Got a picture?
Sopranos fever here probably
reached a peak last July
when 14,000 wiseguy wannabes
answered the show's
open casting call
in decidedly unglamorous
Harrison, New Jersey.
Crowd estimates ranging from
10,000 to 25,000.
This was after the first season.
The line was all the way out
to the freeway.
And it was ridiculous.
- Keep it moving, folks.
- Ladies, step forward.
Apparently, the word got around.
Just bring your eight-by-ten photo
to Jersey.
There are policemen,
firemen, teachers here.
Who wouldn't want fame and fortune?
I'll tell you one thing.
I am right for this part
on The Sopranos.
You can't get more Italian than this.
They don't make them like that.
My friend and I,
we got all dressed up and, like,
there were 482,000 people
ahead of us.
I don't know if we got
much of a chance now.
Leave the area!
You are subject to arrest
if you don't leave the area.
The Harrison police,
concerned about public safety,
closed down the audition.
It's over!
So most of this mob had to be content
with just dropping
their picture in the bin
and taking their chances.
We found Ginny Sack in that group.
She had gone later to the same
high school I went to.
She was a beautician, never acted.
What the hell is this?
I was dizzy.
I was having low blood sugar.
What happened to the fruit salad?
You were supposed to quit smoking
and didn't.
Nicotine is an addictive substance!
What's wrong?
Why are you yelling at me?
You never doubted her for a second.
I know I've gained weight
these last few years.
I see the other wives,
the way men look at them.
Don't I look at you like that?
Haven't I always?
I love you.
As time went on,
I began to realize that the audience
did break down into
two different types.
There was one part that were looking
for a serial drama,
and then there was the group
that was called
"Less Yakking, More Whacking."
In the show, it wasn't
an easy tone in the sense that
it alternated light and dark,
so you had to be prepared
for either one to happen
anywhere around the corner.
Well, I mean, I guess something
that's really important to me
is the darkness mixed with humor.
And when I think about that,
I think about myself
as a kid going to my first funerals,
seeing my grandfather
dead in the coffin
and hearing some
lunatic conversation,
some stupid thing that
one of my aunts was saying.
You think, "What are you
talking about?
There's your father lying there
in a casket."
As a writer, that made
an impression on me.
Look at her like that. Mariolina.
Gave me my first hand job,
me and Vincent Maniscalco
in the alley behind
the chicken market.
Junior?
God, what am I saying
at this poor woman's wake?
Let's go.
I would say this about The Sopranos,
is that I really don't know whether
it was a drama or a comedy.
For example, Tony Sirico.
He was a serious gangster actor,
but the comedy just started
to come forward.
Oh, m*therf*cker!
This absurdity, which was partly him.
Please!
f*cking poison ivy all over.
I was born in Brooklyn.
I grew up on the streets.
I still got cement in my shoes.
So, you know,
I'm well aware of the life.
And I know a lot of guys
involved in this life.
I can feel it itching me already.
He didn't wear makeup because
he would go to tanning booths.
Like that, you know,
he's got that reflector thing
getting tanned? That was really Tony.
Tony always had a tan.
I think my character
acts like me, personally.
But don't tell nobody.
You realize by the time
Caitlyn's out of college,
it'll be, like, the year 2027
or something?
She takes after you, she won't be
out of fourth grade by then.
- What are you doing?
- Nothing.
And cut!
Very nice. Check it, please.
Tony Sirico was very fastidious
and very particular
about how he looked.
No one could touch his hair.
There were no hair people
allowed to touch his hair.
He told me the whole system.
He would get up
at three in the morning,
read his lines, comb his hair,
spray the spray in the air,
the mist would settle,
and he'd do it a few times
until it was shellacked
and ready to go.
The f*ck you doing?
- You think we're digging?
- We're doing "Pine Barrens."
That's right, shithead, get to work.
I know the ground's kind of hard,
but give it some of that
Siberian action.
Paulie and Christopher
were going to k*ll a guy,
took him into the woods,
the guy escaped,
then they got lost in the woods.
Wait a minute.
We walked in a circle.
How's that f*cking possible?
One of the aspects of the episode
is when you first see Paulie
Let's go with the satin finish.
he's perfectly coiffed
and he's getting a manicure.
- Excuse me.
- The whole idea is that
he completely devolves
to the worst version
of himself by the end.
f*cking c**t!
I lost my shoe.
He's a complete mess.
So I said to Tony Sirico,
"That's the reality
of what would happen to your hair."
He goes, "I'm not
messing up my hair."
"Come on.
The whole point of this is that,
you know, you're
Paulie's all f*cked up."
So he said, "All right."
And so he just like
I said, "Come on. Tony."
And he went, "All right, you f*ck."
He messed his hair up like crazy.
I said, "Get this on film
before he changes his mind."
And that's the only time
you've ever seen Tony Sirico
with his hair like that.
Got mayonnaise on your chin.
What?
Mayonnaise!
As the show got more complicated,
Denise and I,
we bought a house in France,
so we would go there to work
trying to come up
with the next season.
She was always gardening,
so I'd go out there
and sit there while
she was clipping and stuff,
and I'd tell her these stories.
Her influence, it was extraordinary.
It was always 13 episodes.
So I'd make 13 lines.
Then I'd start making lines like that
that would say, "Tony."
What does Tony do in episode one?
What does Tony do in episode two?
What happens
And that was containing a plot.
Then I started adding Carmela.
What's Carmela doing?
She had her own season.
Chris. They all had their own
seasons.
Some of them had two or three.
Tony would have two or three lines
of what happened to him
in that season.
Then I would get back,
I would lay it all out
for the writers
so they knew what the direction
of the season was.
Then we'd sit down, we'd say,
"All right, episode one.
I know what it says up here,
but what's this really
going to be about?"
It was actually building a drama.
They're meeting in a basement,
after all.
We'd sit around bullshitting,
like you and I are doing.
- Right.
- All day long.
We'd talk about it
and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,
which a lot of good stuff
comes out of that.
It was literally sitting
with your friends
and, "What'd you do last night?"
And that would digress into a story,
or, "One time this happened
to me, or that, or"
And sometimes it was prompted
by David saying things like,
"What's the worst thing
you've ever done
to somebody in a relationship?"
Really, Tony, just tell me.
How come I can't see you again?
'Cause you f*ck Ralph.
You got morals all of a sudden?
I don't got morals,
but I do got rules.
And you'd just tell stories.
And it was very therapeutic.
I mean, again, we were also
together for years.
So, I mean, in that room
we went through,
you know, divorces
and children being born
and parents dying, and a lot
You know, the stuff of life.
The actor is the instrument
for conveying ideas.
During the next
I told a story about
how when I started writing,
I also took acting classes.
This is Acting for Writers?
And that became part of
the first episode I ever wrote.
Help me, Daddy!
