- 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 ten to 25,000.
This was after the first season.
The line was all the way out to the freeway.
And, uh, 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 here.
I am right for this part on The Sopranos.
You can't get more Italian than this.
They don't make 'em like that.
My friend and I, we got all dressed up
and, like, uh,
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, it's over, 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, then?
You were supposed to quit smoking and didn't.
Nicotine's an addictive substance!
What's wrong with you? 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,
and 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 to yourself, "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.
You know, 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, motherfucker!
This absurdity, which was partly him.
Please!
Fuckin' 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 'cause he would go to tanning booths.
Like that, you know, he's got that reflector thing
getting tanned? Like that was really Tony.
Tony always had a tan.
I think my character acts like me, personally.
But, uh, don't-don't tell nobody.
You realize by the time Caitlin'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.
- Oh! What are you doing? - Nothing.
Oh!
And cut! Very nice. Check it.
Tony Sirico was very fastidious
and very, you know, 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,
and he would read his lines,
he would comb his hair, spray the spray in the air,
and then the mist would settle,
and then he'd do it a few times
till it was shellacked and ready to go.
The fuck you doing?
You think we're digging a hole?
So we're doing "Pine Barrens" episode.
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 kill a guy,
they took him into the woods, the guy escaped,
and then they got lost in the woods.
Wait a minute.
We walked in a circle.
How's that fucking 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.
Fucking cunt!
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."
"Tony, come on. The whole point of this
is that, you know, you're... Paulie's all fucked up."
So he said, "All right."
And so he just like... I said, "Come on. Tony."
And he went, "All right, you fuck."
And 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.
Mayonnaise!
As the show got more complicated,
Denise and I, we bought a house in France,
and 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 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 and 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-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 fuck 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-and parents dying and a lot--
you know, the-the-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-You can depend on me.
Trust me.
I told them a story about
a visit to a psychic I had,
and that became a story
where Paulie visits a psychic.
Charles Pagano.
How the fuck 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 fuck 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.
This is the building that 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 fuck 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, Bobby. 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 fuck out of here before I shove
your quotations book up your fat fucking ass.
...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.
I mean, 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.
I mean, we said things that nowadays,
you know, would be frowned upon.
We could have been mistaken for being racist, 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
'cause I wanted to give my character juicy stuff to do.
It was really 'cause I really loved all the characters.
I just fell in love with all of them.
You know, 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,
and 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, come back, he's looking at it,
he goes, "This is fucking 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 voice it.
Everything else, we've seen before.
It's not good."
And 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's 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,
"Oh, we gotta show this gory thing."
It was the opposite.
I'll give you all my money!
No!
- No! No! - Shut up! Shut up.
- No, come on! - Get the panties off.
No, stop it!
Please! No!
- No! - You fucking bitch!
No! No!
Stop it!
Melfi's rape 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 fuck they did,
those stupid idiots.
Did they just let him out until the trial?
Because I can identify him.
It's a legal thing.
- They have to let him skip. - That's impossible.
I told you everything he told me.
That employee of the month cocksucker
is back on the street, and who's gonna stop him?
You?
Who could I sic on that son of a bitch
to tear him to shreds?
What's the matter?
Hey, hey, hey. Come on.
What'd 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-a sense of-of right,
a-a sense of reason.
Um...
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 wanna 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 rape,
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 killed.
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, yeah, that's true until you owe them money,
and then they're not funny anymore.
And then they're-- so, every once in a while
remind people, this is who Tony Soprano really is.
You finished?
Thank you, T.
‘Cause that sugarless motherfucker,
it's the last fucking drink you're ever gonna have.
Oh! Swear to God! Mommy! Mommy, please, Tony.
I said to the writers,
look, he's a killer...
He's a philanderer. He's a motherfucker.
♪ I'm a fool to do your dirty work... ♪
He's a fool, in many ways.
Maybe it sounds fucking crazy to you.
But Tony's always got to be the smartest guy in the room.
Nothing sounds crazy anymore, 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.
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 fucking attacks.
It was so good for months.
But he couldn't afford to be collapsing
in front of his crew, you know.
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, and 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.
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..."
"Oh, 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. - 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 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 balls.
