Sopranos finale: No apologies or explanations

David Chase, creator of The Sopranos and the writer-director of the series finale, has no apologies or explanations about its controversial, vexing final scene. Though he is hiding out in France.

Chase speaks to Alan Sepinwall, longtime Tabloid Baby link and the preeminent Sopranos TV critic, from the Newark-Star-Ledger– the guy we sent you to check in with Sunday night:

“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. We did what we thought we had to do. No one was trying to blow people’s minds, or thinking, ‘Wow, this’ll piss them off.’ People get the impression that you’re trying to f— with them and it’s not true. You’re trying to entertain them.

“Anybody who wants to watch it, it’s all there.”

But what about reports the ending was left ambiguous in anticipation of a Sopranos movie?

Find out… and read the entire interview… after the jump…“I don’t think about (a movie) much,” Chase claims. “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. 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.”

He said a movie poses problems since he killed off so many major characters last season. He says 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.”

Chase does defend one aspect of the final scene: the selection of Journey’s maligned but classic “Don’t Stop Believin’” as its soundtrack:

“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.”

Read the entire interview here.

–Tabloid Baby