Dad, help me!
Daddy!
You can depend on me.
Trust me.
I told them a story about a visit
to a psychic I had.
That became a story
where Paulie visits a psychic.
Charles Pagano.
How the f*ck do you know that?
He says he was your first,
but I feel many more.
- Hey!
- That one's laughing.
Poison ivy?
He wants to know if it still itches.
Don't f*ck with me.
Who you been talking to?
All my stories, they come directly
from my personal experiences,
seeing and hearing and watching.
26 Grady Court.
- 26. Good.
- This is where I grew up.
The building I grew up in.
And here's my famous apartment
right here, 107.
I grew up in a place called
Maverick Housing Projects
in East Boston.
Whether it was shoplifting
to whatever we did
to make money as a kid, you know.
And when I'm like 13, 14,
I found my way
into the local social club
with these neighborhood gangsters.
If I'm getting an invitation
to the dance,
I wish the feds would
hurry the f*ck up about it.
"Hey, kid, do me a favor.
Just sweep the floors."
And I worked the card games.
- Yeah, I'm in.
- 400 to you, Sil.
Behind closed doors,
I was with these guys.
Don't look at the floor. Look at me.
So once we got in the room together
to write characters,
like Bobby Baccala
To the victor belongs the spoils.
Get the f*ck out of here before
I shove your quotations book
up your fat a*s.
or Richie Aprile
I did a lot of meditation
in the can on this.
On what?
You can't believe
how clear you see things.
Do you ever meditate?
- Me? Meditate?
- Beansie
- Are you crazy?
- Not as crazy as I used to be.
Still crazy enough
to take an eye out.
What's going on here, Rich?
This is where I could contribute
based on my experiences
around these wiseguys.
Sucking up to Tony Soprano
has done wonders for you.
Look at somebody like Uncle Junior
or Tony or Paulie Walnuts.
These are, like, petty,
horrible people.
So you felt free to talk about
anything you wanted.
It was all just, hey,
this is a writers' room.
We're writing about bad people.
Bad people do bad things,
and we got to access
those parts of ourself.
We said things that nowadays
would be frowned upon.
We could have been mistaken
for being r*cist, sexist,
you-name-it-ist, you know.
We considered having an assistant
in there for a while,
and realized we couldn't do that.
If she had a bathing suit on,
if you're are you serious?
I think she stayed at the door
and as he goes,
she's calling after him
So how did you make the transition
from being a cast member
to being a writer?
You know, I didn't start writing
on the show
because I wanted to give
my character juicy stuff to do.
It was really because I really loved
all the characters.
I just fell in love with all of them.
What I learned from David was,
you know, specificity,
specifics, detail.
Everything was thought out.
At some point during the process,
David would get up
and go on the couch
and just lay down and go to sleep.
And we would just keep talking.
But he wasn't really asleep.
He'd have his eyes closed, thinking.
I couldn't stand talking anymore,
and I would be on the couch by myself
and they'd go on talking.
And finally I would get
something done.
At some point, he would get up
and silence would befall the room,
he would pick up a marker,
go to the board,
and then write out
a fully fleshed-out 12-beat story.
David starts filling the whiteboard.
You know, big
three gigantic whiteboards.
He's going nuts,
filling the whole thing.
And we're all like,
"Yeah, that's great"
Chiming in and this thing gets done.
We broke for lunch, we come back,
he's looking at it, goes,
"This is f*cking horrible."
Erases the whole It took us hours.
Every year we would start,
I'd say, "Remember,
the first five ideas,
we're going to throw those out.
Don't even bring them up.
Idea number six, maybe you should"
- This includes me.
- Right.
"we'll talk, we'll voice it.
Everything else, we've seen before.
It's not good."
You're talking about
important things.
You're talking about life,
death, love, violence.
Shut up, don't turn around.
I still feel proud that we never
did violence for violence sake.
I didn't find that.
It was consistent
with the characters.
Yeah, I thought it was earned.
I don't think any of us ever
were gratuitous with violence.
I don't think we ever said,
"We got to show this gory thing."
It was the opposite.
I'll give you all my money!
No!
- No!
- Shut up!
- Come on!
- Get the panties off.
No, stop it!
Please! No!
- No!
- You f*cking b*tch.
No!
Stop it!
Melfi's r*pe was very, very violent
and incredibly disturbing to watch
because it made her choice
whether or not to tell Tony
all the more poignant
because you saw what happened to her.
Did they let him go?
Somebody misplaced the evidence kit,
for a little while or something
I don't know what the f*ck they did,
those stupid idiots.
Did they just let him out
until the trial?
Because I can identify him.
It's a legal thing.
I think they just
have to let him skip.
That's impossible.
I just told you everything
he told me.
That employee of the month c*cksucker
is back on the street
and who's going to stop him?
You?
Who could I sic on
that son of a b*tch
to tear him to shreds?
What's the matter?
Hey. Come on.
What did I do?
Come on, huh?
I remember reading the script
and not finishing it,
and I called David. I said, "Why?
Why would you hurt her?
She's the only one
trying to have a sense of right,
a sense of reason.
Why are you violating her?
I can't even get through it,
I'm so upset."
"Could you just read it
to the end, Lorraine?"
And I said, "Yeah, okay."
And then
What?
I mean, you want to say something?
No.
When she says, "No,"
it hit me like a ton of bricks.
There's a fork in the road,
and she has to choose that fork.
I mean, let's put it this way.
She knew if she told him
about the r*pe,
then it was all over.
She didn't go to school
for 15 years
to become a gangster.
Even the most violent episodes
had such beauty to them.
Like the episode where
the stripper gets k*lled.
It tells the story of Meadow
in college.
Do you have a condom?
Against this young girl
who would be the same age.
The show was always shocking
somebody about something.
That make you feel good?
You feel like a man?
You could push the envelope
and let people be uncomfortable.
Forgive me, but like,
without a trigger warning.
The whole point is
you want to surprise people
and give them feelings
that maybe are uncomfortable
and have them learn
to deal with them.
That, my friend, is life.
You're not going to be given
trigger warnings
when terrible things happen.
Ralphie beating
the stripper to death.
You needed to see what an absolute
despicable person this was
in order to understand
these are the guys
you're rooting for.
Look at you now.
It was interesting,
every once in a while,
the audience would be
lulled into feeling
"Oh, these are big, fun teddy bears
you can talk to
over the backyard fence."
And that's true
until you owe them money,
and then they're not funny anymore.
And then so we would,
every once in a while,
remind people, this is who
Tony Soprano really is.
You finished?
Thank you, T.
'Cause that sugarless m*therf*cker,
it's the last f*cking drink
you're ever gonna have.
Oh! Swear to God! Mommy!
Mommy, please, Tony.
I said to the writers,
look, he's a k*ller.
He's a philanderer.
