The Sopranos Sessions

by Matt Zoller Seitz

  M: Or he can be both.

  A: The cat.

  M: Yes.

  A: Let me ask you this, then: If, during one of our many conversations with Chase, he had invited us to lean in close, and whispered, “Guys, Tony’s dead,” how would that change your feelings about the ending?

  And, flipping that, what if he’d whispered, “Guys, Tony’s alive”?

  M: If he’d said, “Yeah, I killed him,” I would’ve been deeply disappointed in Chase. Because it would’ve meant that he did the most obvious thing and then tried to hide it by making it seem as if he was creating an ambiguous or art-house type of ending.

  And I think I would have been equally disappointed if he’d said, “Tony is alive.” And that’s because I like not knowing, and to me, everything about this ending says, “You’re not supposed to know, you’re supposed to live in the not-knowing.” A lot of characters live there and have to make peace with it. The loved ones who lost people to “witness protection” or because they “ran away” suspect they were murdered but can’t prove it, even though we viewers saw it happen. This ending puts us in their shoes. We make up stories to reassure ourselves that we have control over life, and we really don’t.

  I’m reminded of that moment in “D-Girl” where Dr. Melfi summarizes existentialism for Tony. “When some people first realize that they’re solely responsible for their decisions, actions, and beliefs, and that death lies at the end of every road, they can be overcome with intense dread . . . a dull, aching anger that leads them to conclude that the only absolute truth is death.” I think the insistence on “proving” that Tony died is a means of reasserting control over the show, and over the life of the person doing the proving. Death is the only absolute truth for everyone, and if you read that ending simply as “he died,” you can wash your hands and walk away from it and not have to think about anything else that might be raised in that scene.

  This is a show about either accepting that you’re not in control of anything, or making a conscious decision to deny that. The idea of presenting the ending as a thing that can be mastered and explained is philosophically the opposite of everything that led us to that point.

  I know this is a minority reaction, but I like being baffled or challenged or frustrated by art. I like having to make a case for a particular interpretation or just throw my hands up. It’s fun for me. What I don’t like is any kind of conversation that seems to be leading toward, “He’s dead, end of discussion.” Because that should not be the end of the discussion when you’re talking about a show like this one, a show about psychology, development, morality, and all these other deep and tangled subjects.

  The way the ending teases audiences by seeming very definite while denying us answers and closure makes it the ultimate Sopranos moment. And it throws all the other things we’ve been discussing, here and throughout this book, into sharper relief. Because it’s taking the question of whether Tony lived or died off the table.

  A: I spent many years after the finale as a card-carrying, vocal member of Team Tony Lives. I made arguments like the one above, about how a secret assassin repping an enemy we never heard of before would clash with every narrative rule the show ever followed. More recently, I found myself swaying over to Team Tony Dies, not only because of the death imagery throughout the season—including the way so many episodes open, as this one does, with Tony waking up from a deep slumber—but because some of my initial, long-hardened impressions of the scene didn’t hold up under further scrutiny.

  I had thought, for instance, that the sense of paranoia instilled in the viewer by the rapid editing style Chase uses for the scene was shared by Tony himself—that, perhaps, the point of it all was to finally put us in the mindset of the main character, to make us realize, “This is how miserable it is to be Tony Soprano: to spend every minute of every day worrying about who could be coming through a door to kill you.”

  But all that stuff exists outside the text, not in it. Gandolfini’s playing it as Tony enjoying a peaceful night out with Carmela and the kids, up to and including that final look on his face in between when the bell rings and the screen goes black.

  M: Yeah, he’s checking out the scene in there for self-protection, but he does that everywhere he goes.

  A: So for a while, it seemed easier to just go with the idea that he dies—that the cut to black follows on Bacala’s line from “Soprano Home Movies,” Silvio’s reaction to the Hairdo’s death in “Stage 5,” and all that death imagery. I thought about Tony’s entrance into Holsten’s in the context of the earlier scenes where he visits Janice and then Junior. In both of those, Chase employs an unusual editing style, cutting directly from a shot of Tony looking out at the space he’s just entered to a different point of view where he’s already crossed most of the distance to the relative he’s come to see.