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
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--
You're making me out to be some fucking 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 fuck? The good jewelry?
She always admired it.
They're a lot alike.
That's where the conflict comes from.
You gave a fucking cousin
Cartier dinner rings,
and you give me a vibrating chair?
He tries 'cause 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 gonna 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 kill me now.
Go on. Go.
Go into the ham
and take the carving knife
and stab me.
Here. 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, 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,
"I got accepted to New York University."
I had been living alone, 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 fucking 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 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?"
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 kill you."
You twisted, fucking bitch.
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 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.
That was changing the whole story.
Stroke?
The news on TV yesterday really upset her.
Not that it's any of my business.
Anyhow, it just happened. The EMTs are--
I'm gonna 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. - 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.
Um...
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 vagina."
I said, "What?"
She said, "Yeah, he kicked her in the vagina."
I said, "What was going on?"
"Oh, I don't know.
She was getting married the next day.
And, um, 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 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.
Right.
It's all about the characters.
What's going on?
I mean, the story comes out of those characters
and in that little universe.
Oh!
Over and over again,
every character made a deal with the devil.
I said it's about money and death, right?
Why do we have to get rid of the body?
With the fucking 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, uh...
if I was to hear, let's say, a murder 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.
I don't know what happened with this fellow.
I'm-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.
Mm!
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 story 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.
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.
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 shit.
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, motherfucker.
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, 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 doing the right thing,
instead it reverberates down and screws up everybody's life.
The fuck 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, including the crew, the directors,
the writers, the actors.
Very quiet.
It was always great,
from the beginning to the very end.
Here we go. 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.
Take eight. Pick up eight mark.
Action!
Go ahead.
Tell me again I sound like your wife.
Go ahead.
He would just, you know, fuck 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.
Uh, 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 fucked 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 fucking 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, six o'clock, 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.
You start 10:00 the next day, 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-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 gonna tell you something you're not gonna like.
Fuck.
Just cut it.
This fucking 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 fucking crazy.
All I ever asked for was kindness.
Come here. 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 fuck and I don't want you in my life.
No, don't. Don't go! 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
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 fucking kill you.
You understand me? I'll fucking kill you.
Kill me. Kill me, you cocksucker.
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.
Fucking goddamn! Fucking bitch!
Goddamn 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 killed 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-- 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,
uh, that were continuing to go on.
How do you recover from a shoot like that?
You drink.
I don't know. I don't know.
We did an intervention with him at my apartment in New York,
and, uh, 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-And the, uh, 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, fuck this."
And he walked out and everybody went, "Jimmy, Jimmy."
And he turned to me and he went, "Fire me."
And he left.
Can I be-- Can I be a Soprano baby?
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 fuck away from me.
You understand me?
Yeah. Just relax.
I'm gonna break your fucking 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.
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
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? - 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 was 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 'cause it's a good fucking 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 fucking chairs down"
and "Did you sign the living trust?"
She's a grown fucking 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 fuck wanted it like this?
Who the fuck pissed and moaned at just the idea
of me with a fucking real estate license?!
Free to sit back for 20 fucking years
and fiddle with the air conditioning,
and fucking bitch and complain
and fucking bitch, bitch, bitch! To me!
To your priest! Fuck it!
And people say, "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. No, no, no.
That's it. 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.
Um, I tried to write a traditional eulogy, but...
it came out like bad-- bad TV.
Um...
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 shooting 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, this role,
the-the places it takes me to and the things I have to do,
it's so dark." And I remember saying to you,
"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 shooting 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, um...
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
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. Um...
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 fucking 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-or you had to do something
to make him happy or whatever,
that-- That wasn't gonna happen.
The third season comes along, and I didn't go back, you know?
Um...
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 to have to be there and not really have a role,
um, 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-- oh, 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-- that I--
You know, I probably
morphed into that mother category of...
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.
Uh, I think that's true with every art form.
All due respect,
you got no fucking idea what it's like to be number one.
Every decision you make
affects every facet of every other fucking 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, you know, now you're...
you got to-- 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 wanna 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 shit 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 gotta call the Master Cylinder,"
which is what we referred to him as.
- The Master Cylinder? - The Master Cylinder
up in the tower somewhere.
