Sopranos

'world destruction' is too hip, so is 'evidently chickentown'. using them is powerful to me because it feels like the narrative zooms out for a bit, it's like a little aside from the palm of god/the author. i totally get that it could take people out of the narrative though. it's a risk.

That's an interesting take, connecting it with that Burroughs-y voiceover.

music choices in the soprano are tops, and the non-diegetic music is allowed to be whatever chase wants it to be.

unless you are ridiculously literal-minded about wanting film music to just set the scene and nothing else, in which case, go watch forrest gump.

never have and I'd like you to watch this fucking chainsaw

this fucking chainsaw is much too hip for the milieu

The Sopranos is similar to Jesus Christ as the most objectionable thing about em are the fans

u jelly?

fun fact: Gandolfini was only 5 years older than Michael Imperioli

fun fact this commercial speaks the truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlzuybHJd8Y

Ok I'm watching the chainsaw, when should I expect to see something

https://i1.ytimg.com/vi/5A-cOmaaBgQ/maxresdefault.jpg

lol

lol

I miss Ginny Sack, she deserved her own spinoff

It's Ginny!

Welcome Back, Ginny Sack! (theme song could be a variation of "Jimmy Mack")

David Chase's dry-run Sopranos episode on "The Rockford Files" in 1979:

http://willmckinley.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/the-1979-rockford-files-episode-that-inspired-the-sopranos/

whoa

sounds more like a curiosity than must-see TV (and not playing to TRF's strengths)

yeah i was intrigued at first but that doesn't make it sound too appealing

Uncle Beppy is a better name than Uncle Junior tho. (Also, I distinctly remember my grandma, who lived in Newark nearly her whole life, talking about a restaurant named Beppy's.)

uncle junior is a GREAT name!!

what can i say, Beppy's Restaurant is more memorable than Junior's Restaurant (at least these days)

Related to Sopranos origins and Newark, this is from Philip Roth's I Married A Communist (1998):

He got his name (Little Pussy) because he started out professionally as a cat burglar, sneaking across the rooftops and going in through the windows with his older brother, Big Pussy. In grade school they were already up all night stealing. When they even bothered to come to school, they sat sleeping at their desks and nobody dared to waker them up. Big Pussy died of natural causes, and Little Pussy was bumped off in 1979 in real gangland style...three bullets from a .32 in his head. The next day Ritchie Boiardo tells one of his cronies, "Perhaps it was for the best--because he talked too much."

There was also a Beppy on The Sopranos (played by David Chase's actual uncle, I just read). He was one of the really old school guys in Junior's crew, I think last seen kicking up to Junior and attempting to plot an escape attempt for him with Uncle Pat.

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/27/6006139/did-tony-die-at-the-end-of-the-sopranos

worth reading imo

whether you liked Not Fade Away on one viewing or not, I didn't understand the dismissal of it as "another cliched '60s rock movie." Obviously it's 'the stuff between' that is the key.

So when he answered the "Did Tony die" question, he was laconic.

Just the fact and no interpretation. He shook his head "no." And he said simply, "No he isn't." That was all.

um

"No, he isn't die".

basically, it could be his way of saying "it's not the point."

I finished Season 1 btw. Probably starting Two this weekend. Really great casting, down to the single- or few-episode guests, like Joihn Heard as the sleazy cop.

"The death of this series' main character, which was built up to for the entire episode and left outrageously, deliberately unresolved, isn't the point"

basically, it could be his way of saying "it's not the point."

Yes, this. I would love it if he'd make a definitive statement like that every few years and flip it 180˚ each time.

Really great casting,

this really holds true throughout the entire show imo

yeah, keep watchin' morbs!!!

knew u wld love it

I like it alright. I don't love it.

btw I watched All the President's Men again, and Dominic Chianese is one of the burglars (I think in shirtsleeves?)

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/42sANL2ap9A/mqdefault.jpg

and they're busted by F Murray Abraham

Peter Bogdanovich's interview with Chase on the s1 set is funny for the way PB of course cites Ford, Hawks, Welles (since they're around the same age, Chase at least knows what he's talking about).

I was constantly struck by how much of the Sopranos cast shows up in Woody Allen films (often in tiny bit parts)

"The death of this series' main character, which was built up to for the entire episode and left outrageously, deliberately unresolved, isn't the point"

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand)

i think it's part of the point but i also think it's not unresolved at all, and i think chase's reluctance to answer maybe stems from his thinking that it doesn't need to be explained and to explain it robs it of its poetry.

of course he dies... eventually

(when is a detail)

UPDATE: Chase's publicist put out the following statement:

A journalist for Vox misconstrued what David Chase said in their interview. To simply quote David as saying,“ Tony Soprano is not dead,” is inaccurate. There is a much larger context for that statement and as such, it is not true.

As David Chase has said numerous times on the record, “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.

lawl

everything abt this is funny but none more so than this http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/27/6075535/are-you-proud-of-yourself-savedyouaclick-question-mark-nope

The hero can't dead till the last reel

see it's a mob show (which Tracer got) and an existential dreamscape (well)

Really great casting is thanks to Christopher Walken's wife.

Stick around for Polly Bergen.

yes right, I just found out about that casting duo.

I was constantly struck by how much of the Sopranos cast shows up in Woody Allen films (often in tiny bit parts)

Chase cast entirely out of New York, at least in the first season, as Allen generally has. Though the only substantial actor in a Woody film I can think of is Jerry Adler in Manhattan Murder Mystery, who played Hesh the slick lawyer in Sopranos.

The way Tony and his lower-case family are talking around the coffee shop table in the last ep, it's like they've already dismissed the Family---and of course, cousin*/"nephew"/maybe "son" Christopher is dead, surrogate uncle or brother Sal the sane manager is dead, Tony as boss or whatever his title is, seems dead in the water power-wise--prob doesn't have all that much money, since he didn't at his peak,as his senior Jewish consultant, the guy with the studio, once estimated for another non-made guy. So, whether those guys really are coming to kill him and maybe his relatives or not--hell, maybe they're working for him now, some new bodyguards or something---it's just another thing that happens, in the midst of and after a bunch of other stuff.
*Back when Cousin Buscemi got out of prison and started palling around with Tony, as little Christopher trailed behind, made fun of by the big guys, like when they were all three kids: think that was when Carmela explained to another lady that he was a cousin, but so young that Tony felt obliged or moved to treat him as his nephew.

Dominic Chianese starred in a Woody Allen play in '04 (one I never saw or read):

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/87907-Michael-McKean-Dominic-Chianese-Martha-Plimpton-Star-in-Woody-Allens-Memory-This-Fall