May 21, 2025 • 34 mins
Sopranos creator David Chase wrote an episode of The Wonder Years that was deemed too intense for network television. The internet says it's because the script involved hard core drug use. But we asked the legendary TV writer, and the truth is a whole lot stranger.
Thanks to Nicole Lambert of Chase Films for making today's interview happen!
Hosted by Zaron Burnett, Dana Schwartz, and Jason English
Written by Katie Mattie
Produced by Josh Fisher
Story Editor is Zaron Burnett
Editing and Sound Design by Josh Fisher
Additional Editing by Mary Dooe
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla
Executive Producer is Jason English
Got a question or comment, or a copy of David Chase's lost script? You can reach us at veryspecialepisodes@gmail.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Audiences love a good mystery, both on and off screen,
whether it's a classic Alfred Hitchcock film like Vertigo, or
fans using social media to piece together the rumors of
drama between the cast. But there are lesser known Hollywood mysteries,
like what Happens to All the Lost Scripts? Those episodes
(00:25):
of TV shows or feature film scripts that were written
but never made lost to time. There were two episodes
of Seinfeld that were written and then scrapped for being
too controversial, which feels very Larry David On the big screen.
The film Justice League Mortal was canceled after suffering production
issues and the two thousand and eight Writers Strike. Some
(00:45):
lost scripts pop up years later online, but most never do.
There's one lost Hollywood script that stands out. It was
an episode of The Wonder Years, a half hour comedy
on ABC broadcast in the eighties and nineties. It captured
the suburban lie life of a teenage boy set in
the cultural ships of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies.
The Lost Wonder Year's episode was written by none other
(01:08):
than David Chase, as in the creator of The Sopranos.
You know that little show about Italian American mafia life
in the New Jersey suburbs that changed the course of
television history. Yeah. Him. The Wonder Year's producer Ken Tapolski
once confided to The Wall Street Journal that David Chase's
script was quote phenomenal, one of the best end quote,
(01:28):
but some element in the plot was too intense for
the show. It took the show in a darker direction.
No big surprise there, it was David Chase. But what
exactly was that darker direction? Why was David Chase's episode
so edgy that it never aired on TV? Did a
schoolteacher get whacked for a gambling dead It's been over
(01:49):
thirty years since he first wrote the script. We set
out on a quest to find this long lost David
Chase Wonder Year script, and what better place to start
looking with the man himself. Welcome to our very special
(02:11):
episodes Detective Case Operation Chasing the Wonder Years, The Conversation
with David Chase. Welcome back.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
He is Aaron Burnette, She's Danis Schwartz. Hey, Hey, I'm
Jason English, and I want to address right at the
top that we had an opportunity to spend some time
with David Chase. One of the most celebrated people in
the history of television. We could have asked him about
any episode he's ever written, and we decided forget the
(02:46):
Sopranos finale. We want to talk about The Wonder Years.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yes, love that call.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I mean, David Chase is like truly the inspiration like
I do screenwriting, I work in TV. He is just
like such a genius, such inspiration. This episode was so
so exciting for.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Me, totally for a guy to be able to do
comedy and darkness and then like sentimentality so well, and
you never feel that it's too violent or the comedy
is errant, or it's like sentimentality that is unearned. You're right.
He is the triangle of screenwriting.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
He's so funny and so smart, and now we're like,
there's a lost episode. I want to know everything.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Let's take you back to the early nineteen nineties, right
around the time that David Chase was asked to write
The Wonder Year's episode. At that moment, he was an
established television writer working toward his dream of making movies.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Here's the thing. I took these development deals with studio
so that I would earn an income while I was
trying to break into movies.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
At the time, David was knee deep in projects.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
What was kind of going on around in ninety one
ninety two was I'll fly away in order to exposure
to rock for Files. That's what was going on, and.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
For the course of David's career, he had proven himself
to be a writer who could write for a wide
range of shows. He won the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy
in nineteen seventy eight for The Rockford Files, a show
about an ex convict turn private eye named Jim Rockford,
which he later adapted into television movies. At first a
writer and later the showrunner for the last two seasons
(04:15):
of the critically acclaimed hit Northern Exposure, David Chase experimented
with the mix of smart, combative dialogue and a dream
inflected reality that would later become a hallmark of The Sopranos.
