The Sopranos interview with creator David Chase

0:08Hello and welcome to this special interview special of Pilot Plus. You will recall in a recent episode of the main podcast I mentioned this interview I had done recently with one legendary showrunner, Mr. David Chase, creator of The Sopranos. and then I thought why tell you about this interview when I can let you listen to it in full so just to clarify he is great the man is legendary it was challenging there is no getting away from it and I think you'll be able to tell that when you listen to it but me and Empire's editor-in-chief Nick DeSemlian bravely stepped up to the plate and we sat there for I think it was 40 minutes in total talking to David we do open it up to audience questions for the last 10 minutes or so but um yeah he's quite the character if you've seen the pictures that uh i think boyd mentioned that were on instagram you got me and nick kind of grinning like loons then david kind of scowling down the barrel of the camera and it's not that he didn't like us honestly although you might think that this is just his way when he mentions that james gandolfini based tony soprano's whole character and demeanor on him he's not kidding the man is quite serious the man does not smile an awful lot and he has no time for idiots which was unfortunate because nick and i were on stage with him but uh nevertheless he he did tell me he enjoyed the interview afterwards and while i was basically hanging on for dear life most of the way through this and i was covered in a rather significant sheen of sweat by the end of it i'm really glad we did it and it was a really it was a really good interview i mean how often do you get to talk to the creator of the sopranos about the Sopranos.

1:43Yeah, it was wild. Anyway, this was an Empire VIP club screening. If you don't know what that is, if you subscribe to Empire Magazine as a VIP, you get extra things like cinema tickets and access to the Empire Spoiler Specials podcast. But crucially, you also get to come to Empire VIP events, which are often screening of films with Q &As, sometimes early screenings, and sometimes something like this, a very special screening of a TV show with a showrunner who does almost no press whatsoever. so it's a really rare kind of once in a lifetime experience to be able to see David come and talk about this now everyone who came along they watched the final episode of The Sopranos made in America and then got to hear Nick and I try valiantly to interview David Chase because he watched the he watched the whole episode with them and then he came on stage to talk about it and well this is what happened strap in please before we begin the Q &A welcome on stage.

2:36This is Empire's editor-in-chief, Nick De Semlian, otherwise known as the Paulie Walnuts of the Empire Office. And please do welcome to the stage our special guest, the writer-creator of The Sopranos, Mr. David Chase.

3:10Well, David, thank you very much for joining us this evening. When is the last time you saw that episode? The night it was broadcast. Really? You haven't watched it since? It's pretty good, isn't it? Some of it. But that's interesting you say some of it, because we are all our own harshest critics, right? So as you watch it now, is there a bit where you're like, oh, if I could go back in, I would just tweet. What would you change, if anything? well I wouldn't include Donald Trump in it I mean that's fair that's fair or it would have been much different yeah yeah that I would change you know I was always concerned that the show wouldn't last long because references would change it's bad enough with the devices the phones and all but yeah the music is I I guess a little different, but it's timeless, isn't it?

4:06Yeah. It's a, it's stunning. And it's so defined by sound and by music, the entire show, which I think is one of the reason makes it so effective that we have that. Let's be honest in a room full of people, quite awkward, but silence all the way through the credits at the end. It's yeah. Well, you never had to do that when you're watching on TV, right? Well, you turn it off quite. Yeah. It's not right. But I mean, it's, it's an incredible moment. I was, uh, I was on the internet looking at the discourse around the final episode and there is, it's absolutely true. There is a 30 ,000 word academic dissertation on that episode Which goes into granular detail of almost every frame of that final sequence?

4:42Did you have any idea making it that it would end up being the most discussed episode of television pretty much ever made? Well, it was the most hated episode of television. Well, both. It's polarizing, right? Well, yeah, people came around, but no, I didn't think that.

