BY: DAVID COLEN
Originally Published: May 1, 2008

JOE GANNASCOLI'S got a million gut-busting stories. That’s one of the few positive outcomes a half-century of hard-living will produce. Name the vice -- booze, gambling, overeating, smoking -- and Gannascoli has fallen victim at one time or another, from his formative years in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, to his foray into show biz out West in his mid-thirties, and right on through the Gay Vito era that to this day yields from total strangers an awkward balance of praise and disdain.

Portraying a homosexual mobster on the greatest television show of all-time made Gannascoli. Prior to the outing of Vito Spatafore in Season Five, his character had largely been a fringe guy. With a few exceptions. Like the time he pumped a bullet into the head of Jackie Aprile’s son in a rundown burg called Boonton; like the time he was promoted to captain of the crew formerly led by Ralph Cifaretto, who’d just been beheaded; like the time he convinced Tony Soprano to order a hit on Salvatore "Mustang Sally" Intile, as revenge for the beating with a golf club of his brother Bryan Spatafore.

Gannascoli, who graduated from Lafayette High School before briefly attending St. John’s University, originally auditioned in the late-1990s for the part of Bobby Baccalieri, a role that was awarded to Steve Schirripa. Undeterred by the rejection, Gannascoli appeared as a bakery customer named Gino in a Season One episode, uttering less than two dozen words of dialogue. He took home about $400 for the cameo. Vito Spatafore was introduced a year later, appearing in 30 shows before becoming a series regular.

“The crew always gets copies of the script before the cast,” the veteran actor tells me. “People like the hair stylist and the gaffer and the best boy would get it first. One day I asked if everything was okay with my character, and they told me that everything was fine. They said that I wasn’t going, that I just had to blow someone. I said, ‘What? Don’t fucking break balls, you jerk-off.’ And sure enough I got the script and I said, ‘Holy shit.’ But it was interesting and it was more work for me. It changed my life.”

It was Gannascoli who first pitched the notion of a closeted gangster to writers Robin Green and Mitch Burgess. He’d gotten the idea from a novel called “Murder Machine” and saw it as a sure-fire way to raise his character’s level of prominence amid the seemingly myriad of other plotlines being played out on Sunday nights. It also meant a bigger paycheck for Gannascoli, who was about to incur the expense of a massive wedding with nearly 400 guests, and the purchase of the couple’s first house in East Rockaway, N.Y.

“Without the [gay angle] I think I would have stayed in the background,” he says. “I don’t think I ever would have had any major storylines. I brought it to their attention in the middle of Season Three. I said that’s something you don’t see or hear about, and that I’d be willing to do it.”

When the script was distributed for “Unidentified Black Males” (that was the episode in which Meadow’s boyfriend catches Vito performing fellatio on a security guard), few folks were even aware the idea belonged to Gannascoli. Jimmy Gandolfini privately offered to speak with creator David Chase in an effort to have the story reworked. Tony Sirico said flatly he’d never do the part. Despite having to kiss more than once his on-screen romance, a short-order cook named Jim Witowski, who Gannascoli jokingly likens to former Milwaukee Brewers shortstop Robin Yount because of their Fu Manchu mustaches, he says he has no regrets about the undertaking.

Even if that means being heckled by drunken fans at Madison Square Garden when he attends hockey games in Manhattan or at Yankee Stadium when he attends baseball games in the Bronx. “It happens once in a while,” he says. “But all I need to do is turn around and give them a look. They realize it’s not cool and it goes away.”

Gannascoli and I are talking inside the Fort Lauderdale headquarters of Bright Steps Forward, a nonprofit organization that provides intense pediatric therapy to children born with developmental disorders. It was founded four years ago by Eileen de Olivera, whose son suffers from cerebral palsy. Gannascoli recently came aboard as the group’s national spokesman. The story goes that de Olivera found out he’d be in town for a charity dinner last year, and in her words, “stalked him at the restaurant” where he agreed on the spot to help out.

But that should come as no surprise to anyone who knows him. Gannascoli has devoted a huge chunk of his free time, both during and after filming of The Sopranos, to fundraisers for every cause from the Make-A-Wish Foundation to the Diabetes Research Institute. He also dresses up as Santa Claus on Long Island every Christmas, giving away presents to needy kids. Gannascoli’s heart is figuratively as big as his formerly oversized body, which once maxed out at more than 400 pounds. That was before the LAP BAND procedure he underwent to limit the food capacity of his stomach.