David's early Emmy success in later success with Northern Exposure
made him a highly desirable writer, and he bounced around
Hollywood working on both drama and comedy series. A common
(04:37):
theme in David's work is that he doesn't shy away
from writing about the complexities of society, whether he's writing
present day storylines or diving into the harsh realities of
the past. In the nineteen ninety three drama All Fly Away,
David wrote about race relations in the nineteen fifties and
nineteen sixties, but through the lens of a black housekeeper
and single mother named Lily Harper and the family of
(04:59):
the white district attorney she worked for. Joining the final
season of The Wonder Years would mean returning once more
to these same historical complexities.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
A gentleman named Bob Brush, who was I believe the
executive producer. He had a Corvette. I remember that, and
I was jealous. It was Bob Brush reached out to me.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Bob Brush was the Wonder Years executive producer who took
over as showrunner from the series creators Neil Marlins and
Carol Black.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
I had never really seen the show, and I didn't
watch it afterward.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Even though David hadn't seen the series, he had lived
through the time period it takes place in. The Wonder
Years is set during the massive social upheaval of the
idyllic post World War Two era of America. The show
follows Kevin Arnold, a teenage boy of the Baby Bloomer
generation audiences experienced his life in the suburbs during this
tumultuous late sixties and early seventies, when many Americans thought
(05:56):
the country was coming apart at the seams. It's also
a sweet coming of age comedy, one that doesn't shy
away from its heavier themes. Whatever was going on in
the broader world bled into the character's adolescent lives as
they navigate everything the teenagers face, friends, puberty, first loves,
and family dynamics. The sixth season of The Wonder Years
(06:18):
took place in the year nineteen seventy three. At that time,
during the end of the Nixon Years, both America and
the world were changing drastically. There was the sexual Revolution,
the rise of Eastern spirituality, the creation of suburbs and supermarkets,
as well as the semi liberation of women. Housewives became
professional secretaries became bosses. Of course, there were also the drugs,
(06:39):
which became a driver of the culture. The Vietnam War
was still going on, the Civil rights movement was still
actively creating a more equitable America. All of this was
the backdrop of The Wonder Years. Heading into the show's
final season, Kevin Arnold was now sixteen years old, which
means naturally he was experiencing more adolescent changes. The creators
(07:00):
wanted to accurately reflect both Kevin's inner growth and external
changes set against these starker complexities of the world. To
lead the show in a different direction, the producers turned
to David Chase.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
I mean I thought it was great. I mean Bob
Brush telling me, you know, we want to get a
little bit asier.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
David had developed a reputation for writing edgy television scripts.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Well. I had won an Emmy and the Writer's Guild
Award all in the same year for a TV movie
that I wrote called Off the Minnesota Strip The Mari
Winning Head and she played a young high school student
from Minnesota who got pimped out in Minnesota and then
(07:43):
the pimp took her to New York and she was
on seventh five Anue walking the street. So the story
was this girl who had spent six months on seventh
Abu or Athama and I forget, which comes back to
her small town and tries to fit in. There was
a lot of vagre. There was more edgetunes usually found
(08:06):
in network shows. Yeah, I suppose it was that, and
maybe they had seen Almost Grown Too, which also had
a lot of dab.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Almost Grown was a drama series David co created that
centered on flashbacks in the nineteen sixties. Revisiting life in
the sixties became a recurring theme in his work. For instance,
his first movie, his directorial debut, Not Fade Away, was
said in the sixties, back when David Chase was a team.
The film tells the story of a New Jersey boy
obsessed with Bob Dylan and eager to start his own band,
(08:38):
just like the Rolling Stones. When David finished his Wonder
Year's episode, the producers read it and then chose not
to pursue the darker path he'd set out for Kevin Arney.
Why the Wonder Year's producer Ken de Topolskin told The
Wall Street Journal that David's episode involved hard drug use
and would have jarred the show's audience. How exactly was
(08:59):
the use of hard drugs infused into this family comedy?
Was Kevin Arnold tripping on acid in a hippie commune?
Did he accidentally get slipped some angel dust and Kevin
became PCP Superman? Not quite.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
It was a network show. One Marlborough was a bet
as far as we were gonna go, yeh, no, there's
no drug use no that year. If they were trying
to get some meage, I'm sure they did some kind
of approach to sex, or maybe they'd done that already.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Okay, so there were no hard drugs, then what made
the episode too edgy to air on television? According to
David Chase, the script centered on Kevin's experience with a ghost. Yes,
a ghost, and again we're not talking about an LSD hallucination.
The ghost was real, or as real as any ghost
may be. For his haunting of Kevin Arnold, David Chase
(09:47):
picked a very specific ghost.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
He was visited by the spirit of Holding Cawfield.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Holding Cawfield is the protagonist in JD. Salinger's classic coming
of age novel Catcher in the Rye expelled from his
school for flunking several classes.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
Holden Cawfield came into his room and they had conversations.
I believe Holden Cawfield got him to smoke a cigarette.
You know, bad boy. Holder Holding Colffield has a lot
more age than Kevin Arnold. Yeah, I guess what was
happening was that Kevin Arnold was starting to go through
the teenage rejection of the parents or adolescence. I think
(10:27):
was more honest about adolescens. In other words, that it
can get kind of rough right times. And you know
when I, when I was younger, you know, I always
wanted to be a bad book.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
David was born in Mount Vernon, New York, in nineteen
forty five, and he was raised in New Jersey. He
was an only child in a large Italian American family
with lots of close extended relatives. His father, Henry, owned
a hardware store in Verona, New Jersey, and his mother, Norma,
had a job proofreading the phone book. Henry and Norma
were hard working children, Ittalian immigrants who wanted David to
(11:02):
blend in with post World War Two era American society.
But as a kid, David always marched to the beat
of his own drum. He loved going on adventures in
the woods in New Jersey with his friends. He was
fascinated by all the local mob stories in the newspaper,
as well as the old school Jimmy Cagney gangster film
Public Enemy. But by the time he was a team
(11:30):
the wanna be bad boy switched up his aspirations. In
the sixties, he wanted to become a rock and roller,
but his family was against such folly. So David channeled
that adolescent tension between him and his parents into his
Wonder Year's episode.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Well, part of it was based on a teacher that
I had in high school, a woman named Teresa Gaetano
with her real name, And she always kind of looked
out for me, and she was always on my side.