He's a m*therf*cker.
He's a fool, in many ways.
Maybe it sounds f*cking crazy to you.
But Tony's always got to be
the smartest guy in the room.
Nothing sounds crazy,
the older I get.
He's not fun all the time.
This is a bad guy,
extremely violent person.
You want coffee?
No.
And I always felt that
if there was any lack of realism,
it was that he was more
reflective than reality.
Tony thinks too much.
He's too worried.
But something was happening to him
that he couldn't control.
The panic attacks, really.
If it hadn't been
for the panic attacks,
I don't think he would have
gone to a shrink.
I don't got time for these
f*cking attacks.
It was so good for months.
But he couldn't afford
to be collapsing
in front of his crew.
And obviously there was a lot
underneath there.
He was very depressed
and didn't understand or know it.
He had a lot of fears,
didn't know it.
Do you have any qualms about
how you actually
make a living?
Yeah.
I find I have to be the sad clown.
Laughing on the outside,
crying on the inside.
I feel exhausted
just talking about it.
It's my feeling, and I've been
to a lot of therapy,
you're really never held to account
with a psychiatrist.
And that's always kind of
bothered me a little bit.
"You mean anything I do is?"
"You have to understand
what my parents are like,
and so I can't be blamed?"
Hello?
Theoretically, therapy is supposed to
make you a better person.
All right, let me hear it.
Instead, it made him
a better mobster.
He could actually take
what other people
were feeling into account,
for 20 or 30 seconds.
All we want you to do is talk to him.
After all, he's your uncle.
- Come on.
- That's right.
As we said in the show,
as Livia said,
"Psychiatry"
That's nothing but a racket
for the Jews.
That's what my mother
would have said about psychiatry.
They knew nothing about it.
Melfi.
So it was really important to me
for her to be Italian.
What part of the boot you from, hon?
"Dr. Melfi."
My father's people were from Caserta.
Avellino.
My mother would have loved it
if you and I got together.
And not to be too forceful,
or to be even that sympathetic.
What's the one thing every woman
your mother, your wife,
your daughter
have in common?
They all break my ba*ls.
Her character was based on
the psychologist
I was going to at that time.
They're all Italian. So what?
So, maybe by coming clean with me,
you're dialoguing with them.
I think I began to realize
that what I was doing there was
re-mothering myself.
What you were doing
there in therapy
- With her.
- Right.
Was, I was getting a new mother.
What?
And certainly,
that's what Tony was doing.
You've made me all of the things
you feel are missing in your wife
and in your mother.
You're making me out to be some
f*cking mama's boy.
I'm a man.
Now that we're sitting
in this psychiatrist's office
and we're analyzing these guys,
he needed a mother.
Ma?
His mother was a lunatic.
You know my good jewelry?
The stuff Dad gave you.
Some of those pieces
came right out of Cartier's window.
I gave it all
to your cousin Josephine.
What the f*ck? The good jewelry?
She always admired it.
I think they're a lot alike,
that's where
the conflict comes from.
You gave a f*cking cousin
Cartier dinner rings,
and you give me a vibrating chair?
He tries because he's Italian
and it's his mother,
but she knows all the buttons
to push on him
and consistently does it.
Listen, before you do any more
serious damage to yourself
or your grandchildren's inheritance,
you're going to stop
living alone right now.
I'm not going to that nursing home.
Then I will get a durable
power of attorney over you,
and I will place you there.
Then k*ll me now.
Go on. Go.
Go into the ham and take
the carving knife and stab me.
Here! Now, please!
It would hurt me less
than what you just said.
You know, I know seniors
that are inspired!
Livia was an amalgam,
whether it was intended,
whether David saw it that way
or anybody else saw that,
but it was truly an amalgam.
The writers on The Sopranos,
the one thing we had in common
was we all had the same mom.
And I had a terrible
relationship with my mother.
My mother, just to sum up my mom,
who was absolutely
the rock of our family.
My dad died on a Thursday,
on Monday morning,
my mom was back at work,
with five kids.
God bless her.
But we did not have
a great relationship.
When I got into NYU,
I called my mother and I said,
"Mom, I got accepted
to New York University."
I had been living alone
at that point and she said,
"I'll give you six months."
And I went, "Okay, thanks."
When I got into law school,
I called my mother.
I said, "Mom, I got accepted
to law school."
And she said, "Another one of your
harebrained schemes!"
There's things in that show
that I literally picked them,
you know, visiting my mother.
She was living in a senior housing.
- Who is it?
- It's me, Ma.
The f*cking lady next door
kept running the water.
There it is again.
Drove my mother insane.
That's enough water.
How much water does she need?
She runs the water all day.
Water, water, water!
I'm living next door to Gunga Din!
It's not concocted.
It's all based on stuff that's,
you know, our real life.
And it all started with David
and his life,
but we recognized similar problems
and similar things that make us laugh
or make us frustrated and stuff.
And if it fit with David
and it fit with Tony Soprano,
that was part of the show.
When I was about eight or nine,
we used to go down to the shore
in Belmar, New Jersey.
And we were going out
somewhere at night,
going down the stairs,
and my father fell
and ripped his pants.
My mother went crazy laughing.
That came from that.
Most people didn't understand.
"What's she laughing at?
That's so horrible."
And Nancy said to my wife Denise,
first season, she said,
"I trust that this creature
I'm portraying is deceased?"
I say what your mother has,
at the very least,
is what we call borderline
personality disorder.
These people's internal phobias
are the only things
that exist to them.
The real world, real people
are peripheral.
These people have no love
or compassion.
In the original feature script
and also in the last episode
of season one,
Melfi was going to tell him,
"It's your mother
who's out to k*ll you."
You twisted, f*cking b*tch.
That's my mother we're talking about.
And he goes up to
the retirement center,
and he grabs a pillow,
and he smothers her to death.
That's what it was in the movie,
and that's what it was
going to be in the show.
But Nancy, she had lung cancer
and emphysema.
As the end was coming,
she said, "David, I just
just keep me working."
Your mom's had a stroke.
So that was changing the whole story.
Stroke?
The news on TV yesterday,
it really upset her.
Not that it's any of my business.
Anyhow, it just happened.
The EMTs are
I'm going to live
a nice, long, happy life.
Which is more than I can say for you.
- That's enough!
- Yeah?
Keep her moving, keep moving.
I tried to do the right thing,
you try to have me whacked?
She doesn't understand you.
She's smiling!
Look at the look on her face!
She's smiling!
Get off me!
Yeah. So we kept her working.
I wasn't always perfect,
but I always tried to do
the best I could.
And I know you didn't, any of you,
didn't like it when I tried
to tell you what to do.
Babies are like animals.
They're no different than dogs.
Somebody has to teach them
right from wrong.
But she didn't live that long.
She was wonderful.
People loved Livia.
