A stubborn lunatic’s guide to making great art

25:54How do you make something personal and important when everything about the system is conspiring to keep it off? After a short break, the story of a person who did that maybe the most successfully of anyone, a guy with a tortured relationship with his mother who wanted the whole world to find that drama interesting.

26:23Thank you.

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28:59Welcome back to the show. So, Alex Gibney, a talented and stubborn man who figured out how to make personal art in a system designed to snuff it out. His latest film is about David Chase, a talented and stubborn man who figured out how to make personal art in a system designed to snuff it out. Chase was a TV writer who had had a successful career commercially in the 80s and most of the 90s, but who now felt profoundly frustrated by the limitations of the form. What is the process by which The Sopranos goes from an idea in David Chase's head to a television show on HBO? Okay, so David was just getting tired of doing the TV thing.

29:43I mean, he had had a relatively successful career. He was a showrunner at Northern Exposure, which is a very successful show. And he had done some other ones in the past. But he had always wanted to make movies. That's really what he wanted to do. And this was like his last go-round. He had some money put away. He was just going to write spec scripts and see if he could get a movie made. So it was like the last roundup. So David Chase, frustrated, done with television, convinced that the era is just not one that will let him make work he finds interesting. He figures he probably needs to switch to movies.

30:20He has this one idea he wants to try. This is a clip from the documentary Wise Guy. The voice you'll hear belongs to David Chase. For years, everybody told me that I had to write something about my mother. She was so out there. and so funny. My wife, Denise, was the first one to say that. And then everybody was saying, you've got to write something about your mother. In the documentary, David Chase tells Gibney about how a colleague, Robin Green, also pushed him to try to build a story around his difficult mother. In her pitch, though, it was more autobiographical. Robin said, you should write the show about your mother and a TV producer.

31:00And I thought, who's going to watch that? But maybe if he was like a really badass guy, maybe that would work. Was the bad guy already a mobster? Yeah. I wanted to get De Niro and Anne Bancroft. At first, I thought of it as a feature. It was the story that actually was the first season. It was about a mobster that goes through a shrink after having panic attacks. And so he writes this script, and he decides to make the protagonist a mobster, Tony Soprano, who's got a problem with his mother. And in fact, his mother wants to kill him. And he writes the script, and it's really good. And everybody agrees it's really good, and he starts to take it around.

31:41But at the time, TV was dominated by the three, possibly four networks. And they were interested in kind of lowest common denominator programming and sort of routinized programming. So he would go from place to place, and they all turned him down. And Les Moonves, who was at, you know, a famous executive at CBS said, you know, this mobster stuff is really good, but, you know, are you wedded to the therapy? And Dave was like, yeah, I'm wedded to the therapy, I guess you'd have to say, since it was the central engine of the entire show, right? So everybody wanted him to do something that was the cliché, and he wanted to do something that was completely different.

32:26And it wasn't until the script landed at HBO where they said, whoa, this is new and original and different. That was it. It was different. And HBO was looking to be different. It's not TV. It's HBO. Right. HBO had existed as a cable network since the 1970s. But in the 1990s, the channel was trying to transform itself. At the time, most HBO subscribers were there to watch movies and boxing matches. But HBO, like Netflix would 20 years later, wanted to start making more of its own stuff to make a real name for itself. A traditional TV network may have wanted David Chase to make the safest, most cost-effective version of The Sopranos, but HBO was competing on quality.

33:11There might be a lesson here about golden ages, that if you're someone who makes stuff, one of the best places you could find yourself is at an upstart company trying to compete against the establishment. So with HBO, I mean, they were making money through subscriptions, and they were showing movies that they would license. they had dipped their tone to series, like with Larry Sanders and with Oz and others. And they were thinking, this is pretty good. Maybe we should try a bigger swing. Yeah. And so they were looking for something. So moment and different economic model because they don't need to have a big ratings winner.

