Back to Blog
I must be loyle to my capo5/31/2023 I've worked consistently, luckily, but it's not like all the top directors are calling me and want me in their stuff. It's not like I have Hollywood ringing my phone all the freaking time. “That’s why I'm always generating my own stuff. “I don't get a lot of opportunities,” he laughs, more matter-of-factly than aggrieved. Then there is the stuff that provides a direct, accessible line to his true sensibilities: indies and fiction writing and music and theater and, now, even these Zoom meditation classes. (It was at the former project’s Royal premiere where he came across an unexpected admirer of his work: “Prince Charles was a fan of The Sopranos.”) There is, in a sublime category all its own, a Chopped Tournament of Stars victory from 2014, where he wears a ponytail with a bandana and mixes ice cream with his hands. Imperioli has amassed a disproportionate amount of detective roles on his resume, from The Lovely Bones to Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector. There are the mainstream movies and TV shows that pay the bills, sure. The reality is much more idiosyncratic, a DIY path cobbled together from various esoteric passions. It feels like Imperioli’s prestige TV cachet and ferocious talent could have led to a different trajectory, one with big budgets and high-profile projects. It can be a little surreal to watch the actor engage with his audience so gamely. ![]() “I mean, most Italians, they don't really give a shit about Columbus,” he adds. But let's do it with someone who really means something to us.” ![]() Let’s keep the day of pride, let's keep a parade for Italians. “To be blunt, it’s not that huge of a deal to me, but it is to some people and I understand why and I support that,” he says. Writing that Columbus “enslaved and caused the death of many indigenous people,” as Imperioli has done, tends to piss off his conservative fans. One of his bits involves posting photos of famous Italian Americans who should be honored with statues in place of Christopher Columbus: sixties crooner Dion, for instance, or Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls. “Which brings us to a good question,” he continues. “With our phones, with social media, with our plans, with our fears, with our thoughts, with our fantasies, with our worries about the future, with our projections about what’s coming next, with our regrets about the past.” Imperioli pauses and allows us to marinate on our regretful, phone-addled reality before offering up an alternative: “Instead of being lost in projection and lost in regret and lost in all these thoughts and distracted by them, what we’re going to do is watch those thoughts and watch the mind and become aware of them.” “Most of the time we sit and do nothing, we’re distracted,” Imperioli intones to his virtual audience. He’s wearing a black T-shirt with a string of wooden mala prayer beads around his neck, his wavy silver hair and narrow black-rimmed glasses giving him a vaguely professorial air. ![]() “This is very beautiful, thank you,” he says, after listing the various far-flung places-Indonesia, Italy, Buenos Aires, Brooklyn-from which viewers are tuning in for his inaugural free Meditation 101 class. ![]() On a Monday morning in late August, Michael Imperioli sits cross-legged in front of ruby red drapes not unlike theater curtains, about to teach 400 people from all over the world how to breathe.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |