Companies
offer tours of
‘The Sopranos’ filming locations.
PHILADELPHIA – See, down that alley. That’s where Big Pussy sat in the car with the FBI agent and became a chiacchierone. Big guy shoulda known better.
Over on the corner? It’s Father Phil’s church. And that place? It’s La Pizza. Where Anthony Jr. got the pie the night he trashed his school pool. Where the owner told police: “My pizza never hurt nobody.”
And many, many sliding-pole lengths away there’s the Bada Bing. Madonn’!
Need a fix while the HBO series is in reruns? Get aboard one of two competing “Sopranos” tours that crisscross North Jersey like wiseguys eluding their FBI tails.
In a clash for fans of the show some consider reality TV New Jersey-style, the operator of one tour even took the other to court. Wassamatta? They couldn’t convene a council of the five families?
On this day, on the original tour, there’s a surprise treat – a scene from the series’ fifth season shooting in a parking lot. The glimpse lasts about as long as it takes to say “Ralphie Cifaretto is oobatz.”
Wait, we reveal more than Tony in a session with Dr. Melfi. Let’s do this Soprano-style. One episode at a time.
Just after 2 p.m. on a sultry day, a tour bus leaves Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel, emerging in four minutes to New Jersey sunshine, just as in the show’s opening. A CD plays the theme, by the group A3.
“Tony Soprano goes a way it is impossible to go,” guide Marc Barron of On Location Tours explains. “In the credits you see Tony go through the tunnel, and then there’s Pulaski Skyway … then he is at Exit 13 of the turnpike, but it is really Exit 12 … then the Skyway again. … He passes Satriale’s, Pizzaland, the Muffler Man … but he is going in the wrong direction …
“When they shot the pilot, they just had James Gandolfini driving around North Jersey. They were going to reshoot it, but when HBO picked up the series, they liked it that way.”
Barron is 46 and glib, an actor who has been on “The Sopranos” several times.
“I’ve played a lot of dead bodies,” he said with a smile.
Early on, Barron appeared as a bartender at the Vesuvio restaurant. Then, after a “little fire,” he was never seen again.
“So some say I was whacked.” He winks.
His hands also doubled for those of Frank Sinatra Jr. during the infamous executive game poker marathon. He is a stand-in again next season.
“One thing you will see plenty of today is diners and cemeteries, and they are usually near each other, whatever that means,” Barron said.
During the many, many minutes that the bus sits in North Jersey traffic jams, Barron rattles off a litany of “Sopranos” facts: “The Muffler Man is 25 feet tall. He’s worth 35 large.”
He also asks the passengers endless trivia questions: “What’s the name of Tony’s boat? … Right, the Stugots. And that isn’t Italian for stupid.”
The bus passes the ball field where Tony and Uncle Junior watched A.J. play and two discreet sites where the late Pussy Bonpensiero talked to the FBI, stopping in the lot where two jamooks shot Christopher.
“I will stand in the very spot where Christopher bought the bullet,” Barron said after passengers depart at the New Skyway Diner in South Kearny, N.J.
Pop! Pop! Barron has come heavy. He pulls a cap gun from his pocket and fires it.
On Location Tours, which also offers guided visits to other New York filming spots, has been running Sopranos trips for 2½ years, company president Georgette Blau said.
“Philadelphia is the largest market for people wanting to go on the tour,” said Blau, who sends buses into Jersey several times a week.
Her competition comes from Chris Lucas and his New Jersey Sopranos Tour. Lucas also is an actor who has appeared briefly in the series. He worked for Blau before forming his own family – er, company.
“We’re pretty similar tours,” said Lucas, 34, although his doesn’t start in New York. “We see the same things.”
Lucas said he runs a tour when the demand is high.
“When it is slow, I do fewer,” he said. “Georgette’s company is bigger. She can afford to go out with fewer passengers.”
Blau started legal action against Lucas last year, saying he was giving her agita by deliberately picking up her passengers at a Secaucus, N.J., stop.
Lucas said it was a misunderstanding, that it happened only once, and that everything has been worked out by their consiglieri.
