David Chase, producer and creator of The Sopranos, gets the Q&A treatment in the April issue of Vanity Fair. This is a must read for any fan of the Sopranos. Here is an excerpt:

How involved are you in the editing of the shows?
I do all the editing. I sit over the editor’s shoulder. I hardly ever even show [my cut to] my colleagues. The truth is, what you really want is for people to say, “It’s perfect! My God—don’t change a thing!” (Laughs.) And when they say anything other than that, you tend to say, “Well, they didn’t get it.” We take a long time to do postproduction. We change the stories, and we take scenes that were meant to have one purpose, and re-purpose them to do other things. Or change the whole order of the way the story’s told. Often, because it’s somewhat of a serial story, we’ll realize—like, say, in Episode 8—”You know what? We really should have introduced this guy earlier on.” Or introduced this idea earlier on—so it doesn’t come out of the blue. So we’ll go back and do some retrofitting of information, or character, or some story points.

You’re famous for not tying up loose ends.
I think, probably, that’s because that’s not what the story was about. It’s not important. It seems to be part of life, too, that things recede into the background or whatever. Something that was so important to you Thursday—all of a sudden, you’re caught up in something else and it’s not important Friday.