{"id":1760,"date":"2013-06-20T10:20:14","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T10:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/?p=1760"},"modified":"2017-09-08T20:23:44","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T20:23:44","slug":"shocked-and-saddened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/2013\/06\/20\/shocked-and-saddened\/","title":{"rendered":"Shocked and Saddened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was saddened this morning to hear about the sudden death of James Gandolfini in Italy, of an apparent heart attack.  He was only fifty-one.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t recall that I ever met Gandolfini, though we may have been present at one or more HBO events over the past couple of years (those are large gatherings), but I was huge admirer of his acting.  THE SOPRANOS was &#8220;must watch TV&#8221; for us every year it was on.  A terrific show, with a terrific cast&#8230; Gandolfini first and foremost among them.  It was the show that redefined drama on television, proving once and for all the audiences would gladly follow a flawed, grey, violent character, provided he was interesting enough.  A ground-breaking show, an important show, it helped define HBO&#8217;s &#8220;brand,&#8221; and set the tone for many of the great HBO dramas to follow, including DEADWOOD, ROME, THE WIRE, BOARDWALK EMPIRE&#8230; and GAME OF THRONES.<\/p>\n<p>Gandolfini was a fellow Jersey boy and Jets fan as well.<\/p>\n<p>A huge talent.  I never knew him, but I will miss him all the same. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was saddened this morning to hear about the sudden death of James Gandolfini in Italy, of an apparent heart attack. He was only fifty-one. I don&#8217;t recall that I ever met Gandolfini, though we may have been present at one or more HBO events over the past couple of years (those are large gatherings), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[58],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1761,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions\/1761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}