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'The Sopranos' Won't Let Buscemi Die
Despite being whacked, Steve Buscemi keeps popping up in front of and behind the 'Sopranos' cameras
By Daniel Fienberg
April 7 2006
Steve BuscemiWhen Tony Soprano unloaded his shotgun into Tony Blundetto's chest, it looked like Steve Buscemi's run on "The Sopranos" was over. Instead, the familiar character actor's fingerprints are all over the HBO drama.
First, Buscemi popped up at the end of the March 26 episode titled "Mayhem," playing an unnamed character with heavenly connection in the ailing Tony's coma dream.
"It was just one night," Buscemi says of his in-front-of-the-camera "Sopranos" return. "I always love working on the show no matter if it's directing or acting and I love working with Jimmy [Gandolfini]."
Buscemi continues, "I was more conscious that this probably won't happen again for a long time, so maybe I did savor the moment a little bit more. But once you're in the scene you don't really think about that. You just concentrate on the work."
Of course, Buscemi only needed to savor the moment a tiny bit, because almost as soon as he completed his acting cameo, he was able to begin working on the other side of the camera, directing "Mr. & Mrs. John Sacramoni Request," the episode set to air this Sunday (April 9).
"Even before I was on the show, I'd directed a couple episodes and a lot of the actors I know and have worked with before," notes Buscemi, who earned an Emmy nomination for helming the classic "Pine Barrens" episode. "I think just the more I do it, the more at ease I become there. I guess having acted on the show for a season, you do feel like you're more part of the family. When I first did it, you definitely feel like an outsider. The director is the outsider, especially when you're a new director."
With his latest feature directing effort, "Lonesome Jim," slowly staggering into limited release long after its production, Buscemi has grown to appreciate at least one aspect of shooting for TV.
"It's nice coming into a thing like 'The Sopranos' knowing that it's established and that the thing that I'm gonna direct is gonna end up on screen and people will see it," he admits. "With 'Lonesome Jim' and with this other film I'm trying to get off the ground, we'd lose the money, the rug would just get pulled out from beneath you and then you have to start from scratch and it can be very discouraging. It just makes it hard. But then when you finally get it together, I think it's worth it."
With "The Sopranos" entering the slow crawl toward what's expected to be its series finale next spring, Buscemi is honored to have been part of the decorated show.
"Certainly I think 'The Sopranos' just opened the doors for a lot of great shows, it opened the possibilities that TV could be more like film, that the stories can be complicated and the characters can be darker and that there's an audience out there."