He trimmed down to a low of 240, forcing Sopranos producers to work his drastic weight loss into the show. To open Season Six, he was shown being photographed for a magazine pictorial for a fictitious Thin Club, wearing his old pants over his new ones, which looked about 92 sizes smaller. Gannascoli has packed a good bit of the weight back on, tipping in today in the neighborhood of 300 pounds, in part because of his weakness for liquor.

He has shied away from the sauce considerably since around the time a gambling debt forced him to cash out his stake in a restaurant in 1995, and he hardly drinks around his wife, the former Diana Benincasa.

It was a miserable string of NFL bets one Sunday afternoon that doomed Gannascoli. He wagered a total of $60,000 on three games, a ridiculous sum even for professional sports bettors to ante, and lost them all. Lesson learned. He stays away from the bookmakers altogether nowadays. And he reveals to me it’s been six full weeks since he last got down on a horse race.

Like all addicts, Gannascoli can recall with startling accuracy the details of all the bad beats he’s encountered in his lifetime. The missed chip-shot field goals. The miraculous fourth-quarter comebacks. The epic upsets. Robin Ventura not rounding the bases. But he’s not crying. Instead he’s laughing it off. Clearly, he’s got more pressing matters to occupy his mind. Like cutting down on the cigarettes and cigars. And hitting the racquetball court every morning in an attempt to shed another 100 pounds.

When I ask if he enjoys the down-time in between projects, Gannascoli says he hasn’t made enough money yet to be in that position. He says HBO never paid very well, and rather than pry, I leave it at that. Besides, he continually and in unprovoked fashion tells me portraying Vito Spatafore was a genuine privilege. A real honor to be part of the greatest TV show ever.

A classy move, especially in light of the gruesome and unceremonious manner in which he was written off the show. Vito’s death, which came at the hands of Phil Leotardo in a Fort Lee motel, no doubt, was as nauseating as the offing of any character. Perhaps the only worse one was the slaughter of Ralphie’s pregnant 20-year-old girlfriend, Tracee, behind the Bada Bing! during Season Three. Vito’s death wasn’t sickening as much for the brutality of the beating, but rather for its punctuation -- the ensuing sodomy inflicted by Phil’s thugs with a pool cue.

Shortly thereafter, Gannascoli, who forever has been consumed by an entrepreneurial fire, began to market a line of pool cues. Just like his pasta sauce that he dubbed “A Sauce to Die For” and his crime novel that he dubbed “A Meal to Die For,” the line of pool cues was dubbed “A Cue to Die For.” Despite its branding consistency, pro-gay groups were incensed. The very same pro-gay groups that commended and nominated for awards his portrayal of Gay Vito. Nonetheless, he caved in to their demands that the product be pulled.

After spending some time with the staff and execs at Bright Steps, including a meet-and-greet at the Roasted Pepper in Pembroke Pines, at which he planned to auction an autographed copy of a Season Six script titled “Johnny Cakes,” he’ll head to Los Angeles to begin filming a mob-related feature film called “Corrado” that stars Tom Sizemore.

Away from home, Gannascoli is exceedingly gregarious and warm with fans. He personalizes every autographed publicity still -- Bright Steps has a stack of color 8-by-10s of Vito on the sidewalk in front of Satriales, clad in a hideous blue sport coat -- and he smiles effusively for fans with cameras in their cell phones. He laughs both at and with himself, as well as his most famous on-screen persona.

And that makes all the more curious the fact that virtually all of his Sopranos friendships have dissipated. They all attended Gannascoli's wedding in 2005, and scads of images of Gannascoli hugging guys like Gandolfini and Sirico and Stevie Van Zandt can be found all over the web.

"We were closer at one time and things changed," he says. "For whatever reason I'm not sure. Somewhere along the way, something went south. I have a lot of respect for Michael Imperioli, Stevie Van Zandt, Jimmy, Edie [Falco]. They are tremendous actors."

· To make a donation to Bright Steps, call 1-877-NOW-ICAN or visit brightstepsforward.org. To contact Joe Gannascoli, visit joesoup.com.