She's an English teacher. She was a young woman. She
(12:05):
was probably thirty at that time, which when you're seventeen
sixteen seems like an adult, you know what I mean,
But thirty is messing. Obviously. She was a dynamic teacher.
She was interesting. And my parents went to parents night
and they came back and they told me that they
(12:27):
talked to her and that they were afraid that I
was going to become a beatnik.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
The term beatnik is a derogatory name for the followers
of the Beat Generation, which was a social movement of
artists who rejected mainstream values and embraced self expression. The
Beat Generation was known for its jazz influenced poetry and
their explorations of sexuality, spirituality, psychedelics, and anti materialism. What
(12:53):
David's parents saw was a growing concern about the future
of their son, while his teacher, Teresa Gatano, saw very differently.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
And she said, you don't have to worry about her.
He's going to turn out all right, even if he's
a beating. And when they told me that, they didn't
say it to me with any form of relief. It
was kind of like maybe they weren't that encouraged, or
she hadn't been encouraging enough, but they did tell me, so.
I don't know why they did that, but I always
(13:22):
felt grateful to her that she said that. In fact,
a couple of years ago, I invested some money into
firing a detective to find her and I was going
to call her, and then I never did it. I
still could. She's still alive.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
David's early life was shaped by adults like his teacher,
Teresa Gaitana, who saw something in him others missed. But
it was his own coming of age experiences during the
cultural upheaval of the late sixties and early seventies that
gave him a unique perspective to share with audiences.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Wonder Years was kind of a departure from standard television.
You know, most television was franchises, really doctors, lawyers, cops.
I mean there had always been family stories on TV,
but not commenting on life at that time. You know,
a revolution had occurred in the country the sixties to that,
(14:16):
but everything had changed, and youth very important. The sixties
were some people called it the youth quake, and well,
rock and roll took over everything. Rock and roll was
as important then as the Internet is now. It was
a whole different experience. There was the art itself, right.
(14:38):
My friend Stevie Vanzett would say that it was Bob
Dylan changed everything, and that could be true. In other words,
the music that became popular with young people. Instead of
being like I love you, you love me you, instead
of just those love songs as McCartney could go on
another silly love Si, they became about death and betrayal,
(15:02):
illness or rebellion, and it changed the culture. So we're
still living through with that.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
David's friend Stevie van Zant aka Little Stevie, who's a
member of Bruce Springsteen's Eat Street Band and a proud
son of New Jersey, also of course plays Silvio the soprano,
family mobster and Bada Bang nightclub owner. Returning to the
beat Poets the beat Nicks in the early sixties. Stevie
van Zant believes that between nineteen sixty three and nineteen
(15:31):
sixty five, Bob Dylan changed everything in American culture. You see,
Bob Dylan's poetic folk music helped inspire the Hippies and
their Summer of Love in sixty seven. Early in his career,
though in the sixties he wrote music and support of
social justice issues. He wrote songs like Blowing in the
Wind and The Times They Are a Change in which
(15:51):
served as an anti war anthem, and the other as
a civil rights movement anthem. But his influence wasn't limited
to hippie and folk music. Dylan also revolutionized rock and
roll when he proved mainstream pop songs could hold complex
storytelling in their lyrics, stories that not only resonated with
their audiences but inspired them to take action. Dylan was
(16:14):
changed personified, and Bob Dylan had a significant impact on
young David Chase. The success and artistry of Bob Dylan,
as well as the British invasion with the Beatles and
the Rolling Stones, that made David realize rock and roll
was art and that with his words, he could be
an artist too, just like Dylan. At first, he wanted
(16:36):
to be a rock star like his idols of the sixties,
so he formed a band, one that never actually performed anywhere.
But that path is how David eventually discovered his dream
to be a filmmaker, which led him onto the paths
becoming a television writer, one who used his artistry to
show us the grittier side of American lives. As for
David Chase's Lost Wonder Year's episode, we asked him how
(16:59):
he did Kevin Arnold's storyline with his supportive teacher.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
I don't recall, but she must have cut him a
brake somehow, right, I mean, he must have been the
hero of the story, or so to me when I
look back on that, it doesn't seem to be that
the important thing about that script was the teacher. It
seems to me that for Wonder Years that the ghost
(17:25):
of Olden Clawfield. That was very different for any TV showing,
and Olden Cowfield was a bad boy.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Of course, David Chase focuses on the dream sequence with
the bad boy. It's in his voice as he recalls
the Lost Wonder Year's script. You can sense the same
creativity that would later blossom with the Sopranos, because, as
we all know, this wouldn't be the last time David
would write about a bad boy who pushed the boundaries
of standard TV. Since we had the chance to ask
(17:57):
the man himself, we were curious about what else might
be in David's script that was deemed too edgy. What
other secrets did the lost episode hold? Unfortunately David doesn't
have a copy of that script.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
But I wasn't on the staff on that show. I
wasn't a producer on that show. So I was going
to write one episode. That was it.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Although David can't check the original script, he did give
us a lead on where we might find his lost
work buried somewhere in the files at twentieth Century Fox,
which produced the show with ABC.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Well, they must have records. There was a legal contract
to write it, and I was paid for it. Now,
I mean ABC might have a copy of it too,
So if they have, our gives is probably there. If
they don't, then some of those people clear out stuff
after a while, So I wish I had that script.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So with David's lead, we were one step closer to
finding the lost episode. It should be no surprise. The
rejected episode of The Wonder Years wasn't the only roadblock
in David Chase's career. The want to Be bad Boy
(19:07):
in New Jersey faced several setbacks working in network television.
