David Chase

At 78 years old, David Chase has this physical status:

David Henry Chase (born August 22, 1945) is an American screenwriter, director, and producer.

He is best known for writing and producing the HBO drama The Sopranos which aired for six seasons between 1999 and 2007.

Chase has also produced and written for such shows as The Rockford Files, I'll Fly Away, and Northern Exposure.

He created the original series Almost Grown which aired for 10 episodes in 1988 and 1989.

He has won seven Emmy Awards.

Early life and education

Chase was born into a working-class Italian American family in Mount Vernon, New York, the only child of Henry and Norma Chase. His paternal grandmother had changed the family name from "DeCesare" to "Chase". His father owned a hardware store. He grew up in a small garden apartment in Clifton, New Jersey, and in North Caldwell, New Jersey. He grew up watching matinée crime films and was well known as a creative storyteller.

He has stated that he had many problems with his parents when he was a child. He says that his father was an angry man who belittled him constantly, and his mother was a "passive-aggressive drama queen" and a "nervous woman who dominated any situation she was in by being so needy and always on the verge of hysteria." A character he created for The Sopranos, Livia Soprano, is based on his mother.

Chase struggled with panic attacks and clinical depression as a teenager, something he dealt with into adulthood. He graduated from high school in 1964 and attended Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where his depression worsened. "I slept 18 hours a day," he has stated. He described his problems as "normal, nagging, clinical depression." He also worked as a drummer during this period and aspired to be a professional musician. After two years, he transferred to New York University where he chose to pursue a career in film—a decision that was not well received by his parents. He went on to attend Stanford University's School of Film, earning a Master of Arts degree in 1971.

Personal life

After graduating from NYU in 1968, Chase moved to California and married his high school sweetheart Denise Kelly. He is the father of actress Michele DeCesare, who appeared in six The Sopranos episodes as Hunter Scangarelo.

Chase has stated that he "loathed and despised" television shows, watching only The Sopranos and movies. However, he has said in recent interviews that he watches Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men, the work of former Sopranos writers and producers Terence Winter and Matthew Weiner, respectively. He said that he made those negative comments in part because he had been frustrated working within the confines of 1990s network television.

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Career

Chase began as a story editor for Kolchak: The Night Stalker and later produced episodes of The Rockford Files and Northern Exposure, among other things. He also served as a writer on 19 episodes of The Rockford Files, a series on which he appeared in various capacities for more than four years. He received numerous Emmy awards, one for a television film called Off the Strip, a runaway script he scripted in 1980, including one for a runaway he scripted. With Eve Gordon and Timothy Daly, he created Almost Grown, his first original created series. Although critics loved the one-hour film, only ten episodes aired from November 1988 to February 1989.

Before The Sopranos debuted, Chase spent in relative anonymity. The Sopranos' story was originally intended as a film about "a mobster in therapy having problems with his mother." Chase sought some input from his boss Lloyd Braun and decided to make it into a television series. He started a development contract with production company Brillstein-Grey in 1995 and wrote the first pilot script. He drew heavily from his personal life and his experiences growing up in New Jersey, and has admitted that he tried to apply his own "family values to mobsters." For example, Chase's tumultuous friendship with his mother Livia is partially based on Chase's personal relationship with his own mother. He was also doing psychotherapy at the time and modeled Jennifer Melfi's appearance after his own psychiatrist.

Chase had been fascinated by organised crime and mafia from an early age, and he's seen such people growing up. He was also raised on classic gangster films such as The Public Enemy and the crime series The Untouchables. The Richard Boiardo family, a prominent New Jersey organized crime family when Chase began growing up, is a component of the DeCavalcante family in New Jersey. Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, an American playwright, have influenced the show's script, and Italian director Federico Fellini has a major influence on the show's cinematic style. The series was named after his high school classmates.

The Sopranos were pitched by Chase and producer Brad Grey to several television networks; Fox expressed a keen interest but did not follow it after Chase told them the pilot script. Chris Albrecht, the show's producer, was eventually able to fund a pilot episode that was shot in 1997. Chase supervised it himself. They completed the pilot and showed it to HBO executives, but the show was delayed for several months. During this period, Chase, who had long been frustrated with being unable to break out of television and filming, contemplated petitioning HBO for additional funding to film 45 more minutes of footage and releasing The Sopranos as a feature film. HBO decided to produce the series in December 1997 and ordered 12 more episodes for a 13-episode season. The show premiered on HBO on January 10, 1999 with the pilot, The Sopranos. David Chase and Phil Abrham created the 2022 Super Bowl spot for Commonwealth / McCann in 2022.

