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David Chase, born David DeCesare in Mt. Vernon, New York, and raised in New Jersey, initially aspired to be a star drummer in a rock band. Throughout the 1960s East Coast music scene, he dedicated years to playing drums and bass, aiming to join a successful rock group. Alongside his musical pursuits, he was a passionate fan of films like The Public Enemy (1931) starring James Cagney and TV shows such as The Untouchables (1959) with Robert Stack. When not involved in music, he avidly watched Hollywood and international films from the 1960s. After his music career concluded, he found inspiration to purchase a movie camera and create his own films. He studied at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and later attended the graduate film program at Stanford University. Beginning in the early 1970s, Chase wrote for network TV dramas, eventually becoming a writer and producer on NBC's classic detective series The Rockford Files (1974) featuring James Garner. During his time on Rockford, he wrote numerous memorable episodes and dialogues. He earned his first Emmy in 1978, the same year Rockford won Best Dramatic Series. Contrary to many biographies, Chase did not receive his first Emmy for the acclaimed TV movie Off the Minnesota Strip (1980). Although the film sensitively portrays a young runaway grappling with her life after being returned to her Midwestern family from a life of prostitution in New York City, Chase actually won his second Emmy and a Writer’s Guild Award for this project. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, he earned income writing various TV scripts while developing feature film projects that were never produced. He also started directing his TV scripts whenever possible. Chase often shared stories about his troubled relationship with his mother during his New Jersey years. Encouraged to write about this, he found a way to blend a narrative about his mother with a mob storyline and themes of psychotherapy, which he had begun exploring at that time. This fusion of ideas inspired Chase to write the groundbreaking pilot script for a show that Fox initially developed but ultimately passed on. HBO then took a chance on this unique blend of mother-son conflict, mob danger, and psychological insecurity, resulting in The Sopranos (1999). Everyone involved expected only a pilot would be filmed and that the series would not proceed. Instead, it became one of the most successful shows ever produced by a cable network. Chase and his team have won Emmy, Golden Globe, Writers Guild, and Directors Guild Awards for the series. In terms of its cultural impact and subject matter, The Sopranos has been compared to The Godfather (1972). Chase pledges to advance his feature film projects once The Sopranos concludes its run.
