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As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
June 6, 1998
Sex and the City premieres on HBO.
The cable network HBO airs the pilot episode of Sex and the City, a new comedy series chronicling the lives and loves of four single women living in New York City.
The show’s creator, Darren Star, was best known at the time for producing the long-running Fox TV series Beverly Hills, 90210, and its spin-off, Melrose Place. For Sex and the City, Star switched coasts, loosely adapting a book by the same name by Candace Bushnell, compiled from a number of her columns for The New York Observer. In the pilot, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), who authors a similar newspaper column for the fictional New York City Star, and her three friends--Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon)--discuss the issue of whether women are capable of having sex like men. Carrie also has an embarrassing first run-in with Mr. Big (Chris Noth), with whom she will begin a tumultuous relationship that will last the length of the series.
Sex and the City didn’t really break out with fans until the second season, when the format of the show changed a bit: Carrie stopped addressing the camera directly, and simply provided a voice-over narration, and the man-on-the-street-type testimonials by different characters were largely omitted. The main premise--that each episode provides fodder for one of Carrie’s columns, each of which features a different question about sex, love and relationships--remained constant throughout the show, as did the unusually frank discussion and portrayal of sex that became the show’s hallmark.
At the Emmy Awards, Sex and the City was nominated in the category of Outstanding Comedy Series in each of its six seasons; it won the award in 2001. In 2004, Parker collected an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, while Cynthia Nixon triumphed in the supporting category. To win, Nixon beat out co-stars Davis and Cattrall, who had been nominated in five out of the six seasons of the show’s run. Cattrall and Parker both took home Golden Globe Awards for their performances as well, and the show received three Globes for Best TV Series - Musical or Comedy.
As soon as the series wrapped up in 2004, buzz began about a possible big-screen adaptation. Though the project stalled due to questions over money and Cattrall’s reported reluctance to sign on to the project, the plans finally came to fruition in late May 2008, when Sex and the City: The Movie was released to mixed reviews but great box-office success, including a $55.7 million opening weekend haul. As with the series, Parker served as an executive producer for the movie, which was written and directed by Michael Patrick King.
Jun 10, 2007
Last episode of The Sopranos airs.
Almost 12 million people tune in for the series finale of HBO’s critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning Mob-family drama The Sopranos on this day in 2007.
The mastermind behind The Sopranos was David Chase, a longtime writer, producer and director for TV series such as The Rockford Files, I’ll Fly Away and Northern Exposure. Chase drew inspiration for his latest series from his Italian-American childhood growing up in New Jersey, when he was fascinated by William Wellman’s great 1931 gangster film The Public Enemy, starring Jimmy Cagney. The Sopranos was an immediate hit with critics when it premiered in January 1999. At its center was the New Jersey Mafia boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), whose attacks of anxiety early in the series send him into the office of a therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco). It soon becomes clear that Tony has a stressful life managing his family--including his vindictive mother (Nancy Marchand) and uncle (Dominic Chianese), his materialistic but good-hearted wife Carmela (Edie Falco) and his two teenage children, Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) and Anthony Jr., or A.J. (Robert Iler)--as well as his crew of lieutenants, notably Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico), Silvio Dante (Steve Van Zandt) and Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli).
The Sopranos brought to television a complex, compassionate vision of Mafia life similar to those previously portrayed on the big screen by directors like Francis Ford Coppola (the three Godfather movies) and Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets, Goodfellas). Both The Godfather and Goodfellas were touchstones for Chase (and his characters) throughout the series, as was The Public Enemy, which Tony memorably watches after his mother’s death in the show’s third season.
According to Alessandra Stanley, writing in the New York Times during the final season of The Sopranos: “The series lowered the bar on permissible violence, sex and profanity at the same time that it elevated viewers’ taste, cultivating an appetite for complexity, wit and cinematic stylishness on a serial drama in which psychological themes flickered and built and faded and reappeared. The best episodes had equal amounts of high and low appeal, an alchemy of artistry and gutter-level blood and gore, all of it leavened with humor.” As Stanley recounts, critics and pop-culture observers were often hyperbolic in their praise for the show, calling it Dickensian or Shakespearian; the author Norman Mailer, for one, called The Sopranos the closest thing to the Great American Novel in today’s culture. Fans loved it as well: The show’s audience reached a peak of some 18 million viewers during its fourth season. The show’s breakout success, along with that of the comedy series Sex and the City (which debuted six months before The Sopranos), established HBO’s reputation as the home of some of TV’s most popular original programming.
In the final season of The Sopranos, Tony survives a near-fatal shooting and begins to contemplate his own aging and mortality. Meanwhile, it appears that a full-scale war is brewing between the crime families of New York and New Jersey, as the hated Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) takes control of New York after former boss Johnny Sack (Vincent Curatola) dies in prison. When Phil goes after Tony and his crew, they react in turn, and the bodies stack up. In the closing scene of the open-ended finale, Tony meets Carmela, Meadow and A.J. in a diner for dinner. As soon as the screen went black, fans immediately began debating what actually happened, and mourning the end of a show that many had considered the best in the history of television.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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