Cleaver (The Sopranos)

Cleaver
Cleaver
Directed by	Morgan Yam
Screenplay by	J. T. Dolan
Story by	Christopher Moltisanti
Produced by	Carmine Lupertazzi Jr.; Christopher Moltisanti;
Starring	Jonathan LaPaglia; Daniel Baldwin;
Production; company	Lone Wolves Productions
Release date	September 9, 2007
Country	United States
Language	English

Cleaver is a

television drama series The Sopranos. Although very little film material is actually shown in the series, its planning and development are discussed at large throughout multiple seasons of the show. The extent to which character Christopher Moltisanti

mixes confidential and personal information about the Soprano mob family into the story elements of Cleaver is the focal point throughout its development.

Cleaver —originally titled Pork Store Killer— can be categorized as a

Carmine Lupertazzi, Jr.

and Moltisanti.

The film starred Jonathan LaPaglia as Michael "the Cleaver" and Daniel Baldwin as mob boss Salvatore ("Sally Boy"). Sally Boy's key advisors are played by George Pogatsia (Frankie) and Lenny Ligotti (Nicky). Initially, Moltisanti and Lupertazzi attempted to cast Ben Kingsley as the mafia boss in the episode "Luxury Lounge", but Kingsley turned the part down.

Plot

The protagonist of Cleaver is Michael, a character nicknamed "the Butcher". When Christopher Moltisanti proposes the plot to writer J. T. Dolan, he says the film is about a "young wise guy, assassin, gets betrayed by his people. They whack him and leave his body parts in dumpsters all around the city. Long story short, he is put back together, by science...or maybe it's supernatural. And he gets payback on everyone who fucked him over, including the cunt who he was engaged to. She was getting porked by his boss the night the hero was killed."

Several episodes in the film are drawn from Moltisanti's own life experiences as a

the sacred and the profane

".

Development

Moltisanti met Dolan while both were in rehab recovering from heroin addiction. In the episode "In Camelot" (5x07), their friendship gets complicated when Christopher introduced J. T. to the underground world of high-stakes poker games, inadvertently giving the writer a new outlet for his addictive personality. Dolan rapidly found himself $60,000 in debt, and soon wound up back in rehab at Moltisanti's prompting.

The film itself originated in "

Mayham" (6x03) when Moltisanti offered Dolan a way to clear his debts: to write a screenplay for a digital slasher film based on a concept by Christopher. But the story had its genesis earlier, when Christopher began his quest to write a screenplay in "The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti

" (1x08). After struggling through 19 pages, Moltisanti became disillusioned and slipped into a depression, throwing away his work.

He later had an affair with studio vice-president

D-Girl" (2x07). Through her, he met Swingers and Made writer Jon Favreau, with whom he discussed his film concept. When they decide that the title of the movie is to be Cleaver, Christopher mentions to Tony that the estate of Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver

has filed a motion to put a hold on production because of the name association. This is never brought up again in the series and the title does not change.

In "

Julianna Skiff

, describing both as men who think that everything belongs to them — a notion crystallized by Sally Boy in Cleaver's finale when he tells Michael: "What you have belongs to me" because "what's mine is mine; what's yours is mine."