  M: Yes! And the music is continuous throughout. Bits of time are elapsing in terms of the physical motion of Tony in that space, but that’s not indicated by the music, which never stops. That’s one more reason why this scene feels dreamlike, along with all those incidental characters, like Members Only Guy and the uniformed Boy Scouts, who feel like people you’d meet in an ’80s music video.

  I think you could make a better case for Tony Dies if you assume he’s dead before this scene even starts.

  A: The distance he walks is shorter each time, and when he gets to Holsten’s, we just cut from him looking at the restaurant to him in the booth, in a way that suggests he’s seeing himself—really, that he’s seeing the whole scene play out, like he’s already left his body and is just envisioning what might come next back on this mortal plane.

  So it felt better to go with “Tony died.” It was An Answer, in a way that “Tony lives” never entirely felt like one to me, and when Chase wrote that article about the scene for DGA Quarterly, and talked about the fragility of our mortal existence,1 I was able to smile and say, “Aha! That’s it! I know now, and I don’t have to worry about this anymore.”

  Except the longer you and I talked about it, both on our own and with Chase, the less substantial that idea felt, too, until by the end, I wasn’t entirely sure that even Chase knows if the guy’s dead or alive.

  And does that matter?

  M: You mean does it matter if Chase knows what happened? No. It’s become increasingly clear to me as we’ve worked our way through the entire series again, with over ten years of perspective on that finale and nearly twenty years of living with the show in some form, that Chase is an intuitive writer, somebody who’s not trying to send messages or create puzzles for people to solve, but is just trying to make people feel and think and question themselves.

  It’s also easy to see that Chase is of two minds on the last scene. Which is perhaps something he telegraphed by bringing that cat into it.

  This is an artist sorting through contradictory impulses, in hopes of reaching audiences in a deep way. There are no cookies for figuring things out.

  A: Okay, so a hypothetical: Either way you lean, what happens after that cut to black?

  If Meadow just walks in and the family enjoys the rest of their onion rings, a nice meal, and some ice cream, what happens to Tony Soprano after? Does he sweat and strain rebuilding the Family after the damage Phil inflicted upon it? Do the Feds show up a week later to arrest him, Carlo having finally given them the missing piece of their RICO prosecution? Is the Daniel Baldwin script a huge hit at the start of AJ’s shocking career as a Hollywood tastemaker?

  And if Tony drops dead after the bell rings, whether from a bullet or (like poor Gigi Cestone) internal distress, obviously the next few moments involve Carmela, Meadow, and AJ being horrified and grief-stricken, but what comes after? Does Tony’s death alter the career plans of either kid? Did he really leave enough money in overseas accounts to take care of Carmela after his passing, or will she soon be taking Angie Bonpensiero’s old job passing out supermarket samples? Does Paulie freaking Walnuts somehow become boss of the Family, or does
Butchie throw up his hands at this point and decide to put his own guy in charge of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight?

  I ask this not to spoil the details of the many pieces of Sopranos fanfic I have saved to the cloud, but to consider the larger question: Which ending is more interesting? Whether we get to see what comes next or not, which is a more entertaining, exciting, and/or thematically fitting conclusion to the story of The Sopranos: Tony’s abrupt death or his continued existence?

  M: I think it’s more interesting if he lives. I think it would fit with the cycles of experience depicted on the series. This guy has much more self-awareness and sensitivity than other people in his line of work, but is still a prisoner of his conditioning and maybe his genes, and always seems to fall far short of enlightenment. And if, to quote Mad Men, the greatest predictor of what somebody is going to do is what they have done in the past, Tony’s always going to basically be Tony, the loquacious gangster who puts himself first.

