David Chase¶
At a glance¶
- Born
- August 22, 1945, Mount Vernon, NY — as David DeCesare
- Raised
- Clifton and North Caldwell, New Jersey
- Education
- NYU; MA, Stanford film school (1971)
- Before
- Kolchak, The Rockford Files, I'll Fly Away, Northern Exposure
- Emmys
- 7
- Directed
- Exactly 2 episodes — the pilot and the finale
I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there. June 2007
Before¶
Born David DeCesare to Italian-American parents; the family name was anglicized. He grew up in New Jersey, where his father ran a hardware store, and has been open about a childhood and adolescence marked by panic attacks and clinical depression — the same condition he later gave his protagonist.
He wanted to make films. He got an MA from Stanford in 1971 and then spent twenty-five years in network television, which he has described in consistently unhappy terms: story editing on Kolchak: The Night Stalker, then The Rockford Files (where he learned the craft under Stephen J. Cannell), I'll Fly Away, and Northern Exposure, where he met Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess.
He was, by his own account, good at a job he didn't respect and increasingly convinced he'd missed his chance at the thing he actually wanted.
The pitch¶
The original conception was a feature film: a mobster in therapy, having problems with his mother. The mother came first.
He signed with Brillstein-Grey in 1995 and wrote the pilot. He and Brad Grey took it around the networks:
- Fox showed interest and passed.
- CBS objected to the psychiatry — Chase's account is that they asked whether the character had to go to a psychiatrist.
- Others passed on the premise entirely.
HBO's Chris Albrecht funded a pilot, which Chase directed in 1997. Then it sat. For months, nothing happened, and Chase considered asking for more money to expand it into a feature instead.
In December 1997 HBO ordered twelve more episodes.
Livia¶
The show's antagonist is based on Norma Chase, his mother, whom he has described as a passive-aggressive drama queen. A significant amount of Livia's dialogue is reportedly close to verbatim.
He has said the show is, at its root, about his own relationship with his mother and his own therapy, with the mob as the delivery mechanism — which is why the crime plotting is so often the least important thing in an episode.
As showrunner¶
By every account: controlling, exacting, and extremely specific. He wrote or co-wrote a handful of episodes per season and heavily rewrote nearly everything else. Scripts were broken down shot by shot in the room, which is why the show looks like film rather than television.
He personally chose almost every piece of music in the series — with music producer Martin Bruestle and editor Kathryn Dayak — including the closing song of nearly every episode. See Music.
He directed only the pilot and "Made in America."
The ending¶
Chase has spent eighteen years declining to convert the final image into a fact, with increasing irritation and occasional mischief. The full chronology of his statements — 2007 through 2024 — is on The Ending.
The pattern is consistent: he'll discuss the feeling he was going for, and will not discuss whether Tony dies. When pushed in 2019 he said "Fuck you guys." When misreported in 2021 as having confirmed Tony's death, he responded that if people believed it, that worked for him.
After¶
Not Fade Away (2012) — his feature directorial debut, about a New Jersey garage band in the 1960s. Personal, well-reviewed, barely seen. James Gandolfini plays the father, in his last collaboration with Chase.
The Many Saints of Newark (2021) — co-writer and producer; the prequel film.
He has said he'd consider one more film covering Tony in his twenties, and that the studio hasn't prioritized it.
The legacy¶
Chase's central achievement is not the antihero, which existed. It's that he made a television drama that refused to be reassuring — no lessons, no arcs completed on schedule, no dispensing of justice — and demonstrated that a large audience would accept it.
Every showrunner of the following twenty years works in the space he opened, and most of them have said so. See Legacy & Influence.