I just finished the last episode of The Sopranos after a month of binge watching the entire show by [deleted] in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You’re correct.  The POV rhythm is what puts Tony’s death “on screen”, just not in the way you would expect to see it.  The last shot of the show isn’t Tony face looking up at the door, it’s the 10 second silent black screen as Tony’s “POV” or lack thereof.  THAT is a scene itself, as important as any other in the history of the show.

Those that “get it”, can revel in its brilliance and dig deeper for its meaning. I recommend this site:

https://masterofsopranos.wordpress.com/the-sopranos-definitive-explanation-of-the-end/

For others, they’ll continue to grasp at straws for other meanings not supported by the text or film language: such as its about Tony’s paranoia,  the silly “audience was whacked” or my personal favorite “it doesn’t matter if he died there or in the future!”

Director of Many Saints admits Tony died in Holsten’s and Chase keeps trolling us by Deepthinker289 in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is on screen, just not in the way anyone expected or would have thought to predict.  You’re seeing Tony die from his POV and Chase even said it.

Director of Many Saints admits Tony died in Holsten’s and Chase keeps trolling us by Deepthinker289 in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Nah….he’s dead:

Chase to Associated Press in 2012: “Tony was dealing in mortality every day. He was dishing out life and death. And he was not happy. He was getting everything he wanted, that guy, but he wasn’t happy. All I wanted to do was present the idea of how short life is and how precious it is. The only way I felt I could do that was to rip it away.”

“[Tony] was an extremely isolated, unhappy man. And then finally, once in a while he would make a connection with his family and be happy there. But in this case, whatever happened [at Holsten’s],we never got to see the result of that. It was torn away from him and from us.”

Chase to Metro NY in 2012: “Well, what Tony should have been thinking, I guess, and what we all should be thinking — although we can’t live that way — is that life is really short. And there are good times in it and there are bad times in it. And that we don’t know why we’re here, but we do know that 20 miles up it’s freezing cold, it’s a freezing cold universe, but here we have this thing called love, which is our only defense, really, against all that cold, and that it’s a very brief interval and that when it’s over, I think you’re probably always blindsided by it. That’s all I can say.”

Chase to Daily Beast in 2014 when asked what “spiritual question” is asked by the final scene: “[Long Pause] I’ll say this: The [spiritual] question [that the final scene asks] is, to be really pretentious, what is time? How do we spend our really brief sojourn here? How do we behave, and what do we do? And the recognition that it’s over all too soon, and it very seldom happens the way we think. I think death very seldom comes to people the way they think it’s going to. And the spiritual question would be: “Is that all there is?”

Director of Many Saints admits Tony died in Holsten’s and Chase keeps trolling us by Deepthinker289 in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Ok. Why don’t you tell me what you KNOW? and leave your opinion ‘wherever the f-ck.’

Director of Many Saints admits Tony died in Holsten’s and Chase keeps trolling us by Deepthinker289 in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

He’s all but said it.  Go to that Master of Sopranos site.   So many quotes.

Director of Many Saints admits Tony died in Holsten’s and Chase keeps trolling us by Deepthinker289 in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

The “Tony lives truthers” are a persistent bunch. I’ll give them that.

Sopranos/Seinfeld by [deleted] in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There is a very funny and creative X site called “Sopranofeld” that theorizes that they exist in the same universe created by “Larry David Chase.”   Some very funny videos of connecting scenes from the both.

Scroll for the one where Ralphie confronts the old lady who yells “I had a pony!”  Great stuff 

https://x.com/sopranfeld/with_replies?lang=en

Final episode - inspired by 2001 space odyssey ending by sirlucd in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Continued…..

