David Chase Reveals the Philosophical Meaning of The Soprano’s Final Scene

Eight years after it aired, the final scene of the final episode of The Sopra­nos still has peo­ple guess­ing: What hap­pened when the screen sud­den­ly went black? Did Tony Sopra­no get whacked? Or did he live to see anoth­er qua­si-ordi­nary day? Could he real­ly die as Jour­ney sings, “Don’t Stop Believ­ing?”

In a new inter­view appear­ing on The Direc­tors Guild of Amer­i­ca web site, David Chase, cre­ator of The Sopra­nos, revis­its the mak­ing of the final scene. Chase does­n’t direct­ly answer the ques­tions about Tony’s fate. But he does give us some insight into the deep­er philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions raised in the scene (watch it above) and how much they’re bound up in the lyrics of Jour­ney’s sound­track. There’s some deep­er mean­ing in the small town girl and the city boy tak­ing “the mid­night train goin’ any­where”:

I love the tim­ing of the lyric when Carmela enters: ‘Just a small town girl livin’ in a lone­ly world, she took the mid­night train goin’ any­where.’ Then it talks about Tony: ‘Just a city boy,’ and we had to dim down the music so you did­n’t hear the line, ‘born and raised in South Detroit.’ The music cuts out a lit­tle bit there, and they’re speak­ing over it. ‘He took the mid­night train goin’ any­where.’ And that to me was [every­thing]. I felt that those two char­ac­ters had tak­en the mid­night train a long time ago. That is their life. It means that these peo­ple are look­ing for some­thing inevitable. 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.

And there’s mean­ing packed in the idea of “Strangers wait­ing up and down the boule­vard.”

Cut­ting to Mead­ow park­ing was my way of build­ing up the ten­sion and build­ing up the sus­pense, but more than that I want­ed to demon­strate the lyrics of the song, which is street­lights, peo­ple walk­ing up and down the boule­vard, because that’s what the song is say­ing. ‘Strangers wait­ing.’ I want­ed you to remem­ber that is out there. That there are street­lights and peo­ple out there and strangers mov­ing up and down. It’s the stream of life, but not only that, it’s the stream of life at night. There’s that pic­ture called His­to­ry Is Made at Night [from 1937]. I love that title. And that kind of echoes in my head all the time.

But if you’re look­ing for the philo­soph­i­cal essence of the scene, then look no fur­ther than the mantra, “Don’t stop believin.’ ” That’s what it’s all about:

I thought the end­ing would be some­what jar­ring, sure. But not to the extent it was, and not a sub­ject of such dis­cus­sion. I real­ly had no idea about that. I nev­er con­sid­ered the black a shot. I just thought what we see is black. The ceil­ing I was going for at that point, the biggest feel­ing I was going for, hon­est­ly, was don’t stop believ­ing. It was very sim­ple and much more on the nose than peo­ple think. That’s what I want­ed peo­ple to believe. That life ends and death comes, but don’t stop believ­ing. There are attach­ments we make in life, even though it’s all going to come to an end, that are worth so much, and we’re so lucky to have been able to expe­ri­ence them. Life is short. Either it ends here for Tony or some oth­er time. But in spite of that, it’s real­ly worth it. So don’t stop believ­ing.

Read Chase’s com­plete account of the famous final scene here.

Thanks to Ted Mills for flag­ging this. Fol­low him at @TedMills.

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