Entertainment

SEE IT: James Gandolfini in play as student

James Gandolfini in the 1989 student film “Eddy.” (Mail Online)

Years before James Gandolfini became famous as mob boss Tony Soprano, and before he was making his film debut in an NYU student’s $10,000 film, he performed in a play by Larry Myers titled ‘Tarantula’s Dancing’ at St. John’s.

“It was about how evil the world is and how we all end up on slabs in mortuaries,” Myers told The Post. “The play was dark and his monologue touched on child molestation and death.”

It was a monologue from Myers’ play that Gandolfini performed when auditioning for his first film. A small NYU student flick.

Playing a bad guy pimp, Gandolfini brought “something electrifying” to the film called “Eddy,” according to its director David Matalon who spoke to the Daily Mail Online.

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Last week, Gandolfini died in Rome while on vacation with his family, but in 1989 he was working the door at the Blue Note jazz club in Greenwich Village when he replied to an ad in Backstage magazine.

The ad was looking to fill the role of the tough guy villain in Matalon’s NYU student film but Gandolfini missed his casting appointment.

“We were closing the room up for the night, it was late, almost 11 p.m., and this giant guy stepped off the elevator, he looked like he was going to kill us!” Matalon said.

“He gave this very brutal intense monologue and he just killed it. I said ‘you got the part’ – he was riveting to watch.”

After shooting the film in just 10 days, Gandolfini and Matalon went their separate ways with the director eventually becoming a professional writer and producer in Hollywood.

In 1993, Matalon produced “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” starring Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio, but Matalon admits that he will forever be haunted by not getting to work with Gandolfini in a professional capacity.

“I was always hoping to get a chance to work with him now as a professional, to have that chance on a different level.”

“It was really nice to watch him make it and it’s just tragic that he’s gone, because he was a really special actor,” Matalon said.

Gandolfini’s body arrived in Newark Sunday night and the actor’s funeral is scheduled for Thursday at the Cathedral Church of Saint Jon the Divine in Morningside Heights.