by Brett Martin
Chase remembered telling Carolyn Strauss about the plan, which was originally to sustain the black screen throughout the entire length of what would have been the credits. (That was scratched after the Directors Guild objected.) “I think she was like, ‘Oookaaay . . . ,’” he said. “I don’t remember if she asked, ‘What does it mean?’ But what I would have said was, ‘It’s not what you think. It’s what you feel.’ That’s what I was always trying to go for.”
At the cast’s final table read, the last page of the script was met with stunned silence. “Nobody moved. It was like none of us wanted to leave,” Chase said. Then Falco began to cry softly. Chase looked at Gandolfini, to gauge his reaction. It was the same as it had been at eighty-five previous such readings: He closed his script. He stared into space for several long moments. And then he pushed his chair back and got up from the table.
Three days after the final episode aired, Chase was in France while a small maelstrom over the finale raged at home. Talking by phone, he came as close as he ever would to saying that Tony Soprano met his end in that diner booth. “Everything that pertains to that episode was in that episode. And it was in the episode before that and the one before that and seasons before this one and so on,” he said. “There had been indications of what the end is like. That’s the way things happen: it’s already going on by the time you even notice it.”
“Are you saying . . . ?” came the question.
“I’m not saying anything,” he said. “And I’m not trying to be coy. It’s just that I think that to explain it would diminish it.”
Which was not to say that, for all his dim view of human nature and the course of history, he did not believe in happy endings—or at least progress:
People have said that the Soprano family’s whole life goes in the toilet in the last episode. That the parents’ whole twisted lifestyle is visited on the children. And that’s true—to a certain extent. But look at it: A.J.’s not going to become a citizen-soldier or join the Peace Corps to try to help the world; he’ll probably be a low-level movie producer. But he’s not going to be a killer like his father, is he? Meadow may not become a pediatrician or even a lawyer, but she’s not going to be a housewife-whore like her mother. She’ll learn to operate in the world in a way that Carmela never did. It’s not ideal. It’s not what the parents dreamed of. But it’s better than it was. Tiny, little bits of progress—that’s how it works.
“Go look at Albert Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus,” the supposed misanthrope went on. “Life seems to have no purpose, but we have to go on behaving as though it does. We have to go on behaving toward each other like people who would try to love.”
• • •
Half a decade later, now sixty-seven, he sat in the study of his huge apartment in a historic building on the Upper East Side. He had just, finally, completed his first feature film—a music-filled New Jersey coming-of-age story, originally called Twylight Zones. As with The Sopranos, there had been pressure to change the title; this time, however, Chase had agreed to the change. The film, which would open the 2012 New York Film Festival, would do so under the name Not Fade Away.
It had been a difficult experience—physically exhausting and, he said, artistically challenging. After years of working on The Sopranos, he had grown used to a certain way of telling stories. “I had gotten used to the idea that things could be taken back and fixed. Or that we could go take a little excursion, check out Patsy Parisi’s wife or something. I thought I had cut all that out, but I really hadn’t. The script was too discursive. So we had a lot of film that had to be cut,” he said.
The voices of The Sopranos characters rarely popped into his head anymore, he said. Occasionally, he or Denise would quote a line to each other: “Oh, poor you,” or, “You go about in pity for yourself.” The much-speculated-on idea of a Sopranos movie, picking up where the series had left off, was a nonstarter—the end was the end—but the idea of a prequel, or expanding a tangential story, had occurred to him. “Maybe Johnny Boy”—Tony’s father—“and that period. That’s interesting to me. Or something you saw hints of during The Sopranos. Like, ‘What was production like on Cleaver [Christopher’s fictional pulp mobster/horror movie]?’”
Despite the rigors of Not Fade Away, and the fact that he was writing a miniseries about the history of Hollywood for HBO, he was still insistent on focusing on feature films: “Someone once said that movies are a cathedral, and I still do feel that. A cathedral is big. It’s epic. It’s intense.”
And another series wasn’t in the cards. “The chances of me doing it as well again are almost nil. Plus, I’m not a kid anymore, I don’t have that much time to keep fucking around, giving five years to a TV series,” he said. Then he added, “But it’s not because movies are a more creative place. Not at all.”
As concessions went, it was the equivalent of his view of progress—incremental, but not insignificant. And it would have to do—paired, perhaps, with something he had said in an optimistic moment toward the end of The Sopranos: “Look, I can’t argue with destiny. This is what happened. And I’m very lucky that as I lie on my deathbed I won’t have to say, ‘I accomplished nothing.’ I did something, you know?”
Acknowledgments
Thanks, first and foremost, are due to the people who so generously shared with me their time and stories. That includes, with few exceptions, all the major players in this story as well as dozens of other writers, producers, directors, executives, actors, cinematographers, assistants, and so on. All did as much to create the Third Golden Age as they did to animate these pages. To the many who are not explicitly mentioned—or who preferred to go nameless—please know that I nevertheless relied on, and valued, your wisdom, insights, and perspectives.
Three significant interviewees did not live to see the project’s end. I am especially grateful for having had the chance to meet and learn from Henry Bromell, David Mills, and Stephen J. Cannell and to include their voices here.
