David Chase Takes on Angry Sopranos Fans

Were you at all surprised by the reaction to the final episode?
DAVID CHASE: No. We knew there would be people who would be perplexed by it and shut their minds to it. This just felt like the right ending.

Did you expect people to be so pissed off?
We didn't expect them to be that pissed for that long. It's one thing to be deeply involved with a television show. It's another to be so involved that all you do is sit on a couch and watch it. It seemed that those people were just looking for an excuse to be pissed off. There was a war going on that week and attempted terror attacks in London. But these people were talking about onion rings.

If you were expecting plot twists like Furio coming back from Italy to whack Tony and marry Carmela, you were obviously barking up the wrong tree.

There was so much more to say than could have been conveyed by an image of Tony facedown in a bowl of onion rings with a bullet in his head. Or, on the other side, taking over the New York mob. The way I see it is that Tony Soprano 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.'' They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall. I thought that was disgusting, frankly. But these people have always wanted blood. Maybe they would have been happy if Tony had killed twelve other people. Or twenty-five people. Or, who knows, if he had blown up Penn Station. The pathetic thing — to me — was how much they wanted his blood, after cheering him on for eight years.

You know there were many people who thought the end was brilliant.
Sure. But I must say that even people who liked it misinterpreted it, to a certain extent. This wasn't really about ''leaving the door open.'' There was nothing definite about what happened, but there was a clean trend on view — a definite sense of what Tony and Carmela's future looks like. Whether it happened that night or some other night doesn't really matter.

Have you heard the elaborate theories about what really happened? Like the one that says you were re-creating The Last Supper?
The interesting thing is that, if you're creative, there may be things at work that you're not even aware of: things you learned in school, patterns you've internalized. I had no intention of using The Last Supper, but who knows if, subconsciously, it just came out. If people want to sit there figuring this stuff out, I think that's just great. Most of them, most of us, should have done this kind of thing in high school English class and didn't.

Are they wasting their time? Is there a puzzle to be solved?
There are no esoteric clues in there. No Da Vinci Code. Everything that pertains to that episode was in that episode. And it was in the episode before that and the one before that and seasons before this one and so on. There had been indications of what the end is like. Remember when Jerry Toricano was killed? Silvio was not aware that the gun had been fired until after Jerry was on his way down to the floor. That's the way things happen: It's already going on by the time you even notice it.

Are you saying...?
I'm not saying anything. And I'm not trying to be coy. It's just that I think that to explain it would diminish it.

Why do you think people are so intent on getting an answer?
I remember I would tell my kid and her cousins bedtime stories. Sometimes I would want to get back to the grown-ups and have a drink, so I would say something like, ''And they were driving down the road and that's it. Story over.'' They would always scream, ''Wait a minute! That's no ending!'' Apparently that need for finality exists in human beings. But we're not children anymore. Especially watching a show like The Sopranos that's got sex and violence.

You've said that you knew what the final scene would be for several years before it happened. What was the seed of the idea?
As I recall, it was just that Tony and his family would be in a diner having dinner and a guy would come in. Pretty much what you saw.

So you just had to get them to the diner?
Yeah. But it's not that difficult. Whatever else happens, people are going to have to stop and eat.

Was Journey there from the beginning?
I had thought about using ''Don't Stop Believin''' a couple times over the course of the series in a background way, but I had forgotten about it until my nephew sent me a mix tape with the song on it. I knew it would be controversial, because Journey has a reputation that most people wouldn't associate with our show.

Did you consider other songs?
When we were scouting locations, I actually took several songs in the van and played them for the crew. I'd never done that before. When the Journey song came on, everybody went, ''Oh no! Jesus, David, what are you thinking?'' But then they started to say, ''You know what? This is kind of good. This is a great f---ing song!''

What about the black screen?
Originally, I didn't want any credits at all. I just wanted the black screen to go the length of the credits — all the way to the HBO whoosh sound. But the Director's Guild wouldn't give us a waiver.

Did you think of it as a prank — people thinking their TVs had gone out?
I saw some items in the press that said, ''This was a huge 'f--- you' to the audience.'' That we were s---ting in the audience's face. Why would we want to do that? Why would we entertain people for eight years only to give them the finger? We don't have contempt for the audience. In fact, I think The Sopranos is the only show that actually gave the audience credit for having some intelligence and attention span. We always operated as though people don't need to be spoon-fed every single thing — that their instincts and feelings and humanity will tell them what's going on.

It seems part of what upsets people is your ruthlessness. The idea that nothing ever changes or gets better.
I disagree. People have said that the Soprano family's whole life goes in the toilet in the last episode. That the parents' whole twisted lifestyle is visited on the children. And that's true — to a certain extent. But look at it: A.J.'s not going to become a citizen-soldier or join the Peace Corps to try to help the world; he'll probably be a low-level movie producer. But he's not going to be a killer like his father, is he? Meadow may not become a pediatrician or even a lawyer, but she's not going to be a housewife-whore like her mother. She'll learn to operate in the world in a way that Carmela never did. It's not ideal. It's not what the parents dreamed of. But it's better than it was. Tiny, little bits of progress — that's how it works.

