Wise Guy: David Chase And The Sopranos, directed by Alex Gibney, is essentially a two-and-a-half hour documentary split into two parts. The centerpiece of the documentary is Gibney interviewing David Chase, the creator and showrunner of The Sopranos, in a soundstage replica of Dr. Jennifer Melfi’s office. It’s where so many scenes took place between the psychiatrist, played by Lorraine Bracco and New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano, played by the late James Gandolfini, that it seemed like a fitting place for Gibney to probe the mind of the notoriously tight-lipped Chase.
The Gist: Despite Chase’s discomfort about talking about his life, Gibney probes the writer about his upbringing in an Italian family in New Jersey, including his extremely difficult relationship with his mother. After Chase and his wife moved to California right after they got married (to get away from his mother), and Chase went to film school at Stanford, he started working for a studio that made cheap b-level horror films, and soon ended up writing for television. Some of the shows he wrote for include The Rockford Files, Northern Exposure and I’ll Fly Away.
Chase goes through the…
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