They just got such a kick out of her.
I don't know how many thousands
of times I heard,
"That's just like my grandmother!"
"That's just like my aunt!"
And yet my mother,
who it was patterned after,
was, I thought,
completely out there by herself
in some other universe.
I knew people had mother issues.
I didn't think I was alone
on the reservation,
but I really did think my mother
was out in some other universe.
It's really about her fears
and terrors and anxieties.
But what I didn't understand then,
the thing I learned
many, many years later,
I was living out in California.
I was talking to my mother
on the phone.
This was toward the end of her life.
We were talking about my grandfather.
She said, "It's like Aunt Louise,
he didn't mean to hurt her."
I said, "What do you mean?"
She said, "Well, yes, he kicked her
and he didn't mean to."
I said, "What do you mean
he kicked her?"
She said, "Well, yes,
he kicked her in the vag*na."
I said, "What?"
She said, "Yeah,
he kicked her in the vag*na."
I said, "What was going on?"
"Oh, I don't know.
She was getting married the next day.
And he was just upset."
I just thought,
this is things started
to make sense to me.
Because I remember
my mother screaming
in a nightmare saying,
"Papa, put your pants back on!
Don't do
Papa, put your pants back on!"
So I have no proof,
but he was a bad guy
and so was my father's father.
Some of these guys
from Southern Italy
Wow.
I came here to Hollywood
to make movies,
and I got sidetracked into TV
and to becoming a writer,
basically because of what I would say
were my own weaknesses.
One, I became scared to direct,
and also there was money involved.
But then the second year of the show,
my feature agent took me out
to lunch and he said,
"I want to impress upon you
that you are a brand now.
And why I'm saying this
to you because
now you can get to do
all those movies you want."
Many people probably would have quit
then and there, right?
And maybe I should have.
But I just loved doing
The Sopranos so much
that I stuck with it.
They talk about
universe-building all the time.
The more I did The Sopranos,
the less I could watch anything else.
It wouldn't make sense to me.
It wasn't in the universe
where I was existing.
Not only those characters,
I was living there.
It's all about the characters.
What's going on?
I mean, the story comes out
of those characters
and in that little universe.
Over and over again,
every character
made a deal with the devil.
What I said, it's about
money and death, right?
Why do we have to get rid
of the body?
With the f*cking questions now?
Everybody made a deal with the devil.
There was this issue
of an outstanding loan.
Can I stop you for a second?
Melfi made a deal with the devil.
I don't know where
this story is going.
But there are a few
ethical ground rules
we should quickly get out of the way.
What you tell me here falls under
doctor-patient confidentiality,
except, if I was
if I was to hear, let's say,
a m*rder was to take place.
Not that I'm saying it would, but if.
If a patient comes to me
and tells me a story
where someone's going to get hurt,
I'm supposed to go
to the authorities.
Would I have to go to the police?
Technically.
Technically.
I don't know what happened
with this fellow.
I'm I'm just saying.
Isn't that a deal with the devil?
Here.
He's a good man, a good father.
You tell me
he's a depressed criminal,
prone to anger,
serially unfaithful.
Is that your definition
of a good man?
Carmela, she was married
to the devil.
She married him
and stayed married to him.
You can leave now or stay
and hear what I have to say.
You must trust your initial impulse
and consider leaving him.
You'll never be able to
feel good about yourself.
You'll never be able to quell
the feelings of guilt and shame
that you talked about
as long as you're his accomplice.
Leave him.
Take only the children,
what's left of them, and go.
My priest said I should try
and work with him,
help him to be a better man.
How's that going?
She was told, "Take your kids
and leave now."
That old psychiatrist,
that was the only person
that ever spoke the truth about it
in the whole show.
Tony.
I'm not charging you
because I won't take blood money.
Happy birthday.
You can't either.
One thing you can never say,
that you haven't been told.
You're living off of his blood money.
Tony, what did you do?
Take your children now and leave.
Oh my God.
We're having a good week.
She didn't do it.
Oh my God! What a car!
It's a very interesting thing,
the level of denial
that someone like her
would have to live with.
Or the stories she tells herself
in order to make that okay.
I don't think there was
anything going on
she didn't know about,
at least peripherally.
If Tony's the devil,
is there a deal with the devil?
He obviously made
his deal with the devil.
You know, he's really
the devil's representative,
however you want to put it.
But he wasn't happy
with his deal, was he?
See, that's what I often felt.
People said, "Oh, he should
have been punished."
And my response always:
"He was punished every day, this guy.
You didn't see him be miserable
for all these years?"
It's a man in struggle.
He doesn't have a religion.
He doesn't believe in the government.
Mr. Soprano was kind enough
to come with us.
He doesn't believe in anything
except his code of honor.
I'm sure Agent Harris explained
that there's something
we'd like you to hear.
And his code of honor
is all going to sh*t.
What are you talking about, meetings?
With who, for Christ's sake, Livia?
All of them.
Raymond.
Larry.
Three of my capos have
their mothers in his place?
If this is true, Livia,
you know what I
I mean, I'm the boss,
for Christ's sake.
If I don't act, blood or no
I have to.
Dead now, m*therf*cker.
So he has nothing left
and he's looking around
and he doesn't
It was that that searching
that I think a lot of America does
half the time.
You can go buy things,
you can do whatever,
but it was that he had
no center left.
He's a guy who always tries to
do the right thing in his mind,
which ends up screwing up
everybody's life, pretty much.
He's always trying to do
the right thing
and it's never really
the right thing.
Like blowing up his friend's
restaurant
to stop a hit from being done there.
He thinks it's the right thing,
instead it reverberates down the path
and screws up everybody's life.
The f*ck are you doing?
Look me in the eye.
Tell me you didn't lay a finger
on my place.
I think the show got deeper
as it went on.
I didn't burn down your restaurant.
I think Jim was a lot of
the reason for that.
I swear on my mother.
Jimmy had magic,
and I think that magic kind of
permeated in concentric circles
out to everybody else,
the crew, the directors,
the writers, the actors.
Very quiet.
It was always great,
from the beginning to the very end.
Background! Action!
It was like playing,
it always felt like playing with him,
the way little kids play.
Like, "You be the mommy
and I'll be the daddy."
It was as easy and carefree as that.
22, take eight. Pick up eight mark.
Action!
Go ahead.
Tell me again I sound like your wife.
Go ahead.
He would just, you know, f*ck around.
He would throw kisses at me
and take his clothes off.
I mean, he was just a lunatic.
- Okay.
- Wait a minute. Hold on.
Go ahead. Tell me again
I sound like your wife.
He was great to that crew.
Made them laugh.
And he gave each of
the cast members $30,000.
You mean after his big negotiation
where he held out and HBO paid him
a million dollars an episode?
Yeah.
When Jim got the deal,
none of us even knew
it was on the table.