33:45They just need some people who love a show. That's good for them. And then if you love different shows, that's okay because this group loves this show and they'll subscribe. And this other group loves this show and they'll subscribe. Good. Everybody doesn't have to love every show. So poised for that moment. And then he walks into it with his script to HBO, and they're asking the questions where everything's upside down. Instead of saying, like, okay, so we'll shoot it in L.A., and we'll do second unit in Jersey, right? Because that'll save money. They were like, you're going to shoot everything in Jersey, right?

34:19That's what David said. He's like, whoa, I felt like I had landed in an alternate universe. Like, they were going to let me do anything I wanted? And they pretty much did. Yeah. David felt he had landed in Bizarro World. It was like where the execs were encouraging him to engage his own creativity and to lean in to all the things that were important to him, as opposed to, you know, invest in the stereotypes that had become so successful. The Sopranos was not a confected corporate product. I mean, it wasn't at all in terms of its artistry and all of that. But it didn't come about because David thought, how can I make a lot of money?

35:01It came about because David was like, I'm obsessed with my mother. I mean, there's something funny about the idea that millions of dollars were spent and made for someone to just kind of have their dream. To work out their own personal shit about their mother. I totally agree. And that to me was the beauty of the moment. You came across a network who was like, fuck it. Let's roll the dice. Yeah. You know, what have we got to lose? But a lot. But a lot. I mean, it is true. And they were scared, too. I mean, because after they shot the pilot, they waited six, seven, eight, nine months before they made the decision to go ahead and order the series.

35:45They were terrified. Right. Because, like, how can you have a mobster who's the protagonist? Yeah. Somebody who kills people for a living is going to be the protagonist of this family drama, right? And they were really nervous about it. And one argument that David had with the creative executives at HBO was over Tony killing somebody on camera. And they were worried that they would turn viewers off. But David convinced them. They said, look, we're making a show about a mobster. If he doesn't kill the guy who was a snitch, then what are we doing? We're just making bullshit. And so they move forward.

36:33You actually, in the movie, you play a clip from that scene, which is kind of famous. It's episode five, first season. Tony Soprano takes his daughter Meadow on a college tour. And it's this moment where you're really seeing him as a sweet dad instead of as a mob boss. How'd it go? We got a 48 to 52 male-female ratio, which is great. Strong liberal arts program in this cool and art center for music. Usual programs abroad are China, India. You're just applying here. Already you're leaving? It's an option, Dad. Junior year. And then while he's on this college tour with his daughter, he happens to run into a guy who's in the Witness Protection Program, who had actually snitched on Associates of Tony's.

37:12And so it is like a moment where you feel the show challenging you as a viewer because you're seeing him in this very domestic, state, sweet dad guy, and then you're watching him plot the murder of this guy. The kill itself is very violent. Very violent and grisly. Yeah, he literally chokes him to death with a wire.

37:32Good morning, rat. Who are you? What is this? Don't make me laugh. You pimp! You fuck! Teddy, there must be something we could do. Tony. It's Tony, you fuck. You know how much trouble you're in now? You took an oath, and you broke it. I'd vaguely heard about the argument behind this scene, but the two things that surprised me that I understood in a different or deeper way watching your film, one is you have the HBO executive who's like, yeah, yeah, we totally were telling him to take this out. Like, you actually, you never see the suits. Like, people always talk about the notes from the suits, whatever, but the suits never show up and say, this is what I was thinking and why.

38:06So you have that. But then also they talk about how they did say, like, hey, if you're insisting on doing this, like, we can be convinced. We can be convinced by the argument that otherwise he's bullshit and the show is bullshit and you have to do this for the show to have integrity and for people to care about it. But could you make the guy he's going to kill a little bit more sort of... Malevolent. Yeah, and they do. There's this, like, moment where they're in the parking lot of the motel and you see the guy and he pulls out a pistol. He's in darkness. He's aiming at Tony and his daughter. And then he realizes there's other people at the motel and he can't get away with it and he puts the gun down.