At The Penguin Press, I will forever be grateful to Eamon Dolan for his early faith in me and this project; to Colin Dickerman for patiently and expertly shaping the result; and to Laura Stickney for a pleasant, if too brief, assist. Likewise to my agent, Daniel Greenberg, for his support and guidance, and to his colleague, Lindsay Edgecombe. I thank Jim Nelson and my other colleagues at GQ for their inspiration, indulgence, and friendship: Mark Lotto, Devin Friedman, Dan Fierman, Amy Wallace, Mary Kaye Schilling, and Alex Pappademas, among them. For close, perceptive, and immeasurably helpful reads and feedback, thank you to both Michael Oates Palmer and my old Time Out New York cubicle mate, Jason Zinoman. William Bostwick began this project nominally as my “assistant” but has since grown into a valued colleague; I fully expect to be working for him someday.
For aid—logistical, spiritual, and otherwise—along the way, I’d also like to thank the following: Diego Aldana, Theano Apostolou, Leslee Dart, John Solberg, Tobe Becker, Nancy Lesser, and Chuck Slocum; Adam Mazmanian, Jenny Ewing Allen, Brett Anderson, Nathalie Jordi, Pableaux Johnson, Rien Fertel, J Dagney, Chris Hannah, Adam Blank, and David Hirmes. It remains true that this could not have been done without the skill, good company, and forbearance of Jennifer Fistere.
To my parents, who once bribed me with a suction-cup bow-and-arrow set to watch no television for a month, I forgive you. To Scott Martin, who fortified and distracted me with yaka mein and companionship in the final stages of writing, I welcome you to our family’s new city. And to Kira Henehan, my indispensable, beloved gumshoe and partner, I hope my gratitude is evident every day.
Notes on Sources
Except where noted below and in the text, the material in this book is derived from original reporting and author interviewing.
Prologue
On Victorian serialized novels, I consulted David Payne’s The Re-Enchantment of Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot and Serialization (Basingstoke and
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Author and Printer in Victorian England by Allan C. Dooley (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992); and, in particular, “No Time to Be Idle: The Serial Novel and Popular Imagination,” an essay by Shawn Crawford (World & I 13 [November 1998]: 323–32). Here and elsewhere, I also draw on my own The Sopranos: The Book, produced for HBO in 2007 by Melcher Media and accompanied by an episode guide assembled by Mimi O’Connor.
Chapter One: In This Maligned Medium
On MTM Enterprises and the Second Golden Age, I found two books to be invaluable: Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER, by Robert J. Thompson (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1996); and MTM “Quality Television,” edited by Jane Feuer, Paul Kerr, and Tise Vahimagi (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1985). Also helpful for context was “Television’s Real A-Team” by David Freeman (Esquire magazine, January 1985) and “How I’d Fix Network TV” by Steven Bochco (Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1992).
Chapter Two: Which Films?
The 2007 Vanity Fair profile to which David Chase refers is “An American Family” by Peter Biskind (April 2007). Stephen J. Cannell was interviewed extensively for the Archive of American Television, which is a deep and wonderful resource for anyone interested in how TV gets made.
Chapter Three: A Great Notion
On the early history and economics of HBO, I relied heavily on Inside HBO: The Billion Dollar War Between HBO, Hollywood and the Home Video Revolution by George Mair (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1988).
Chapter Five: Difficult Men
Some of the analysis in this chapter was aided and abetted by Susan Faludi’s Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1999), which I’m grateful to have been pointed toward by Todd Kessler. Also useful, for Scott Sassa’s unfortunate quote about cable vs. network, among other details about Alan Ball and Six Feet Under, was “The Next Big Bet” by Tad Friend (The New Yorker, May 15, 2001). The economics of basic cable bundling were summarized nicely in a National Public Radio report, “‘Where’s My AMC?’ DISH Network Dispute Drags On,” by Lauren Silverman, aired September 13, 2012.
Chapter Six: The Arguer
Both Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood are essential reading. Some of David Simon’s account of his year spent at BPD’s Homicide Unit, as well as his disillusionment with and divorce from the Baltimore Sun, comes from his afterword to the 2006 Holt Paperbacks reprint of Homicide. The tension between Simon and Charles Dutton on the set of HBO’s The Corner was the subject of “Who Gets to Tell a Black Story?” by Janny Scott (New York Times, June 11, 2000).
Chapter Seven: The Magic Hubig’s
David Simon’s letter to Carolyn Strauss was reprinted in The Wire: Truth Be Told by Rafael Alvarez (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2009) and also quoted in “Stealing Life” by Margaret Talbot (The New Yorker, October 22, 2007). Simon’s account of “Little” Melvin Williams’s drug empire and its downfall ran in the Baltimore Sun from January 11–15,1987. Several quotes from the novelists who worked on The Wire come from “Baltimore’s Finest” by Alex Pappademas (GQ, December 2008).
Chapter Eight: Being the Boss
The account of David Chase’s appearance at New York’s Museum of Modern Art was informed, among other sources, by “Leaving the Family” (Newark Star-Ledger, February 14, 2001).