We didn't know to negotiate.
I think he felt terrible about that.
So he called us all
into his trailer one by one
and gave everybody a check
for $30,000.
What?
I never got $30,000.
All right.
This is where
I turn the camera on you.
No, I don't know anything about that.
He gave money to cast members?
Yeah, that makes
That sounds like him.
He was a very good-hearted, kind man.
Looking out for his friends.
He was a generous person.
I think he felt HBO had f*cked them.
And he wanted to do something
to make up for it, to help.
I also think that there was
maybe a shred of regret
for the days he didn't
show up for work.
Everybody was ready
Where's Jim?
Look, we all partied
and we had a great f*cking time.
And maybe there were
some mornings where it just
was a little harder to get out
of bed for all of us.
It wasn't just Jim.
What started to happen was,
aside from the money that it cost,
there's the worry about, you know,
what's happening to him.
And then ultimately, he had to agree
that we could dock him
$100,000 a day for every day
he didn't show up.
All right, this is a pick-up.
I think what Jim didn't know
or expect
is just how difficult it is to be
the lead of a series.
I had no clue.
I walked in with a big smile
on my face
and I got punched right in the nose
and I said,
"I got to figure out some way
to do this."
I had no clue how to prepare for it.
You'll start Monday morning,
usually 5:30, 6:00, even earlier.
It'll go to you go 14 hours.
And because the actors have
a 12-hour turnaround,
you go 8:00 and you start
at 8:00 the next day,
then you work till 10:00,
then you start 10:00 the next day,
you'll work till 12:00.
Then you're going to come home
and you've got to memorize
seven, eight pages,
four or five scenes for the next day.
And they can work you later
on a Friday night.
So Friday you're usually there
till 2:00, 3:00 in the morning.
Sometimes we've seen
the sun come up on Saturday,
and then Monday morning,
you start all over again.
He probably quit the show
every other day, I would say.
You know, maybe every day.
But giving him
Every other day,
we would go to a bar and, you know
We would have
the exact same conversation.
We would get drunk, you know,
say, "I'm done.
I can't, I'm not going back."
And I would say, "Okay,
you got a hundred people
depending on you here."
You know? And he's like,
"Ah yeah, yeah. Okay."
You know.
So usually he would come back.
But then a few times,
he disappeared for a few days.
You know, it just got to him.
And action.
I'm going to tell you something
you're not going to like.
f*ck.
Just cut it.
This f*cking scene.
He felt that he had to go to places,
he said, that were
destructive to him.
You know what?
- And painful for him.
- You're f*cking crazy.
All I ever asked for was kindness.
Come here.
You listen to me
and you listen to me good.
No more calls, no more nothing.
You see me, you cross the street.
You're a dangerous f*ck
and I don't want you in my life.
No, don't. Don't go!
I'll call your wife!
What'd you say?
I'll go to Columbia.
I'll tell your daughter about us.
Some of the things I'll use
to get angry
are lack of sleep
will piss you off to no end.
Sleep two, three hours a night
for two nights
before you have a violent scene,
every single thing that anyone does
will piss you off.
Now you listen to me.
You go near my wife or my family,
and I'll f*cking k*ll you.
You understand me?
I'll f*cking k*ll you.
k*ll me. k*ll me, you c*cksucker.
I'll do a lot of weird things.
Bang my head on things.
You do whatever you need to do.
Put a rock in your shoe,
a very pointy rock.
Walk around with that all day.
I mean, it's silly, but it works.
You're mad.
And slowly, things become
more accessible to you.
But I find I need to be alone.
I'm not the type that's going to be
chatting a lot
before I have to do something.
I'll drink six cups of coffee.
I don't recommend that
to anybody, but
And then you're mad.
I'll try anything
to get where I have to go.
As long as it's not
gonna hurt anybody.
f*cking g*dd*mn! f*cking b*tch!
g*dd*mn it, Tony!
He would get himself ready
for a scene
by punching the inside
of the car so much
his knuckles would be bruised.
He'd have to do these
things to himself.
When Jim k*lled the snitch,
he really hurt his hands.
The rope or whatever it was.
He was incredibly invested
in making that character believable,
and unless you're really diligent,
you can end up taking your work home.
As an actor, that's not
always a great idea.
So yeah, I think it may have
taken a toll on him.
When you said to me,
"He said it was difficult for him,"
and I said, "That's what he said."
Right.
To a certain extent,
I'm being a wiseass
because obviously there was other
things going on in his life also.
And he had some problems
which are now well-known
that were continuing to go on.
How do you recover
from a sh**t like that?
You drink.
I don't know.
We did an intervention with him
at my apartment in New York,
and that was to try to get him to go
to a facility, you know, for rehab.
And we had had a lot
of friction by that point.
And the ruse was
I was inviting Jimmy over
so we could talk things through
and clear the air.
And then he came up, everybody,
we had the rehearsal
the day before or whatever.
His sister, everybody were there,
and he walked in,
he saw everybody sitting there,
and he went, "Oh, f*ck this."
And he walked out
and everybody went, "Jimmy."
And he turned to me
and he went, "Fire me."
And he left.
Jim had, you know, like all of us,
his own things to work out.
And his life changed dramatically
in the course of that show.
Relax, man.
Get the f*ck away from me.
You understand me?
Yeah. Just relax.
I'm gonna break your f*cking face.
He went from being
a relatively unknown actor
to being a huge star,
extremely recognizable,
and it was a little strange for him,
that kind of eradication of privacy.
He was really in the spotlight
wherever he went.
He didn't blend into the crowd.
Stop it. My kid's with me.
And he was very different
than Tony Soprano.
He was very laid back.
You know, he wore Birkenstocks
and liked Green Day and AC/DC.
- What kind of puppy?
- He's a Chihuahua Pomeranian.
What's funny is that a lot of fans
look at Tony Soprano
as kind of a role model,
which is very scary in a lot of ways.
So maybe that, you know,
I mean, he probably felt that.
People thinking he's Tony Soprano
and he's not.
He's really a good guy
and really complicated.
You might say,
and I'm not sure about this,
maybe there was more Tony there
than he wanted to admit.
That it was too easy for him.
Can I tell you something, Tony?
Don't pretend like I got a choice.
The last year,
I have been dreaming,
and fantasizing,
and in love with Furio.
He talked to you! Oh, poor you!
He made me feel like I mattered!
You asked me the other day,
what Irina's cousin has
that you don't have.
And I thought about it because
it's a good f*cking question.
And she's sexy enough,
even with the one pin gone,
but that's not it.
I could converse with her
'cause she had something to say!
I am here!
I have things to say!
Besides "Bring the f*cking
chairs down"
and "Did you sign the living trust?"
She's a grown f*cking woman
who's been kicked around!
And she's been on her own
and she's had to fight!
And struggle!
