by Ronald Kopp
It was the beginning of the end for Adriana La Cerva, beloved fiancée
of Christopher Moltisanti and soon to turn low-level informant for
the FBI. And I was on the periphery. Those days I was clerking in
a then-trendy video shop on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
There was nothing unusual about the question I was being asked. In
fact, in that particular year, I was probably asked this question
or a variation of it more often than "How are you?" or "Would
you like milk and sugar?" or "Can you spare some change?"
The question was, "Hey, do you guys have The Sopranos?"
Usually the answer was no, if the person was looking for a particular
episode. The owner of the video shop was a very good businesswoman,
but she was notorious in the neighborhood for buying a stingy number
of copies of hot new titles. Getting a new release from us was akin
to being let into a hip new disco in the '80s to hear really bad music.
New Yorkers being New Yorkers, we were terrifically popular.
Anyway, what made the Sopranos question memorable on this particular
occasion was the person asking it, and the information that came bundled
along with it. Karen Young had been one of my favorite customers for
a long time. I knew her work as an incredibly talented and versatile
actress. Plus, she was always funny, self-effacing and open to my
more off-the-wall recommendations, and she usually had her darling
daughter Wanda in tow. She didn't know much about The Sopranos and
felt compelled to explain her sudden urge to see it.
"I'm up for a role on the show," she almost apologized.
A couple of days later, Young was as hooked on The Sopranos as the
rest of America. And, as it happens, she had also been cast as FBI
Agent Robyn Sanservino, whose terrible powers of persuasion would
eventually turn Adriana into a reluctant snitch, leading to her unfortunate
demise.
Adriana had been such a popular character on the show that some die-hard
fans refuse to let her go. They cling to the idea that she wasn't
actually killed, because-unusually for The Sopranos-the camera pans
away from her at the moment of her murder. Hope springs eternal.
In a phone interview this week, I asked Young if people recognized
Agent Robyn on the street.
"Oh, yeah, all the time-constantly! Especially in supermarkets
and drug stores, for some reason," she said.
And what, I was curious, was their typical reaction to meeting the
person they blame for Adriana's demise?
"They say, 'You're such a b _ _ _ _! Usually, they say it with
a smile on their face. Usually."
Young loves working on the show. The quality of the writing is such
that she always gets great lines-in fact, even the minor characters
do. She's proud to be part of it.
Working on a television series is fun and exciting (Karen also frequently
appears on Law & Order), but it's also the hardest medium for
her as an actor. TV is shot really quickly, often with only enough
time for a single take. Things can be chaotic. She compares navigating
the politics of each crew and each production to finding herself in
a labyrinth. Actors by nature are remarkably good at memorization,
but learning the names of everybody on the set in a few days is a
genuine (and not at all trivial) challenge.
It was a nice change of pace, then, to do location work on the new
Laurent Cantet film, Heading South. The film, set in the '70s, is
a brilliant character study of three women who migrate south to Haiti
to enjoy the companionship of younger local men. A rapturous review
in The New York Times proclaimed it to be "one of the most truthful
examinations ever filmed of desire, age and youth, and how easy it
is to confuse erotic rapture with love."
"Laurent knew exactly-exactly-what he wanted from each of us,"
Young says, "but he wasn't in any hurry."
Fourteen takes weren't especially unusual. He was able to build each
performance methodically, brick by brick. Young found it to be quite
an interesting way to work. She "stopped trying so hard to predict
what the director wanted" and gave herself up to the process.
The result is an unnervingly natural performance that has won wide
acclaim. I was curious about what her reaction would be to a review
that I had dug up from Film Freak Central: "Karen Young gets
to deliver the screen's finest erotic monologue since [Ingmar Bergman's]
Persona!"
"Really, they said that?" she asked. "That's almost
the same thing that that pink paper said, The Financial Times. That's
the pink one, right? Anyway, it's true that Persona was a model for
Laurent. He made no bones about it. Europeans and especially the French
are different from Americans in that way, the way they deal with their
influences. They're more referential-referential and reverential-than
we are. It's very open and honest."
Like Cantet's two previous films, Human Resources and Time Out, Heading
South is an intense character-driven drama that explores rich political
subtexts. I asked Young if the director had discussed these with her
and the other actors.
"That's not the sort of thing he would burden our performances
with during a shoot," she said. "Besides, we had more interesting
things to talk about at dinner! But Laurent is Laurent, he has a strong
vision, and these things are going to come out in the final film."
Well said and true!
Actress Karen Young will be introducing her new film, Heading South,
at the Paramount Center for the Arts at 1008 Brown Street in Peekskill
on Saturday, August 26 at 8:00 p.m. (tickets $12). After the screening,
she'll be on hand for a Q&A. The film also plays on Thursday,
August 24 and Friday, August 25 at 8:00 p.m. and on Sunday, August
27 at 3:00 p.m.