One setback occurred while filming the show Almost Grown. Part
of the series took place in the same era as
The Wonder Years, but as seen through a different lens.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
And I also did a series dentical Almost Grown, which
was about a rock and roll fanatic from the sixties
who met his future wife in high school in the sixties.
Three and then the pilot was two hours long, and
it followed them. We did the early sixties, the last
(19:42):
sixties with you know, campus craziness and all that, and
then them as a divorced couple, and that was all
about to meet. In fact, the whole point of the
show was to have each episode had a kind of
the theme set forward from a famous or copylar start.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
The series starred Tim Daily and Eve Gordon as the
high school sweethearts turned devorceeeds.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
And it worked pretty well, I really did. Tim and
Eve were great, the kids were great. It was on
Monday nights so CBS at ten o'clock and it just
was not catching on, and then it started to catch
on and critics started to write favorably about it because
it was different. And then CBS canceled it. And it's
(20:31):
always been my theory that CBS canceled it because Universal,
who did a lot of business with all the networks,
it was too expensive, and Universal asked not to cancel
and probably said, you know, we'll give you some other
d detective show to reduced to eight or something. That's
(20:53):
just my thought. There's no proof of that, but it
was odd the way it happened.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Remembers exactly where he was when the show was canceled.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
We were doing pickups for the first half of the season.
For episode thirteen. CBS had ordered four more that we
were writing scripts for, and then all of a sudden,
out of nowhere comes this cancelation. And I went went
down to the set on the stage and we were
shooting a scene between Tim Day and another actor as
(21:25):
two young like long hair guys in sleeping bags. So
it didn't need much of a set, needed like a
one ball. Meanwhile, in that stage, bulldozers were tearing down
our sets. That's how fast they were. Because the next
day they had sold that space already to something else,
(21:46):
so something was fishing. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Watching the almost grown set be dismantled by the heavy
equipment was a devastating blow for David Chase. What was
it like? Oh?
Speaker 4 (21:59):
It in still the hatred in me?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Frankly, But despite the fact David constantly struggled against the
rigidity of working in network television, he kept writing and
developing new projects. At each of his TV development deals,
he wrote movie scripts on the side, much like his
Wonder Year's episode. Many of his TV pilots and feature
films were turned down for being too dark. Despite the
(22:23):
constant rejections, David had this one pitch he loved. It
was for a feature film about Quote, a mobster in
therapy who was having problems with his mother. His manager
at bryl Stein Gray Lloyd Brawn suggested David's film would
make a great television series. At that same time, a
cable TV show on HBO called The Larry Sanders Show
(22:43):
caught David's attention. It was an Emmy Award winning sitcom
starring Gary Shanling. The show gave a behind the scenes
look at a fictional late night talk show.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
The characters, they were cowardly, they were narcissistic, they were
full of shit. They were real people, and they were
very funny. And that's why when I first signed a
deal was berl Stein Gray, another development deal. I started
pumping them right away about selling the Sopranos idea to HBO,
(23:16):
and they said, no, HBO hadn't completely turned their business
modelation and this was going to be expensive. It was
an hour show and they didn't want to do that.
So we went to see the outlier of the network's Fox.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
At that time, his stubbornness paid off. David finally got
the green light to develop his new project about an
Italian American mafioso seeking therapy, and just like the Wonder Years,
once again he would be writing for network television. That
could be a frustration.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Really, if you look at the pilot of The Sopranos,
that's really kind of what you see. However, the one
that I did for Fox, I thought, work, sorry, don't
have anybody get killed. Now, Okay, this is a gangster
show where nobody gets killed. And as I was writing it,
(24:10):
I began to in the language and I began to realize,
man if this thing goes. If they buy this, it's
going to be a catastro show. It's going to be
this coalition of differing expectations that they want and what
I want. They're going to be like Howl like that.
(24:31):
I wrote this pilot that didn't have any merger, and
every other network passed off, so on CBS, NBC and ABC,
and I thought, idiot, you gave a mob show and
nobody gets nobody gets robbed down. So I fixed that.
I made a c story before we went to HBO,
(24:52):
and they brought that. Somebody got killed, there was an explosion,
a restaurant got destroyed.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
In nineteen ninety seven, the Soprano found its home at HBO. HBO,
also known as Home Box Office, was a premium cable
channel network that was known for airing sports events and
first rate movies. Their secret new formula for TV was
that they started funding television series while keeping movie quality
scripts and production, and thanks to David Chase and the Sopranos,
(25:19):
HBO would go on to revolutionize TV.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Sopranos was these were sociopaths and career criminals. There was
no cops. I mean there were, but the cops for
this there was a doctor who was a psychiaterst it
was about a family of chrominals. There hadn't done anything
like that on TV. And also the thinking about it
(25:44):
having somebody's mother play the bad guy, the villain, that
was different.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Just like his script for The Wonder Years, David relied
on his own life experiences to tell the stories of
The Sopranos. The show takes place in these same New
Jersey suburbs where David Chase grew up. Its fictional DeMeo
crime family was based on the local New Jersey wise
guys David heard about growing up, and it should be
no surprise that David's relationship with his mother is what
inspired Tony's conflicted relationship with his mom. In order to
(26:15):
truthfully delve into Tony's journey in therapy with the psychiatrist,
doctor Melfie, David drew on his own experiences with a therapist.
