Congrats to the Newark Star-Ledger’s Alan Sepinwall on securing what has to be considered the scoop of the week, an interview with “The Sopranos” creator David Chase.

Chase has had an ambivalent relationship with his fans, particularly the bloodthirsty whacking crowd who seemed to tune in only for the chance to see someone’s head get blown off (or run over by an SUV). So was he reluctant to fill last week’s penultimate episode, “The Blue Comet,” with so many vivid death scenes?”I’m the Number One fan of gangster movies,” he says. “Martin Scorsese has no greater devotee than me. Like everyone else, I get off partly on the betrayals, the retributions, the swift justice. But what you come to realize when you do a series is you could be killing straw men all day long. Those murders only have any meaning when you’ve invested story in them. Otherwise, you might as well watch ‘Cleaver.'”

One detail about the final scene that he’ll discuss, however tentatively: the selection of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” as the song on the jukebox.

“It didn’t take much time at all to pick it, but there was a lot of conversation after the fact. I did something I’d never done before: in the location van, with the crew, I was saying, ‘What do you think?’ When I said, ‘Don’t Stop Believin’,’ people went, ‘What? Oh my god!’ I said, ‘I know, I know, just give a listen,’ and little by little, people started coming around.”