CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 5/02/08

WGF Storyteller Series:
David Chase

By ari eisner

To coincide with his reception of the WGA's Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television, 2008, Sopranos creator/showrunner/mastermind David Chase spends a night discussing his career, process and other mob-related tidbits before a theater of writers as part of the Writer's Guild Foundation's "Storyteller Series."

David Chase was raised in North Caldwell, New Jersey. That city would one day become home to the Soprano family, as Chase is most comfortable when writing about familiar environments. "I have to think of something (taking place) in New Jersey in order for it to work for me," he said. After graduating from Stanford, television producer Roy Huggins gave Chase a break when he read a spec script the film school graduate co-wrote with a college classmate. The classmate left the business, but Chase kept writing, eventually landing gigs on Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Rockford Files, I'll Fly Away, and Northern Exposure. But it wasn't until he created the mob drama sensation The Sopranos that the auteur felt as though he'd truly been able to work freely as an artist.

The show, originally conceived as a feature-length movie about a mobster, his crazy mother, and his therapist, couldn't find financial backing because of its cross-genre tone. The idea morphed into the notion of a television pilot for Fox. That network passed on the project, which turned out to be the best thing that could happen to it. HBO picked the show up, and Chase described that experience as one of the most liberating events in his career. "I'd run away from the plantation and I was headed for freedom land."

The idea for The Sopranos sprang from a conversation Chase had with his wife Denise. "She told me, 'You should write about your mother.'" Chase didn't think anyone would care, but the character of Livia Soprano would turn out to be one of television's most unique and memorable nemeses. Season one of the series was to play out like the feature script, culminating in a final confrontation between mother and son by the finale. "Livia was supposed to be dead in episode 13," Chase said. But Nancy Marchand, the actress playing the character, was ill (she passed away in 2000) and told Chase she just wanted to keep working.

Speaking to an audience of die-hard Sopranos fans, Chase revealed some nitty-gritty details, and no tidbit was too small for this house of enthusiasts. Chase revealed that the episode "Join the Club," in which a comatose Tony (James Gandolfini) imagines himself as a normal businessman traveling for work is, despite what most people seem to think, "not a dream." The dismemberment of Ralph Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano) in "Whoever Did This,"—with his head, hands, and torso all buried separately—was based entirely on fact. Most interestingly, Chase revealed the whereabouts of the infamous Russian (Vitali Baganov) who escaped Christopher (Michael Imperioli) and Paulie (Tony Sirico) in "Pine Barrens": after being found by a troupe of boy scouts and reuniting with his boss Slava (Frank Ciornei), the gangster was treated for a head wound and is now living out his days in his home country. Brain damaged, but alive.

Chase remained reserved when it came to explaining the final "blackout" moment of the series. He insisted that all the visual cues for what transpired are there in the episode, and to explain what transpired would only "flatten it."

A writer who doesn't mince words or pander to his audience, David Chase never seemed afraid to speak his mind. During the Q&A portion of the night, he wasn't in the least bit shy about his thoughts on The Sopranos video game ("It didn't work"), or revealing his bafflement at his audience and their obsession over the series' smallest nuances ("Who gives a shit?). He was equally candid in his response to an audience member who praised Northern Exposure. Unceremoniously, Chase told the man who expressed his adulation for the series, "I didn't like Northern Exposure, and I did it for the money." Tony Soprano himself couldn't have put it more bluntly.

Writer-director Ari Eisner has sold TV pilots to Warner Bros. and Fox. He is co-creator of the trailer parodies Must Love Jaws , 10 Things I Hate About Commandments (which was featured on CNN and in TIME and Rolling Stone), and Glen and Gary and Glen and Ross (mature language). He has written for everything from CBS's Still Standing to Creative Screenwriting Magazine to, of course, CS Weekly.

David Chase courtesy Michael Jones

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