I have to admit based on what I know about David Chase - and even the most laudatory books on him make it clear he was a prick to work with - part of me wonders if, unlike Milch and Simon, the reason he's never worked in TV again is that a lot of his co-writers and possibly some of the people who worked with him, needed a long time to get where they are in Wise Guy to get over him. Even Van Zandt called him a contrarian and that's being generous.

The one thing you get about Chase, at the time at least, was that he never seemed to like working in the medium he was a part of. I'm glad he's found peace with himself but you show know something that when Gibney started the doucmentary and began to ask presonal questions Chase initially considered walking off. Gibney himself confirmed that.

I'm not saying the Sopranos isn't a masterpiece, though I will admit I've written more than my share of articles arguing that both its place in history have been overstated by contemporaries and that its immense popularity at the time may have been out of touch with what viewers were watching overall for much of the 2000s. But I've never had the desire to revisit the same way I have all of the other HBO dramas of this era: OZ, The Wire, Six Feet Under or Deadwood. I've had issues with it over time and while I'm willing to acknowledge they may be mine alone I've always been uneasy with its place in the pantheon of great shows. I agree its groundreaking and that the revolution couldn't have happened without. Yet I've never been able to regard it with the same adulation. And I think part of it may be Chase's barely held contempt with TV then, while he was working in it and even now.

I think there is a part of him who never really did get over the fact the pilot was never made and that he couldn't turn into a movie which was, as he makes clear in this film, the real reason he wrote it in the first place. He never had much use for the business of television, wasn't happy working in it at the time, and even by the standard of the so-called 'difficult men' in the industry was one of the worst order.

Maybe that's part of the reason. Chase's mission statement for The Sopranos was that people are incapable of change and will always give in to their worst instincts rather than do anything that might be difficult. We see it with every character in the crew right up until Kennedy and Heidi. The Sopranos is Chase's def facto statement on the entire human race and not even OZ or Deadwood was that pessemistic about human nature. I get enough of that point of view in real life? Why should I want to see it hailed as the quintessentail masterpiece of television?

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Good article.