Sopranos week: Call for submissions

By Matt Zoller Seitz on March 29, 2007 in Television Jump to Comments (0)

Governor Soprano

From April 1 through April 8, the premiere date for the first of eight final episodes of The Sopranos, The House Next Door will run articles on various aspects of the show.

On deck thus far: A portrait of Paulie Walnuts, a piece on the show's use of music, a conversation between New Jerseyans about the series' portrait of the Garden State, and links to articles on other sites, including Star-Ledger articles by Alan Sepinwall and yours truly. More stuff is in the works, and it'll be posted when it's done.

If you'd like to contribute, email your pitch to the editor at reeling@aol.com. Pieces can be of any length (we tend to run longer articles, but short and sweet is good, too.) Appreciations are welcome; contrarian opinions are encouraged.

TAGS: the sopranos

[Editor's Note: This is the original comments section for this entry, which did not transfer in the Blogger to WordPress import.] Eires32 said... I'm sure you will put up a link to the "seven minute Sopranos"; I've watched it five times today! Looking forward to all the great writing to come... 3/29/2007 9:47 PM Matt Zoller Seitz said... Thanks -- now the pressure's on, I guess! I got a couple of pitches today that were terrific, and they'll be in the lineup, provided the writers can crank them out fast enough. 3/29/2007 10:37 PM Anonymous said... Could someone write something about how every character has to die to restore the world's equilibrium? 3/29/2007 11:12 PM Quarterican said... If I had it more together - I don't have quick access to the DVDs of the previous seasons and haven't watched anything except the most recent one in over a year - I'd volunteer to write a piece that I'm sure has already been written but which I've never read. As someone with primarily Mediterranean heritage - though not Italian - with one immigrant parent and grandparents who live in a barely assimilated subset of a moderately assimlated community, I feel that The Sopranos excels at capturing the atmosphere of a community that isn't quite integrated into the mainstream of American culture, and the spectrum of responses people have to the tension between their status as Italians (in this case) and Americans. It's never the focus of the show, and I'm glad it's not - that'd be too on the nose to be effective - but over the eighty-some hours the accumulation of moments and details has become the richest portrayal of this facet of the American Experience that I've had the pleasure of watching. The effect would undoubtedly be stronger for an actual Italian American (who wasn't, in Melfi's words, overly concerned with the honor of Annette Funicello) but there's more than enough similarity to my own heritage that almost all the show's cultural touchstones are either immediate or have close analogs (without, of course, the mob elements). I'm as bored as anyone with Meadow and Finn's arguments, but their 6th season spat about deracination, stinky cheese, and "the poverty of the mezzogiorno" was, to me, priceless, and all the more so because they both have valid (and invalid) criticisms of the other person's attitudes. (And all the more personally relevant because I've had that and similar arguments.) The experience for Tony in particular in returning to Italy was perfect and bittersweet and familiar to me, and perfectly summed up when Carmela eagerly asks about the food and he disappointedly sighs that there's a lot of fish. Early in the show's run he contrasts himself with the Cusomanos (whatever happened to them?) and I believe goes so far as to call them "white" and indicate that he isn't - but he's more American than he can know until he goes to Italy and realizes that he's far from being at home there, either. And there's so much more...I know that there must be many who share my appreciation for this facet of the show, but most of my friends have much deeper American roots than I do, so this aspect of The Sopranos has been like an extra perk, a specially personal pleasure. 3/30/2007 12:49 AM Matt Zoller Seitz said... Anon: Oddly enough, I just filed a Star-Ledger piece that's in the ballpark of that -- about how "The Sopranos" is the most cynical drama in TV history, pretty much a gallery of what human beings shouldn't do. quarterican: I'd encourage you to start writing that piece, but it looks like you already have! If you feel like elaborating, email me the result. 3/30/2007 1:01 AM Alanna said... Not a pitch, but the television blog I write for is hosting a Sopranos-inspired Blog-a-Thon, inviting admirers of organized crime across the Internets to blog about their favorite mob movie or TV show. Info can be found here. 3/30/2007 10:34 AM
Posted by Keith Uhlich on 2010-02-07 15:08:38

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