Before The Sopranos , TV looked like TV. The lighting was flat. The directing was coverage—wide, medium, close-up, cut.
The documentary includes interviews with prominent cast members and executives:
The documentary is worth its runtime just for the horror stories of who nearly ruined the show. We see grainy audition tapes of actors who "didn't get it." One actor plays Tony as a thug. Another plays Carmela as a doormat. Michael Imperioli (Christopher) shows up wearing a method-acting scar. But then, we see the moment Edie Falco reads. She sneers. She prays. She cries in two seconds flat. Wise Guy slows down the footage to show you how she absorbs the room. Wise Guy- David Chase and The Sopranos Miniseri...
In Part One, Gibney plays a clip of Livia telling Tony, "You’re not going to feel sorry for yourself." Chase pauses the clip. He looks at his hands. "My mother said those exact words," he whispers. "It's funny. It's not funny. It's horror."
The first part, titled “The Guy Who Didn’t Get the Girl,” is a masterclass in misdirection. It begins not with The Sopranos , but with Chase’s childhood in Clifton, New Jersey. His mother, Norma, was a sharp, anxious woman who once threw a plate of spaghetti against the wall because her husband, Henry, was late for dinner. His father, a hardware store owner, was a gentle, cowed presence. Gibney unearths home movies: young David at a birthday party, not laughing, staring at the cake as if trying to decode its meaning. Before The Sopranos , TV looked like TV
Wise Guy meticulously chronicles how David Chase shattered that mold. Through a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes footage and newly conducted interviews, the miniseries illustrates that The Sopranos was a Trojan horse. It looked like a mob drama on the outside, complete with whackings and pork store sit-downs, but inside, it was a deeply personal story about family, depression, and the unfulfilled promises of the American Dream.
But the most moving segment is reserved for James Gandolfini, who died in 2013. Gibney has access to unreleased behind-the-scenes footage from the final season. In it, Gandolfini is not acting. He is sitting alone in the Bada Bing! set, in the dark, smoking a cigarette. He looks exhausted. Chase’s voice cracks as he describes their final conversation. “He said, ‘Dave, I don’t know who I am without this guy.’ I said, ‘Jim, you’re a father. You’re a husband. You’re an actor.’ He just shook his head. He knew something I didn’t.” the algorithm-driven streaming slop.
The documentary then pivots to the show’s infamous ending—the cut to black at Holsten’s diner. For thirty minutes, Gibney deconstructs it with the precision of a bomb squad. He interviews fans, critics, and cast members. Steven Van Zandt (Silvio Dante) admits he threw his remote at the TV. Edie Falco (Carmela) says she understood it immediately: “It’s the only way it could end. Because death doesn’t give you a crescendo. It gives you nothing.”
Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos is essential viewing. It doesn't try to make us nostalgic for the early 2000s. It makes us thankful we survived the emotional wreckage that Chase and Gandolfini left in their wake.
The documentary opens with Gibney pushing Chase to admit that Tony Soprano is an extension of himself. Chase resists. He squirms. He looks like a man who has been caught stealing hubcaps. But the evidence laid out by Wise Guy is damning.
The final hour of Wise Guy is melancholic. We see modern America—the CGI blockbusters, the algorithm-driven streaming slop. Gibney asks younger filmmakers (including Bill Hader and the Succession writing staff) how The Sopranos changed them.