The Sopranos is thoroughly infused with David Chase's obsessions, his fears, frustrations,
desires and aspirations. Even David Chase's dream to be a
filmmaker gets reflected in the character Christopher Molta, Santi, Tony's
(26:37):
nephew who starts writing screenplays to try to break into Hollywood.
David Chase's remarkable personal storytelling was amplified by the incredible cast.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
I mean, I felt we had done something pretty good.
You know, when it comes to the mesaorizing department, you
really also have to go see who would you name?
Jim somebody, Jim Gandalfen. You know, he was exceptional.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Actor, James Gandolphine. He brought Tony soprano to life. He
was terrifying, but he was equally compelling. His iconic performance
earned him three Emmys, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, one
Golden Globe, and the love of millions of fans. Unlike
The Wonder Years and other network shows David worked on,
his crime Family series wasn't seen as quote too dark
(27:25):
or quote too edgy. Instead, working with HBO was vastly
different from a traditional network.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
Oh my god, are you kidding me? It had been
like making a show in the Soviet Union. What you
could say, what you could sir, where you could be
disrespectful or what was considered disrespectful. Literally, it was like
the fucking Politbureau of the Soviet Union and HBO. We
(27:53):
had two arguments one was about the name of the show,
and one was about the first episode where Tony himself
commits to Murdy Straum was a guy goal college. We
had those two arguments and that was it forever. Not
that they didn't voice their opinions, but there were somebody
(28:16):
we could talk with each other. There was listening and
speaking going on, and you knew that their goal was
completely different than the networks. Their goal was to present
something dynamic, original, nervous making, and that loves those role
of things that the networks don't want, at least at
that time.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
It was the college episode to change the course of
television history forever. It was high art about low characters.
It was a visceral illustration of Tony's role as a
family man, but one with a twisted moral code. Tony's
internal complexities paved the way for other anti heroes, think
Breaking Bad's high school chemistry teacher turned crystal meth dealer
(28:58):
Walter White. But as we've heard, Tony Soprano wasn't the
first anti hero. David Penn, his self confessed tendency to
write toward a quote unquote bad Boy followed him around
for a while.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Well.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Tony soprano is the ultimate anti hero in television history.
Olden Coffield was the old school anti hero and thus
the ghost that gave meaning to David's Lost Wonder Year's episode.
Looking back at David Chase's Wonder Year's episode, it makes
perfect sense that he'd be chosen to take the show
in an edgier direction. That's what David did best. Pushed
the boundaries of television, whether he's enlisting the ghost of
(29:31):
bad boy Holding Coffield to choke a smoke with Kevin Arnold,
who's in the throes of full on teenage adolescents, or
if he's revealing the generational trauma and intercomplexities of a
family of career criminals. For both his Wonder Year script
and The Sopranos, David's conflicted family dynamics shaped both stories.
There's so much of David's life portrayed in the Sopranos,
(29:52):
we can infer how much of his adolescences layered in
his Wonder Year's episode. In his Lost script, with its
haunting of holding Coffee, you sense that David Chase was
the spirit of Kevin Arnold. After our conversation with David ended,
we followed his lead for where we might find his
lost script. One legal representative at twentieth Century Fox said
(30:13):
the company had been bought and sold so many times
the script was likely lost for all time. Another representative
said that even if they had the script, they wouldn't
release it, which begs the question will David's episode of
the Wonder Year's ever surface? Will we ever find what
timely advice the ghost of Olden Coffield gave Kevin Arnold,
(30:34):
or how Kevin's teacher cut him a brake? We're not sure,
but there's one person who's curious to see the script again.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Oh, I'd love it, So I say that now until
Arry No, I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
We may not have discovered the lost David Chase Wonder
Year's Script, but we found something far better, a conversation
about the nature of art and the artist from the man,
the myth, and the legen of television himself. In the end,
David Chase goes back to Bob Dylan to analyze the
meaning and the value of the revolution that he created Intellivision.
(31:10):
Just like how Dylan made art as pop music, David
Chase made art as TV. As David Chase says, Dylan
songs were not silly little love songs like the majority
of pop tunes of the day. Instead, Bob Dylan.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Songs became about death and betrayal, illness or rebellion, and
it changed changed to culture and we're still living through
it now. And so these shows that I'm talking about
were kind of little stabs are trying to capture that.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
In a very David Chase way. His little stabs became
great artwork.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So my only and it's a very tenuous connection to
the Wonder Years. But I took a screenwriting class one
summer at UCLA with d Caruso, who was a a old,
long time screenwriter. He'd written on Gilligan's Island or probably
with a lot of other stuff too. But Danica mckeller,
(32:10):
who played Winnie Cooper, also took his class. It was
not the same class, but it was at the same time.
And I would always talk to us about how I
have you know people in my class, so I don't
want to say who, and managed to mention like.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Danica mckeller was telling me the other day.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
So he was so proud she and I could both
write an episode of an island based sitcom if you
needed it. If it comes up drop of a head.