Unlike me, is that it?
Who the f*ck wanted it like this?
Who the f*ck pissed and moaned
at just the idea
of me with a f*cking
real estate license?
Free to sit back for 20 f*cking years
and fiddle with the air conditioning,
and f*cking b*tch and complain
and f*cking
b*tch, b*tch, b*tch to me!
To your priest! f*ck it!
And people say,
"Oh, the show got darker." Well
he got darker.
I am Resurrection.
And I am Life, says the Lord.
Whoever has faith in me
shall have life,
even though he died
And everyone who has life
and has committed himself
to me in faith,
shall not die forever.
Jim, if heaven exists,
what would you like to hear God say
when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
Take over for a while.
I'll be right back.
No, no, no.
That's it.
You dare not change it.
It's too good.
Think of the possibilities.
This is years after the show ended.
His agent called me.
And she said
She was, I don't mean blunt,
she was just very
straightforward about it.
Were you surprised?
No.
Dear Jimmy,
your family asked me
to speak at your service,
and I am so honored and touched.
I tried to write
a traditional eulogy,
but it came out like bad TV.
So I'm writing you this letter,
but it is being done
to and for an audience,
so we'll give the funny
opening a try.
One day we were on the set
sh**ting a scene,
and it said, "Tony opens the door
angrily and he closes it,
then he starts to speak."
The cameras rolled and
you opened the refrigerator door,
and you slammed it really hard,
and you kept slamming it
and slamming it
and you went apeshit
on that refrigerator.
And so we finally had to call cut.
And I remember you saying,
"Ah, this role,
the places it takes me to
and the things I have to do,
it's so dark."
And I remember saying,
"Did I tell you to destroy
the refrigerator?
Did it say anywhere in the script,
'Tony destroys the refrigerator'?
It says, 'Tony angrily shuts
the refrigerator door.'
That's what it says.
You destroyed the refrigerator."
Another memory image of you
that comes to mind is,
we were sh**ting in that
really hot summer
in humid New Jersey heat.
And you were sitting in
an aluminum beach chair
with a wet handkerchief on your head.
And I was filled with love.
And I knew then
that I was in the right place.
Because
I said, "Wow, I haven't seen
that done
since my father used to do it
and my Italian uncles used to do it
and my Italian grandfather
used to do it
it in this same hot sun
in New Jersey."
And I was so proud of our heritage.
It made me so proud of our heritage
to see you do that.
I really feel that,
though I'm older than you,
that, and always felt,
that we are brothers.
Now, to talk about a third guy
between us,
there was you and me
and this third guy.
People always say, "Tony Soprano,
why did we love him so much
when he was such a prick?"
And my theory was,
is they saw the little boy.
They felt and they loved
the little boy.
And they sensed his love and hurt.
And you brought all of that to it.
Cut it.
Let's go again.
Working with Jim as Tony,
when you were writing,
did you see elements
of yourself in Tony?
Toward the end, I began to.
I was beginning to see that
we had merged in some way,
some strange way.
There were two Davids.
He was so f*cking funny
when he wanted to be.
He was so, so great
when he wanted to be.
But this person that knowingly
made you feel like
you had some hand in the cause
of his dour state or whatever,
or his unhappy
or you had to do something
to make him happy or whatever,
that wasn't going to happen.
The third season comes along,
and I didn't go back, you know?
I wasn't happy.
A large part of what happened to me
is that it became toxic.
We didn't leave that room
except to go on the set,
which was its own exhausting,
you know, horror.
You know, just a lot of work,
just have to be there
and not really have a role
that your mind could
You know, at the end,
my mind was not on it.
And he knew that. And he was mad.
I made a couple of bad mistakes.
I did.
You know, when he fired me,
we were in that, it was so awful.
And he
Everything that David
accused me of I did.
I interrupted him during
conversations with other people.
That was one thing I did.
I did, like, a few bad things.
And that was what
that ultimately was what it was
with me and him.
Because you had to behave yourself.
You had to behave.
He's a very coded person.
He has a code of cool and behavior
and what is acceptable
and what is not.
And I think that I,
you know, I probably
morphed into that mother category
of, you know, black-holedness
for him, you know.
In the writers' room,
it's collaborative.
But it's still your vision.
Did that cause tension?
Let's put it this way,
I used to sometimes get very angry
because no one was
coming up with anything.
And then, since those days,
I've thought,
"Yeah, maybe that's because
you said no to everything.
So they stopped."
This attitude of yours,
it's a lot of what's made you
an effective leader.
But we all got flaws, even you.
Seven deadly sins,
and yours is pride.
David, look, you know,
he's very uncompromising,
but there has to be a part of you
that is ruthless and merciless
when it comes to protecting the art.
I think that's true
with every art form.
All due respect,
you got no f*cking idea
what it's like to be number one.
Every decision you make
affects every facet
of every other f*cking thing.
It's too much to deal with, almost.
And in the end,
you're completely alone with it all.
There was an enormous amount
of pressure on him
because now you're
you set the bar really high
and you gotta surpass it
every year, you know?
You got to make it better.
Not just satisfy the audience,
but make it better,
more interesting, stranger.
Think about the risks he took.
You know, his whimsical nature,
that wonder.
"And what if we just do this?"
Think I want to come home.
There are some
non-negotiable conditions.
Like what?
You can't have your horse in here.
- Why not?
- Are you kidding me?
The smell and sh*t
all over the place?
I'll clean up after her.
You always say that.
It really was just from this guy's
heart and imagination.
And we knew if you wanted
to even change a word
of your dialogue, they're like,
"We got to call the Master Cylinder,"
- which is what we referred to him as.
- The Master Cylinder?
The Master Cylinder
up in the tower somewhere.
And we'd wait to get the word back,
"He said that's all right"
or "No, keep it as it is."
But 'cause it mattered to him
and it was his it was his project.
You know, we were there
to serve his project.
Everybody, eyes right here.
That's what we're hired to do.
Just hug me.
The person who set
the highest standards was David.
And it did torment him.
And he was never satisfied
with the work.
He was one of those guys that just
"David, enjoy it."
Come on, buddy.
David, congrats, man.
- How are you? Thank you.
- Good.
It's good to see you too.
Every couple of decades or so,
somebody comes along
and changes the game.
The nice thing about being
from New Jersey
is they never see us coming.
Uncompromising, unrelenting,
innovative, idealistic,
romantic to a fault,
and, yes, a cynical,
self-destructive contrarian.
In other words, my kind of guy.
Change my meat to Black Forest.
f*cking dreams, Jesus Christ.
I want to talk to you about dreams.
It's all right.
Dreams and movies are so close,
that you can go from right here
in this room
Bam! To, you know, anywhere.
Right. Free association.
Yeah.
Come on, Ton.
Sooner or later,
you got to face facts.
- I don't want to hear it.
