Sopranos...the last episodes

Props on entertaining yourself with sheer stupidity.

 

Sopranos is now a sports story? Both PTI and Sportscenter are devoting large chunks to covering the finale.

 

Wouldn't it have been cool if the dude comes out of the john, pulls out the gun and AJ takes the bullet for his dad, who is then able to pull out his piece and blow the crap out of the dude...drop his gun...holding the bleeding, dead AJ as the camera zooms out from above and yells...." WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

That would have been cool.

 

Focus on Meadow's face as she walks in the door. There are three flashes as she stands there with a shocked expression. Then cut to black, roll credits.

 

yeah I saw that, at least Around the Horn and PTI are before Snoozecenter, which just recaps everything that Around the Horn and PTI covered except adding in some lame puns, people wearing ties, bad hip hop culture reference, and golf, nascar, and other boring sports!

 

Sounds predictable and cliche'd... and then you'd get a host of complaints about "who killed Tony?, who was the guy that went into the bathroom, was it the NY crew who put him up to it, or somebody else, did just Tony die or the rest of his family..."

And it goes on, and on, and on (and on)...

Btw... that "nikki Leotardo" post is completely false, and made up. Its a bad e-mail circulating around the internet, and people are accepting it and posting it as their "own" observation (like the poster did here). This guy wasn't the same actor that played Phil's nephew... he was a pizza store owner who they found randomly right before they shot the finale.

 

There is a reason that cliches become cliches. If the "Let the viewer determine the ending" approach is so great, why even have the show. Every week they could just play the opening credits, then show a black screen for an hour. The possibilities are endless. It's groundbreaking.

The reality is that instead of manning up and making an ending, they just decided not to have an ending, so they get the critics of the non-ending, but they also get the emo types that laud their vision and say basically what you did, that no ending would please everyone and this is such a work of genius. The advantage here is, they can say that the people who actually wanted an ending just don't get it.

 

you just made up your own ending, with just as many possibilities as the one you criticized. I don't see much difference between your version and the blank screen. That's actually the beauty of the blank screen, you can make up whatever you want.

 

That was a terrible episode

 

Found an interview given by the "members only jacket" guy off the Bucks County Courier Times website. Doesn't look like he was was portraying a repeat character in Nikki Leotardo as had been mentioned previously in this thread. This was his first time acting and first time being on the show. It looks as if he was nothing more than guy that comes into the restaurant locks eyes with Tony a couple times and then goes to the bathroom.

Oddly enough this interview was posted a full day in advance of the show being aired.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-06092007-1360360.html

Slice of mob life

By ANDY VINEBERG
Bucks County Courier Times

After eight years and 86 episodes, the ultimate fate of fictional New Jersey crime boss Tony Soprano might be determined by a pizza shop owner from Penndel.

Paolo Colandrea, owner of Paul's Penndel Pizza, last month filmed a potentially pivotal scene for the final episode of “The Sopranos,” the groundbreaking HBO mob drama that says goodbye at 9 Sunday night.

Colandrea, 47, describes his role as simply “mystery man,” a guy who walks into a diner and locks eyes ominously with Tony, who's sitting at a table with wife, Carmela, and son, A.J. Colandrea sits down at the counter, stares at Tony again, gets up to go the bathroom, and ...

He can't say what happens next. But even if he could, it might not mean a thing.

“Sopranos” creator David Chase reportedly filmed three different endings to ensure secrecy. Colandrea, who spent 18 hours on the set one day and 10 hours two weeks later, doesn't even know if his scene will appear.

“I don't know. Nobody knows,” the charming Italian said while sitting in the restaurant he's owned since emigrating from Naples in 1978. “They keep it so closed, not even the cast knows all that's going to happen. I can assume, but I don't know.”

Colandrea, who doesn't have any lines, filmed his scene at Holsten's Diner in Bloomfield, N.J. Off camera, he said he mingled with series stars James Gandolfini (Tony) and Edie Falco (Carmela) and met Robert Iler (A.J.) and Chase. During his first day of filming, he shared a sushi dinner with Gandolfini, Falco and the crew.

“He's such a nice guy, just an unbelievable person,” Colandrea says of Gandolfini. “And Edie Falco, she's the sweetest woman you ever want to meet.”

Colandrea, who earned more than $3,000 (before taxes) for his role, also saw Jamie-Lynn Sigler (Meadow) on the set but didn't talk to her.

“She's so gorgeous,” he said. “She has bodyguards with her, but I don't blame her.”

So how does a pizza shop owner with no previous acting experience land a role on the final episode of the most acclaimed program in cable television history?

Right place, right face, really.

Earlier this spring, Eileen DeNobile, owner of the Lawrenceville, N.J.-based Noble Talent Management, was looking for an Italian man, about 6 feet tall, between the ages of 30 and 50, for a part on “The Sopranos.” She stopped into Penndel Pizza for dinner one evening, saw the framed photo of Colandrea pouring a glass of wine and thought she might have found her man.

