’s a local sports figure, not one of the most famous people in the world, who at that moment in 2010 still lived and worked in Ohio.
4. Why would the Knicks choose two characters so closely associated with New Jersey — at a time when a different NBA franchise, the Nets, still played in the Garden State — as part of a pitch for LeBron to come to the Big Apple?
5. Most importantly, what does this mean for the never-ending debate about whether Tony died when The Sopranos cut to black at the end of that last episode?
Obviously, this video is not part of The Sopranos canon. It was never meant for public consumption. Sopranos creator David Chase did not write it. It was shot in Gandolfini’s apartment rather than the show’s usual home base at Silvercup Studios in Queens. It is, as Torre and his guests describe it, fan fiction — albeit fan fiction created by and starring James freaking Gandolfini and co-starring Edie freaking Falco. It would be like if William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy wrote and appeared in a short film in the early Seventies where Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock finally appeased a segment of the Star Trek fanbase by making out with each other. It’s insane that this exists, even in this form.
And yet… Chase has never wanted to fully explain the meaning of that cut to black, nor of what exactly happened right after. (Though he came pretty close with me once.) As we’ve all argued about for years, maybe the guy in the Members Only jacket comes out of the bathroom and puts a bullet in the back of Tony’s head while Meadow is walking through the Holsten’s front door. Maybe Tony and his family enjoy a quiet meal together and return to their lives. Maybe Tony drops dead of a heart attack from eating one onion ring too many. The scene is meant to evoke the fear of death and the idea that any of us could go at any minute, even if we don’t live as dangerous a life as the boss of the New Jersey mob. But it’s not necessarily saying that Tony dies right then and there.
A less-remembered plot development of that last episode involved Family captain Carlo Gervasi going missing shortly after one of his sons was arrested on a drug charge. Paulie Walnuts fears that Carlo may have agreed to become a government informant. So even though Tony makes peace with the New York mob, and things more or less return to normal (other than the deaths of most of his non-Paulie captains), the finale also leaves open the possibility that the bumblers in the FBI may have finally gotten their acts together and found a way to bust him. If that’s the case, maybe witness protection — in exchange for flipping on new New York boss Butchie DeConcini — is where he and Carmela headed next. Even if it’s impossible to fathom them being placed so close to home.
Sure, the Knicks’ video is a calamity on almost every level, with appearances by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Alec Baldwin, and Harvey Weinstein, among others. And, sure, Gandolfini is playing the SNL sketch version of Tony rather than getting deep into character here. (Falco, on the other hand, slips effortlessly back into Carmela because that’s just how she’s built.) But given that Jim died only a few years after the video was made, there’s something poignant about this lost performance — and this final, if unofficial, Tony and Carmela scene — finally seeing the light of day.
LeBron ultimately took his talents to South Beach to play for the Miami Heat. So, the Knicks’ approach failed. But at least it brought Tony Soprano back to life for a few minutes.
Michaela Coel in ‘The Christophers.’Claudette Barius/NEON