Chapter Nine: A Big Piece of Equipment
The documentary Without a Net: Creating NYPD Blue (later subtitled David Milch’s Creative Process), directed by Marc Ostrick, is everything its two subtitles promise: a candid, fly-on-the-wall record of Milch’s final year at NYPD Blue and a vivid portrait of his unusual methods. Also very useful was “The Misfit” by Mark Singer (The New Yorker, February 14, 2005); the essay “Robert Penn Warren, David Milch and the Literary Contexts of Deadwood” by Joseph Millichap, collected in Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear By, edited by David Lavery (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006); and Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills by David Milch, interviews by David Samuels, produced by Melcher Media (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2006), a veritable bonanza of Milchiana from which several of the on-set anecdotes are drawn.
Chapter Ten: Have a Take. Try Not to Suck
David Simon’s charges against star Sun reporter Jim Haner were laid out in “Favorite Son” by Abigail Pogrebin (Brill’s Content, October 2000). Other details are from “Stealing Life” by Margaret Talbot, referenced above.
Chapter Eleven: Shooting the Dog
Amy Wallace’s profile of Chris Albrecht, “Violence, Nudity, Adult Content,” appeared in the November 2010 issue of GQ. On Rescue Me, I drew from the preface by Denis Leary and Peter Tolan in Rescue Me Uncensored: The Official Companion (New York: Newmarket Press, 2007).
Chapter Twelve: See You at the Emmys
Alone among the major showrunners covered here, Matthew Weiner declined, politely, to sit for interviews specific to this book. I was, however, able to draw on our multiple conversations in other contexts and on the truly heroic amount of talking he’s done on behalf of Mad Men elsewhere. Chief among those sources were an hour-long interview conducted by Weiner’s sister Allison Hope Weiner for her video podcast Media Mayhem and “‘Mad Men’ Has Its Moment” by Alex Witchel (New York Times Magazine, June 22, 2008). Some quotes here come from my own articles: “Breakout: Jon Hamm” (GQ, December 2008) and “The Men Behind the Curtain: A GQ TV Roundtable” (GQ, June 2012). The latter is also the source of David Milch and Vince Gilligan quotes elsewhere.
Index
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
ABC, 45, 97, 175, 228
advertisers and advertising
act-outs preceding commercial breaks, 224
influence on content, 85–87
sensibilities of, 217, 220, 221
African American actors and audience, 51, 130–31, 140, 152
Albert, Lisa, 252
Albrecht, Chris
arrest and dismissal from HBO, 236
background in entertainment, 55–56
on cancellation of Deadwood, 232–33
on The Corner, 131
on Gandolfini as Tony Soprano character, 67–68
on HBO’s failures, 231
on HBO’s successful formula, 212
on hospitable environment for artists at HBO, 229–30
on John from Cincinnati, 235
on Lucky Louie, 230, 231
positions at HBO, 55–56, 229, 236
on Simon’s pitch style, 200–201
on The Sopranos “College” episode, 92–93
on The Sopranos pilot, 65–66, 69
successful series produced, 57–58, 229
work after dismissal from HBO, 281
working relationship with Strauss, 55, 57, 237
Almost Grown, 45, 69, 73, 75
Alvarez, Rafael, 113, 115–16, 125, 144–45
AMC. See also Breaking Bad; Mad Men
Broken Trail, 247, 271
Emmy awards, 247
internal problems, 284
original-programming strategy, 246–47
transformation from commercial-free network, 245–46
The Walking Dead, 284
American Beauty (film), 95, 107
antihero principle, 4–6, 87–88, 175, 222, 267–68
Ball, Alan
American Beauty (film), 95, 107
on antiheroes, 106
approach by HBO with funeral home concept, 95, 96–97
Oh, Grow Up, 97–98
post-traumatic stress, 97–98
praise for The Sopra
nos, 94–95
Six Feet Under, 4, 60, 98–104, 107
supportive showrunner style, 102–3
True Blood, 107, 281–82
basic cable. See cable dramas
Bedard, Bridget, 252–53, 255, 260
Bewkes, Jeff, 55, 56, 229, 237
Bianchi, Ed, 184
Biskind, Peter, 160, 286
black actors and audience, 51, 130–31, 140, 152
Boardwalk Empire, 5, 232, 282, 285
Bochco, Steven
approach by MTM for police drama, 27–28
autocratic showrunner style, 30
creative autonomy, 28, 29
on creativity in television writing, 32
dismissal from MTM, 32
on disparagement of television, 23
failures, 174
Hill Street Blues, 28–32, 172–74
NYPD Blue, 174–78
on working with Milch, 172–74, 177
Bradbury, Ray, 23
Brand, Joshua, 51–55, 156
Braun, Lloyd, 58, 65
Brazil, Scott, 218
Breaking Bad
acquisition by AMC, 270–71
antihero protagonist, 267–68
concept for, 266–68
female character, 5, 267
New Mexico production location, 272
pilot, 269
pitches for, 268–70
references to current events, 272
visual storytelling, 276
writers’ room, 264–65, 271–77