Blau said that despite its success, “The Sopranos” is not her biggest-drawing tour.
“‘Sex and the City’ is a more popular tour. It’s a party,” she said. “You don’t need to know the show to enjoy the tour.
“But it’s different with “The Sopranos.” You really need to be into the show.”
The bus meanders through Kearny, N.J., stopping across the street from Satriale’s, the pork shop where Tony and his crew conduct daily business.
The store is gated-up, with show props inside – including a calico-covered table that often is seen outside with Silvio, Paulie and Hesh sitting around.
The large pig atop the store in the series is not there.
“They only put that up when they are filming here,” Barron said. “Otherwise, it disappears.”
The 17 passengers are learning enough about the Soprano family to fill an FBI dossier.
Originally offered to Fox, the series was going to be called “Made in New Jersey.”
Tony and Carmela’s house in North Caldwell, N.J., is owned by an architect. The police don’t let tours in the upscale Essex County town.
The show’s creator, David Chase, tries to pay homage to both “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.” The first choice to play Tony was Ray Liotta, and Lorraine Bracco was offered the role of Carmela but thought Dr. Melfi was a better character. Liotta and Bracco played husband and wife in “Goodfellas.”
Yes, the “wings” in Paulie Walnuts’ hair are real.
“Watching the show is like coming home,” said passenger Nancy Wegge, who with her husband, Bill, lives in St. Louis. “I’m from Verona,” she smiles, “near Livia Soprano’s house.”
The bus stops by a Lyndhurst, N.J., bakery, and creamy cannoli are given to the passengers.
They include a 25-year-old woman from Australia, who said “The Sopranos” has a cult following Down Under, and a mother and son from California who couldn’t leave New York without seeing where their favorite show is shot.
“It’s his birthday, and the tour is my treat,” said Traci Dougherty, 18, of Bensalem, Pa., walking with her boyfriend, Tyler Fike, 18, of South Philadelphia. She will be a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania this fall, and he a freshman at Drexel.
“He knew we were going to New York, but I didn’t tell him about the tour.”
More than four hours out, the bus is at its last stop, the Bada Bing (real name Satin Dolls), the strip club in Lodi, N.J. It pulls into the rear lot, near where, in a sickeningly brutal scene, Ralphie beat a dancer to death.
“It is kind of macabre,” said Lucas, of the rival tour. “First, the attraction was inside the club. Now they want to see where the girl was killed.”
Inside, two women in white bikini outfits whirl on stage.
(Separation of fact and fiction: The girls are not topless, as they are in the series. State law does not allow that form of dancing if liquor is served.)
A manager opens a small room for the tourists to buy caps, T-shirts and G-strings.
At the bar, a waitress named Ariel is understated in describing what it was like when filming took place there earlier.
“It got quiet,” she said. “The lights got bright. … Everyone was polite. … Christopher sat there.”
She nods over her shoulder toward the break in the bar. It is the spot where Tony went upside the head of Georgie the bartender because he couldn’t get a message straight.
“Let me answer questions I got inside,” Barron quipped, back on the bus: “Yes. No. Fake.”
The tour seems longer than Uncle Junior’s house arrest.
It is slowed in Route 17 traffic, which is just fine. For up ahead, on the parking lot of an IHOP, filming is under way.
“That’s Christopher,” someone shouts from the bus.
Several yards away, a sports car is shielded by a giant silk screen to enhance lighting.
In the front passenger seat sits a man who indeed looks like Michael Imperioli, the actor who plays hyperactive wise guy Christopher Moltisanti.
Tourists’ cameras move as fast as Pie-O-My in the stretch.
Janice Soprano will marry Bobby Bacala next season, Barron reveals. That plot simmered last year like a pot of pasta.
He said that as big as actor Steven R. Schirripa is, he still wore a body suit while playing Bobby, adding 75 pounds and 11 inches to his girth.
“He’s going to lose the fat suit,” Barron said with a smile. “If I married Janice, I’d stop eating, too.”
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(c) 2003, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer’s World Wide Web site, at http://www.philly.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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PHOTO (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099):
AP-NY-07-27-03 0601EDT
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