I love any very special characters in this one.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Oh gosh, I wish I watched The Wonder Years is
my question. I'm like, is it worth going back? Sometimes
it's like those old classic TV shows where you're like,
is it worth like going back? Because I will say
I missed the Sopranos the first time, and it wasn't
until I was married that my husband was like, no,
we should like go back and watch the Sopranos, and surprise, surprise,
it's great. Everyone was right.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I had an interesting one with the very special character
because I was like, you know, I wanted it to
be the Holden Coffield ghost. But then something else jumped out,
which was David Chase's therapist. You're one, you're the therapist
or David Chase. That's just gotta be wild. But then, secondly,
kudos to them for never cashing in on the Sopranos fame, Like,
I don't know who they are. They never wrote a
cookbook of Italian American dishes from David Chase's therapist, right
(33:26):
with the tack of doctor Melfie on the cover. I
was like, good on you, so that's mine.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
They were always doing that thing that Jason's screenwriting teacher
was doing like well, I can't say who, but I
have one therapy patient very specific.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
You probably know his name.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people,
thanks to Nicole Lambert of Chase Films, who helped make
today's interview happen to. This episode was written by Katie Maddie.
If you go all the way back to our first episode,
Katie wrote that one too good to have her back
in the Our show was hosted by Zaren Burnett, Danish Swartz,
and Jason English.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Our producer is Josh Fisher.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Story editing by Zarren Burnett, Editing and Sam Design, mixed
and mastered by Josh Fisher. Additional editing by Mary Doo.
Original music by Alise McCoy. Show logo by Lucy Quintania.
Our executive producer is Jason English. You can email the
show at Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com. If
you secretly saved a copy of David Chase's Wonder Year script,
(34:29):
we'd love to read it. We'll send it over to
our new pal, David Chase. Very Special Episodes is a
production of iHeart Podcasts.
Audiences love a good mystery, both on and off screen,
whether it's a classic Alfred Hitchcock film like Vertigo, or
fans using social media to piece together the rumors of
drama between the cast. But there are lesser known Hollywood mysteries,
like what Happens to All the Lost Scripts? Those episodes
(00:25):
of TV shows or feature film scripts that were written
but never made lost to time. There were two episodes
of Seinfeld that were written and then scrapped for being
too controversial, which feels very Larry David On the big screen.
The film Justice League Mortal was canceled after suffering production
issues and the two thousand and eight Writers Strike. Some
(00:45):
lost scripts pop up years later online, but most never do.
There's one lost Hollywood script that stands out. It was
an episode of The Wonder Years, a half hour comedy
on ABC broadcast in the eighties and nineties. It captured
the suburban lie life of a teenage boy set in
the cultural ships of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies.
The Lost Wonder Year's episode was written by none other
(01:08):
than David Chase, as in the creator of The Sopranos.
You know that little show about Italian American mafia life
in the New Jersey suburbs that changed the course of
television history. Yeah. Him. The Wonder Year's producer Ken Tapolski
once confided to The Wall Street Journal that David Chase's
script was quote phenomenal, one of the best end quote,
(01:28):
but some element in the plot was too intense for
the show. It took the show in a darker direction.
No big surprise there, it was David Chase. But what
exactly was that darker direction? Why was David Chase's episode
so edgy that it never aired on TV? Did a
schoolteacher get whacked for a gambling dead It's been over
(01:49):
thirty years since he first wrote the script. We set
out on a quest to find this long lost David
Chase Wonder Year script, and what better place to start
looking with the man himself. Welcome to our very special
(02:11):
episodes Detective Case Operation Chasing the Wonder Years, The Conversation
with David Chase. Welcome back.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
He is Aaron Burnette, She's Danis Schwartz. Hey, Hey, I'm
Jason English, and I want to address right at the
top that we had an opportunity to spend some time
with David Chase. One of the most celebrated people in
the history of television. We could have asked him about
any episode he's ever written, and we decided forget the
(02:46):
Sopranos finale. We want to talk about The Wonder Years.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yes, love that call.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I mean, David Chase is like truly the inspiration like
I do screenwriting, I work in TV. He is just
like such a genius, such inspiration. This episode was so
so exciting for.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Me, totally for a guy to be able to do
comedy and darkness and then like sentimentality so well, and
you never feel that it's too violent or the comedy
is errant, or it's like sentimentality that is unearned. You're right.
He is the triangle of screenwriting.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
He's so funny and so smart, and now we're like,
there's a lost episode. I want to know everything.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Let's take you back to the early nineteen nineties, right
around the time that David Chase was asked to write
The Wonder Year's episode. At that moment, he was an
established television writer working toward his dream of making movies.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Here's the thing. I took these development deals with studio
so that I would earn an income while I was
trying to break into movies.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
At the time, David was knee deep in projects.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
What was kind of going on around in ninety one
ninety two was I'll fly away in order to exposure
to rock for Files. That's what was going on, and.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
For the course of David's career, he had proven himself
to be a writer who could write for a wide
range of shows. He won the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy
in nineteen seventy eight for The Rockford Files, a show
about an ex convict turn private eye named Jim Rockford,
which he later adapted into television movies. At first a
writer and later the showrunner for the last two seasons
(04:15):
of the critically acclaimed hit Northern Exposure, David Chase experimented
with the mix of smart, combative dialogue and a dream
inflected reality that would later become a hallmark of The Sopranos.