38:40But so as a viewer, you're feeling a bit more like, okay, this guy, he's threatened him, whatever. And it was funny watching that moment. I was like, oh, you know, maybe the network was right. Like maybe the push and pull between the artist and the people who stand for skittish audiences, maybe it had produced something that worked. Yeah, I think that's right. And that's the best thing often about notes in general. You know, sometimes, particularly reaction, not so much the prescription, but the reaction to, like, this doesn't feel right. It's sometimes worth listening to.

39:21There's a moment in your film where you're interviewing the writers of The Sopranos. They say that they don't think the show could be made or made in the same way today. It would be too controversial. What do you make of that? I think they were talking about political correctness. you know, there was a willingness to say things that were downright offensive. And also a willingness, even in the writer's room, to get ugly. To talk about stuff in a way that was brutally honest and would reveal about themselves stuff that wasn't particularly elevating or inspiring. Maybe just the opposite. In Wise Guy, the Sopranos writers talk about the freedom and tension that came with inventing all these unlikable characters and then imbuing these unlikable characters with attributes that sometimes came from the writers themselves.

40:09You know, look at somebody like Uncle Junior or Tony or Pauly Walnuts. I mean, these are like petty, horrible people. So you felt free to talk about anything you wanted. It was all just, hey, there's a writer's room. We're writing about bad people. Bad people do bad things, and we got to access those parts of ourself. I mean, we said things that nowadays, you know, would be frowned upon. We could have been mistaken for being racist, sexist, you name it-ist, you know. We considered having an assistant in there for a while and realized we couldn't do that. But that to me was actually one of the great lessons of doing the show.

40:50It's like when you start to pre-censor yourselves all the time. We've all got weird, dark, inappropriate feelings or thoughts. And to the extent that they're routinely repressed, they'll come out in unexpected and sometimes dangerous ways. You know, what was that line about, if only Hitler's art teacher was a little bit more attentive? You could have just made some offensive paintings. The terrifying beauty of the show was that these people were so complex. Yeah. They were both so charming and brutal. And one of the things that they made a point of during the making of the show, which I thought was so great, is whenever it seemed that the characters were becoming too likable, particularly the mobsters were becoming too likable, they would have them do something brutal.

41:55Yeah. Just to remind you, because also in the back of his mind, you know, David is making this show, which is a character drama about a family, but it's also a commentary about America and the brutality of America and the rapaciousness with which capitalism sort of, you know, chews people up and spits them out. And The Sopranos is kind of the logical extension of that scene in The Godfather, you know, where they're all sitting around the table asking The Godfather to share all the bought politicians and police officers. And it's, we're willing to pay a fee. After all, we're not communists here.

42:35Right? But it's a brutal commentary on capitalism and America and the cruelty of the country. So all those things are going through their heads, and they're willing to be ugly. And I think that's what people ended up loving the show for, is it didn't pull punches. And suddenly the uncomfortable conversations that you shied away from because you might offend somebody, they were engaging in those conversations on screen. And that's what great art does, is it allows you to get into areas that maybe you're not permitted to as part of your daily life. Yeah, and it's funny. It's like what's so brilliant about it being a mob show is that one, once there's guns and murder, you can trick people into paying attention to family dynamics, which is part of what he wants to talk about.

43:20But also these writers can take ideas that they have or parts of themselves that might be uncomfortable. But now if it's coming out of like the mouth of a murdering mobster, that's a context in which we're willing to sit with those ideas without worrying if we're hearing art from a bad person. That's right. But at the same time, because they're all coming out of their personal experiences. I mean, it was supposed to be about David's mother. Then all the writers found out that they had major issues with their mothers. So it ends up being, you know, a lot of this experience ends up being universal.

43:56I think the other thing that makes this show so successful, too, is that, you know, There are a lot of conversations that are extremely unironic, and they're very funny for it because these brutal mobsters are having very sensitive discussions about how their feelings are hurt, or should I buy flowers for my wife on her anniversary? Stuff like that. You know, normally in most mob movies, you see the action. Yeah. You don't see the day-to-day interactions where you're trying to figure out whether or not you should show up for your son's soccer practice.

