Why Does Martin Scorsese Have Beef with ‘The Sopranos’?

Martin Scorsese just isn’t a fan of The Sopranos.

That intel come from Sopranos creator David Chase himself, who seems on The Hollywood Reporter‘s It Happened in Hollywood podcast along with filmmaker Alex Gibney, director of the 2024 doc Sensible Man: David Chase and The Sopranos.

Within the doc, Chase says, “Marty Scorsese doesn’t like the show. He said, ‘I don’t get it – it’s like all these trees and shit.’”

Chase goes on to postulate that the Goodfellas director couldn’t determine with a mafia epic advised within the sprawling, wooded suburbs of New Jersey, versus one set within the city jungles of New York Metropolis, the place Scorsese grew up.

On the podcast, I deliver up the second, asking Chase, “Was [Scorsese] really not a fan of The Sopranos? Did he ever go on the record to say that?”

“Yes, he did,” Chase replies.

Scorsese mentioned as a lot in a 2019 interview with Sight & Sound journal, telling the outlet, “I believe I solely noticed one episode … as a result of I can’t determine with that technology of the underworld. They dwell in New Jersey with the massive homes? I don’t get it.

“They use language – four-letter words – in front of their daughters, at the dinner table? I don’t get that. I just didn’t grow up that way,” the director continued.

Chase was requested to unpack Scorsese’s distaste for the celebrated HBO sequence — winner of 21 Primetime Emmys — on It Occurred in Hollywood.

“What was that all about?” I ask. “How could he not appreciate what you’d done?”

“I don’t know. You have to ask him,” Chase replies.

Requested if the 2 had ever crossed paths, Chase shares, “I met him briefly, but we’ve never talked about it.”

Chase then goes on to elaborate on the speculation he relayed in Sensible Man.

“It’s very simple,” Chase says. “He grew up in New York in Little Italy, and there’s 5 Households organized crime there. That’s what he depicted. I grew up in New Jersey and there was branches of suburban New Jersey and there was branches of 5 Households organized crime, however they’re totally different from those in New York, a distinct tradition.

“People go to the suburbs to build fancy houses and get trees and stuff. It’s that simple. It was real for that place. Like his is real for his,” Chase explains.

And but that doesn’t totally clarify it — as massive parts of Scorsese’s Goodfellas had been filmed in verdant, rural elements of Upstate New York, Lengthy Island and, sure, New Jersey. And The Sopranos has actually paid homage to Scorsese, even having a lookalike actor play Scorsese in a cameo function in season one.

Scorsese was unavailable for remark.

For extra from Chase and Gibney on The Sopranos and Sensible Man, take heed to the full episode of It Happened in Hollywood — and you should definitely subscribe.