Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Life of a Legend
Bailey was...eager to show another side of Gandolfini: a hard-driving, obsessive character actor who fretted over line memorization and sought out projects and roles that cut against what naturally became a tough-guy persona.
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The pre- and post-Sopranos sections of this book can’t compete with its hefty, chewy middle. Professionally, the life was not unlike a sandwich with excellent ingredients nestled between slices of adequate bread. The book could have used trimming, but that is a minor downside to Bailey’s thoroughness as a researcher: he seems to have talked to everyone who would talk to him, and tracked down multiple revealing interviews ... A compassionate and judicious biographer, Bailey neither skirts nor dwells on Gandolfini’s drug and alcohol abuse, or on the turmoil in his romantic life, focusing instead on the guilt he suffered for his lapses ... Bailey makes us feel the loss of both artist and man, which is what you want from an account of a life cut short.
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Snappy and tactful ... There is one thing missing from Gandolfini, though. There’s no dirt. A hard-partying actor is bound to have something unpleasant in his dossier, and though it’s clear that Gandolfini was beset by what are popularly known as demons, Mr. Bailey gives an intelligent account of his subject’s life and work without dipping into the sewer ... Mr. Bailey, a freelance film critic and historian, has turned what might have been a deficit into a strength. He includes the trickier aspects of Gandolfini’s life, but he does it without prurience or scandal-mongering ... It is fun to get perspective from people who shared the screen with him on ... What emerges from their testimonies, adeptly incorporated by Mr. Bailey, is an appealing portrait of a talented man who was plagued by self-doubt and self-sabotage.
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