- Well, you're gonna hear it.
I had dreams for a long time
I had m*rder*d someone.
And the weight of it got to me
too late in the game.
And I was saying to myself
in the dream,
"What did you do that for?
You've thrown everything away.
You're finished.
The hell did you do that for?"
And now the news
You want to take it for a test drive?
The fun thing about dreams
in The Sopranos is that
when you've got a character
who's supposed to be,
you know, in control,
but dreams, you're never in control.
No, never.
In the Kevin Finnerty dream sequence,
what was Tony trying to get at?
What the hell?
This isn't my wallet.
Oh, no.
He was saying, "Who am I
and where am I going?"
And he was terrified.
Tony's fatal flaw as a mobster
is that he had a conscience.
Listen, we're just impressed
to be in the presence of a man
whose sales team snatched
the brass ring
12 consecutive quarters.
I mean, it's not such a big deal.
There's always a faster g*n.
As David even said,
Tony in another life
would be a guy
who sells lawn furniture
on the Garden State Parkway.
And Kevin Finnerty,
that was the alternate version
of who Tony was.
I came here because
I thought you could help me
reach Finnerty.
Now, I have his wallet.
I have his briefcase,
but I'm not him.
One day we will all die,
and then we'll be the same
as that tree.
No me, no you.
At his core, he understands
right from wrong.
And again,
you're in the wrong business
if you're going to be worrying
about stuff like that
because you're going to be
doing a lot of wrong.
I had f*cked-up dreams last night.
Fever dreams.
I shot this guy.
He's a friend of mine.
So, you know, it's interesting
that Tony,
he had the outlet in therapy.
I was I was filled with
- Anger.
- Yeah, right. Anger.
You know everything.
You've never dealt with your anger.
And look at the cost.
You are the biggest threat
to yourself.
But that's what being
a human being is.
But some people are more
self-destructive than others.
You just wash it down like a pill.
And then peyote, you know,
later on in the show.
Which was another way of him
sort of exploring the bigger picture.
I get it.
I get it!
At the beginning of every episode,
we'd all sit around a table
and read through the script together.
But we'd all walk in
kind of like, "Are you all right?"
Kind of like,
"Is this your last episode?"
It's like, you never really knew
who was going to be around
for the next couple of episodes.
It was hysterical.
And we'd all be like,
"Hey, no, I'm good."
We were all scared of it.
Yeah, the guys were like,
"Who's gonna get it next?"
And the ritual was if David
invited you for lunch or dinner,
you were f*cked.
The phone call
from the Master Cylinder.
But, you know, he's the boss.
The part of you that
you were seeing in Tony,
was the boss part?
The idea that you're
Well, I thought that
You f*cking
when someone had to die
on the show,
I would have to tell the actor.
And it was hard for me.
Jesus Christ.
People were really
broken up about it.
I got to sit down.
I feel like I can't stand.
Some would kind of beg, almost.
- Is that okay, Tony?
- 'Cause it's their job.
It's their livelihood.
Vincent Pastore, Big p*ssy.
We fought for him.
"Don't k*ll him.
Don't k*ll him, David.
Give him another season."
Well, you know what?
This is a mob show.
People gotta go.
Oh, f*ck.
Adriana.
And I tried to distance myself
with all of it.
What about her?
Feds.
By thinking the way he was thinking.
Gotta go.
Jesus f*cking Christ.
Once we made the decision
that Adriana was going to start
cooperating with the feds,
the writing was on the wall.
At some point, this was not
going to end well for Adriana.
I'm going to take care of it.
David sat me down on set
and he said, "I'm going to
sh**t this two ways.
I'm going to sh**t it
where you get away,
and I'm going to sh**t
it where they k*ll you,
and no one's going to know
how it ends until it airs.
Because we have confidentiality
issues on the set,
nobody can know
what's really going on."
And I said,
"But I'm going to be dead.
And I'm not going to be on
the show anymore."
And he was like
And I took another job
because I didn't know,
and I was scared,
and he was f*cking pissed
because now that's going to get out.
But I had to take that job.
I thought I'd never work again.
I knew that playing Adriana
for five seasons
and being known for that,
that that was going to be my life.
I knew I was going to be
stereotyped forever.
So I was like, I better just take
advantage of this right now.
- Hello?
- Yeah. It's me.
Jesus, I don't even know
how to say this.
It's Christopher.
He tried to commit suicide.
Oh my God, is he all right?
He's fine.
He was up by Ramapo.
Apparently, he took some pills,
and this trooper found him
in a bathroom at this diner,
and they brought him to the hospital.
Anyway, I'm on my way up there now
and I'm going to send Sil by
to pick you up then, okay?
Jesus Christ.
As sad as I was to go in the end,
I was ready.
I knew that that was
that that's how it needed to be.
It was very difficult because
it's the characters and the actors.
It wasn't only Adriana.
It was Drea de Matteo.
David did not want to see her
get shot because he loved her.
Why are you crying?
He's going to be fine.
I couldn't bear to see
Adriana get shot.
I couldn't have watched that.
So we broke the style of the show.
Any other victim on that show,
you saw him get hit.
We started talking about it like,
how should we do this?
If it's not going to happen
on camera naturally,
then we have to find
a poetic transition.
She's not wild and begging,
so I think she's more
- We're rolling, guys.
- This, you know?
Action!
That was, by far, the hardest scene
that I've ever played.
And of course, she's so great,
she was like,
"Don't take it easy on me.
You know?
It's obviously going
to be my last scene, you know?
Let's make it good, right?"
I was like, "Stevie, we've got
to f*cking go.
I'm a c**t. You're a mafioso.
Grab me by my hair
and let's f*cking go."
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
- Come on.
- No! Please!
Where you f*cking going?
Come on!
- f*cking c**t.
- No! Please!
No!
No!
When I wrote the scene,
it is scripted that the camera
just drifts into the sky.
And it was going to connect to
the camera drifting down
to find Tony and Carmela
in another scene.
On purpose, the last scene
of that show,
Tony and Carmela are in the woods,
and she's talking about buying
this piece of property.
Yeah, it's a gorgeous piece of land.
And with this view?
Well worth 600,000.
The surveyor's coming on Tuesday.
And he's, like, thinking only
about Adriana.
Some of these things get me choked up
when I think about that character
getting it like that.
And it was also the end
of Drea de Matteo.
We wouldn't have Drea anymore.
- You alright?
- Yeah. Me? Yeah.
Absolutely.
At what point did you start
thinking about ending the show?
There were seven seasons,
but they called it 6A and 6B,
which is how HBO got out of
giving the actors raises.
If they had called it season seven,
they would have been
contractually entitled to a raise.
Cut.
Two years before that,
Chris Albrecht said to me,
"You better start thinking about
how you want to end this show."
And I had never thought about it.
Because ending?