44:38After a short break, Alex Kidney, someone who has survived decades, all these different eras of technological and business shifts, who's learned both from his own work and from the work of people like David Chase, his advice on how to keep going during tough times.

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47:44David Chase has said that this moment where The Sopranos was allowed to happen was a blip. Like, whatever window that opened for a moment that he snuck through, he doesn't think that window is open anymore. Do you agree with that? Well, it's not open under the current system. So something new is going to have to come along to blow it open again. Because HBO, also, remember, was a different kind of a system. And it was coming up and they knew they had to do something different or they weren't going to get anywhere. I mean, what's the point of trying to become another network. If you're far behind in a sailing race, it doesn't make any sense to follow the same wind that's already got those boats that are way ahead of you.

48:27You tack on a different course and hope to catch a different kind of a wind. So at the moment, it's pretty bleak for trying to do personal art that's going to connect with viewers. But the hope is, the hope at the bottom of Pandora's box, after a lot of bad shit has come out, is that there is a new distribution mechanism out there that will allow this relationship once again to find a way. You know, and it's kind of what you see happening in journalism. Like, the Substack model is interesting because suddenly you see some people are making bank on Substack by going directly to their readers. Interesting.

49:12That was the hope in podcasts for a while, too. And actually, I think podcasts, you know, some over time still find a way to get audiences, but it's not as easy as it seemed like it was going to be at first. Yeah. I mean, I think in podcasting, certainly, there was a moment where it's like you want the moments where the people with money kind of don't know what they're doing. Right. And they're just like betting on a lot of stuff and they're not tracking things very carefully. And what gets harder if you're trying to make something interesting is either they've figured out what works and they just want to do that over and over again.

49:45That's right. Or they're scared. That's right. And I think right now is the moment where they've both figured out which things work and they're scared. Right. And also, you know, some key players in the distribution universe are tech players who have other businesses. Yes. You know, if I'm Apple, do I want to do anything that's going to offend somebody and so they might not buy an iPhone or an iPad? And if I'm Amazon, do I want to do something that might offend somebody who might buy their sneakers on Amazon? You know? Yeah, and we're never going to be a big enough part of their business to be worth that much headache.

50:23And so I think it makes sense. And I don't think they think of it that way. Like, I don't have conversations. I mean, I think they think, let's do stuff that's entertaining. And they hire executives who've been in the business before. But over time, tendencies emerge. Yeah. And the tendencies are, let's do the thing that worked the last time. That was pretty good. Yeah. Or do you want to do the thing that might not work, and then you have to have a meeting? And, like, the meeting goes badly. Right. But it's funny. You know, what I get from this conversation with you, it's so funny to compare podcasting to film and television because they're, like, cities and we're just, like, some little, like, highway town.

50:57But there's this real sense of doom and gloom and end days and whatever, like, because there was, like, such a surge and then such a crash. But hearing the way you look at your industry and look at adjacent industry, it feels almost more like a sailor looking at tides, you know? Yes, I think that's right. And you're looking over into the distance for that swell that's going to be different. And I think it'll come because it's always been like that. You know, you go back to the 20s and the 30s and the 40s. Think about what radio producers must have thought with the advent of television. Yeah. It's over for us.

51:35It's over. Right. Yeah. No, and I felt, you know, when I got into radio, it was like there was public radio and there was some great programs. But I felt like, what are you doing? Like, this is a stupid thing to love. You're just a person out of time. I didn't get in thinking anything good would ever happen. There was something I heard the other night. I went to a benefit for this small little outfit up in Maine, which is a place called the Carpenter's Boat Shop, where people who have found themselves betwixt and between spend time at a place where they learn how to build boats. Okay. Cool. But this guy who's been doing that or, you know, who founded it and has been running that place for 45 years, you know, talked about his life.