4:56Nick de Semlyen:Was the reaction what you expected? Did anything surprise you? Um, well, I knew, I knew it would have a, you know, the show was so hot at that time and people were just talking about it all the time. So I knew it would have a reaction, but, um, I didn't really think about it that much. But people are obsessive. I found that the, uh, the booth that they sit in was auctioned on eBay. I think in a couple of years ago, made$84 ,600, which is pretty good. Yeah, I know. And you know, I went back to that store, Holston's. Yeah. A couple of years later and they were giving out hats and I said can I get one of those hats they made me pay for $15 Did you use the jukebox they were well known before that everybody knew about Holston's right?

5:45That's incredible. I can't believe that made you pay. Did you tell them who you are? I think they finally gave me I think I think Nicole works with me I think she told them and you would hope you would give me that it's the least I could do right

5:57Nick de Semlyen:is it true that you wanted the uh entire credits to be black like and the dga wouldn't allow that i think you're right i think it was yeah yeah was there any other compromise that you needed to make or did i mean i'm you did the pilot in the end i don't think hbo was crazy about that ending but um but you know they questioned me a little bit i had a great relationship with them i'm not complaining about them at all um and i and they were not you know they didn't know what to say about that rightly so but by that point they'd learned to trust you right like you had free rain pretty much on the show when i say like it's not it was not a network show very much not one and you know they gave you free rain and they trusted in your vision and it was never a you know in envisaged as a conventional show like it pushed against all the boundaries of what people i guess come to expect from television well here's what we have to know is that they gave me complete they had complete trust from day one and uh television networks don't do that no and i don't know chris albrecht and carolyn strauss jeff bucas they hired me to do this and they let me do it we had one or two arguments in the entire 10 years what were they about What were they about the title the sopranos, you know what that and?

7:23Tony killing a guy in episode five Right was the university episode Was it the university episode no college. All right college. Yes. That's why yeah I forget there are two. Yeah.

7:33Nick de Semlyen:Yeah, yeah Did they want more violence or less violence? You can imagine some people want more You know Chris was a really smart guy and here's what he said to me before we got started. He said okay so you're on HBO but don't do things just because you can do them and I thought that was really smart so there was things like the topless waitresses which actually is not even legal in Jersey I didn't know that you can't serve alcohol and have women topless in the same place so I had been to a topless place in Newark but it was a back of a delicatessen and there was no welcome uh they were they just trusted me and it was so what i'm getting to is yeah they trusted me by this time but they started off with the trust that's a hell of a thing isn't it yes especially having worked in network television like that yeah coming out of network television which is pure shit yeah completely and i worked in network television so i include myself and you were ready to leave tv right like if this hadn't worked you were at the point where you were kind of yeah i wanted to leave i wanted to leave tv yeah i mean i always i never wanted to be in tv i wanted to make movies i never got like my first job was in tv and my wife had supported me for a long time and so i thought i just needed to now support her and so i'll take the money and do tv but it's incredible that you wanted to work in film and yet what you did was bring a cinematic quality to television that had never really been seen before and made tv fundamentally changed it to become more cinematic that's what they say i'm actually really interested in the cinematic influences there's many and and i believe fellini was a big influence for you and the pilot you directed had some chinatown in it am i right in thinking this final episode has some kubrick 2001 space odyssey that's really interesting the way that you chose to direct it yes i don't know what the point was but so it's about it's the specifically the kind of the tiny point of view i think you know just technically it has to do with i've always been interested in uh characters walking into their own point of view yeah um it it's you see it all the time and most times you don't notice it but it's something off there it's something off about time it's like you're looking at that and then you're in that and kubrick did that in 2001 a bunch of times and then uh yeah and these are references you and the cinematographer would discuss before when you're prepping it because you brought back the same dp who did the pilot to direct to shoot this one yeah yes yeah i think he was still on the show yeah i mean i think he was still part of the show he was great alex akaroff he's a genius it's i mean it's it's a stunningly shot episode and you mentioned the pov thing obviously pov becomes quite an important device towards the end of the episode let's say uh but it's interesting the way that is layered all the way through the importance of that that first person perspective that you mean the pov i'm talking yeah the pov because walking into the scene but then as we get into that final episode and we have the we have bell tony's eyes pov bell tony's eyes pov it sets up that rhythm so yeah yeah the bell was supposed to recall the first episode of that season there was a bell um tony was sitting at a dock at the lake house and he was looking out at the lake and he was in a terrible mood and a bell kept ringing with uh with a little with waves and that was supposed to signal to people like i think buddhists ring bells when they forgot attention and something really strange happened then that was the first episode of the last season and we were shooting that sequence and a duck by itself flew through the scene amazing yeah perfectly bookending the themes yeah yeah incredible can i ask about the cat in this episode the cat there are some there are some wild theories online not all about the cats um but there is a theory that it's adriana's ghost what were you thinking about can you talk about what you were thinking about when you were i don't know what's going on there yeah did you have a cat at the time or no i didn't know but my wife's aunt had a cat that only looked into corners or sat in corners never sat at that angle all the time that's all we had cats but not like that did did it amuse you or does it amuse you all the theory i mean people are still writing about the show in so much detail and crazy theories not just about the finale but does that do you keep abreast of that does that kind of no why would i i'm not i'm not i don't need attention sure of course i do do you have a favorite insane sopranos theory oh theories um no i don't really have there's one that tony is a cannibal and he's selling body parts through the pork store yeah that's a good one that's a side hustle about that I know somebody wrote somebody has credit with some kind of thing that everybody thinks makes sense and I never read it You said when you first saw this episode back when it when it first said it was a very emotional thing to watch because you were Saying goodbye not just to the show but to these characters and I remember you saying that, you know When meadows park in the car you were just thinking i'm never gonna see how what happens to meadow Like what what happens to what's her next step?

