The Sopranos Iconic Location Settings and Why They Were Chosen

The Sopranos is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2024, and we all remember the iconic locations. Mark Kamine worked on all seven seasons of The Sopranos, including time spent as the location manager.

One of the most important television shows in history, it left an indelible mark on the entertainment industry and had a special impact here in New Jersey where the show was based and so many scenes were shot.

It was his job to find authentic locations - especially here in New Jersey - that would help bring the classic HBO series to life.

Now the executive producer of The White Lotus, Mark is in Thailand shooting the new season's episodes.

In his new book, On Locations - Lessons Learned From My Life On Set With THE SOPRANOS and In the Film Industry, Mark shares some great behind-the-scenes stories me of making The Sopranos, including his own reaction to that famous final scene at Holsten's in Bloomfield.

Here are some excerpts of my conversation with Mark Kamine.

Oh, it was crucial and Sopranos to a higher degree of authenticity, I guess you could say, than most in on movies and tv and Hollywood, you tend to go where tax credits are available where things are a little cheaper that could pass for whatever your meaning to the show to be about.

So I've filmed New York numerous times. New York-set movies in Boston and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and Atlanta. I once shot for Chicago, winter in the late spring and summer in Atlanta.

But David Chase on the writer and creator of Sopranos, insisted that we film the New Jersey locations in New Jersey, even at the cost of losing the tax credit that was in action in New York State.

So at the time, New Jersey does have a tax credit now for films, which gives you money back when you work there, like a 20%, 25%, 30%. It varies.

And during Sopranos years, New Jersey didn't have a tax credit, but David wouldn't shoot a suburban house in New York if we could find the right one in New Jersey. And that's mostly what we did.

It's a great school for a film production like ours where we spent one day at Drew and got, I think it was three...it's definitely two, but it might be three different college looks out of it.

And while Tony discovers a rat, someone in witness protection that he's tracking while he's taking his daughter around. And it was set in Maine. David Chase's daughter was, I think, or had, just prior to that season, toured colleges, including some colleges in Maine.

So David had written Colby, Bowdoin and Bates into that script. And we filmed it all at Drew University.

The scout who I believe found that was a guy named Bill Barvin who was a New York scout and location manager. And a great one, who was one of the guys that I learned from on my first job.

And I think that David (Chase) wanted not a quaint or cozy house for his mob boss.

It was up on a hill, which made sense as far as Tone. They always say mobsters want to sit in with their back to the wall in the restaurant. So they could see what's coming at them. And that's kind of this prospect of the house.

I know that in the pilot, if you look back at that, there were security lights up on top of the house to light up the approach to the house so that he would see what's coming.

The funny thing about that is that the builder of that house, who was the owner of the house, was very particular, you know, very proud of his work. Did a lot of expensive building around North Caldwell and other areas.

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And built that house and took meticulous care of it. And the security lights on the roof, when I came back eight months later, when the show was picked up to talk to him about coming there periodically, it would be Tony's house.

He said, no way are we letting you come back here because it was a zoo, and the security lights caused leaks in my roof that took me months to track down and fix.

And it was like, this is not happening. And eventually, we had a lot of time and I made a few different visits and we talked him, the owner, into doing it and I think he was happy.

I know he was happy that he did. I mean he got a lot of money out of us. He got a lot of mileage with his friends.

He used to invite them over when we would film there and it was for the most part a really decent relationship as far as us getting along and seeing eye-to-eye and him trying to jack up the price season by season.

I can't totally blame him. I know David was many times thinking he would have that house burned down or blow up.

Those two shows (The Sopranos and The White Lotus) in particular and they come at sort of early in my career and maybe at the end, but they are more specially location-driven than most shows.

I'm sure like Breaking Bad - what would that be without the desert and all that?

But these two shows and their creators, Mike White in the case of White Lotus, he really wouldn't go to one country or a backlot and shoot it for a country.

I mean this show he immerses himself.  We scouted early on for this season and Italy. We scouted Italy and France along the coast and, and then Mike went and lived there and this past year lived in Thailand for months while he was writing until the (writers') strike came.

So it's crucial, I think, to him and the way the people are and he learns from the people.

Look, we will cheat locations here on this show. We might shoot the Bangkok airport in Koh Samui and we might combine different aspects of beaches and hotels to make up our main hotel, which will primarily be one out. And it happened last year, too. But the country, I think, is crucial. And for Sopranos, the state of New Jersey was crucial.

I read the script and I talk about it in the book how the production. I mean, it was such a successful show, and it got bigger and bigger, and the production grew and grew.

So when you narrowed back down to just one episode happening, there were a lot of people shuffling for a little bit of territory near David. And I got a job that I was trying to move out of locations and assistant production managing towards producing.

And so I got a job, and I knew that the people in my department would be fine without me. They probably would have been fine without me for the last two years of the show.

