The ANNOTICO Report
Frank Santorelli 'Soprano's' Georgie, the bar-staffer/bouncer
recognizes
that he was playing a guy who was too stupid to keep
his mouth shut.
Yet Frank makes the same mistake, and is a "wise guy"
who hasn't wised up,
and is too stupid to keep his mouth shut and tells Italian
American's that
attempt to defend their culture from the Negative Portrayals
of TV pap
like the 'Sopranos' "to get a life".
To add insult to injury, Santorelli headlines The Godfathers
Of Comedy,
all-Italian lineup.
Santorelli and ALL 'Sopranos' who appear in any venues,
should be "heckled"
or get a Pizza Pie in the face.
Jam ShowBiz
Canoe Network
June 2, 2005
You've heard of the designated hitter. As Georgie, the
bar-staffer/bouncer
at the Badabing strip club on The Sopranos, Frank Santorelli
is the
designated hittee.
"Y'know, my character, he gets beat up all the time,"
says the Boston-based
comic who headlines The Godfathers Of Comedy all-Italian
lineup at Yuk
Yuk's starting tomorrow.
"Last time we saw him, I'm in the hospital, beat up pretty
badly by Tony.
And Pauly Walnuts (Tony Sirico) is in the room offering
me money, sort of
like an apology."
Though he also took a pretty good beating in Season 3
from the
since-deceased Ralphie Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano), it's
usually Tony
Soprano he rubs the wrong way.
"Going in, what did I know? All I knew was I was going
to be in a scene in
the pilot of this show called The Sopranos. I knew who
James Gandolfini was
from the movie Crimson Tide, but nobody said, 'By the
way, this guy's gonna
be super white-hot pissed at you all the time.' "
Georgie's problem is he can't shut up. "I've noticed from
the scripts,
everytime he says something to me, I say something back.
It's like I should
learn to keep my mouth shut. One time, I'm dumping the
ice 'cause it's
melted. Tony goes 'Hey, whaddya doin'? You're wastin'
ice, you're wastin'
it!' So I say 'No, it's waterin' down the drinks' --
instead of just
shuttin' up and agreeing with him. So I got beat up."
The most recent attack came in the penultimate episode,
with Tony in an
introspective mood about our dangerous times and terrorism.
"He says
'Someone could set off a nuclear blast at Port Newark,'
and I say 'That's
why you gotta live for today.' Which is stupid, 'cause
he's expounding
about the end of the world. And he says 'What'd you say?'
"And I repeat myself. And he says 'I'm talking about the
end of the world
you a------, I'm talking about your kids, I'm talking
about your kids and
my kids bein' incinerated!' And I say 'Geez, I can't
even think about it.'
Which sends him into a rage. He hits me in the head with
a glass, and I go
down and he kicks me, like, 20 times."
The Sopranos is on one of its regular hiatuses and filming
just started on
the first episode of Season 6 (which will probably air
next spring). If
past seasons are any indicator, the call to come and
play Georgie again
will wait until the writers have built a huge enough
head of steam in Tony
that he's ready to blow again.
In the meantime, the comic, who was once the star of his
own WB sitcom
pilot All About Frank, is gearing up for a new career
as a road comic. His
current string of cities -- Toronto, Pittsburgh, Chicago,
Montreal and
Minneapolis -- is his first time ever on the road, and
is considered a
warmup for life as part of an arena tour he's putting
together with fellow
Italian-American "name" comics Dom Irrera and John Campanera,
a la The Blue
Collar Tour and The Kings Of Comedy. That show is also
tentatively titled
The Godfathers Of Comedy. (The one at Yuks is a one-off,
with openers
Freddy Proia and Eddie Della Siepe).
"We're trying to get like Quentin Tarantino or Martin
Scorsese to host the
thing, maybe Jay Leno. And we're trying to make a movie
out of it, like an
HBO thing."
So it's Sopranos to Godfathers. Unlike the producers of
The Sopranos,
Santorelli says he has seldom run across beefs about
stereotyping from
fellow Italian-Americans. "My accountant's wife actually
gave me some sh--
about the show once, and she's Italian, but mostly it's
'What's it like to
work on it?' There are some people upset about how Italians
are portrayed,
but think they need to get a life."