13:00What's her life going to be? Like how does it feel watching it again? Now? Does that stay with you? Does it feel slightly different with the distance of time? Well, I was near tears watching it tonight. Really? Toward the end. Now I can't remember what I was crying about.

13:22It was a music cue. Yeah. I don't think it was the beginning of Don't Stop Believing. Might have been. It might have been that. It gave me chills up and down my spine. It always did. I mean, that scene always made me cry. really yeah because it was you know there's the thing in the movie then there was also just you know life and my life and tied up with that and my family and you name it and of course the music because that's that i mean the music oh yeah that song that gives everyone's chills now not just because of this why did you settle on that particular song um that's not my favorite song but um people made fun of it but i always thought it was okay yeah i kind of liked it my kid was two years old um there was three songs one of which i don't remember uh and then the other one was al green love and happiness and um and this one and i was in the location van with all the department heads who were looking for locations and i was and i never did this and i so i told them what i was thinking and i said the three songs and i said that one they said oh jesus no jesus christ no and i thought that's the one there's a theme here i don't know if you've noticed yeah was it easy and also stevie van zandt he told me that a lot of music people came up and wanted to do the last the last scene um and he said what are you going to do and i told him he said oh jesus christ not that but you see the thing about when when tony was listening to music I always tried it to be I always tried to have it be music that he would listen to and I believe he would he was probably in high school when that came out or something like that so that's what I always tried to do I didn't try to give him like he would have never listened to Bruce Springsteen for example never but

15:20Nick de Semlyen:is it true that Journey would only license the song if there was no violence in the scene that it was being used over I don't remember I remember that Steve Perry wasn't even around and he claims that he had to approve it we never let anybody approve anything so i don't know how that happened i wanted to shift from this one to the other one that you directed which was which was obviously the pilot episode uh and i watched it again the other day and it's neat it's an incredible first episode of television but the thing that struck me is people when they talk about the sopranos they talk about difficult men and that it's about masculinity difficult men difficult men and masculinity but the thing that kind of struck me from that first episode is How much we understand carmela's in a life just from the very first episode.