David's early Emmy success in later success with Northern Exposure
made him a highly desirable writer, and he bounced around
Hollywood working on both drama and comedy series. A common
(04:37):
theme in David's work is that he doesn't shy away
from writing about the complexities of society, whether he's writing
present day storylines or diving into the harsh realities of
the past. In the nineteen ninety three drama All Fly Away,
David wrote about race relations in the nineteen fifties and
nineteen sixties, but through the lens of a black housekeeper
and single mother named Lily Harper and the family of
(04:59):
the white district attorney she worked for. Joining the final
season of The Wonder Years would mean returning once more
to these same historical complexities.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
A gentleman named Bob Brush, who was I believe the
executive producer. He had a Corvette. I remember that, and
I was jealous. It was Bob Brush reached out to me.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Bob Brush was the Wonder Years executive producer who took
over as showrunner from the series creators Neil Marlins and
Carol Black.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
I had never really seen the show, and I didn't
watch it afterward.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Even though David hadn't seen the series, he had lived
through the time period it takes place in. The Wonder
Years is set during the massive social upheaval of the
idyllic post World War Two era of America. The show
follows Kevin Arnold, a teenage boy of the Baby Bloomer
generation audiences experienced his life in the suburbs during this
tumultuous late sixties and early seventies, when many Americans thought
(05:56):
the country was coming apart at the seams. It's also
a sweet coming of age comedy, one that doesn't shy
away from its heavier themes. Whatever was going on in
the broader world bled into the character's adolescent lives as
they navigate everything the teenagers face, friends, puberty, first loves,
and family dynamics. The sixth season of The Wonder Years
(06:18):
took place in the year nineteen seventy three. At that time,
during the end of the Nixon Years, both America and
the world were changing drastically. There was the sexual Revolution,
the rise of Eastern spirituality, the creation of suburbs and supermarkets,
as well as the semi liberation of women. Housewives became
professional secretaries became bosses. Of course, there were also the drugs,
(06:39):
which became a driver of the culture. The Vietnam War
was still going on, the Civil rights movement was still
actively creating a more equitable America. All of this was
the backdrop of The Wonder Years. Heading into the show's
final season, Kevin Arnold was now sixteen years old, which
means naturally he was experiencing more adolescent changes. The creators
(07:00):
wanted to accurately reflect both Kevin's inner growth and external
changes set against these starker complexities of the world. To
lead the show in a different direction, the producers turned
to David Chase.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
I mean I thought it was great. I mean Bob
Brush telling me, you know, we want to get a
little bit asier.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
David had developed a reputation for writing edgy television scripts.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Well. I had won an Emmy and the Writer's Guild
Award all in the same year for a TV movie
that I wrote called Off the Minnesota Strip The Mari
Winning Head and she played a young high school student
from Minnesota who got pimped out in Minnesota and then
(07:43):
the pimp took her to New York and she was
on seventh five Anue walking the street. So the story
was this girl who had spent six months on seventh
Abu or Athama and I forget, which comes back to
her small town and tries to fit in. There was
a lot of vagre. There was more edgetunes usually found
(08:06):
in network shows. Yeah, I suppose it was that, and
maybe they had seen Almost Grown Too, which also had
a lot of dab.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Almost Grown was a drama series David co created that
centered on flashbacks in the nineteen sixties. Revisiting life in
the sixties became a recurring theme in his work. For instance,
his first movie, his directorial debut, Not Fade Away, was
said in the sixties, back when David Chase was a team.
The film tells the story of a New Jersey boy
obsessed with Bob Dylan and eager to start his own band,
(08:38):
just like the Rolling Stones. When David finished his Wonder
Year's episode, the producers read it and then chose not
to pursue the darker path he'd set out for Kevin Arney.
Why the Wonder Year's producer Ken de Topolskin told The
Wall Street Journal that David's episode involved hard drug use
and would have jarred the show's audience. How exactly was
(08:59):
the use of hard drugs infused into this family comedy?
Was Kevin Arnold tripping on acid in a hippie commune?
Did he accidentally get slipped some angel dust and Kevin
became PCP Superman? Not quite.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
It was a network show. One Marlborough was a bet
as far as we were gonna go, yeh, no, there's
no drug use no that year. If they were trying
to get some meage, I'm sure they did some kind
of approach to sex, or maybe they'd done that already.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Okay, so there were no hard drugs, then what made
the episode too edgy to air on television? According to
David Chase, the script centered on Kevin's experience with a ghost. Yes,
a ghost, and again we're not talking about an LSD hallucination.
The ghost was real, or as real as any ghost
may be. For his haunting of Kevin Arnold, David Chase
(09:47):
picked a very specific ghost.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
He was visited by the spirit of Holding Cawfield.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Holding Cawfield is the protagonist in JD. Salinger's classic coming
of age novel Catcher in the Rye expelled from his
school for flunking several classes.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
Holden Cawfield came into his room and they had conversations.
I believe Holden Cawfield got him to smoke a cigarette.
You know, bad boy. Holder Holding Colffield has a lot
more age than Kevin Arnold. Yeah, I guess what was
happening was that Kevin Arnold was starting to go through
the teenage rejection of the parents or adolescence. I think
(10:27):
was more honest about adolescens. In other words, that it
can get kind of rough right times. And you know
when I, when I was younger, you know, I always
wanted to be a bad book.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
David was born in Mount Vernon, New York, in nineteen
forty five, and he was raised in New Jersey. He
was an only child in a large Italian American family
with lots of close extended relatives. His father, Henry, owned
a hardware store in Verona, New Jersey, and his mother, Norma,
had a job proofreading the phone book. Henry and Norma
were hard working children, Ittalian immigrants who wanted David to
(11:02):
blend in with post World War Two era American society.
