8 Book Review VIDEOAGE June 2024 With years of insight into different areas of the entertainment business, the author walks down memory lane and serves up heartfelt and hilarious anecdotes from working behind the scenes on prestige TV’s most darling TV show, The Sopranos. Mark Kamine Shares Insights From His Days Working On The Sopranos By Luis Polanco “I ’ve always been anxious, fearful, competitive, envious and angry.” So goes the epigraph by David Chase — the creator, head writer, and executive producer of the HBO heavyweight The Sopranos — for Mark Kamine’s On Locations: Lessons Learned from My Life On Set with The Sopranos and in the Film Industry (208 pgs, Steerforth, 2024, and $25). Anxiety, fear, competition, envy, and anger — these serve not only as excellent motivators for characters in a psychological crime drama about the ruthless feuding between mob families but also, on a much less dramatic scale, for people in real life, in and out of the entertainment industry. With a storyteller’s confidence and expertise, Kamine weaves these emotional and poignant elements to depict an honest portrayal of the ambition, frustration, and hilarity of life as a location manager for TV. Today, Kamine might best be known as an award-winning executive producer on the critically acclaimed and razor-sharp black comedy The White Lotus, a series set around the fictional White Lotus resort. Mike White, creator, director, and screenwriter of The White Lotus, as well as the HBO series Enlighted, wrote the memoir’s foreword, in which he describes the delight of Mark Kamine entering his life and of finding a writerly disposition in someone else in the TV biz (“Mark engages everyone with a writer’s curiosity and respect,” he writes). Kamine also has written discerning book reviews for The New York Times and the Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. The subject of On Locations finds Kamine revisiting moments across his career, especially during his time as a location manager for The Sopranos, a role he held for all seven seasons of the show. Mark Kamine begins his memoir by relating an anecdote of one of his father’s depressive spells. His father — who grew up near Paterson, New Jersey, served in Korea, went to college and law school, and had his own law practice — wouldn’t get out of bed for a number of weeks. When Kamine entered his father’s room, there his father was, supine, mulling over the decision he made to move his office to a new strip mall. For some readers, the opening chapter may remind them of the beginning of The Sopranos, where the gruff patriarch Tony Soprano faces his own existential crisis in the opening episode of the show. Kamine blends moments from what’s going on in his family life throughout the book, as the book is structured around chapters that alternate between his involvement in the show and what happened between seasons. When Kamine joined The Sopranos, just after the pilot, he recalled turning up to Silvercup Studios in New York City and, first thing’s first, diving into the tricky relationships and difficult issues of his job. The owner of the house where Sopranos was shot was complaining about lighting set up by the crew. Some scenes were shot at a real strip club named Satin Dolls. Kamine described its owner as “a bulky bulldog of a man,” who behaved as much in business. “I will see [club owner] Tony push people and rules and regulations as far as he can to take away as much cash as can be made,” Kamine remembers. Starting out, there was also the issue of managing 16-hour workdays, which sometimes meant clocking out at 4 or 5 in the morning. On Locations is full of surprising and compelling anecdotes, capturing both the demanding aspects of the entertainment business and the joyous ones with coworkers and collaborators. In the book’s concise chapters, readers will find mention of The Sopranos creator David Chase, the underappreciated behind-the-scenes crew, and the talented cast, including reminiscences of the beloved James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, and season six special guest Lauren Bacall, among many others. In the years after The Sopranos, Kamine grew into a career as a production manager and earned production credits on films such as Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and Ted, among others. After the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the film and television industries, he found himself landing an EP role on The White Lotus. If On Locations is any indication of his future, more writing might be on the horizon, which would be a boon for readers everywhere. On Locations is full of surprising and compelling anecdotes, capturing both the demanding aspects of the entertainment business and the joyous ones with coworkers and collaborators.
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