16:04There is so much to that character Uh, and I read that you were very conscious because it was a tv show and you know You wanted a tv audience that you were Very hard making sure that the female characters were properly represented in that Was that something that was at the forefront of your mind when you did this? It wasn't in the forefront of my mind, but It came up. Well, I guess in a sense it was it the idea came about because my wife and people I know well used to tell me oh you got to do something about your mother I mean she's you know and I dined out on her stories about her for all time and um so I had this idea of doing a tv producer who was had a difficult mother and then I thought who cares about that and I thought well let's do a gangster film and that was it um and so that was a very central woman in the story and i also realized that american tv anyway at that time is family dramas you know and women were central in most of those dramas so there you are and you drew a point was it your cousin that was inspiration for carmela i read diana no i had a cousin named carmel oh right that was what it was yeah yeah what she was my cousin diana was kind of like her yeah it's because it feels very personal because we feel so connected these characters feel so lived in when we meet them so they do feel like they're drawn from lift experience that's that's edie falco that's not that's not she's very good that's edie falco gives you that feeling yeah

17:33Nick de Semlyen:yeah so the show really blades to trail for portrayal of mental health on tv and i'm sure it inspired a lot of men to go to therapy who might not have otherwise um it's interesting was that a real sort of stigma at the time apparently cbs wanted you to drop the yeah therapy yeah they had a cbs at that time said you know i don't know uh are you married to this uh prozac thing and prozac was kind of new then i said yeah he said and uh seeing a shrink you you're married to that i said well yeah he said well you know the killing and the cheating and the lying that's okay but i i can't i can't go for that because i guess it was you know like probably not masculine right yeah well it's a very different time like the the stigma around mental health was quite pronounced yeah and then we got an award and our third season we got an award from the american psychiatric associations and they said that the number of men coming from i didn't realize that i didn't realize there was a stigma among men about going to therapy um and that's what they said have you had people come up to you and tell you that their experience that they've i don't recall that maybe maybe that happened but yeah yeah Yeah, because it feels like, I think you're right, it's a masculinity thing.

18:47But people are like, if Tony Soprano can have therapy, I can have therapy. Right? I suppose so. Yeah. Here's what I remember. My brother-in-law was a banker, and he worked for a bank president in Florida. And the bank president, him and his wife watched the show. And he said when it was over, I wish I was Tony Soprano.

19:11It's interesting though because he is an anti-hero he is magnetic he is charismatic He's very attractive to the audience despite the terrible things that he does And that's an interesting line to walk with the show I remember doing an interview once and someone said that Anti-heroes are great because they do things they're active they have agency whereas traditional heroes react to events things Yeah, that's true to them, which is why writing anti-heroes is so much more fun

19:39uh no well i'm thinking no that's right i don't know it's just humphrey bogart has there ever been any an actor more interesting than that you know um it's just got something going people are interested in it they don't want to say you know italian americans were upset about this show and they protested and did all this crap and And what they didn't know was every time we went anywhere somebody come over say, you know My uncle when he was a kid he carried bags for so-and-so Well, my father worked in a gas station and Al Capone drove in one time. That's all these are Italians Yeah, that's all they want to talk about was their connection to the mafia their personal connection That's wild absolutely why because it is a show that on the face of it certainly from the beginning They think it's a mobster in therapy.

20:29You'd think that people connected to that life would have concerns. But obviously as it goes on, nothing made that world look cooler at times, right? Than the Sopranos. Well, I guess so. Frank Costello, who was head of one of the New York families, saw a psychiatrist.

20:48Nick de Semlyen:Because of the show. No, no. No, he came away before. Yeah. We have to talk about James Gandolfini, obviously beloved guy and Titanic actor. Amazing. I mean, seeing him on a cinema screen is incredible. What was it like directing him? He did that twice Directing him? Yeah Was it true he was copying your mannerisms in the pilot? He told my wife that She was on set and she said God you're really doing this so well I'm just copying David And now Somebody that I worked with was telling me a couple of weeks ago That when I get angry It's like I want to murder somebody And I lose my temper and I scream and yell And then I thought Well yeah, that's where Tony Socrates comes from but I didn't really didn't think that through you know Tony Soprano was more patterned on my father really you said previously that you loved writing for Junior more than the other characters all the writers loved writing for Junior why was that?