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 project.
You know, we were there to serve his project.
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.
- Good to see you. - 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.
♪ Dream ♪
♪ When you're feeling blue ♪
Change my meat to Black Forest.
♪ Dream ♪
♪ That's the thing to do ♪
♪ Just ♪
♪ Watch the smoke rings rise in the air ♪
♪ You'll find your share... ♪
Fucking dreams, Jesus Christ.
I wanted 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.
♪ Dream ♪
♪ And they might come true ♪
♪ Things never are ♪
♪ As bad as they seem ♪
♪ So dream... ♪
Come on, Ton. Sooner or later,
you gotta face facts.
- I don't wanna hear it. - Well, you're gonna hear it.
I had dreams for a long time
I had murdered 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. - Right.
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.
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 gun.
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 fucked-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.
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!
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."
Phew! 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 fucked.
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 it the boss part? The idea that you're--
Well, I-I thought that...
You fucking--
...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 Pussy.
We fought for him.
"Don't kill him. Don't kill him, David.
Give him another season."
Well, you know what?
This is a mob show.
People gotta go.
Oh, fuck.
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 fucking 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 gonna take care of it.
David sat me down on set
and he said, "I'm going to shoot this two ways.
I'm going to shoot it where you get away,
and I'm going to shoot it where they kill 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 fucking pissed.
Because now that's gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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, uh, "Don't take it easy on me.
You know?
It's obviously gonna be my last scene, you know?"
"Let's make it good, right?"
I was like, "Stevie, we gotta fucking go!
I'm a cunt. You're a mafioso.
Grab me by my hair and let's fucking go."
Oh, no.
Oh, no. No...
- Come on. Come on! - No! No! Please!
Where you fucking going?
Come on! Come on!
- No! Please! - Fucking cunt!
No!
No! No! 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 all right? - Yeah. 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.
Um, if they had called it season seven,
they would've been contractually entitled to a raise.
Cut.
Two years before that, Chris Albrecht said to me,
"You know, 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.
- 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 space suit 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.
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 gonna 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, fuck! Are you fucking kidding?
The last of the whole goddamn series?"
Everybody was up in arms.
And I said, "Well, you just decided it for me."
♪ Just a small town girl ♪
- Hey. - Hey.
♪ Livin' in a lonely world ♪
But it wasn't just to be contrary.
♪ She took the midnight train goin' anywhere ♪
♪ Just a city boy... ♪
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."
♪ Strangers waiting ♪
♪ Up and down the boulevard... ♪
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.
♪ Working hard to get my fill ♪
♪ Everybody wants a thrill ♪
And also the diner scene,
a lot of the conversation is "remember when."
Right. Yeah. 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.
♪ Up and down the boulevard... ♪
Well, it's true, I guess.
That scene, it builds on itself like a pyramid structure
where we just build, build, build, build, build.
What you're watching is a lot of shit going on.
She's trying to park her car.
There are a lot of people, characters,
the guy in the Members Only jacket.
♪ Hiding somewhere in the night ♪
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.
♪ Don't stop believin' ♪
♪ Hold on to the feelin' ♪
♪ Streetlights ♪
♪ People, oh ♪
♪ Don't stop-- ♪
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.
- 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 fucking 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.
Uh, 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, you know...
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 killed?
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,
the show's gonna 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 fucking believe what I just watched."
"What happened? 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 fucking movie.
And, um...
I-- 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 shoot 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.
- 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--
♪ I got a letter this mornin' ♪
♪ How do you reckon it read? ♪
♪ It said, "Hurry, hurry" ♪
♪ "The gal you love is dead" ♪
♪ I got a letter this mornin' ♪
♪ I say how do you reckon it read? ♪
♪ It said, "Hurry, hurry" ♪
♪ "'Cause that gal you love is dead" ♪
♪ You know, I grabbed up my suitcase ♪
♪ Took off down the road ♪
♪ When I got there ♪
♪ She's layin' on a coolin' board ♪
♪ I grabbed up my suitcase ♪
♪ I said, I took off down the road ♪
♪ I said, when I got there ♪
♪ She's layin' on a coolin' board ♪
♪ You know, I walked up close ♪
♪ Looked down in her face... ♪