'Wise Guy' review: We've got the boss of 'The Sopranos' over here in definitive look back at a TV classic

When we first see director Alex Gibney interviewing “The Sopranos” creator David Chase, the setting is a specially built replica of the office used by the show's psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi, a move that comes across as just a tad gimmicky, maybe even a little bit hokey.

That feeling soon dissipates. With the Academy Award-winning Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “Taxi to the Dark Side,” “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks,” et al.) getting Chase to open up about all things “Sopranos,” including how Chase’s own upbringing influenced the series, “Wise Guy” turns into an extended therapy session of sorts.

Chase grouses, “I’m just talking my f---ing head off, I can’t believe it. I really regret the amount of f---ing verbiage from this morning. ... I didn’t realize it was gonna be about me," and says all this talk reminds him of one of Tony's most famous lines: " 'Remember when' is the lowest form of conversation."

The viewer experience is all the more enriched because the two-part HBO documentary IS about Chase. Over the course of 160 minutes, “Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos” establishes itself as the definitive history of a series that is almost universally regarded as one of the greatest works in the history of television (I certainly concur with that). Here we are, some 17 years after the brilliant, polarizing, stunning finale, and we’re still arguing about whether Tony was whacked by the guy in the Members Only jacket or someone else at Holsten’s Brookdale Confectionary, or if the Sopranos were destined to finish that order of onion rings “for the table,” order dinner and call it a night.

“Wise Guy” is a feast of archival film, fresh interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, key scenes and outtakes from the series, and while it’s great to hear from cast members including Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco and Michael Imperioli, as well as writers and producers and executives who made valuable contributions to the series, it’s Chase’s story and his insights that drive the doc.

We learn about his upbringing as an Italian American in New Jersey and his time at Stanford University’s School of Film, where he fell in love with cinema. (There’s a wonderful moment where Chase describes how a chase scene in “The Sopranos” was a direct homage to a sequence in “Chinatown,” and we see split screen footage of the two scenes side by side.) Chase carved out a a successful but creatively frustrating TV journeyman career as writer for “The Rockford Files” and “Northern Exposure,” among many other series, but all the while, he dreamed of a career in movies. He initially envisioned “The Sopranos” as a feature starring Robert De Niro and Anne Bancroft. He eventually morphed the script into a TV pilot, with all the traditional networks passing before HBO grabbed it.

Chase recounts how the character of Tony’s nightmare of a mother, Livia Soprano, was modeled after his mother, with Chase finding the perfect actor to play the part in Nancy Marchand. (“When all my relatives started watching the show, they said, ‘My God ... that’s your mother!’ I said, ‘No s---.’ ”) We see audition footage of James Gandolfini and Imperioli and Drea de Matteo (reading for a role she didn’t get before she was cast as Adriana), as well as some familiar faces that weren’t cast on the series.

Lorraine Bracco, the only actor in the original cast who was well-known, confirms the story of how she balked at taking the role of Carmela because it was too close to Karen from “Goodfellas,” and was cast as Dr. Melfi. Another clip features Steve Van Zandt reading for Tony, but when HBO balked at the idea of an untested actor as the series lead, Chase created the role of Silvio Dante specifically for Little Steven.

The documentary’s treatment of the late James Gandolfini’s legacy is filled with warm and loving testimonials from his colleagues, who clearly loved and admired him, but it doesn’t shy away from addressing Gandolfini’s struggles in dealing with sudden and massive fame, and his substance abuse issues, which sometimes greatly impacted production. (Gandolfini’s no-shows became so frequent that HBO established a $100,000 fine for every day he didn’t show.) Footage of Chase delivering a passionate eulogy at Gandolfini’s memorial service is utterly heartbreaking.

Addressing that famous final scene, Chase says that the more pushback he heard about using Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” the more he was convinced it was the perfect choice. He also says—

Let’s just leave it there.