Happy Birthday: David Chase

Born: August 22, 1945 in Mount Vernon, New York, USA

Network television is all talk. I think there should be visuals on a show, some sense of mystery to it, connections that don’t add up. I think there should be dreams and music and dead air and stuff that goes nowhere. There should be, God forgive me, a little bit of poetry.

I felt I was out of step with everything. I remember seeing Pretty Woman (1990) on an airplane. Everybody was laughing their heads off. “Ho-ho-ho!” It wasn’t funny to me, it wasn’t dramatic–it wasn’t anything. I thought, “Why don’t I just open the door and jump out?”

It wasn’t something I was really dying to hear, because my response in my head was: I don’t give a fuck – I hate television. But I wasn’t used to being talked to that way. – on his reaction to Brad Grey’s desire to sign him to a television deal.