When we were doing 'The Sopranos', I used to love that about it. There were rules, Mafia codes you had to go by, but the code is ridiculous. It's a code among sociopaths.

When I was a kid, I used to watch 'Laurel and Hardy' with my cousins all the time. I still think they're extremely funny and so surreal.

The Sopranos' is filled with really retrograde humor. Bathroom humor, falls, stupid puns, bad jokes - infantile, adolescent stuff, but it makes me laugh.

I was so besotted with '8½' that, when it was on TV, I used to take pictures with my 35-mm. camera of the frames of the film. That was the first time I'd ever really seen Italians on screen.

I think that the difference between The Sopranos and the shows that came before it was that it was really personal. There had been a lot of dramas, a lot of really good ones, a lot of really bad ones, but they were always franchise shows about cops, or doctors, or lawyers. They weren't about the writer himself.

James Gandolfini was a genius. Anyone who saw him even in the smallest of his performances knows that. He is one of the greatest actors of this or any time... A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes. I remember telling him many times, 'You don't get it. You're like Mozart.'

When I was doing 'The Sopranos,' I liked putting music together with the film; that was my favorite part of it.