Cinematical

I don't spend a lot of time imagining the business concerns of strip club owners. I'm sure they involve many questions of labor relations, plus the question of how warm you have to keep the place so that the goosebump factor is low -- but one New Jersey club manager's long-term business decisions may have given us the heads-up on a well-loved HBO series heading to the big screen.

The good people at /Film are linking to a story at the Times Herald-Record explaining how the manager of the Satin Dolls gentleman's club recently received a phone request asking him to hold off on some upcoming renovations -- which may seem less than germane to the world of film until you realize that Satin Dolls also served as the Bada Bing on The Sopranos. Nick D'Urso, manager of Satin Dolls, relates in the piece how his planned renovations might be held off so as to preserve the, uh, Bing-ness of the location: "I got an inside tip that they're going to do a movie, so I don't want to make any major changes ... I'm not going to reveal my sources, but we got a call from somebody (working) on the script."


The piece is long on innuendo and low on fact -- apparently, an HBO spokesperson's only comment was "No comment" -- but D'Urso is apparently taking the call seriously enough to hold off on some changes he was hoping to make: ""If we remodeled it, they could always spend the money to recreate it the way they want to, but why bother? Even if it's all for naught, I'd rather wait." Of course, if the powers-that-be do go ahead with a Sopranos movie, that raises the question of whether a big-screen iteration of the much-loved series could recapture the magic, or would just be a slow trudge back to the money well. (Of course, I'm smiling imagining a Sopranos film that literally follows the series finale, just running opening credits, and then featuring a black screen for two hours; There's your continuation! There's your closure!) Do we take this news with a grain of salt (and a little salami), or are you hoping it's true so we can see Tony, Carmela, Dr. Melfi and the gang again?