BOOKS
GANDOLFINI
ALL THIS FOR A SLICE OF GABAGOOL
★★★★
AUTHOR JASON BAILEY
JAMES GANDOLFINI WAS a “searcher”, says The Sopranos creator David Chase in this new biography of the late actor who helped change TV forever. “Whatever the opposite of bullshit is, that’s what Jim was searching for.” That assessment reverberates through author Jason Bailey’s portrait of a star forever hunting something real, on screen and off. The most heart-warming moments in this chronicle of the life and times of the man behind Tony Soprano come from tales of that realness — the time, for example, when he phoned his Sopranos co-star Vincent Curatola (who played rival Mob boss Johnny Sack) on Christmas morning to wish him season’s greetings, years after the HBO smash ended. Curatola’s wife, it turned out, was in hospital. Gandolfini tore up his Christmas plans and immediately drove there with coffee and doughnuts, because it was the decent thing to do.