David Chase - Eulogy for James Gandolfini (Excerpt) lyrics

Dear Jim, Your family asked me to speak at this service. I am so honored and touched....I want to do a good job because I love you, and because you always did a good job. [...] One day toward the end of the show, fourth season — four or five — we were on the set shooting a scene with you and Steven Van Zandt. I think the setup was that Tony had received news of the d**h of someone and it was inconvenient for him. And it said, “Tony opens the [refrigerator] door angrily, and Tony starts to speak.” And the cameras rolled, and you opened the refrigerator door, and you slammed it really hard. You slammed it hard enough that it came open again. And so then you slammed it again, and it came open again. You kept slamming it, and slamming it, and slamming it, and slamming it. You went apesh-t on that refrigerator. And the funny part for me was, I remember Steven Van Zandt — because the cameras were going, and we had to play this whole scene with the refrigerator door open. And I remember Steven Van Zandt staying there, standing, and trying to figure out, “Well, what should I do first as Silvio? Because he just ruined my refrigerator.” And also as Steven the actor, because we were going to play a scene with the refrigerator door open; people don't do that. And I remember him going, sort of trying to tinker with the door, fix the door. And so we finally had to call “cut,” and we had to fix the refrigerator door — and it never really worked, because the gaffer tape showed, we couldn't get a new refrigerator, and it was a problem all day long. I remember you saying, “This role, this role. The places it takes me to, the things I have to do. It's so dark.” And I remember saying to you, “Did I tell you to destroy the refrigerator? Did it say anywhere in the script, ‘Tony destroys a refrigerator'? It says ‘Tony angrily shuts the refrigerator door.' That's what it says. You destroyed the refrigerator.” [...] You were a good boy. Your work with the Wounded Warriors is just one example. And I'm going to say something because I know you'd want me to say it — that no one should forget Tony Sirico's efforts in this. He was there with you all the way, and in fact, you said to me just recently, “You know, it's more Tony than me.” And I know you, and I know you would want me to turn the spotlight on him, or you couldn't be satisfied. So Tony Soprano never changed, people say. He got darker. I don't know how they could misunderstand that. He tried, and he tried, and he tried. And you tried, and you tried, more than most of us, and harder than most of us, and sometimes you tried too hard. That refrigerator is one example. Sometimes your efforts were a cost to you and to others. But you tried. And I'm thinking about the fact, like, how nice you were to strangers on the street, fans, photographers. You would be patient and loving and personable. And then finally, you would just do too much, and then you'd snap. And that's of course what we read about, the snapping. [...] So if this was an episode, we would end with a song. And the song, as far as I'm concerned, would be Joan Osborne's “What If God Was One of Us.” And the setup for this — we never did this, you never even heard of this. But the setup was, Tony was somehow lost in the Meadowlands. He didn't have his car and his wallet, and his car keys. And I forget how he got there — there was some kind of a story. But he had nothing in his pocket but some change. He didn't have his guys with him. He didn't have his gun. And so mob boss Tony Soprano is like one of the working stiffs, getting in line to get on the bus. And the way we were going to film it, he was going to get on the bus. And the lyric that would have gone over that would have been — we don't have Joan Osborne here to sing it — “If God had a face/What would it look like?/And would you want to see/If seeing meant that you would have to believe?/And yeah, yeah/God is great/Yeah, yeah/God is good/Yeah, yeah, yeah.” So Tony would get on the bus, and he would sit there, and the bus would pull out of this big billowy haze of smoke. And then the key lyric would come on, and it was: “What if God was one of us/Just a slob like one of us/Just a stranger on the bus/Trying to make his way home?” And that would be playing over your face, Jimmy. But then — and this is where it gets kind of strange — now, we would have to update it, because of the events of the last week. And I would let the song play further, and the lyrics would be, “Just trying to make his way home/Like a holy rollin' stone/Back up to heaven all alone/Nobody callin' on the phone/Except the pope, maybe in Rome.” Love, David