I had read the script and my job started and I was gone a couple of weeks or a week before shooting started on the final episode.

And then, of course, it's months later when the show comes out. I was watching the show night by night, just like everyone who watched it, which was a lot of people.

And when the screen cut to black at the very end, my wife and I were like, did the cable go out? What happened?

Because he cut to black and then the titles didn't come up for awhile.

And I knew the last scene was at Holsten's in Bloomfield and that there was a crowd of people and it was kind of a regular family dinner, and it was maybe a little creepy there, but I knew what happened.

But when it cut out, I thought something else ominous was going on. I think it had that eerie effect for a good reason.

Joseph Frank Pesci was born on February 9, 1943, in Newark, New Jersey. At just five years old, Pesci was appearing in plays in New York. Five years later, Joe was cast as a regular on a television variety show called Startime Kids, which also featured Connie Francis. Before pursuing a career in acting, Pesci followed in his mother's footsteps and worked as a barber in the '60s. During this time, he was also trying to start a music career. He played guitar with bands like Joey Dee and the Starliters. In 1968, he released his debut album, Little Joe Sure Can Sing! under the name Joe Ritchie). Pesci's album consists of covers of contemporary pop hits like "Holiday" and "To Love Somebody." He was also friends with the members of the Four Seasons (and you can see more about that in the film Jersey Boys).

A decade later, Pesci later joined Frank Vincent in a comedy duo, performing as "Vincent and Pesci." In 1976, he and Vincent were cast in his first film, a 1976 low-budget crime flick called The Death Collector. Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro were impressed by his performance in the film and offered him his first big role in Scorsese's Raging Bull. Before they persuaded him to take the role, Pesci had been on the verge of giving up his faltering acting career. With 46 acting credits below his belt, we are glad Pesci didn't give up on acting. He is known for playing short-tempered and violent characters, but his co-stars have always spoken fondly of him and described him as soft-spoken and humble. His foul-mouth on and off screen made Home Alone director Chris Columbus place a Swear Jar for the adult actors to use whenever they cursed. Supposedly, Pesci filled it up in a single day.

Take a look below at our favorite Joe Pesci movies:

In the 1990 classic Christmas movie, director Chris Columbus cast Pesci because he was one of his heroes. But he didn't know how hilarious the actor would be. This remains one of our favorite and earliest memories of Pesci as an actor growing up. He and Daniel Stern were a perfect match as bozo burglars outwitted by Macaulay Culkin's makeshift booby traps. To add to his intimidating aura against Culkin's Kevin McCallister, Pesci deliberately avoided him on set because he wanted Culkin to think he was mean. Pesci kept forgetting that he was filming a family movie during his character's outbursts, so most of his unintelligible mutterings were his way to avoid cursing.

In this 1980 sports drama, co-star Robert De Niro accidentally broke Pesci's rib in a sparring scene. The shot appeared in the film's final cut where Pesci groans in pain after being punched. Despite the accidental breaking of bones, the two actors lived and trained with each other to achieve the feeling of brotherhood. Ever since then, the two have been very close friends. Additionally, in the famous "hit me" scene Pesci and De Niro were really punching each other. The actors went on to star alongside each other in six more movies following Raging Bull: Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Goodfellas (1990), A Bronx Tale (1993), Casino (1995), The Good Shepherd (2006), and The Irishman (2019).

Starring alongside Robert De Niro for the fourth time in the 1995 crime film, Pesci plays the role of mobster Nicky Santoro, who moves to Las Vegas with De Niro's Ace Rothstein to make their mark. Most of the conversations between the two were improvised, so Pesci's many iconic swear-ridden lines are that much more impactful. The role is iconic Joe Pesci -- being ruthless, violent, and sharp.

Every film we've seen Joe Pesci in all has an essence of what we view him as: hilarious with a foul mouth. This 1992 crime-comedy has the actor portray a lawyer, who is his cousin's last resort to avoid prison time for murder and robbery. With no trial experience, an uncompromising judge, and some tough locals, the challenge of winning the case looks bleak. Insecure and out of place in Alabama as he is, Pesci's Vinny pulls it off, with tons of laughs and a movie we can watch over and over again. Following his serious roles in Goodfellas and JFK, Pesci getting back into comedy was the perfect opportunity to show that he can play a lead role and be more than just the bad guy.

Not only is this one of our favorite Joe Pesci roles, but Goodfellas is one of our favorite movies of all time. In the 1990 biographical crime-drama, Pesci's portrayal of real-life mobster Tommy DeSimone was almost entirely accurate, besides their differences in size (Pesci is 5'3" while DeSimone was 6'4"). Pesci won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his depiction. Of course, the iconic "How am I funny?" scene is based on something that happened to Pesci in real life. When he was working in a restaurant, Pesci apparently told a mobster that he was funny, but that didn't garner a positive response. When he told the story to Martin Scorsese, he decided to include it in the film.