21:47well Nancy also it has something to do with their age their advanced age so they would say anything they had no there was no governor on the motor you know I think that's what it was and also with Junior especially They would say things in an antiquated way. Yeah, like he would call money spondulics or he would talk about This is worse than patience on a monument These are old American expressions that nobody knows but he did you know, yeah I always thought that like Christopher felt like he was in some way an avatar for you like a guy who wanted to be a storyteller But was almost constrained by his environments.

22:25He just wanted to make movies. Was there an element of that there? Was that subconscious or? no he i mean i didn't he had nothing to do with me really yeah i just thought well you know i did want to make movies maybe it maybe it was a connection there but he uh you know when i went to film school was the beginning of american film schools and now they're all over the place true making movies is big is a big concern of young people

22:52Nick de Semlyen:and i thought that he would be part of that i have no idea if you want to talk about this but christopher wrote a horror film obviously in the show cleaver you wrote a horror film called grave of the vampire which i haven't seen but what was that experience yeah um grave of the vampire i was working for a company called clover films in hollywood they made soft corn soft core porn films for uh i was trying to get any kind of job and uh there was a thing at that time called pussycat theaters, the theater chain, and they did what was called softcore porn. So I was working for this company and they decided to branch out into a horror movie.

23:31And the idea for Grave of the Vampire was the head of the company, this guy named Dan. And he just, he let me write the script and it was a big deal. I was going to get to actually write something. And yeah, so I wrote it and i didn't it wasn't called that i had called it still life so obviously that was not cool for him and so they changed that and i was completely rewritten so but that was my first credit you

23:58Nick de Semlyen:wouldn't want to watch it in a room like this on a big screen necessarily you wouldn't want to watch it no no no it wasn't really well directed it was not very i want to check it do you i mean as someone who essentially shaped every tv show for the last quarter of a century like do you watch a lot of tv yourself do you do other shows resonate with you now you don't at all no i don't i don't But that's not it's not about television. I don't see a lot of movies either and I've stopped reading books. I don't know what's going on I know actually I do it's age. Yeah, but um The books thing is what really concerns me and yet I don't pick up a book and read it.

24:33Mm-hmm. So I Mean sopranos is obviously on the face of it a story of the mob, but in reality it is a portrait of America I mean the last episode is called that right. It's you know, it feels like a portrait of You know a warts and all look at America as a country I wonder like if you were starting now like if you were making this upon us now, how would it be a different show? Well, you couldn't make it at all really well not with any resemblance to that no We need to begin with they get all upset about the Italian Americans complaining

25:08um you know corporate cowardice would run the whole thing no you just couldn't come couldn't do any of that yeah none of that line well language would be okay i guess yeah and sex would be okay but uh nothing idea wise no and there's nothing like you wouldn't have a if you if you were able to do it it's like is there a different way that you would have approached it if you were doing it now like if you were able to go back and talk to yourself when you were making it that what would you what would you say well actually you know i try i the original script was written for fox which was the fourth network which was the radical network um and i wrote that script and they turned it down and then i realized that no one was killed in it there was no murder and i thought oh you schmuck it's a gangster movie and i thought well you're writing for a tv network You can't have a murder in there.

26:04So I put a murder in, gave it to HBO, and off it went. Makes all the difference. Got up the body count. I mean, all the networks turned it down. I mean, thank God, right? Absolutely. Can you imagine what this would be if it had been a network job? I'd be dead or in a minor institution. Seriously. Best thing that ever happened to you? It was the best thing that ever happened to me. and i give them like you know i heard afterward that hbo kind of changed a little bit and got a little more uh dictatorial but when i was there it was like like i said they trusted completely

26:42Nick de Semlyen:was that right from the beginning like even the pilot when you were shooting that there was a big gap between the pilot and them green lighting well they tested the pilot a lot and you know i was of course incensed about that and insulted but um and what what a surprise it didn't test well what a shock um and so then so again i give them credit it didn't test well but they still put it on the air yeah but that's the whole thing isn't steve jobs used to say that you don't ask people what they want you give them what they want because they don't know what they want until they see it and no one had seen anything like this before so i imagine they weren't quite sure what to make of it when they first saw it i know that but why what do they do they're they're not idiots they all went to college why do they listen to this testing they have marketing people they need to you know that's just their job you know what else are they gonna do

