Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)

In the memoir, the photograph depicting the Family as if they were the fictional Italian American crime family, the Sopranos, acts as a symbol of the vampiric quality of the Family. Joy emphasizes Les’s obsession with the HBO drama and the ways he particularly related to the protagonist, Tony Soprano. She frames this idolization as representative of Les’s disordered thinking. Joy describes Tony as a self-obsessed, violent narcissist and Les as having a “Sopranos fantasy of being a spiritual gangster, minus the white-collar crime (or so [she] thought)” (225). The parenthetical she includes alludes to the later revelation that Les and the Family are indeed engaged in extensive financial crimes.

Joy commemorates Les’s fascination by “commissioning a Family photo shoot inspired by Annie Leibovitz’s Vanity Fair portrait of the Sopranos cast” (231). [The original photo can be seen here and the image Joy commissioned can be seen here.] Joy highlights violence as a defining characteristic of the Soprano crime family. When someone threatens the family as a whole, or Tony in particular, they are murdered. She frames this mindset as analogous to Les’s own perspective—when someone threatens the Family, they need to be taken care of, albeit with less violent tactics than those employed by the fictional Sopranos.

When Joy finally leaves the Family, she thinks about the photo differently. She reflects, “In my mind, the image morphed and fangs began to sprout from everyone’s smile. I’d been dining with vampires. No, I realized. I am the dinner” (272). This photo once had a place of pride in the restaurant into which Joy had invested enormous amounts of money. After she leaves the group, she feels the image reflects the ways the Family had been feeding on her, spiritually and financially.