Do you believe life has an arc? Or is it just a bunch of stuff that happens?
Is there a pupose, you mean? Everything I have to say about that is in the show. Go look at Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphu. It's all there: Life seems to have no purpose but we have to go on behaving as thought it does. We have to go on behaving toward each other like people who would love.

So, it's still worth trying?
Of course. What else are you going to do? Watch TV?

(Interview by Brett Martin. Excerpted from The Sopranos: The Complete Book)

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Accused of Helping the Mob, FBI Agent Gets His Day in Court

The rumor was explosive, hard to believe: Gregory Scarpa Sr., a ruthless Colombo crime family capo known as the Grim Reaper, was receiving tips from a mysterious source inside law enforcement, a man he called “the girlfriend.”

The confirmation was devastating: Prosecutors working to cripple the family in the mid-1990s said that the source was their own Roy Lindley DeVecchio, a Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisor, the man assigned to lead the Colombo investigation.

In May 1995, an assistant United States attorney, Ellen M. Corcella, was prosecuting a murder conspiracy case on the brutal war for control of the family. She practically begged jurors not to be distracted by the role prosecutors said Mr. DeVecchio played.

“He’ll get his day in court,” Ms. Corcella told the jury.

Though Ms. Corcella lost that case, her prediction eventually came true. More than a decade later, Mr. DeVecchio arrived in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn yesterday for a trial on murder charges. By the account of state prosecutors, he traded information with Mr. Scarpa from 1980 through 1993, directly causing four Mafia killings and failing to stop several others.

Mr. DeVecchio tried several legal maneuvers — including claiming immunity from prosecution as a federal agent — but each failed, and he appeared in court yesterday in a drab gray suit, ragged crew cut and crinkled features, watched from the gallery by rows of agents dressed nearly identically.

Prosecutors say Mr. DeVecchio accepted cash, wine, the services of a prostitute and jewelry stolen from bank safe deposit boxes. They say he billed the federal government for more than $66,000 in payments to Mr. Scarpa, then kept the money himself. But his greatest rewards were the least tangible, prosecutors say: Through years of handling his prized mole, Mr. DeVecchio grew his legend in the annals of law enforcement.

After helping supervise the famed Commission Case in the 1980s, when top leaders of the city’s five crime families were jailed, Mr. DeVecchio was honored by the Police Department and called to lecture at training academies.

So to Mr. DeVecchio’s lawyers and supporters, among them five agents who signed for his $1 million bail, the charges unfairly smear an exemplary career. Motivated by political gain, they say, state prosecutors have built a flawed case on the word of Mr. Scarpa’s common-law wife, Linda Schiro, a woman intent on selling her story to publishers.

Yesterday, there was a lot of history in the room, all the way up. The judge overseeing the case, Gustin L. Reichbach, was investigated by the F.B.I. in the 1960s when he was a student at Columbia University.

Despite a warning and a reminder that he could have a jury hear the case, Mr. DeVecchio waived his right to a jury trial and left his fate to a man that his F.B.I. colleagues had once described as a dangerous student protest organizer.

Absent an audience of jurors, an assistant district attorney, Joseph P. Alexis, opened his case with a stark, unemotional recounting of the charges. In a trial expected to last more than a month, he said Ms. Schiro would testify that Mr. DeVecchio had visited her home, taken cash payments and told Mr. Scarpa whom to kill.

The witness list includes several Mafia associates, including Mr. Scarpa’s namesake son, who is in prison for racketeering.

By the prosecutor’s account, Mr. DeVecchio identified informers. “Scarpa used this information,” Mr. Alexis said, “to devastating effect.”

Mr. Scarpa shot Mary Bari, the girlfriend of a Mafia figure who was suspected of crossing Mr. Scarpa, while his son held her down, Mr. Alexis said. Mr. DeVecchio eventually investigated possible informers on request.

“Shockingly, DeVecchio used his F.B.I. resources, looked into the matter and faithfully reported back,” he said.

A lawyer for Mr. DeVecchio, Douglas Grover, said Ms. Schiro’s testimony had been concocted to sell books. Several of the victims, he said, were killed before they ever had a chance to cooperate with the F.B.I.

Mr. Grover said Mr. DeVecchio’s relationship with Mr. Scarpa was proper, required to make big cases against secretive Mafia families. “Gregory Scarpa, as ugly and miserable a human being as he was, a made member of the Colombo crime family, was a top echelon F.B.I. source,” Mr. Grover said.

For Mr. DeVecchio, 67 and retired, the trial will render final judgment on a career marked as maverick from the start.

After joining the F.B.I. in 1965, Mr. DeVecchio worked in New York, a city traditionally unpopular among agents for its weather, cost of living, field office bureaucracy and large, ambitious Police Department. His Italian family background led to assignments investigating the Mafia, supporters say.