52:24He said, I feel like my life is a rowboat. You know, I'm always looking backwards but moving forwards. And I was like, hmm, you know, it's not unlike this moment for creators. You know, you got to know what's happened behind. Yeah. But you keep going because, you know, there's always a place, you know, you can't stay still, right? Yeah, and you don't know even when you're living through a good moment. I mean, sometimes you do, but at a certain point it's like you're just the people who make stuff and they figure out a way to make stuff. That's right, yeah. What was it? Art is born of constraint and dies of freedom.

53:02Because I can remember there was a period in docs where it was like, I'm not going to do a film for under, you know,$2 million or$3 million. That's just the way it is. And then I remembered, like, there was supposedly a conversation between Louis Bunuel and Nicholas Ray in Spain at some point. And Bunuel, who had sort of learned how to save money by being a producer, was notorious for being very cheap and very efficient in his shooting. They used to call him Mr. Clapstick because, you know, to edit his movies, all you do is you cut out the clapsticks. And then you'd send it to the lab, right? But he was telling Ray, who was very frustrated after he had done King of Kings, he says, I just can't get my own movies made.

53:45He said, well, you know, maybe if you reduce your budgets by like 50%, you'd get them made. And Nicholas Ray said, nobody would ever respect me, you know, in the industry if I did that. It was kind of a deeply sad moment. And they both walked away from the dinner, like, not understanding what the other person was thinking about or saying. And it's hard because, you know, for documentaries, at a certain moment, instead of being the person who had to pretend that they weren't really interested in documentaries in order to get hired, me. Yeah. Right? You know, suddenly you could walk around and actually you could buy a house.

54:26You could think about sending your kids to college. You know, there was a business. There was an industry that could support people without you having to do some other job in order to do the job you wanted. On the other hand, you know, there comes a moment when if you really love what you're doing, you figure out a way to make it work. And screw the suits. Yeah. No, I totally agree, and it's weird. I identify with both people in that conversation. I understand the feeling of I don't want to make something at any less of a resource level than the highest resource level I've ever participated in.

55:02But I also understand the viewpoint of art is making it. Art is making it when it's hard. Art is doing it under constraints. Oftentimes, the money is a questionable gift. Do you know what I mean? Oftentimes, the things you invent because you have to are just as worthwhile and vital as the things that are much better catered. And it's funny. I always end up lost in these conversations, raging about the unfairness of the industry, because there's a part of me that feels it, and there's a part of me that's just like, get to work. Right. That's right.

55:38So, what did we learn this week about surviving as the kind of lunatic who wants to make things for a living? I think what I hear in Alex's story, and in David Chase's, is that to survive a creative dark age, It helps to have a kind of pathological stubbornness. It also helps to be willing to do work you don't love while you wait for the chance to do the work you do. And that we're at the mercy of changes in business models and audience expectations that are bigger than any one person. But that the people who make things, make things. And that success for a lot of people I admire came a lot later than I would have expected.

56:16I did have one last question for Alex. We've established that podcasting is certainly in decline TV is in decline. Documentary film is in decline. Do you feel like America itself is in decline? Yes. Yes. America is in decline because the country's been ignoring all of the contradictions that have been gnawing at it for years and years and just pretending that they don't exist. And now they're catching everybody. Where do you think it goes?

56:50look backwards and row forwards

56:59I don't think I'm gonna get a better answer than that

57:06Alex Gibney his new documentary is called Wise Guy David Chase and the Sopranos you can see it on a channel formerly called HBO max now.

57:34Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Shruthi Pinamineni, and is produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. fact-checking this week by Holly Patton theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian our executive producers are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Leah Reese-Dennis thanks to the team at Jigsaw Alex Gibney, Rich Pirello and John Schmidt and to the team at Odyssey JD Crowley, Rob Mirandy, Craig Cox Eric Donnelly, Kate Rose, Matt Casey Maura Curran, Josephina Francis Kurt Courtney and Hilary Schuff our agent is Oren Rosenbaum at UTA If you'd like to support the show and get access to our incognito mode feed with no ads, no reruns, and bonus episodes, head to searchengine.show.

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58:41Thank you.