Michael Imperioli Claims He Couldn’t Have Made ‘Summer of Sam’ Without the Help of a Witch

Michael Imperioli gave “movie magic” a whole new meaning when developing the 1999 crime drama Summer of Sam.

In a clip from the new documentary Ghosts Of The Chelsea Hotel (and Other Rock & Roll Stories) shared with Variety, The Sopranos star revealed that after he “had just begun writing Summer of Sam with Victor Colicchio,” a witch he met in the historic New York City Chelsea Hotel did him a solid.

“I really wanted to get [the film] made,” Imperioli explained. “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.”

He added that he “was very ambitious at the time and wanted to get that made, so [he] resorted to tapping into otherworldly means to get it through the studio system.”

Unfortunately, Imperioli didn’t delve further into the specifics of the witchcraft he took part in while working to make Summer of Sam a reality. However, the film ultimately came to fruition with the help of critically-acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee, so he likely considered that witchcraft a win.

“The Chelsea’s a very mythical place,” Imperioli, who was 29 when he moved to The Chelsea, shared. “Especially if you’re an artist in New York, it looms very large, and the idea of living here seemed not really possible.”

He also described The Chelsea as “a good place to have solitude” while he worked, which likely attracted the vast array of artists — including composer Virgil Thomson, author Jack Kerouac, and punk rocker Patti Smith, per AnOther magazine — who all called it home at one point in their lives.

Imperioli revealed that the witch was not the only “otherworldly” being he encountered while at The Chelsea.

“I saw a ghost here,” he said. “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.”

Now what I want to know is how Imperioli would rank The Chelsea up against The White Lotus resort.

Summer of Sam is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.