  I think it’s also interesting if he dies, though that’s a less disturbing ending to me, because it’s the standard gangster story ending, and no matter how you read it, for reasons of genre history it always comes back to “Don’t do crime, kids.”

  A: Back in the day, I felt like death was an easier sentence for Tony to take, because so much of his life—thanks to genetics, mental health, and the monstrous business he has chosen—brings him so much misery. But in rewatching the series and writing this book, it’s clear that among Tony Soprano’s greatest gifts is his ability to live in the moment, shrug off the overall pain and paranoia of his life, and enjoy the many fruits that come with being the boss of New Jersey.

  M: “If you’re lucky, you’ll remember the little moments, like this, that were good.” The end of season one.

  A: Right. So maybe he’d have a relatively fine old time drifting into old age.

  The day James Gandolfini died—in sudden, startling fashion that sadly evoked the very themes Chase was trying to convey with this scene—I wrote that, “as horrible a human being as Tony was, it gives me a small bit of comfort on this surprising, terrible day, to imagine Tony still alive, waddling out of his SUV and into the pork store, or calling up Dr. Melfi for one more shot at therapy.”

  Now? Now, I’m Schrödinger’s critic: equally intrigued by the idea of Tony living and Tony dying. I understand what the scene was about—and, more importantly, I know how it made me feel the first time I watched it, every time since, and through all these conversations I’ve had with you and the rest of the Sopranos-loving world about it over the last decade. I felt then, and now, afraid for Tony Soprano, and painfully aware of both his fragile mortality and my own, more keenly than any other piece of art has made me feel. That matters much more to me, ultimately, than a definitive answer.

  M: There was a moment a few years ago when a journalist2 reported that Chase told her Tony lived, and he got mad at that—as mad as he’s gotten at all the people who keep saying Tony died. But what he said, specifically—and he was directing it toward everybody—was, “‘Whether Tony Soprano is alive or dead is not the point. To continue to search for this answer is fruitless. The final scene of The Sopranos raises a spiritual question that has no right or wrong answer.”

  I think the most important two words in those two sentences are “spiritual question.” And if we fixate on anything other than that, we’re missing the point. When people ask me, “Do you think Tony died?” I sometimes answer, “Of course.” And then I pause and add, “Sooner or later, everybody does.” Which admittedly is a dickish thing to say—but you know what I mean? That bell, to me, is a tolling bell, as in “Bring out your dead.” It rings every time somebody goes through that door. I’m not saying “Holsten’s is Heaven!” or anything like that. I mean it’s a prompt for us to think about death and life, and what we’ve done with our lives.

  Maybe the ending is moralistic, but not in the way that some of the people who need Tony to be dead might frame it. Maybe the ending is saying, “This guy never got it. Are you gonna be like him?”

  A: This is all-important, and we’ll see what happens to the conversation now that the phrase “death scene” is out there. We only have this one life, and precious little control over how long it lasts. How do we choose to live it? Tony Soprano has clearly made many bad choices, as have the other people at that table with him, as have nearly all the characters with whom we’ve spent these eighty-six-plus hours of television.

  I think you and I are in agreement on the larger point of the scene, right, Matt?

  M: What point is that?

  A: Obviously, he’s alive.

  M: ALAN.

  * * *

  1 “This Magic Moment,” by James Greenberg. Directors Guild of America Quarterly, Spring, 2015. Chase: “I thought the possibility would go through a lot of people’s minds or maybe everybody’s mind that he was killed. He might have gotten shot three years ago in that situation. But he didn’t. Whether this is the end here, or not, it’s going to come at some point for the rest of us. Hopefully we’re not going to get shot by some rival gang mob or anything like that. I’m not saying that [happened]. But obviously he stood more of a chance of getting shot by a rival gang mob than you or I do because he put himself in that situation. All I know is the end is coming for all of us.”

