most boring job in the world?

Did The Sopranos glamorise mob life? “If you think that was glamour, you need a psychiatrist! It’s the most boring job in the world — sitting round reading the racing form all day.”

Steven Van Zandt talking to Financial Times. When I first watched Sopranos, I was absolutely drawn to Tony’s lifestyle, of just sort of driving around all day, accepting snacks. Further viewings and a deeper consideration of my character and the burdens make me think I wouldn’t trade gigs with Tony, but still, something appealing.

Also of interest:

Then David Chase approached him to play the lead in The Sopranos. At that stage, “it was a completely different show . . . a live-action Simpsons”, Chase has said. In the end, HBO vetoed someone with no acting experience as protagonist, but Chase incorporated Van Zandt into the show as Dante, a character the guitarist had himself created in a treatment for an earlier project.

FT can’t help but editorialize:

He mixes shrewd political judgment (in April, four months before the fall of Kabul, he tweeted that the US leaving Afghanistan was “a huge mistake”) with left-field ideas (such as mandatory martial-arts training for girls from kindergarten age to reduce sexual assaults).

Left-field doesn’t mean bad, FT!