Chick Benetto is a former Major League Baseball player whose wife has left him and whose daughter is estranged. He can’t seem to hold down a job and in his despair, he’s taken to drinking heavily. After leaving the scene of a car accident that he caused, Chick finds himself contemplating suicide in the dugout of the park where he played baseball as a child. He then has a vision of his dead mother, Posey. Weirded out, he drives to the house where she used to live. Not only is mom there, she makes him breakfast. And he gets to spend one final day with her.
In his first television appearance since the end of “The Sopranos,” Michael Imperioli stars as Chick Benetto in “For One More Day.” Based on the best-selling novel by Mitch Albom, the TV movie should appeal to a wide audience because woman who produced it – Oprah Winfrey – has a proven track record for picking stories, whether to read with her book club or adapt into films, that resonate with the public.
Winfrey has already produced two other Albom books for television, “Tuesdays With Morrie” and “Five People You Meet in Heaven.” Imperioli appeared in the latter film, along with Ellen Burstyn, his co-star in “For One More Day.” The pairing of these two powerful, controlled actors results in a piece that addresses sentimental themes – family, love, redemption – without congealing into sentimental goo.
“I meet a lot of people who have lost their parents,” says Albom, 49. “If you ask them if they could one more day back, all of them would say, ‘I’m sorry.’ This movie is about the regrets people that children have about their parents. This story is about a guy who gets a chance to do that. We’re lucky in America that we have time to think about what our lives are about.”
Best known for playing Christopher Moltisanti, Tony Soprano’s violent, drug-addicted nephew, Imperioli, 41, took the role because, he says, “This is a guy who is really struggling to accept himself and make sense of his life. I have sympathy for that struggle. These are very human problems.
“No one is going to have one more day. That one more day is now,” he adds. “All we have is the present – the past is gone and the future hasn’t happened. It’s never too late to attend to deepen the relationships you have. Those are noble themes.”
Of all the “Sopranos” cast, Imperioli is having the best post-show career. In addition to the Oprah movie, he also won a top role as a detective in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones,” currently shooting in Pennsylvania.
“It’s such a fun movie to do. Peter Jackson’s a very creative guy and he’s put together some great actors.” Imperioli co-stars with Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci.
But “For One More Day” remains special for the actor because it gave him the chance to work with his 10-year-old son Vadim, who plays Chick as a boy.
“He has very good instincts as an actor,” says Imperioli, who teaches acting in his spare time. “I saw that in him before he did any acting, and he’s expressed a lot of interest in it.”
“The single best gift Michael brought to the movie besides his talent was his son,” says Albom. “I think Vadim steals the movie.”
While Imperioli got to share the movie with his son, Albom shared it with his mother, on whom the character of Posey is based.
After Albom’s friend Morrie and Uncle Eddie both died before the books in which they appeared were published, Albom didn’t want to have to wish for one more day when it came to his own mother.
“I didn’t want to be in a situation where I wrote this book and then laid it on her grave. I wanted to be able to hand it to her. I took the first copy I got back from the press and told her to please read it.”
FOR ONE MORE DAY
Sunday, 9 p.m., ABC
