Michael Imperioli resorted to witchcraft to get Summer Of Sam made
Michael Imperioli "resorted to tapping into otherworldly means" to get his movie made
When it comes to getting a movie made, sometimes you’ve got to leave no stone left unturned. Just ask Michael Imperioli, who was willing to dabble in the occult to get his movie Summer Of Sam onto the screen. In a new documentary Ghosts Of The Chelsea Hotel (via Variety), the Sopranos alum talks about making a deal with a witch that apparently paid off.
“I had just begun writing Summer Of Sam with Victor Colicchio—we wrote that script together. I really wanted to get it made. So I met somebody who was living here who was a witch, who said she could help me get it made, but it wasn’t going to happen the way I thought it would,” Imperioli recalled. “I was very ambitious at the time and wanted to get that made, so [I] resorted to tapping into otherworldly means to get it through the studio system.”
Imperioli apparently doesn’t elaborate on what otherworldly means the witch employed, though Summer Of Sam did get made, so it must’ve worked. He’s probably not the only Hollywood power player who’s sought out supernatural power, but he is one of the most open about his experiences with mysticism. The actor has explored “Christian Science, the Russian mysticism of Gurdjieff and Ouspenskii, Hinduism, Theosophy, Occultism, and more,” per LA Yoga magazine, with whom he shared that “I studied with a shaman from Panama, that was really my last stop before I found Buddhism, and I believe she had a lot to do with setting me on my path.” Speaking with The Believer, he shared about his interest in the work of Carlos Castaneda: “I really wanted the magic. I really did. And I believed that was possible. It’s funny: sometimes when I’m in LA, in Westwood, I drive by his house, which is on Pandora Avenue, where he practiced with the three witches and stuff like that. It’s not far off Santa Monica Boulevard, but it’s surrounded by hedges. I don’t know who owns it now.”
Anyway, Imperioli and his witch friend were not the only mystical beings in the Chelsea Hotel. “I saw a ghost here,” he says in the doc. “Some people may think that I’m insane and it’s bullshit or whatever. But I’m not the only person who has seen this apparition of a woman, apparently from the late 19th century, whose soon-to-be husband died on the Titanic. She came from upstate or something and was waiting for him here, and when she found out what happened to him, she killed herself.” Spooky stuff!