Trivia / The Sopranos S 6 E 21 Made In America

• Deleted Scene: Peter Bogdanovich has claimed that there was supposed to be one final scene with Dr. Melfi and Elliot Kupferberg (who are otherwise absent in this episode), with the latter counseling the former after her decision to drop Tony as a patient in the previous episode. The closest that the deleted footage has come to release is some behind-the-scenes photos of it being filmed.
• Shrug of God: David Chase has made various comments about the finale but has avoided providing an explanation to the meaning of the final scene. In his first interview after the broadcast of the finale with New Jersey paper The Star-Ledger, Chase stated,
  I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there. 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 fuck with them and it's not true. You're trying to entertain them. [...] Anybody who wants to watch it, it's all there.
  • Chase also addressed the opinion of some that the open-ended finale was insulting to the show's longtime fans:
    I saw some items in the press that said, "This was a huge fuck you to the audience." That we were shitting 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.
  • In an interview conducted by Brett Martin several weeks after the finale's original broadcast, Chase shared his views on the final episode and the reaction to it. On those fans of the show who demanded an unambiguous and definitive ending, Chase remarked,
    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. [...] The pathetic thing — to me — was how much they wanted his blood, after cheering him on for eight years.
  • Chase also made comments about the purported lack of finality in the final episode:
    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 matter.
  • On moments during and after the final scene, Chase referred to a scene from "Stage 5":
    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 Gerry Torciano was killed? Silvio was not aware that the gun had been fired until after Gerry 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[...]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.
  • In a December 2008 radio interview with Richard Belzer, Chase also mentioned the scenes from "Stage 5" and "Soprano Home Movies" in relation to the final scene. At the 2008 TCA Awards, held on July 22, Chase commented,
    I wasn't going to do this, but somebody said it would be a good idea if we said something about that ending. I really wasn't going to go into it, but I'll just say this...when I was going to Stanford University's graduate film school and was 23, I went to see Planet of the Apes (1968) with my wife. When it was over, I said, "Wow... so they had a Statue of Liberty, too." So that's what you're up against.
  • In a November 2008 interview with Entertainment Weekly's Steve Daly, Chase stated,
    There's more than one way of looking at the ending. That's all I'll say.
  • Chase revisited the final scene in an April 2015 interview with DGA Quarterly and "suggested that fans, experts, and scholars have been over-thinking the ending to the show."
    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.
  • In response to reports that Chase has offered a definitive answer to the question of whether Tony Soprano lived or died, at the show's conclusion, Chase has issued denials indicating such reports were incorrect and reiterated the stance he has consistently taken on the subject, and publications have printed retractions.
  • In a January 2019 interview with Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz for their book The Sopranos Sessions, Chase refers to the final scene as "that death scene". Seitz then asks Chase if he is aware of his choice of words to which the latter, after a long pause, responds with an expletive. Chase would eventually reveal that he "didn't want to do a straight death scene", after originally envisioning Tony's death occurring in a meeting with Johnny Sack. However, Chase later clarified his statement, saying he was not describing the Holsten's scene as "that death scene" but an earlier idea that he had abandoned.
• What Could Have Been: David Chase revealed in 2021 that his original choice for the song in the iconic final scene was "Love and Happiness" by Al Green. He also revealed that he imagined an alternative version of the final scene, which would have bookended the famous opening title sequence by having Tony drive from New Jersey to New York before his implied offscreen death.
• Word of God: In an interview that was widely publicized in June 2020, David Chase described the final scene as a "death scene," thereby settling the Ambiguous Ending question for a lot of fans. However, the "full story" is still complicated, as at least one article reporting on the story pointed out.
  • During a November 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Chase made comments that some interpreted as confirmation that Tony Soprano dies in the final cut to black. He had originally envisioned a scene in which Tony would drive from New Jersey to New York, the reverse of the route followed in the opening sequence of every episode, and arrive at a meeting in which he would be killed. After driving past a small restaurant on Ocean Park Boulevard, though, Chase decided that Tony should instead "get it in a place like that".
• Word of Saint Paul: Many people believed that the Smash to Black represented Tony being killed in the last scene. There's a suspicious looking guy going to the bathroom, making some people believe he was the killer. According to his actor, Paolo Colandrea, the guy in the bathroom most likely was going to approach Tony. He still isn't sure if he killed him or just talked to him or something.

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