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In<\/em> Gandolfini: Jim, Tony and the Life of a Legend, Jason Bailey charts the life and work of James Gandolfini\u2014a once-in-a-generation talent who found a lasting place in the cultural firmament with his Emmy-winning work on<\/em> The Sopranos. But like the conflicted mobster he so aptly played, Gandolfini was a complicated man\u2014and partway through his HBO hit\u2019s run, the pressure of his job and his personal demons threatened to stop the entire operation in its tracks. In this exclusive excerpt, costars Edie Falco<\/strong>, Steven Van Zandt<\/strong>, and Steve Schirripa,<\/strong> as well as a variety of<\/em> Sopranos crew members, recall the drama\u2019s most challenging era.<\/em><\/p>\n The no-shows started during season 3. The stress of The Sopranos<\/em> had weighed on James Gandolfini from the beginning; his costar Steven Van Zandt recalls spending \u201cmost of my time talking him into coming back the next day. . . . We\u2019d have the same conversation at least once a month.\u201d Van Zandt would reaffirm how lucky they were to be on such an excellent show, how few comparable film roles there were out there, and then he\u2019d deliver the clincher. \u201cCome back and do us all a favor, because you\u2019re helping to employ, I don\u2019t know, sixty people here?\u201d he\u2019d remind him. \u201cSo think of them every time you want to quit. Think of the other fifty people that are trying to make a living, depending on you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo he would sometimes take a few days off, whatever,\u201d Van Zandt says. \u201cBut he always came back. He always came back, and he was the most generous guy in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Gandolfini\u2019 by Jason Bailey<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The reasons for Gandolfini\u2019s \u201cdays off\u201d varied. Sometimes he was avoiding a difficult or embarrassing scene. Sometimes the difficulties of line memorization would send him into a tailspin. Sometimes he wanted to get an early start on a weekend of partying, which was increasingly his coping mechanism for his unhappiness at home; sometimes he hadn\u2019t quite recovered from one of those weekends. \u201cHe likes to have a good time,\u201d explains Sopranos<\/em> script supervisor Christine Gee<\/strong>, \u201cbut sometimes, you know . . . some people don\u2019t know when to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n Whatever prompted it, the outcome was the same. The production office would get a call from the transportation department; the driver who had gone to Jim\u2019s apartment to pick him up reported that he was not answering his door or his phone. \u201cSo that could throw a day into a tizzy,\u201d says Steve Kornacki<\/strong>, then an assistant production coordinator, \u201cbecause then you had to punt and you had to figure out what to do, until somebody got ahold of Jim.\u201d As updates were relayed from his driver to the Teamsters co-captain to executive producer Ilene Landress<\/strong>\u2014he\u2019s up and around, he\u2019s in the shower, he\u2019s coming out to the car\u2014the crew would do what they could: establishing shots, maybe, or coverage of his scene partners over his stand-in\u2019s shoulder, with Gee reading Jim\u2019s lines.<\/p>\n \u201cFind something else to shoot or shoot what you can, as long as you hear he might be coming in,\u201d explains location manager Mark Kamine<\/strong>. \u201cYou pull up whatever work you can do without him until he gets in, or says he\u2019s not coming in. And then the Teamster tells the other Teamster who tells the producer who tells me, if I\u2019m the one on set, he\u2019s not coming in. And then the first question is, what can you do instead? And if you can\u2019t do anything, it\u2019s like, OK, go home.\u201d<\/p>\n On the occasions when the driver could get him out of the apartment, albeit late and hung over, they would pour coffee into him to sober him up and get him camera ready, and take a shot at making their day (sometimes shooting his medium shots and close-ups simultaneously). \u201cAfter the first time, there was a contingency plan,\u201d Kornacki notes. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think it happened a lot. But the producers were ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLook, it was difficult on production, obviously,\u201d says cinematographer Phil Abraham<\/strong>. \u201cI don\u2019t remember ever getting a phone call saying, Don\u2019t come in to work<\/em> I remember specifically, Jim even giving them advanced warnings, like I\u2019m not coming in tomorrow<\/em>. And people would go, Ha, yeah, right<\/em>. And he wouldn\u2019t come in tomorrow! It wasn\u2019t necessarily always like, he went out drinking that night and then disappeared. I mean, it was<\/em> that a lot. But I know that playing this character was a huge burden on this guy. He was not this person. And yet he needed a release\u2014it\u2019s almost like the noise in his head was probably too much. Now, whether or not that\u2019s the way one does it\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n