27:32Nick de Semlyen:what were the things that people didn't react well to at the test screen was it the ambiguity and the kind of the fact you weren't spelling things out in the way people expected the whole thing you know it was considered tasteless and crude and um sexist and toxic male and you know yeah and the only character that did well in the testing was arty bucco's wife that's so random yeah they said that she was the moral center of the show because she makes him give the tickets back so they were pushing you to make her more central to the whole story that's wild NBC would have said yeah he'll come in a car accident and have him marry her

28:16that's it it's incredible it's interesting you say about HBO changing because it's hard to imagine that HBO would be what they are now without the Speranos like I can't hear the HBO audio item without immediately hearing the Sopranos theme tune like that is burned into my brain at this point Okay

28:34Nick de Semlyen:I think it's by it's Alabama free which is a British band I think they're based in London at Brixton that they did the theme the theme song for the show. I think I'm right I'm sorry The band actually it's the band who did the meet there Yeah Yeah, I think I think I believe so. Yeah, okay So let me ask you, I met somebody yesterday who lives in Brixton, and I believe that I read that there was a reggae concert in there where the bass was so low that broke windows and disturbed housing foundations. Is that true? It sounds plausible. I don't know. It's just a Wednesday night in Brixton. This woman that I was talking to said, I was there, and it made all of us want to go to the bathroom.

29:17She said, yeah, really low frequencies does that to your colon. Wow. Yeah, that's incredible. Don't go to South London Right on that note I think we can ask some questions from the audience I just want to say one thing We're talking about the importance of music to the show And it really is And we're really fortunate to have Chrissy Hynde right here Yes

29:45We probably used three of their songs Three or four I think Them, The Stones, Dylan The usual suspects. Yeah, I think you said an influence that it was your favorite part of the process was picking picking those songs Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely really. Oh, yeah, but the rest of it was work. But this this part was pleasure Yeah, yeah, it's I'm a really I'd highly recommend it was there anything you wanted to put in but could never get Well, I think we wanted a Beatles song they wouldn't do it No, no where everything was okay and then at the end for the last I think I should have said this. For the finale, people came out of the woodwork wanting to have their song be on.

30:30I'm not surprised by that point. It would have made their careers. Yeah, yeah.

30:35Nick de Semlyen:Did you hear from Journey after this? I'm assuming so. I never heard from Journey. Really? But as I said, Steve Perry said that we had to send him a script and either it was done without my knowledge because we never did that because we were having problems with somebody on our crew Was leaking a lot developments to the New York papers So we never let anybody see the scripts it wasn't like go over with so cool. We can't do it We wouldn't even do it, you know to do it to him, but he said that's what happened I don't think he was even in the band anymore, but but But I guess he was a vocalist on me I think they probably sold one or two records off the back of this I think that's safe to say well, I think they probably sold one or two records off the back of this I think so fantastic i think we have some roving mics somewhere do we have mics we have a mic there we have a mic over there we do if anyone has some questions a show of hands would be the way to go let's begin with you there

31:35hello hi david um i watching that final episode i was struck by um all the humor and the lightness and the banter between the characters. And I wondered whether this was a deliberate sort of ploy to sort of counter quite often the darkness of some of the episodes, the wacky that goes on and the murder. And I wonder if that's a very conscious thing. You know how they go together? Yeah.

32:05Well, I don't know. There's kind of cheerful humor. and there's not cheerful humor. And that's kind of what this is. It's really, you know, it's human behavior. And it's kind of ludicrous. And the ludicrous is what I always liked. I mean, I remember when I was going to school in the Bronx, I went to a relative of mine's funeral, and this was a traditional thing for Italian-Americans or Italians. There was another funeral there, and they hire mourners. They hire women to kneel by the casket and cry and sob. Oh, and I watched that. I thought this is ludicrous This is like the saddest day of their lives.

32:49Look what they're doing. This is all false And I just saw the comedy in that and that was kind of key Thank you Fantastic. We had another one just Yes, just a right behind