“That's authentic Italian all the way,” said DeNobile, who already knew Colandrea casually. “He certainly looks the part. Plus, we were looking for a person easy to work with, and he's got a great personality, very bubbly.”

DeNobile sent the photo and a recommendation to HBO, and Colandrea was invited to audition in New York City, along with 29 others. The audition consisted of performing the actual role as it appeared in the script.

A few days later, Chase called Colandrea and asked him to come to North Jersey for a costume fitting.

The part was his.

“It's unbelievable,” said Colandrea, a fan of the show since its debut in 1999. “For an Italian, it's the experience of a lifetime to be on "The Sopranos.' ”

Colandrea, a single father of two daughters, said he plans to watch Sunday's episode with about 100 friends and family members at a cousin's house in Ewing. (“I have to cook for all of them,” he said, smiling.)

Meanwhile, he said, “half of Italy” is waiting to hear what happens Sunday night.

And if his scene ends up on the cutting-room floor?

“Everyone knows there's nothing I can do, that it's out of my power,” Colandrea said. “But I'm thinking, "Why make me go up again after two weeks if they're not going to use me?' I'm keeping my fingers crossed.”

Andy Vineberg can be reached at 215-949-4135 or avineberg@phillyBurbs.com.

June 9, 2007 3:33 AM

 

First interview from David Chase just hit the web for this morning's edition of the New Jersey Star Ledger via their online website.

Source: The Star Ledger

http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/sepinwall/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1181623651270570.xml&coll=1

'Sopranos' creator's last word: End speaks for itself

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

What do you do when your TV world ends? You go to dinner, then keep quiet.

"Sopranos" creator David Chase took his wife out for dinner Sunday night in France, where he fled to avoid "all the Monday morning quarterbacking" about the show's finale. After this exclusive interview (agreed to before the season began), he intends to let the work -- especially the controversial final scene -- speak for itself.

"I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there," he says of the final scene.

"No one was trying to be audacious, honest to God," he adds. "We did what we thought we had to do. No one was trying to blow people's minds or thinking, 'Wow, this'll (tick) them off.'

"People get the impression that you're trying to (mess) with them, and it's not true. You're trying to entertain them."

In that final scene, mob boss Tony Soprano waited at a Bloomfield ice cream parlor for his family to arrive, one by one. What was a seemingly benign family outing was shot and cut as the preamble to a tragedy, with Tony suspiciously eyeing one patron after another, the camera dwelling a little too long on Meadow's parallel parking and a walk by a man in a Members Only jacket to the men's room. Just as the tension ratcheted up to unbearable levels, the series cut to black in mid-scene (and mid-song), with no resolution.

"Anybody who wants to watch it, it's all there," says Chase, 61, who based the series in general (and Tony's relationship with mother Livia specifically) on his North Caldwell childhood.

Some fans have assumed the ambiguous ending was Chase setting up the oft-rumored "Sopranos" movie.

"I don't think about (a movie) much," he says. "I never say never. An idea could pop into my head where I would go, 'Wow, that would make a great movie,' but I doubt it.

"I'm not being coy," he adds. "If something appeared that really made a good 'Sopranos' movie and you could invest in it and everybody else wanted to do it, I would do it. But I think we've kind of said it and done it."

Another problem: Over the last season, Chase killed so many key characters. He's toyed with the idea of "going back to a day in 2006 that you didn't see, but then (Tony's children) would be older than they were then and you would know that Tony doesn't get killed. It's got problems."

(Earlier in the interview, Chase noted that often his favorite part of the show was the characters telling stories about the good ol' days of Tony's parents. Just a guess, but if Chase ever does a movie spinoff, it'll be set in Newark in the'60s.)

Since Chase is declining to offer his interpretation of the final scene, let me present two more of my own, which came to me with a good night's sleep and a lot of helpful reader e-mails:

* Theory No. 1 (and the one I prefer): Chase is using the final scene to place the viewer into Tony's mind-set. This is how he sees the world: Every open door, every person walking past him could be coming to kill him or arrest him or otherwise harm him or his family. This is his life, even though the paranoia's rarely justified. We end without knowing what Tony's looking at because he never knows what's coming next.

* Theory No. 2: In the scene on the boat in "Soprano Home Movies," repeated again last week, Bobby Bacala suggested that when you get killed, you don't see it coming. Certainly, our man in the Members Only jacket could have gone to the men's room to prepare for killing Tony (shades of the first "Godfather"), and the picture and sound cut out because Tony's life just did. (Or because we, as viewers, got whacked from our life with the show.)

