R.I.P. JAMES GANDOLFINI

James Gandolfini and Diane Lane as producer/director Craig Gilbert and Pat Loud, promotional still from the film "Cinema Verite`"

R.I.P. James Gandolfini, popular, revered actor and Soprano. My fave of his roles remains the portrayal of producer/director Craig Gilbert in "Cinema Verite,`" termed by the Wall Street Journal "...the real gift beyond price here." First his character reveled in the creative/competitive/pushy streak essential for any commercial artist, particularly a ground-breaking one (documentarian Gilbert invented reality tv with PBS' 1973 series "An American Family" with the Loud clan.) Then Gandolfini drifts into the eventual angst for his role in a sea-change of pop culture that proved as destructive for its subjects as it was informative about them. You believed this was the man who, haunted like Oppenheimer over the terrible power he'd unleashed, did not work in the business again.