When you cancel the show.
I don't know.
That's what happens to
all television shows, isn't it?
They finally get canceled.
But this was a different thing.
You directed the first episode,
and then you didn't direct any others
while you were writing and producing.
But then you came back
and directed the last episode.
Yeah. With Alik, same DP.
By then we've both evolved.
I mean, ten years has passed.
- Yeah, long time.
- Yeah.
So I think what we did
is in the last episode,
we talked a lot about 2001,
about point of view
that gets interrupted
by the character entering
into the point of view.
The astronaut begins to see himself.
Got the space suit on.
And he comes into himself
in a mirror.
And he turns and there he is
without the spacesuit on.
And then finally, he's eating dinner,
just all by himself
and getting older.
He looks behind
and he sees himself in the bed
as an old man.
This simple technique,
it's always mesmerized me, that.
And for that episode,
Tony, all the way through,
everyone he goes to see,
he walks into his own POV.
It made me think of time
and I guess approaching death.
Sir.
Excuse me.
Or approaching something.
There's something mystical about it.
For the last scene,
the first idea that I carried
for a long time
was that Tony was going to
go back into Manhattan,
through the Lincoln Tunnel
for a meeting,
and that he was going to meet
his demise there.
I didn't know that he was
going to meet his demise,
but it didn't look good.
I guess that's what
was going to happen.
If you were in the audience,
you'd think,
"I don't think this is going to
work out well for him."
But you would never know.
And then I was driving down
Ocean Boulevard here,
and I saw this diner, and I thought,
"Maybe the ending should take place
in a place they go to eat
all the time."
- Quiet, please.
- Quiet.
And when I said,
"So, I'm thinking about
'Don't Stop Believing,'"
everybody went, "Oh, f*ck.
Are you f*cking kidding?
The last of the whole
g*dd*mn series?"
Everybody was up in arms.
And I said, "Well, you just
decided it for me."
Hey.
But it wasn't just to be contrary.
What looks good tonight?
I don't know.
The more I was working with it,
I started to hear
one of the lyrics in that song:
"The movie never ends.
It goes on and on and on and on."
I thought, "Wow."
The whole episode,
there's a circularity.
It feels like you're returning
to episode one.
Get back.
The exploding Weber,
the exploding car.
If you don't like that ramp,
I'll build you another one.
Maybe it's the wood.
I was struck by the circularity.
Like the first episode, last episode.
Hey, kids! Come here.
There's a vibe of, kind of,
the patterns of life
that you keep seeing happening
over and over and over again.
You know, sometimes
life is good.
Life is often good.
And also the diner scene,
a lot of the conversation is
"remember when."
Right. Yeah.
To my family.
In the first season, Tony had said
You remember the little moments
like this.
That were good.
So buck up.
And A.J. brings that back up to him.
Focus on the good times.
Don't be sarcastic.
Isn't that what you said one time?
Try to remember the times
that were good?
- I did?
- Yeah.
Well, it's true, I guess.
That scene, you know, builds
on itself like a pyramid structure
where we just build, build, build.
What you're watching
is a lot of sh*t going on.
She's trying to park her car.
There are a lot of people,
characters,
the guy in the Members Only jacket.
Other possible threats
are walking in.
There's tension building
in that diner scene.
We're expecting something.
I went ahead and ordered
some for the table.
And then it goes to black.
It was so sudden and strange.
Really took everybody by surprise.
I started calling everybody
and I'm like,
"Yo, did my TV just go out?"
I was with Jim and Jim said,
"That's it?
That's it?" He was
He couldn't believe it.
- Oh, so Jim didn't know?
- Nope.
Was he pissed?
I think he was in shock
like everybody else.
It was just like
that's it.
That's the end of the story.
And I'm thinking to myself,
"This is David.
This is f*cking David.
This is exactly how he wanted
to end the show.
He doesn't want anyone to know
what's going on right now."
I think what I was thinking about was
the universe goes on and on.
You may not go on and on,
but the universe is
going to go on and on.
The movie is going to keep going.
There is a resolution
of irresolution, right?
Which opens up a very interesting
poetic point of open ending.
Countless people have said to me,
"All right, I know you know.
What really happened?"
Vanity Fair did an article like
ten years after Sopranos.
And they came to me
and they said, you know,
"What's the ending?
What was the real ending?"
You know, I said, "Okay, all right,
once and for all, what happened
at the end was,
the director yelled cut
and the actors went home."
What could it have been?
Tony getting k*lled?
The family getting wiped out?
And then everyone goes, "Yeah."
You know, big resolution
and impact means nothing
because 20 minutes later
you forget the whole show.
But if you build philosophical end,
open end,
which is what it has become,
this show is going to live forever.
Nobody's going to figure it out.
The ending is whatever
you want it to be.
He died an old man
Somebody came out of the bathroom
and shot him in the head
Everyone stands around
the water cooler one last time
and just says, "I can't f*cking
believe what I just watched."
"What happened?"
What do you have left with?
You have left with
something to resolve.
Okay. And how are you
going to resolve it?
By watching the show again.
When you were done, were you done?
Had you made peace with that?
Were you sad? Were you
Wanted to do something else?
I wanted to
I wanted to get down to what
I had always wanted to do,
which was make a f*cking movie.
And
It's for sure I had done
enough Sopranos,
but it was over. It just felt right.
It was over.
All right, guys, here we go.
Here, all here.
As time went on, I missed the people.
It really was like a family.
And I missed the problem-solving.
There's writing,
and then there's, like,
what color hat should he have on?
A red hat.
Well, he can't have a red hat
because she's got a red hat.
We can't sh**t there because
we can see the Shell sign.
Or during the editing process.
Well, why black?
Why? Why cut to black?
There was that scene
between Meadow and A.J.
"Stopping by Woods
on a Snowy Evening."
Oh my God, I'm so glad I'm not
in high school anymore.
- You read this?
- This is a long time back.
- He was doing his homework.
- What does it mean?
I have to turn in a close read
by tomorrow.
What does it mean?
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
and miles to go before I sleep"?
"Woods on a Snowy Evening,"
I think is the name of the poem.
- Oh, the Robert Frost?
- Robert Frost poem.
And she says
What's covering the field?
- Snow.
- Yay!
And what does snow symbolize?
Christmas?
Hello.
Cold?
Endless white, endless nothing?
- I don't know.
- Death.
I thought black was death.
"I thought black meant death."
So that was in my head also.
But, see, now people will say,
"See, he admitted Tony died."
The truth is
Welcome to our World! Where we serve you cookies to ensure you get the best viewing experience on our site.
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
01x02 - Part 2
Watch/Buy Amazon
Two-part documentary film which explores the life of David Chase and his role as the creator of The Sopranos.
Two-part documentary film which explores the life of David Chase and his role as the creator of The Sopranos.