David Chase
David Chase
David Chaseis an American writer, director and television producer. Chase has worked in television for 40 years; he has produced and written for such shows as The Rockford Files, I'll Fly Away, and Northern Exposure. He has created two original series; the first, Almost Grown, aired for 10 episodes in 1988 and 1989. Chase is best known for his second original series, the influential and critically acclaimed HBO drama The Sopranos, which aired for six seasons between 1999 and 2007...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Producer
Date of Birth22 August 1945
CityMount Vernon, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I mean a couple of years ago (HBO head) Chris Albrecht called me and said we should really seriously think about how long we want to go and how this thing should end. So I took that to heart and thought about it a long time and plotted it out and this will be the end, yeah.
I hope that over the past seven years we succeeded in bringing a little of it back.
We have eight more games to go; and we want to win them all. If we can win a title, people will think we're for real. We can't take anything for granted.
They're on edge, disquieted, off balance. What a short time we're on this Earth.
There's a tremendous amount of camaraderie between these guys, as well as a lot of competition and backbiting. They come to me and say, 'Why did he get to do this? Why did he get to do that?' A lot like they are on the show with Tony. And it's true that when they're together, a kind of group-think takes over.
It may be that in two or three or four years I could be sitting around and get an idea for a really great 'Sopranos' movie. I don't think that will happen. But if one morning somebody woke up and said this would make a really good, concise, contained 'Sopranos' story, I wouldn't rule that out.
There will be these 12 (upcoming episodes) and then another eight, and that will be the end.
Your father tells you a story when you're a kid, or your mother or your uncle or whoever it is. You sit there with your mouth open, and your mind goes to all these places they're telling you about that you've never seen, and you're agape. You just can't believe that things can happen like that - but it's just so direct.
I was so besotted with '8½' that, when it was on TV, I used to take pictures with my 35-mm. camera of the frames of the film. That was the first time I'd ever really seen Italians on screen.
I would imagine that the more time you spend talking to another person, the more you're going to lie to them. So if you spend a lot of time with your relations, you're probably lying a lot to them.
People have said that I said I hate television. I never did say that. What I said was that I hated a lot of stuff that was on television. It's nothing about the medium itself.
The Sopranos' is filled with really retrograde humor. Bathroom humor, falls, stupid puns, bad jokes - infantile, adolescent stuff, but it makes me laugh.
The thing about movies now is in a way what it always was: The screen is huge and now the sound systems are too. And you never get that with TV. Even with a home system, it's never the same.
When we were doing 'The Sopranos', I used to love that about it. There were rules, Mafia codes you had to go by, but the code is ridiculous. It's a code among sociopaths.