Meanwhile, remember that 21-month hiatus between Seasons Five and Six? That was Chase thinking up the ending. HBO's then-chairman Chris Albrecht came to him after Season Five and suggested thinking up a conclusion to the series; Chase agreed, on the condition he get "a long break" to decide on an ending.

Originally, that ending was supposed to occur last year, but midway through production, the number of episodes was increased, and Chase stretched out certain plot elements while saving the major climaxes for this final batch of nine.

"If this had been one season, the Vito storyline would not have been so important," he says.

Much of this final season featured Tony bullying, killing or otherwise alienating the members of his inner circle. After all those years of viewing him as "the sympathetic mob boss," were we, like his therapist Dr. Melfi, supposed to finally wake up and smell the sociopath?

"From my perspective, there's nothing different about Tony in this season than there ever was," Chase says. "To me, that's Tony."

Chase has had an ambivalent relationship with his fans, particularly the bloodthirsty whacking crowd who seemed to tune in only for the chance to see someone's head get blown off (or run over by an SUV). So was he reluctant to fill last week's penultimate episode, "The Blue Comet," with so many vivid death scenes?

"I'm the number one fan of gangster movies," he says. "Martin Scorsese has no greater devotee than me. Like everyone else, I get off partly on the betrayals, the retributions, the swift justice. But what you come to realize when you do a series is, you could be killing straw men all day long. Those murders only have any meaning when you've invested story in them. Otherwise, you might as well watch 'Cleaver.'"

One detail about the final scene he'll discuss, however tentatively: the selection of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" as the song on the jukebox.

"It didn't take much time at all to pick it, but there was a lot of conversation after the fact. I did something I'd never done before: In the location van, with the crew, I was saying, 'What do you think?' When I said, 'Don't Stop Believin',' people went, 'What? Oh my God!'

"I said, 'I know, I know, just give a listen,' and little by little, people started coming around."

Whether viewers will have a similar time-delayed reaction to the finale as a whole, Chase doesn't know. ("I hear some people were very angry and others were not, which is what I expected.") He's relaxing in France, then he'll try to make movies.

"It's been the greatest career experience of my life," he says. "There's nothing more in TV that I could say or would want to say."

Here's Chase on some other points about the finale and the season:

* After all the speculation Agent Harris might turn Tony, instead we saw Harris had turned, passing along info on Phil's whereabouts and cheering, "We're going to win this thing!" when learning of Phil's demise.

"This is based on an actual case of an FBI agent who got a little bit too partisan and excited during the Colombo wars of the'70s," Chase says of the story of Lindley DeVecchio, who supplied Harris' line.

* Speaking of Harris, Chase had no problem with never revealing what -- if anything -- terror suspects Muhammed and Ahmed were up to.

"This, to me, feels very real," he says. "For the majority of these suspects, it's very hard for anybody to know what these people are doing. I don't even think Harris might know where they are. That was sort of the point of it: Who knows if they are terrorists or if they're innocent pistachio salesmen? That's the fear that we are living with now."

Also, the story -- repeated by me, unfortunately -- that Fox, when "The Sopranos" was in development there, wanted Chase to have Tony help the FBI catch terrorists isn't true.

"What I said was, if I had done it at Fox, Tony would have been a gangster by day and helping the FBI by night, but we weren't there long enough for anyone to make that suggestion."

* I spent the last couple of weeks wrapping my brain around a theory supplied by reader Sam Lorber (and his daughter, Emily) that the nine episodes of this season were each supposed to represent one of the nine circles of Hell from Dante's "The Divine Comedy."

Told of the theory, Chase laughed and said, "No."

* Since Butchie was introduced as a guy who was pushing Phil to take out Tony, why did he turn on Phil and negotiate peace with Tony?

"I think Butch was an intelligent guy; he began to see that there was no need for it, that Phil's feelings were all caught up in what was esentially a convoluted personal grudge."

* Not from Chase, but I feel the need to debunk the e-mail that's making the rounds about all the Holsten's patrons being characters from earlier in the series. The actor playing Members Only guy had never been on the show; Tony killed at least one, if not both, of his carjackers; and there are about 17 other things wrong with this popular but incorrect theory.

 

I like theory one...Also I didnt' see the flashes and Meadow's face, so I'll have to rewind and take a look...

 

I thought it was great but maybe some of you would like this version more:

"The People's Sopranos Finale"
http://justinssoapbox.blogspot.com/2007/06/peoples-sopranos-finale.html

 

What? That didn't actually happen, it was my made up ending in response to Nick's assertion that no one could come up with a better ending than the one we got.

Well .... it would be nice to see all of those glorious breasts.

 

Crap...

 

Finally got to see it. Bizarre.

 

Read a VERY interesting theory that the last episode actually all takes place in Tony's head right before he blows his brains out while in the safehouse.

http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?showtopic=3154768&st=2160

 

How's this for an ending?

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