The New York Times interviewed some of today’s leading writers about the controversial ‘Sopranos’ finale Sunday night.  I think it’s very interesting to see what writers think of their peers’ work.

Damon Lindelof – Lost – “I’ve seen every episode of the series. I thought the ending was letter-perfect…My heart started beating. It had been racing throughout the last scene. Afterward I went to bed and lay next to my wife, awake, thinking about it for the next two hours. And I just thought it was great. It did everything well that ‘Godfather III’ did not do well…If you feel that everybody is going to hate it anyway, no matter what you do, there’s a certain liberation in writing it.”

Carlton Cuse – Lost – ““There was immediate blowback for me.  A sense of fear ran through my veins, thinking that we are going to be in this position…we know the end is coming in 48 short episodes.”

Doug Ellin – Entourage – “The show just ended, and I’m speechless. I’m sure there is going to be a lot of heated discussion, but that’s David Chase’s genius. It’s what made ‘The Sopranos’ different from anything that’s ever been on TV. It invented a whole new approach to storytelling that isn’t afraid to leave things open-ended, and now the biggest open story line in the history of television.”

David Shore – House – “Obviously he wants us to speculate on what it all means. Obviously that’s what we’re all doing.”

David Milch – NYPD Blue and Deadwood - “It was a question of loyalty to viewer expectations, as against loyalty to the internal coherence of the materials. Mr. Chase’s position was loyalty to the internal dynamics of the materials and the characters.”

Chuck Morre – Two and a Half Men – “This is what you get when you let a writer do whatever he wants…People just finished watching that show and immediately talked about it for a half-hour.  That’s just wonderful. What more could you want as a writer?”

Tim Kring – Heroes – “I have to admit that as soon as it ended, I immediately went there. I don’t have an ending for the series yet. I put myself years in the future thinking about what you do when you have viewers with these sorts of expectations. And I think you just have to be true to what you were originally trying to say…the storytelling in the finale a bit disjointed, so that you lost the cause and effect of some scenes…This was a show that always did everything its own way,”