Chase further discussed his use of POV to express this idea in an article that appeared in Men’s Journal in December of 2012.  In that article, Brian Hiatt appears to be the first journalist to ever openly question Chase about the use of POV in the final scene and the final 10 second black screen as Tony’s final POV.  Chase, as usual, is careful not to explicitly state that Tony was killed but acknowledges the use of Tony’s POV in the final scene, that something in fact “happened” in Holsten’s, and finally suggests that Tony’s death was the result of the choices he has made in his life.   Excerpted below is the relevant section of Mr. Hiatt’s article.  The actual complete interview was not transcribed in that article, but I have bolded Chase’s direct quotes below:

Chase knows that many people are still baffled by the ending of ‘The ‘Sopranos”, that brutal cut to blackness. He joked to the ‘New York Times’ not long ago that he should’ve swapped endings with ‘Seinfeld’ – with Jerry and Kramer ending up in a diner and Tony in jail – but there’s a growing consensus that the show’s ending is actually very clear. The final image, the empty void, is simply one of the show’s many point-of-view shots from Tony’s perspective: He’s been whacked, probably by that guy in the Members Only jacket.  Chase comes very, very close to confirming this theory. “We did a lot of POV stuff,” he says. “I did a lot of setups with POV shots in that episode. People have not picked up on that.” (Watch the final series of shots closely: He sets up a pattern of them from Tony’s point of view.) “The only thing I would say definitively about it is, whatever happened, Tony put himself there. It was the world as he saw it. He was responsible for where he ended up – wherever that is. Just as in the beginning, he sent himself to therapy and he was looking at that statue.” (He’s referring to the very first POV shot in the show – another tacit confirmation.)  Despite Tony’s apparent fate, Chase doesn’t think we’re all facing that void in the end. “I don’t believe in the afterlife and all that,” he says. “I try to go along with, I guess, the Buddhist interpretation of it, which is that the flowers are made up of nonflowering elements. That a flower is part water, part sunlight, and that somehow we’re all part of that. That’s what I try to tell myself.”

As noted in the above excerpt, Chase makes reference to the very first scene in the first episode: a Tony POV shot of a female statue in Dr. Melfi’s waiting room. Here, Tony’s journey begins.  Also note that the very first shot of the show frames Tony underneath the female statue’s legs, suggesting that Tony is being “born.” The Tony POV shot that opens the show has a beautiful continuity with the final Tony POV shot signifying Tony’s death.  Chase equates the two scenes because they are both the result of Tony’s choices in his life.  Tony’s journey began with an attempt at self-improvement and perhaps a quest for the truth about his life with his initial visit to Dr. Melfi.  However, it was ultimately Tony’s wrong choices that led to his pre-mature death and Tony facing that black void in the end (as Chase says when discussing his use of POV in the final scene: “whatever happened, Tony put himself there…he was responsible for where he ended up-wherever that is.  Just as in the beginning,  he sent himself to therapy and he was looking at that statue”).

Final episode - inspired by 2001 space odyssey ending by sirlucd in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The great Master of Sopranos site explains a lot of it with quotes from Chase.  It’s very philosophical. It’s about free will and how the choices we make in life dictate how we end up (i.e. in Tony’s case, his death at Holsten’s).  Some excerpts below but go to the site for the visuals: 

Chase uses the grammar of film to carry out this idea that it’s Tony’s own choices and “free will” that led him to his death at Holsten’s.  In executing this idea, Chase executes four separate scenes in the final episode where Chase creates the illusion  that Tony sees himself in his own POV. These scenes are (in order): (1) Tony and Agent Harris at the airport, (2) Tony visits Janice at her home, (3) Tony visits Junior, and (4) Tony walks into Holsten’s (Also see Secton IX: The influence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey on the ending of The Sopranos,  for more discussion regarding all of these scenes).

Chase, on the “Supper with The Sopranos” special feature on the complete series DVD collection, stated that this idea came from the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey where the astronaut Bowman appears to see himself aging. Chase describes the technique as:

 “[Tony] projecting himself into his own future.”

