‘Wise Guy’: What We Learned 25 Years Later Watching The Sopranos Documentary

Alex Gibney’s illuminating new docuseries, Wise Guy: Guy David Chase and The Sopranos, which premiered on Max this Saturday night, is a treasure trove of Sopranos trivia that is sure to stun even the most devoted fans of the series. Through never-before-seen audition tapes, interviews, and insider footage, Gibney and the cast of Wise Guy reveal all of the effort, drama, inspiration, and backstage antics that went into the making of one of the most celebrated (and revisited) television shows of the 21st century.

For instance, did you know that to try and win the part as Carmela, Edie Falco showed up to her audition with a homemade baked ziti? I’m just kidding. OR AM I? I am. In reality, Falco was convinced she wouldn’t get the part because directors didn’t usually cast women who looked like her in Italian-American roles.

Hungry for more deep-cut factoids about The Sopranos? Below are 26 things Wise Guy: Guy David Chase and The Sopranos reveals about everybody’s favorite TV show.

1. David Chase originally wrote The Sopranos as a feature film based on his mother’s life.
2. CBS head honcho Les Moonves turned The Sopranos down because he didn’t like that Tony took Prozac.
3. Martin Scorsese didn’t like The Sopranos at first and thought the pilot had too many trees.
4. Andrea Donna de Matteo, who played Adriana La Cerva, originally thought The Sopranos was about opera singers.
5. Steven Van Zandt was first brought in to audition for Tony Soprano after Chase watched him induct The Rascals into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.
6. Lorraine Bracco was offered the part of Carmela Soprano, but asked to play Dr. Melfi instead. She had been in therapy before and didn’t want to repeat her character from Goodfellas.
7. James Gandolfini walked out in the middle of his audition. He didn’t think it was going well. However, the casting directors thought he was great, so he auditioned again at David Chase’s house and got the part.
8. HBO tested the pilot in four markets: Dallas, Connecticut, and two places Chase can’t remember. No surprise, the Connecticut audience liked it the best. Also, the pilot-testing audience wanted the show to focus more on Artie Bucco’s wife, Charmaine. Maybe next time!
9. It took ten months for HBO execs Chris Albrecht and Carolyn Strauss to order The Sopranos to series after the tepid response to the pilot.
10. Season 1 was supposed to end with the death of Tony Soprano’s mom, but the actress who played her—Nancy Marchand, had emphysema and lung cancer, so she begged Chase to keep her working. It was the only time Chase ever conceded.
11. The actor who played Paulie Gualtieri was a lot like his character. The two-tone hair, the tan … that was all Tony Sircio. In fact, no one was allowed to Sircio’s two-tone hair, and he was very upset when he had to mess it up for the “Pine Barrens” episode.
12. People had to ask David Chase for permission if they wanted to change a word of dialogue. According to Edie Falco, the cast “was there to serve his vision.”
13. Toward the end of the series, there were confidentiality issues on set, which led to Chase shooting multiple outcomes for Adriana’s character, including one where she survives and one where she dies.
14. If Chase asked to have dinner or lunch with a cast member, it meant they were about to get whacked.
15. Speaking of getting whacked, the cast begged Chase not to kill off Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero. Chase’s response? “This is a mob show. People gotta go!”
16. Also, still speaking of getting whacked, Chase didn’t have the heart to kill Adriana on screen, so the camera pans to the sky instead, and the audience only hears the gunshot.
17. David Chase’s agent encouraged him to leave the show after the second season to pursue feature films, but he declined. He’d fallen in love with the characters and wanted to keep world-building.
18. Evidently, James Gandolfini was a goofball on set. “He would fuck around,” recalls Lorraine Bracco who played Dr. Melfi. “He would throw kisses at me. He was just a lunatic.”
19. He also tried to quit the show every other day, according to Steven Van Zandt. The two would go to the bar after work, get drunk—and then, like clockwork, Gandolfini would claim he was going to quit the next day. He would inevitably change his mind when Van Zandt reminded him he had 100 people depending on him
20. After Gandolfini negotiated a blockbuster $ 1 million-per-episode salary, he felt bad and gave every cast member $30,000 to make up for it. Well, everyone except Edie Falco. She didn’t know about it until Alex Gibney mentioned it to her on camera.
21. Albrecht staged an intervention for James Gandolfini, and when the actor entered Albrecht’s apartment and saw everyone sitting there, he said “Fire me!” and walked out.
22. James Gandolfini would walk around with a rock on his shoe all day, bang his head on things, or drink six cups of coffee to get really angry in preparation for a violent scene.
23. Everybody was up in arms about Chase’s decision to use the Journey song “Don’t Stop Believin’” in the finale. The overwhelming response from the cast? “Are you fucking kidding me?” Stars! They’re just like us.
24. Chase took inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey for the finale. “The astronaut begins to see himself,” Chase says. “He turns a corner and sees himself as an old man. This simple technique always mesmerized me.” Watch the finale again and you may notice how Tony walks into his own POV with everyone he goes to see. “It made me think of time and approaching death,” Chase says of the technique. (Wait. Did David Chase just admit that Tony dies??)
25. James Gandolfini didn’t know how The Sopranos was going to end until it aired. According to Lorraine Bracco, she and James Gandolfini were together during the finale, and when the scene infamously cut to black, he screamed, “That’s it?”
26. All Chase wanted to do after The Sopranos ended was “make a fucking movie.” And so the legendary TV show that was never supposed to be a TV show ended just as it began. To quote Journey, “It goes on and on and on and on.”

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