and the actor who plays Vito actually suggested the storyline
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060411/LIFE/604110320/1005Is 'Sopranos' character a mix of Mike Tyson and Liberace?
AP/TINA FINEBERG Joseph R. Gannascoli
Associated Press
04/11/2006
Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhall and ... Joseph R. Gannascoli?
In the year when "Brokeback Mountain" became a phenomenon and Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar playing Truman Capote, Gannascoli's character was outed Sunday night on "The Sopranos."
Vito Spatafore -- the heretofore closeted gay mobster -- was spotted by some wiseguys who came by a sweaty S&M joint to collect their protection money. "It's a joke," Vito weakly offers, then begs: "Don't say nothin'!" By the end of the episode, he's checked into a motel with a gun, looking suicidal.<<<snip>>>
This season, Vito has hung around the hospital while Tony Soprano was recovering from a gunshot wound, trying to ingratiate himself with Tony's wife while plotting with Paulie Walnuts to grab her cut of a big score. And he's chomped on carrots while prattling on about all the weight he's losing. (In real life, he's down to 260 from a high of 400 pounds.) Now that the gay story line is heating up, the 47-year-old Brooklyn-born actor is immensely pleased, in part because it was his idea to make Vito homosexual.
"I saw him as, like, a cross between Mike Tyson and Liberace," Gannascoli said in an interview at his home. "I wanted to make him sort of in self-denial, self-loathing, a real gay hater."
Gannascoli's suggestion was inspired by the book "Murder Machine," about the Gambino family, which had an openly gay member also named Vito. "They didn't bother him about it, because I guess he was good at what he did, which was chopping up bodies," Gannascoli said.
"I thought that was a way of separating myself from the other actors, because I would have been in the background most of the time," he said.
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He's got a point with the last part there - to be honest, there seems to be too many characters on "THe Sopranos" that sometimes can cause me to lose interest. But he'll definately stand out from the pact because of this storyline arc. Should be interesting watching