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.
The Importance of The Sopranos Location Spots
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.
Using Madison’s Drew University to sub for New England
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.
Why that house was chosen for the Sopranos home
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.
The importance of being on location
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.
That famous Final Scene
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.