  2 “Did Tony Die at the End of The Sopranos?” Martha Nochimson, Vox, August 27, 2014. “When [Chase] answered the ‘Is Tony dead?’ question, he was laconic. ‘No,’ Just the fact and no interpretation. He shook his head. ‘No.’ And he said simply, ‘No, he isn’t.’”

  THE DAVID CHASE SESSIONS

  These conversations took place between the authors and Sopranos creator David Chase in a series of French and Italian restaurants (and one hotel bar) on the Upper East Side of Manhattan between September and December 2017.

  Session One:

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  On the origins of Chase’s career and The Sopranos, finding James Gandolfini and Edie Falco,“College,” and more.

  ALAN: Tell us about your mother.

  DAVID: I said a lot back in the old days, about depression and my mother, stuff like that, and I kind of oversold it. The reason I talked so much about her and about the pressure is because I knew that’s what the show was about, and I wanted there to be a connection, so that people would say, “Hey, gee, that sounds interesting.” Over the last maybe eight to ten years, I really have to come to the conclusion that in many respects, I had a very happy childhood. My mother was nuts, and she obviously did not have a happy childhood. I have a hunch that she might have been abused. And my father was a different kind of guy altogether, although he was also an angry person. But my mother? My mother was very funny.

  A: How far in Caldwell did you grow up from where The Sopranos house was?

  D: As the crow flies, a mile. To actually get there? Ten or twelve minutes.

  MATT: How much did the world of the Mob overlap with yours?

  D: A little. My father had a hardware store in Verona, New Jersey, and he knew these two guys who had a tailor shop in Verona. They were connected. I think a lot of them lived in Hanover. As I was leaving New Jersey and the East Coast, some guy had his garage got blown up in North Caldwell, and the guy in Roseland got shotgunned to death.

  I was interested in the Mob probably mostly because I was Italian. My father and I used to watch The Untouchables every Thursday night. I think that’s the reason the Mob really grew on me. When I was watching that show, I was watching my father. He knew all those gangsters’ names, Frankie Yale and all those people. I was interested in my father’s youth, where he came from and what he did and what it was like then.

  An even better example of that was William Wellman’s The Public Enemy. His [Cagney’s] mother in there looked my grandmother. It all started with Public Enemy, even before The Untouchables.

  So he watched The Untouchables every week. But he and my mother especially hated the Italian Mob, the gangsters. They w
ere ashamed of them, thought they were terrible people. From watching The Untouchables, a friend and I got the idea to shake down the president of the school class in eighth grade for lunch money, and he went and told the principal! [Laughs] I got in a lot of trouble for that. My father said, “You’re imitating the most horrible, the worst kind of people on the planet!” He didn’t say it that way, but he was furious. It was further confirmation that I was a bum and a punk and all that.

  But he’d watch The Untouhables anyway. So many people were like that.

  A: That makes me think of Richard La Penna. Did your father object to the idea that there were so many depictions of Italians as wiseguys?

  D: There were fewer depictions back then. I mean, this is pre-Godfather, which really kick-started all that stuff, and The Godfather was so Italian. Before that, as I recall, in the original Scarface you had Tony Camonte, but there weren’t Italian actors playing the roles, either. It all came due with the advent of The Godfather.

  A: What do you remember of the first time you saw it?

  D: I was disappointed in it because I’d read the book. The book had the whole story in there, two movies’ worth. And Marlon Brando wasn’t Italian. I liked it—I’m not saying I didn’t like it—but I remember the book just blowing me away, so in comparing it to the book, as I was, they weren’t the same thing. I’ve seen Part I since then, and I like it a lot better, though I still to this day like Part II better than I.

  A: How and when did you decide you wanted to write for TV and movies?

  D: When I was in film school. I went to film school because I wanted to be a director, and that’s where I learned that films had to have a script. Writing a script was cheap in comparison to making a film. Going to graduate school, film school—it cost money to make films, even small ones. But all you need to write them is a paper and pencil, so that’s when I started thinking about it. I was twenty-one, twenty-two, something like that.