A Quote by Steven Van Zandt
I had the wonderful good luck of having Jimmy Gandolfini as my mentor and David Chase as my godfather, two of the most talented guys in the history of television.
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I went to Jimmy Gandolfini's funeral, and when I was there, I realized Jimmy Gandolfini didn't have Twitter.
I was researching some of the modern-day figures that The Sopranos were moulded on. So many iconic Sopranos moments. James Gandolfini and Edie Falco had an incredible scene together in the kitchen of that house that looked like it was about to explode. That was an iconic series that changed the way we did television. It is also an extremely realistic portrayal of the mafia. Much more so than The Godfather. The Godfather, one of the greatest films ever, but let's face it, a romanticized version of the mob.
Having done 300 television shows and almost 60 movies, I'm tired of having guys who are younger than some sandwiches I've had, telling me to turn left at the couch. There's no appreciation of actors and no sense of history.
I had been thinking about how greatness always has a hand from luck or fate. That no one ever achieves anything with their will alone. The luck or fate that helped us, amongst many others, was that my sister happened to know these two heavy metal kids David Navarro and Stephen Perkins.
I like to say two things in life that mean the most: genetics and luck. When you look at it realistically, genetics is luck too. Because you could have been born in some really terrible situation and never had a chance to realize yourself or see who you were. And so the luck of genetics and then after that, circumstances, those are the two guiding things.
First of all, I've been having a wonderful run of luck with cover albums, songs I didn't write. I had five pop cover albums and two Christmas albums, and they were all very successful.
When I started 70 odd years ago I was told that to be a success you've got to have talent, personality and luck. I've had 99.9 percent luck and the other miniscule percentage would be having had the luck to have a little bit of talent, being able to stand upright and that's it. It's all luck.
We were creating a formula for points racing, and that wasn't good in qualifying for the Chase, and it wasn't good when we got to the Chase. We wanted to change that, and we also wanted to fix a couple things. One of them was that we didn't want to have a bad race or two take somebody out early on in the Chase, which has happened every year.
I had to learn that I'm not that special. I may be talented, but I'm not the most talented in the world. And some of the most talented players don't even make it.
Here's my feeling: For everyone, men and women, it's important to be a feminist. It's important to have female characters. It's wonderful for women to mentor other women, but it's just as important for women to mentor men and vice-versa. In my line of work, having Greg Daniels be such a great mentor to me is fantastic. Finding a writer's assistant, be it a man or a woman, and encouraging them to think with a feminist perspective, is key.
I'd never had a mentor in Hollywood. Men have always been in control of the business, and they usually mentor people who are like them - but two inches shorter.
Look - guys are dogs. Women have known this since the beginning of time. Guys don't want to be chased; they chase. So if you're going to catch one, you have to know how to make him chase you.
I only know two cats in this business that really had it all; Elvis was one of those guys, the other was Ricky Nelson. There was a difference in those two guys though. Elvis moved...Ricky never had to; he stood flat footed and captivated his audience with his good looks. We grew up with him; those who didn't missed something. History books are gonna have to say that he played a big role in Rock 'n' Roll music.... and he did it his way.
As an actor just learning the craft, you literally do a scene with Jimmy Gandolfini, and you walk away a better actor.
There really are two different schools of songwriting-American and Canadian. It's interesting. You guys have this history of guys like Paul Williams and Jimmy Webb, and they're different than Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. All those weird voices come out of Canada. That's because it's so cold here we can hardly open our mouth. We get much less light in Canada. No wonder the writing's dark.
A big part of winning is having lots of good luck. And I think a good competitor makes his own luck. That's why he is a winner. Luck to me is lots of determination lots of hard work, faith in myself, and in God.
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