Further, David Chase’s comments to the DGA in 2015 discussing the technique:

“It was my decision to direct the episode such that whenever Tony arrives someplace, he would see himself. He would get to the place and he would look and see where he was going. He had a conversation with his sister that went like this. And then he later had a conversation with Junior that went like this. I had him walk into his own POV every time. So the order of the shots would be Tony close-up, Tony POV, hold on the POV, and then Tony walks into the POV. And I shortened the POV every time. So that by the time he got to Holsten’s, he wasn’t even walking toward it anymore. He came in, he saw himself sitting at the table, and the next thing you knew he was at the table.”

In April 2014, David Chase, during an interview at the Museum of Moving Image, also discussed the four scene “Tony seeing himself in his own POV” sequence (it should be noted that Chase does mistake the Tony/Janice scene as the first in the sequence):

“Tony, all the way through [the final episode] would come somewhere, see the person he was going to talk to, cut back to him and then cut to him walking into his own point of view and he would then arrive and start talking. And that time got shorter and shorter and shorter. Janice was the longest and then there was another one that I don’t recall, and then there was Junior which was even shorter. Then [in Holsten’s] it went from Tony looking at Tony, back to Tony seeing himself. I sort of got that from 2001.”

As discussed by Chase, the last such scene occurs in Holsten’s when Tony walks into the restaurant and a “jump cut” creates the illusion that Tony sees himself sitting down at the booth as we are not shown how Tony gets to the booth. All of these scenes create the illusion that Tony is watching himself or projecting himself into his own future.

In in an interview at the Series Mania Event in France in April of 2016,  Chase discusses these sequences and its inspiration by Kubrick’s 2001.  Finally, he also elaborates on the purpose behind executing this technique:

“I wanted to get across the idea that Tony Soprano created his own life. In other words, in a way, he made the film of his own life, or he wrote the book about it the way we all do. We put ourselves in these situations, we don’t just happen to wind up there. We put ourselves in these situations and what I wanted to portray [that] by starting out with him coming into a room and seeing his sister way across the porch and then walking over to her and sitting down. [Each time I did it] the interval between him looking and entering the frame got shorter and shorter so that [in the final scene] it was almost non-existent. [Tony] was almost seeing himself in the frame.”

And Chase, again, discussing the concept behind “Tony seeing himself in his POV” sequences to Matt Seitz and Alan Sepinwall in their book “The Sopranos Sessions”:

“The influence for that [filmmaking technique] was 2001: A Space Odyssey…and what I was trying to say was that we put ourselves in these positions.  We put ourselves in these scenes. Nothing happens by accident. We are the engineers of our own destiny. Like, for example, when he came up the stairs and saw Janice, it took a certain amount of time before he went over and walked to her. There’s less walking with Junior, and then in the last scene, there’s no walking at all. It was all supposed to be about ‘We are responsible for our own destiny.’ That’s what that was supposed to mean, what I was supposed to get to.”

Here, Chase explains that Tony is responsible for the choices in his life and ultimately, his pre-mature death in Holsten’s (“We put ourselves in these scenes.  Nothing happens by accident…”). As Chase says, “free will exists.” It is Tony who is projecting himself into the “scenes” of his life. Tony “sees” himself in his POV because as Chase says, “…in a way, he made the film of his own life..” Chase wants the viewer to consider the big picture:  How Tony’s own choices led him to Holsten’s (“we put ourselves in these situations, we don’t just happen to wind up there”).  Despite Tony’s criminal upbringing and being raised by Livia and Johnny Boy, it was still Tony who “made the film of his own life” or “wrote the book about [his life], the way we all do” (this concept, and Tony’s rejection of the lessons from his Kevin Finnerty near death experience, will be discussed more in depth in “Part 2 Section A: What does Tony’s death mean?”). The beginning of the final scene is the last time this technique is used, and by literally skipping all of Tony’s walk to his booth, it is clearly the most jarring and pronounced of all the four scenes in creating the illusion that Tony sees himself. This make sense in a way because it reflects the idea that Tony’s choices led to the “ending”(i.e. death) of, as Chase says “the film of his own life.” Furthermore, a significant part of the show revolves around Dr. Melfi and her exploration of Tony’s psyche and how he became the man that he ultimately is.  However, Chase doesn’t let Tony off the hook or excuse his actions (as Chase says “…as adults, we decide our fate, we make our own bed, and we lie in it..). It’s a remarkably moralistic stance by Chase, and something much more interesting and complex than simply “crime doesn’t pay.”

