Chase went on to explain that the plan was to use that death scene "whenever the show went off the air," but then he changed his mind. That could imply that Tony does not die in the actual ending we got because that originally planned scene of Tony's death was never filmed. It just means that David Chase chose not to show him get killed.
Well, in that same interview, Sopranos writer, and Boardwalk Empire creator, Terence Winter , had this to say:. And maybe not. Because according to the writers, Tony does end up dying or getting caught at some point in the future.
Getting a quick shot to the head, or having to live the rest of your life knowing that somebody out there wants to kill not only you, but possibly even your entire family? If Tony doesn't die from a bullet, he'd probably die from stress alone. And I love that the ending is that ambiguous. The scene was great, but the effectiveness only lasted a few seconds, while I've been thinking about The Sopranos ending for years now. That's the power of that ending. But what do you think?
Do you believe Tony died that night? Also, how do you think the ending of The Sopranos compares with other popular shows like Dexter and Breaking Bad? Sound off in the comments section below. 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? 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?
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? I think it would fit with the cycles of experience depicted in 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.
Alan: 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. Alan: Right. Melfi for one more shot at therapy. 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. 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. Maybe the ending is moralistic, but not in the way that some of the people who need Tony to be dead might frame it.
Are you gonna be like him? We only have this one life, and precious little control over how long it lasts. How do we choose to live it? I think you and I are in agreement on the larger point of the scene, right, Matt? Matt: What point is that?
Matt: ALAN. Already a subscriber? Log in or link your magazine subscription. Account Profile. Sign Out. James Gandolfini in The Sopranos finale. Directors Guild of America Quarterly , Spring, Again, you were winning Emmys and getting acclaim, but my impression is you actually kind of hated it. Yes, I did hate it. And it really was true. It was totally looked down on, and you could not make the break from TV to movies.
I was at Universal Studios. I had a seven-year deal. Universal makes movies. And at first I was talked out of it. I want to work on movies. So through all that period of frustration — success, but frustration — in TV, you were still writing film scripts, but getting nowhere. And out of that came The Sopranos. And he was proved right, I guess. Why are we going to do that, guys with long coats and hats? Now, did it ever cross your mind, before or after the Brillstein-Grey conversation, that it could be interesting just to do a show about a TV producer and his problematic mother?
More directly autobiographical? Oh, yeah. I had gotten to that stage. I used to tell stories about my mother and I would get laughter beyond belief, and I dined off of that for years.
And then I got a phone call from a young executive. She was a low man on the totem pole. When are we going to get started? In that pilot, there were no murders.
It was a mob show, but nobody got killed. I really felt this was the first time I was going to direct something that meant anything. And so I did direct it. They questioned me about that, and they finally said OK. And I really, really worked hard, and the pilot was good and the show was good. They, of course, being in the television business, decided they had to test it. And they tested it in four markets, and that took months.
That was the ultimate. At that time, HBO was movies and boxing, right? He would have to be helping the government fight terrorism in his spare time, by night.
You were apparently considering Michael Rispoli. Well, I was seriously considering Stevie. And I was seriously considering Jim. What I found out later is his mother had been dead for seven or eight years. But we kept pursuing it and kept pursuing it. I had come back to L. I showed them the tape.
And that was that. Edie Falco came over from Oz. That was just because you loved that movie? But that was the pool of Italian American talent who might make the cut at that time in New York. And I insisted that everybody be Italian American.
It seems like the toughest role to cast might well have been your mother …. She was very difficult. We must have seen a hundred Italian American actresses.
But when we were casting the pilot, a hundred women came in and did a crazy Italian mama. And then Nancy Marchand, who was not Italian American and had made a career for herself playing snooty rich women, she came in and she just did it.
It was really strange. She just had it nailed. So you have your core group. The pilot eventually gets picked up. And the first episode drops on Jan. How early on did you realize you guys were onto something? This had never happened before to me. He was from Miami. Well, that was knowing that it was clicking with the public. When did you feel that your writing really kicked into high drive?
But I mean, the pilot also. It brought stuff out in me. Because this was how foreign the idea was that your main protagonist could be …. A murderer. And maybe he would be selling drugs. Can you talk about how you chose writers and how things worked in the room?
Two of the writers I knew from prior work, Robin Green and Mitch Burgess, and they really liked the script and they said all the right things; I could tell they understood it. The other people? You just read scripts, agents send in scripts and you read them, and the ones that you like, you meet with the person, and if you hit it off you bring them on. So we got rid of like five people. Something they couldn't find. I mean, they didn't become missionaries in Africa or go to college together or do anything like that.
They took the midnight train going anywhere. And the midnight train, you know, is the dark train. Meadow is filled with nothing but very, very deep emotions about parking her car. But possibly a minute later, her head will be filled with emotions she could never even imagine. We all take this stuff so seriously—losing our keys, parking our car, a winter cold, a summer cold, an allergy—whatever it is. And this stuff fills our mind from second to second, moment to moment.
And the big moment is always out there waiting A lot of the audience I gathered doesn't like A. But there's also something about him that is earnest. He's got his father's kind of questioning and kind of little boy innocence. When I see Tony reach across and grab his arm [when he arrives], it makes me feel really good.
Not only that, I'll tell you who else is reaching across the table, that's Jim Gandolfini reaching across to Robert Iler in the last scene they're going to do together.
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