All Due Respect . . . The Sopranos Changes Everything: A Chapter From The Revolution Was Televised by Alan Sepinwall
5/5
()
About this ebook
In this chapter from the critically acclaimed book The Revolution Was Televised, Alan Sepinwall explores why The Sopranos was critical to ushering in a new golden age in television. Drawing on a new interview with creator David Chase, Sepinwall weaves fascinating behind-the-scenes details about the show with his trademark incisive criticism—including his theory on the controversial series finale.
Alan Sepinwall
Alan Sepinwall has been writing about television for close to twenty years. Formerly a TV critic for the Newark Star-Ledger (Tony Soprano's hometown paper), he currently writes the popular blog What’s Alan Watching? on HitFix.com. Sepinwall's episode-by-episode approach to reviewing his favorite TV shows, "changed the nature of television criticism," according to Slate, which called him, "the acknowledged king of the form." Visit AlanSepinwall.com.
Read more from Alan Sepinwall
The Sopranos Sessions: A Conversation with David Chase Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sepinwall On Mad Men and Breaking Bad: An eShort from the Updated Revolution Was Televised Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to All Due Respect . . . The Sopranos Changes Everything
Related ebooks
Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fat, Drunk, and Stupid: The Inside Story Behind the Making of Animal House Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5If You Like Quentin Tarantino...: Here Are Over 200 Films, TV Shows and Other Oddities That You Will Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Chuck Klosterman on Film and Television: A Collection of Previously Published Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Permanently Suspended: The Rise and Fall... and Rise Again of Radio's Most Notorious Shock Jock Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5LIFE The Sopranos Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFast Forward: Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bronsonýs Loose!: The Making of the <I>Death Wish</I> Films Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaking It: What I Got Away With In Hollywood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Off the Back of a Truck: Unofficial Contraband for the Sopranos Fan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wire: Truth Be Told Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unofficial Encyclopedia to The Sopranos Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDown and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Fil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, & the Network Battle for the Night Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to '80s Teen Movies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sopranos Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Dirty Life in Comedy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sopranos and Philosophy: I Kill Therefore I Am Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Entertainment Weekly The Ultimate Guide to James Bond Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Performing Arts For You
The Diamond Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Woman Is No Man: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Star Wars: Book of Lists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRomeo and Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Movie Quotes for All Occasions: Unforgettable Lines for Life's Biggest Moments Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Our Town: A Play in Three Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lucky Dog Lessons: From Renowned Expert Dog Trainer and Host of Lucky Dog: Reunions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hamlet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Best Women's Monologues from New Plays, 2020 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tempest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Comedy Bible: From Stand-up to Sitcom--The Comedy Writer's Ultimate "How To" Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Dolls House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count Of Monte Cristo (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Whale / A Bright New Boise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yes Please Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Midsummer Night's Dream, with line numbers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Agatha Christie Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related categories
Reviews for All Due Respect . . . The Sopranos Changes Everything
5 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
All Due Respect . . . The Sopranos Changes Everything - Alan Sepinwall
All Due Respect . . .
The Sopranos Changes Everything
A Chapter From The Revolution Was Televised
Alan Sepinwall
A Touchstone eBook
Published by Simon & Schuster
New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhi
All due respect . . . The Sopranos changes everything
Guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office.
He complains, It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. That the best is over.
The punchline—not that Tony Soprano could ever understand it—was that the show that told his story represented not the end of something, but the thrilling ground floor.
Other shows had made the revolution possible, but The Sopranos is the one that made the world realize something special was happening on television. It rewrote the rules and made TV a better, happier place for thinking viewers, even as it was telling the story of a bunch of stubborn, ignorant, miserable excuses for human beings.
And all of it came from the mind of a man who wanted nothing more than to be out of the TV business at the time he wrote that first script.
I was never that happy in television,
Sopranos creator David Chase admits. He’d been writing TV dramas for a couple of decades—had worked on The Rockford Files, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (the short-lived ’70s drama that helped inspire The X-Files), Northern Exposure, and I’ll Fly Away, among other impressive resume lines, and had created a critically well-regarded but short-lived series called Almost Grown—and in the mid-’90s he signed a development deal with the Brillstein-Grey production company, for reasons he couldn’t quite understand.
They made this development deal with me, and people there said they believed I had this great TV series in me,
he says. I thought, ‘Me? A great TV series? I’m not even crazy about doing TV. I want to break out and do movies.’
Given the shows he had written for, what exactly was so burdensome about the business for him at that point?
I was really lucky,
he says, in that I worked for and with some really talented people. And on my own. But I’d had, either by myself or with these other people, had to sit through these moronic meetings, in which every timid, weak, vapid idea was always preferred to anything revolutionary or new. That was one thing: I was never surprised watching hour-long TV. And I never saw anyone on there who behaved like real human beings.
The Sopranos would not be timid, weak or vapid. It would surprise everyone in the business—including Chase, who never expected the thing to get made, much less in an environment where it could both succeed and stay true to his vision.
Among the ideas he was fighting against was the notion that a TV series had to have a likable character at its center. Why, TV executives had been asking for 50 years, would viewers want to come back week after week to watch a jerk, a crook, or worse? There’s a famous scene in Paddy Chayefsky’s script for Network (a movie that predicted the reality/tabloid state of our pop culture with stunning accuracy, but didn’t have the optimism to allow for the flip side demonstrated by shows like The Sopranos) where a bored development executive rattles off the descriptions of the shows under consideration for next season; every one of them has a main character described as crusty but benign.
That was complex
TV characterization for