Breaking his silence months after the HBO mob drama ended its run, he is offering a belated explanation for that blackout at the restaurant. He strongly suggests that, no, Tony Soprano didn't get whacked moments later as he munched onion rings with his family at Holsten's. And mostly Chase wonders why so many viewers got so worked up over the series' non-finish.As for the possibility Tony was "whacked" by the guy in the Members Only jacket,
"There WAS a war going on that week, and attempted terror attacks in London," says Chase. "But these people were talking about onion rings."
Chase says the New Jersey mob boss "had been people's alter ego. They had gleefully watched him rob, kill, pillage, lie and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted 'justice'...Well, Chase has to admit he did a lot in the final episodes to make Tony as unlikable as possible. Coppola left a little spark of humanity in Michael Corleone at the end of Godfather II. By the end of the Sopranos series, Tony Soprano was finally shown to be little more than a rapacious sociopath. No appetite was to be denied regardless of the cost to his soul. Even his psychiatrist (the audience's real stand-in, the series voyeur) finally quit in disgust as his enabler.
"The pathetic thing -- to me -- was how much they wanted HIS blood, after cheering him on for eight years."
Can David Chase find the one last shred of humanity in Tony Soprano capable of sustaining our interest for a feature length film? Or are we to be given Godfather III?
