Movies - TV
The Sopranos’ Subject Matter Made Finding Filming Locations A Little Tricky
By MICHAEL BOYLE
"The Sopranos" was always a little controversial, which made things difficult for Ilene Landress, the show's producer and production manager. Talking to Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa for their book "Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of the Sopranos," Landress talked about the first time they had trouble securing a filming location for a scene.
The scene in question was one of the show's many, many funeral scenes, this one taking place in the middle of the penultimate episode of the first season, "Isabella." It was originally filmed in an Italian funeral home in Little Italy but they didn't get to finish filming the scene in that funeral home because of what Dominic Chianese’s Uncle Junior said in the middle of the funeral.
Landress said, "You see Uncle Junior peering into the coffin and he turns to somebody and says, 'She gave me my first handjob.' And we got thrown out of the place." Landress also said that it wasn’t just funeral homes that wanted nothing to do with the show, even churches said no to the provocative show.