Mr. DeVecchio first came to prominence in the early 1980s. Posing undercover as a hit man, he helped convict a former intelligence agent of plotting to kill prosecutors and witnesses.

By then, in the parlance of the F.B.I., he had opened Mr. Scarpa, contracting him as a confidential informer to gather insight on Mafia doings and hierarchy.

Mr. Scarpa was something of a legend himself, a compact, muscular man of 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds. In the 1960s, the F.B.I. engaged him to travel south, meet Ku Klux Klan members and use his powers of persuasion to find the bodies of slain civil rights workers. Back home in Brooklyn he reputedly oversaw Colombo loan-sharking operations, hijackings, weapons sales and killings.

Much of Mr. Scarpa’s reputation derived from an uncanny ability to avoid prison through a series of indictments. In 1993, he finally pleaded guilty to murder and racketeering charges. The next year, at age 66, he died in a prison hospital of complications from AIDS, which he had contracted in a blood transfusion from a member of his crew.

The relationship between Mr. DeVecchio and Mr. Scarpa first drew scrutiny in 1994, when F.B.I. agents voiced their suspicions to supervisors, but an inquiry failed to find enough evidence. Taking the witness stand at a hearing in 1997, he strongly denied giving Mr. Scarpa investigative information.

Still, the accusations persisted, taking the form of defense motions, rumors, Mafia lore and, not least, book proposals. In 2005, state prosecutors got their break from Ms. Schiro, who had lived with Mr. Scarpa for years, bearing sons who followed their father into the Mafia.

By Ms. Schiro’s account, Mr. DeVecchio warned Mr. Scarpa of surveillance, impending arrests and other government informers. Prosecutors accused him of helping Mr. Scarpa kill a teenage murder witness, rivals for power and suspected informers, including a woman who had dated a family consigliere.

In his opening, Mr. Grover said the new charges reprised accusations long laid to rest, tacitly acknowledging the long, strange arc of Mr. DeVecchio’s career at the F.B.I. “Watch this one play out,” Mr. Grover told the judge. “It’s going to be quite interesting.”

Thanks to Michael Brick

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A Dentist Gets Drilled by "The Shark"

Joseph "The Shark" Lopez returns with more Shark Tales from the Family Secrets trial and some questions for Pat Spilotro, the dentist brother of Tony and Michael Spilotro. Pat testified during the trial regarding his relationship with some of the defendants. Nick Calabrese, testifying for the prosecution, revealed how both Tony and Michael met their demise.

"The trial was quite a show of characters. The best was Dr. Spilotro, the rat. If his brothers could have seen him on the stand testifying as a government witness they would have puked. He was disgusting. He sat there like a big church victim crying about his brothers.

What about the families of the guys his brother killed, did he weep for them? What about the guy whose head went into the vise or the burglars that were killed? What about those guys doc?

There were times I thought the trial would never end. Day after day was a grind. Judge Zagel kept it going at a good pace. The big issue on appeal will be the double jeporady arguments of Calabrese and Marcello. This case will go on for years to come and it aint over yet!" - Joe Shark

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The Sopranos Bobby Bacala is Heading to Las Vegas

Steve Schirripa, Bobby ‘Bacala’ Baccalieri from The Sopranos’, will be hosting Vegas Va-Voom Variety Spectacular at The Comedy Festival on November 14th at 9:00 PM. It’s a variety show full of music, comedy, and surprise guests. Musical performances include Las Vegas headliners the glitzy-glam duo Zowie Bowie, Vegas perennial favorite “The Lon Bronson Band,” and Schirripa’s own sexy Vegas Va-Voom showgirls.

The Comedy Festival will run from November 14-17 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and is produced by HBO and AEG Live. For ticket information please log onto: www.thecomedyfestival.com.

He'll also be on The Tonight Show onTuesday, October 16 promoting his appearance at The Comedy Festival.

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"Rocky" Busted in Mob Roundup

The FBI said it arrested seven associates of the Genovese Crime family Wednesday on charges the men took part in a series of armed robberies and other crimes in New York and New Jersey.


Among those charged were John "Rocky" Melicharek, Dominick "Shakes" Memoli and Enad "Neddy" Gjelaj.

The suspects are accused of robbing numerous Morris County homes at gunpoint, as well as an Orange County business. The FBI said the men also threatened a Manhattan businessman if he did not make payments to reputed Genovese crime family associates Michael Iuni and Angelo Nicosia.

The suspects were taken to the FBI office in Newark Wednesday morning. They are expected to be arraigned on the extortion and robbery charges late Wednesday.

Melicharek and Memoli face up to life in prison. Others face a maximum of 40 years if convicted. Prosecutors said Memoli and Gjelaj are already behind bars on other criminal counts.

U.S. attorney Michael Garcia said in addition to prison time, his office plans to seek $1 million in restitution from the suspects.

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