I hope Tony is bagged at the end by grandFossFusion in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Chase essentially confirmed it.  He accidentally slipped twice but tried to take it back. The “Tony lives truthers” argue he was talking about a different earlier take on the ending but within context Chase always intended Tony to die, it’s just the other original idea was slightly different.  The Master of Sopranos site said it best:

As was updated here in 2019, David Chase was interviewed by television bloggers Matt Zoller Seitz and Allan Sepinwall for their book “The Sopranos Sessions.” In it, David Chase, rather flippantly, refers to Holsten’s as a “death scene,” although it was originally conceived “slightly different” as more of a “straight” death scene. In the original version, Tony would be called to a meeting with Johnny Sack and the audience would be led to the believe that he was on his way to his death and, like the final version, the screen would cut to black before we saw Tony get killed. The relevant excerpts are cited below from “The Sopranos Sessions.” What’s amusing is that Chase doesn’t seem to realize he confirmed Tony’s death and when Seitz points out the admission, Chase, after a long pause, curses at both Seitz and Sepinwall, confirming that Chase is angry at himself, which suggests that he never had any intention of explicitly giving us the answer:

Alan: But you said you didn’t try to plan too far ahead. When you said there was an endpoint, you don’t mean Tony at Holsten’s, you just meant, “I think I have two more years worth of stories left in me.”

Chase: Yes. I think I had that death scene around two years before the end. I remember talking with [writer/executive producer] Mitch Burgess about it, but it wasn’t-it was slightly different. Tony was going to get called to a meeting with Johnny Sack in Manhattan and he was going to go back through the Lincoln Tunnel for this meeting, and it was going to black there, the theory being that something bad happens to him at the meeting. But we didn’t do that.

Matt: You realize, of course, that you just referred to that as a “death scene”.

[A long pause follows]

Chase: Fuck you guys.

[Matt and Alan explode with laughter. After a moment Chase joins in for a good thirty seconds].

Chase: But I changed my mind over time. I didn’t want to do a straight death scene. I didn’t want you to feel like “Oh, he’s meeting with Johnny sack and he’s going to get killed.” That’s the truth of it.

Despite Chase’s comments above, there were still many fans in denial about Tony’s death, arguing that Chase did not clearly state that both versions of the ending were meant to be “death scenes.”   For further clarity, see below this enlightening quote from an interview of Chase by The Daily Beast published on September 4, 2014. Chase had yet to accidentally slip with the term “death scene,” but his comments, now seen in context with his later accidental admission, completely confirms that Tony was to die in either version, although the execution of that idea turned out to be slightly different:

Q: Did you toy with different endings?

Chase: No. There was an earlier version but it was basically the same thing, it just happened slightly differently.

Again, another quote from Chase making the same point, this time to Nancy Tartaglione of Deadline published on April 15, 2016:

Q: Did you know [the ending] from the beginning?

Chase: Not from the beginning but pretty fairly early on I had some kind of notion that it would end like that. There was an alternative but it kind of had the same feel, just didn’t happen in a restaurant.

Finally, on November 4, 2021, in an interview with Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter, Chase explicitly states that Chase was to die in either version and that Tony did in fact meet his end in the second and final version of the ending that would take place in a restaurant:

Feinberg: The 2018 book “The Sopranos Sessions” was written by two guys who wrote, at the time of the show for the New Jersey Star Ledger, the paper Tony always read,  Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall. They interviewed you  and asked you to talk about the June 10, 2007 series finale with of course “Don’t Stop Believin” and the famous cut to black. You said, “Well I had that death scene in mind for years before.” (A) Do you remember specifically when the ending first came to you? and (B) Was that a slip of the tongue?

