Another interesting tidbit from Foxnews.com:

Tony Soprano Finally Beats Tony Bennett

For years, Tony Bennett refused to allow his songs in “The Sopranos.” Did you know that? Tony’s manager son Danny Bennett tells me that every season, David Chase’s office would call to ask permission for a Bennett recording.

“And we always turned them down,” Danny says. “My dad felt that the show was demeaning to Italians.”

A couple of times, Chase worked in references to Tony Bennett, Danny recalled with a smile. “When Tony was shot, Carmela brought him Tony’s box set in the hospital. She said, 'These are his favorite songs.'"

But the songs were not heard.

And then, in Sunday night’s finale, a permanent impression of Tony Bennett: Tony Soprano flips through the juke box on the diner table, and finds a single: “I’ve Gotta Be Me,” backed with “A Lonely Place.” It was released in 1969.

“It was a real single,” Danny Bennett says. Indeed, there’s a long lingering close-up. But Tony couldn’t pick either one, Danny says, and Chase knew it. Danny Bennett has a theory. “David Chase put those there, but since he couldn’t have either song, he knew Tony couldn’t choose them.”

The other choice Tony Soprano lingers on is Heart’s record, “Magic Man.” But Danny points out, “It was “Magic Man (Live). The ‘live’ part is important. And he didn’t choose that one either.”

Of course, Soprano picked Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” And six days after a TV show went off the air, we are still talking about it. I am surprised that so many people didn’t understand that when a TV show or movie cuts to black, and there’s silence, death is indicated. That’s it. This is one of the oldest conventions of filmed drama. The Sopranos, I must tell you, are gone. They are not coming back, except in syndication.



>>>>http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/15/television.sopranos.reut/index.html
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>>>Interesting. It could certainly mean that at the moment it all went black and quiet Tony's life ended.( and thus the series ends - even Tony wouldn't know what happened after that ) But I think Chase made it deliberately ambiguous, and thereby made it poetry rather than narrative.
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>>>The more i think about that ending the more I like it.
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>>Which one, the ambiguous one we thought we watched the other night or the theoretical one that Tony was whacked?
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>>The new theory is an intriguing one. A problem I have with it is Tony was not an omniscient character, i.e. not everything on the show was told from his POV. Even if he got killed the world would not "fade to black" for everyone else.
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>>Chase has given one interview since the show aired, with his pet reporter at the Newark Star-Ledger, and in it hinted that he deliberately left it ambiguous. He added that he has no intention of clarifying anything -- everything he intended to say is in the show.
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>No, I mean the deliberately ambiguous ending ( the poetic one ) not the interpretations and speculations it engendered.
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>Of course I like surrealistic art a lot too <s>