The Sopranos star Michael Imperioli has revealed that he met with a witch to help get Summer Of Sam made.
Speaking in the documentary Ghosts of the Chelsea Hotel, the actor explained how he took supernatural steps to get the 1999 crime-thriller — which he co-wrote with Spike Lee and Victor Colicchio — through development.
“I really wanted to get it made. So I met somebody who was living here [in the Chelsea Hotel] who was a witch, who said he could help me get it made, but it wasn’t going to happen the way I thought it would.
“I was very ambitious at the time and wanted to get that made, so (I) resorted to tapping into otherworldly means to get it through the studio system.”
Imperioli also had a cameo in the film, which is based on the real-life serial killer David Berkowitz (also known as the Son of Sam), who operated in New York in 1977. John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, Mira Sorvino and Jennifer Esposito also starred.
The actor is best-known for playing Christopher Moltisanti in the hit HBO series The Sopranos, but he recently criticised Hollywood for typecasting him as a gangster.
Asked by The Times if he was flooded with job offers after finishing The Sopranos, he said:”Not really. I think at the time a lot of people thought I was that character.
“Kind of like Jersey Shore and they’d found us all at the mall and put us on the show. Hollywood is very unimaginative when it comes to casting.”
Elsewhere, the actor recently revealed that the scenes where his character had to be physically abusive to Adriana (Drea de Matteo) were the most challenging.
“The most brutal, difficult stuff for me is when Christopher had to be physically abusive with Adriana, for obvious reasons,” he said.
“On a technical level, you’re trying to be really careful so you don’t hurt the person. But having to get to that point of violence towards a woman, you have to go to some nasty places to get there. Sometimes it’s very immediate. Sometimes it’s something present in your life that you can tap into. Sometimes you have to go someplace from the past. And sometimes you have to go to someplace imaginary.”
He added: “It’s much easier shooting a mobster or shooting heroin. That stuff to me is not difficult. But that stuff with her was. Sometimes you’ll use stunt doubles, sometimes not. And even then, it’s one thing to choreograph and rehearse it, then when you act it full-tilt with all the emotion, it’s easy to not have as much control as in the rehearsal. So you really have to be quite careful.”