Chase is specifically credited to three episodes of The Sopranos, but as the show's producer, showrunner, and head writer, he was involved in all of the scripts, including directing and touching up each script's final draft. In addition, he penned the pilot episode and the series finale (both of which he also wrote). "I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there," Chase said of the tense final scene of the series finale.

Chase's debut feature film, Not Fade Away (2012), was released on December 21, 2012. It focuses on the lead singer of a teenage rock'n' roll band (played by John Magaro) in 1960s New Jersey. Chase reunites with James Gandolfini (former star of Sopranos) who co-stars as Magaro's father, "a music-driven coming-of-age tale," the film is described as "a music-driven coming-of-age tale." Bella Heathcote, Christopher McDonald, Molly Price, Lisa Lampanelli, Jack Huston, and Brad Garrett are among the cast members. Chase has portrayed the film as about "a war-depression-era parent who has given his child every benefit that he didn't have growing up," but now can't help but being jealous of his son's liberated, more exciting destiny. Steven Van Zandt, another Sopranos cast member, served as both a music manager and executive producer.

Despite the fact that Chase was "against [the film] for a long time," Deadline Hollywood announced in March 2018 that New Line Cinema had purchased the script for The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel to Chase and fellow screenwriter Lawrence Konner's book The Sopranos. "I was interested in Newark and life in Newark at that time," Chase said of the book, which focuses on the 1967 Newark riots and racial tensions between the Italian-American and African-American cultures." With my grandparents' dinner, I used to go down there every Saturday night. Tony's boyhood was what grabbed my attention, but it wasn't the only thing that interested me was his childhood. I was interested in learning about it." Chase served as producer, and Alan Taylor, who had previously produced episodes of the series, was hired to direct the film in July 2018. The film was originally scheduled to be released on September 25, 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the release date was postponed until March 12, 2021 and later September 24, 2021, before finally being released on October 1, 2021.

He and his Chase Films production company have signed a deal with WarnerMedia more recently.

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Awards and recognition

• 1978 Emmy Award Winner, Outstanding Drama Series (The Rockford Files)
• 1979 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Drama Series (The Rockford Files)
• 1980 Golden Globe Award Nomination, Best Television Series – Drama (The Rockford Files)
• 1980 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Drama Series (The Rockford Files)
• 1980 Emmy Award Winner, Outstanding Writing in a Limited Series or a Special (Off The Minnesota Strip)
• 1992 Golden Globe Award Nomination, Best Television Series – Drama (I'll Fly Away)
• 1992 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Drama Series (I'll Fly Away)
• 1992 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Writing for A Drama Series (I'll Fly Away – "Pilot")
• 1993 Golden Globe Award Nomination, Best Television Series – Drama (I'll Fly Away)
• 1993 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Drama Series (I'll Fly Away)
• 1994 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Drama Series (Northern Exposure)
• 1999 Golden Globe Award Winner, Best Television Series – Drama (The Sopranos)
• 1999 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Drama Series (The Sopranos)
• 1999 Emmy Award Winner, Outstanding Writing for A Drama Series (The Sopranos – "College")
• 1999 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Writing for A Drama Series (The Sopranos – "Pilot")
• 1999 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Directing for A Drama Series (The Sopranos – "Pilot")
• 2000 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Drama Series (The Sopranos)
• 2001 Golden Globe Award Nomination, Best Television Series – Drama (The Sopranos)
• 2001 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Writing for A Drama Series (The Sopranos – "Funhouse")
• 2001 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Drama Series (The Sopranos)
• 2001 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Writing for A Drama Series (The Sopranos – "Amour Fou")
• 2002 Golden Globe Award Nomination, Best Television Series – Drama (The Sopranos)
• 2003 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Drama Series (The Sopranos)
• 2003 Emmy Award Winner, Outstanding Writing for A Drama Series (The Sopranos – "Whitecaps")
• 2004 Golden Globe Award Nomination, Best Television Series – Drama (The Sopranos)
• 2004 Emmy Award Winner, Outstanding Drama Series (The Sopranos)
• 2006 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Drama Series (The Sopranos)
• 2007 Emmy Award Winner, Outstanding Drama Series (The Sopranos)
• 2007 Emmy Award Nomination, Outstanding Writing for A Drama Series (The Sopranos – "Kennedy and Heidi")
• 2007 Emmy Award Winner, Outstanding Writing for A Drama Series (The Sopranos – "Made in America")
• 2008 Laurel Award for TV Writing Achievement