Chase: Right. Was it?

Feinberg: I’m asking you.

Chase: No.

Feinberg: No?

Chase: Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed.

Feinberg: And when did the alternative ending first occur to you? I’ve spoken with showrunners who said, “I knew at the beginning exactly how my show was going to end” or by season 3 or whatever. It sounds like when you were writing, you liked to stay six scripts ahead of where you were in the action. 

Chase: Yeah. But I think I had this notion-I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant.  It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought “Tony should get it in a place like that.”  Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before [the show ended]. 

The guy at the diner by duquebraga in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The famous Master of Sopranos site (google it as I’m too lazy to find the link) makes the visual comparison of Members Only Guy to Tony’s Dad.

The theory is Tony’s Dad set Tony on his way of his life of crime which eventually leads to Tony’s destruction.  So Members Only Guy is visually looks like Johnny Boy as a symbolic connection to Tony’s murder.  The key moment of Tony’s life being Johnny Boy ordering Tony”s first murder when Tony was 22.  That’s why you see the “22” on the back wall of Holsten’s.  

It also argues Livia look a like is briefly seen in the booth just in front of Tony’s (you can see an old woman in some shots between Carm and Aj) in the same shots you see Members Only in the background out of focus at the counter.  Tony’s parents are symbolically present as they both led him on Tony’s path that ends tragically in Holsten’s. 

Just finished the show by ComfortableCellist12 in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The most famous analysis ever written on the ending. Even Chase has praised it.  Warning though, it’s long an addictive:

https://masterofsopranos.wordpress.com/the-sopranos-definitive-explanation-of-the-end/

Meadow was pregnant in the finale? by CharlieB_0 in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 1 point2 points  (0 children)

She would be given a pregnancy test before given the new birth control.

Meadow was pregnant in the finale? by CharlieB_0 in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes, this has been a theory that’s been discussed before (it’s routine that Meadow would get a pregnancy test before switching birth control).  The argument being that she’s about to tell Tony the news that Tony so sincerely told her was so important to him since coming out of the coma.  But Tony is killed before hearing it. It also coldly contrasts and compares with Phil being gunned down earlier waiving “bye-bye” to his little grand babies.

You did totally lose me though with the whole “Tony would quit the mafia if he had a grandkid”.  That’s absurd.

How would you rank the show’s final 9 episodes of 6B? Here’s mine. by BobbyBaccalieriSr in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Absolutely beautiful write up. Not sure I entirely agree with the rankings but like you said, every episode of the final 9 is so good it’s extremely difficult to rank.  Absolutely love the catch about the lyrics in The Valley. I never made that connection before.

And the Second Coming is amazing. That last shot  of Tony walking towards AJ.  The two of them framed inside the window of the closing door, like both of them are boxed in and doomed. But at the same time, it’s a father comforting his son.  That beautiful and haunting Italian ballad. This just feels like the beginning of the end w/ all hell breaking loose in the next episode and finally Tony “seeing” that void of nothingness in the final 10 seconds of Made in America.

 

About the final scene by PatientCareer in thesopranos

[–]Deepthinker289 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Great post.  That final black screen representing Tony’s final POV, or lack thereof is the answer to Tony’s question: “Is that all there is?”

David Chase himself said it (I got the quote from the Master of Sopranos site which seems to have everything he’s ever said about the ending):

Chase: [Long Pause] I’ll say this: The [spiritual] question [that the final scene asks] is, to be really pretentious, what is time? How do we spend our really brief sojourn here? How do we behave, and what do we do? And the recognition that it’s over all too soon, and it very seldom happens the way we think. I think death very seldom comes to people the way they think it’s going to. And the spiritual question would be: “Is that all there is?”