Vince Curatola as Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni
April 16, 2007 5:03AM
Newark Star-Ledger
Last night's episode of "The Sopranos" said farewell to one of the show's most memorable characters. For the benefit of the unspoiled, we'll save the character's identity until after the jump, followed by a farewell interview with the actor in question.
So, as anyone who clicked through knows by now, the dearly departed was none other than Johnny Sack, who succumbed to lung cancer in a prison hospital. A few days before the episode aired, I got on the phone with Vince Curatola, a onetime masonry contractor who got into acting on a whim at middle age and almost missed his "Sopranos" audition because he wanted to smoke a cigarette.
How did you find out Johnny was going to die?
(Producer) Terry Winter called me in mid-June and said, 'Johnny's going to get sick, he's not going to make it.' I liked the idea of how he was going. I felt that it would have been inappropriate for poor Johnny to bleed out in the street with a shank in his back. He was a boss; that's not for him.
So you liked the story?
In that way, it would give Johnny some closure, an ability to talk to his family, say, 'Look, I'm going on a long trip, I'm not coming back.' It was an actor's dream to go from diagnosis many weeks later to his death. Plus, my wife Maureen's brother Tommy died at the age of 61 from cancer a few months before we got the script. He was an iron worker at World Trade, and he got terribly sick, and we watched him go, and sure enough, in comes this script. Because I'm on the board of Hackensack University Medical Center, I was able to gain access to the oncologists and do the research, and one of them helped Terry with the technical terms in the script.
As an actor, then, you didn't have to look very far to find some experience to draw on for this story.
My mom was 39, never smoked a cigarette in her life, died of lung cancer. I don't know what to say. That kind of a diagnosis is 50-50. Johnny's didn't work out well, but I kind of felt that even though he was going, he said to his brother-in-law he'd like his insurance to be pieced out, he was stoic and organized to the end, that's me in my life. Every time I get on a plane, I say to Maureen, 'This paper is here, and these papers are there.'
In a way, it has to be nice for you to get to make your exit early in this season, when you'll get more attention than if it had happened later.
I'm glad because I would not have been happy going to the end of the season going, 'Can you tell me what's going to happen?' It freed me up, career-wise. I already have a movie lined up.
What do you think Johnny added to the show?
Johnny's always been intelligent, and Tony doesn't have a whole lot around him in his crew who are bright. It was a bonus for Tony to be able to deal with a boss in New York who could speak English, could make his point known. I think Tony needed somebody like that. the reason Johnny put up with Tony, there was money in North Jersey, but I think he also liked Tony. If they were both contractors, the way I was before I got into acting, I think they would have been bowling buddies.
In your mind, did Johnny buy that big house in North Jersey because he wanted to give Ginny a mansion, or was it a power play?
That was a power play. That was saying, 'Look, we're here, we're gonna watch you very closely. If you're going to go buy 12 Rolls Royce, we're going to see that in your driveway.' That was definitely a calculated business move.
One of the things that always made Johnny distinct, especially after Bacala's wife died, was his unwavering devotion to his family.
No one else had that note to play. I think that's what rounded Johnny out. You could look at him in all of his meetings and all of his dealings and all of his mania and go, 'He's not completely an animal. Look at how he loves his wife, his children.' That's the advantage he's had over every other character. He showed that if he had to walk away from the money, he would.
How was it working with Sydney Pollack in your final episode?
Tremendous. First of all, he came on the set very humble. He didn't come on the set blasting like you would expect a guy with his name to do. He was a gentleman, so much about the scenes. He's consummate director, but he's an actor, so he got the whole thing. He worked like hell. We're used to the rhythm of the crew, he's not, and he was very solicitous to everyone.
Do you have a favorite episode?
"The Weight" (the season four episode where Johnny tries to kill Ralphie because of the 90-pound mole joke) was big but not my favorite. I kind of crave more business relationships with my men and Tony than going to the family. We know Johnny's devoted to his wife, but I didn't need an entire episode about that.
I tend to mesh them all together for some strange reason. It's hard for me to slice up the pie again. I think somewhere back in season five, Tony and I, the Lorraine Caluzzo situation, those were some of my favorite episodes.
There's been this tradition on the show that the cast will take you out to dinner when your character's been killed off.
You said 'killed off.' Johnny just died.
So what did the cast do for your send-off?
Nothing. We stopped the tradition now. We made a rule that anything in the second half of the final season, there's probably going to be a lot of funerals, so nobody has any time.
TV shows aren't shot in sequence. When did you play the deathbed scene?
I shot it the first day of the episode of a three and a half week schedule. We had to use the worst makeup -- we'd set up six different makeups, we start out the first day with the most horrendous one. The last day that we shot was the day of the diagnosis, so we went completely in reverse.
I know you weren't working with any of the regular castmembers on this episode, but how did they treat you in the days and weeks leading up to it?
Everybody patted me on the back and applauded and said, 'I wish it was me.' Because I could get out faster and get some closure. There's a lot of closure here. 'Something's going to happen? Great, let's do it now.' Not that I don't love what I'm doing on the show, but I want it to be in the past now. From a practical standpoint, I got to move on more quickly than some of the others.
Alan Sepinwall can be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com
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