But as a kid, David always marched to the beat
of his own drum. He loved going on adventures in
the woods in New Jersey with his friends. He was
fascinated by all the local mob stories in the newspaper,
as well as the old school Jimmy Cagney gangster film
Public Enemy. But by the time he was a team
(11:30):
the wanna be bad boy switched up his aspirations. In
the sixties, he wanted to become a rock and roller,
but his family was against such folly. So David channeled
that adolescent tension between him and his parents into his
Wonder Year's episode.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Well, part of it was based on a teacher that
I had in high school, a woman named Teresa Gaetano
with her real name, And she always kind of looked
out for me, and she was always on my side.
She's an English teacher. She was a young woman. She
(12:05):
was probably thirty at that time, which when you're seventeen
sixteen seems like an adult, you know what I mean,
But thirty is messing. Obviously. She was a dynamic teacher.
She was interesting. And my parents went to parents night
and they came back and they told me that they
(12:27):
talked to her and that they were afraid that I
was going to become a beatnik.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
The term beatnik is a derogatory name for the followers
of the Beat Generation, which was a social movement of
artists who rejected mainstream values and embraced self expression. The
Beat Generation was known for its jazz influenced poetry and
their explorations of sexuality, spirituality, psychedelics, and anti materialism. What
(12:53):
David's parents saw was a growing concern about the future
of their son, while his teacher, Teresa Gatano, saw very differently.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
And she said, you don't have to worry about her.
He's going to turn out all right, even if he's
a beating. And when they told me that, they didn't
say it to me with any form of relief. It
was kind of like maybe they weren't that encouraged, or
she hadn't been encouraging enough, but they did tell me, so.
I don't know why they did that, but I always
(13:22):
felt grateful to her that she said that. In fact,
a couple of years ago, I invested some money into
firing a detective to find her and I was going
to call her, and then I never did it. I
still could. She's still alive.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
David's early life was shaped by adults like his teacher,
Teresa Gaitana, who saw something in him others missed. But
it was his own coming of age experiences during the
cultural upheaval of the late sixties and early seventies that
gave him a unique perspective to share with audiences.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Wonder Years was kind of a departure from standard television.
You know, most television was franchises, really doctors, lawyers, cops.
I mean there had always been family stories on TV,
but not commenting on life at that time. You know,
a revolution had occurred in the country the sixties to that,
(14:16):
but everything had changed, and youth very important. The sixties
were some people called it the youth quake, and well,
rock and roll took over everything. Rock and roll was
as important then as the Internet is now. It was
a whole different experience. There was the art itself, right.
(14:38):
My friend Stevie Vanzett would say that it was Bob
Dylan changed everything, and that could be true. In other words,
the music that became popular with young people. Instead of
being like I love you, you love me you, instead
of just those love songs as McCartney could go on
another silly love Si, they became about death and betrayal,
(15:02):
illness or rebellion, and it changed the culture. So we're
still living through with that.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
David's friend Stevie van Zant aka Little Stevie, who's a
member of Bruce Springsteen's Eat Street Band and a proud
son of New Jersey, also of course plays Silvio the soprano,
family mobster and Bada Bang nightclub owner. Returning to the
beat Poets the beat Nicks in the early sixties. Stevie
van Zant believes that between nineteen sixty three and nineteen
(15:31):
sixty five, Bob Dylan changed everything in American culture. You see,
Bob Dylan's poetic folk music helped inspire the Hippies and
their Summer of Love in sixty seven. Early in his career,
though in the sixties he wrote music and support of
social justice issues. He wrote songs like Blowing in the
Wind and The Times They Are a Change in which
(15:51):
served as an anti war anthem, and the other as
a civil rights movement anthem. But his influence wasn't limited
to hippie and folk music. Dylan also revolutionized rock and
roll when he proved mainstream pop songs could hold complex
storytelling in their lyrics, stories that not only resonated with
their audiences but inspired them to take action. Dylan was
(16:14):
changed personified, and Bob Dylan had a significant impact on
young David Chase. The success and artistry of Bob Dylan,
as well as the British invasion with the Beatles and
the Rolling Stones, that made David realize rock and roll
was art and that with his words, he could be
an artist too, just like Dylan. At first, he wanted
(16:36):
to be a rock star like his idols of the sixties,
so he formed a band, one that never actually performed anywhere.
But that path is how David eventually discovered his dream
to be a filmmaker, which led him onto the paths
becoming a television writer, one who used his artistry to
show us the grittier side of American lives. As for
David Chase's Lost Wonder Year's episode, we asked him how
(16:59):
he did Kevin Arnold's storyline with his supportive teacher.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
I don't recall, but she must have cut him a
brake somehow, right, I mean, he must have been the
hero of the story, or so to me when I
look back on that, it doesn't seem to be that
the important thing about that script was the teacher. It
seems to me that for Wonder Years that the ghost
(17:25):
of Olden Clawfield. That was very different for any TV showing,
and Olden Cowfield was a bad boy.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Of course, David Chase focuses on the dream sequence with
the bad boy. It's in his voice as he recalls
the Lost Wonder Year's script. You can sense the same
creativity that would later blossom with the Sopranos, because, as
we all know, this wouldn't be the last time David
would write about a bad boy who pushed the boundaries
of standard TV. Since we had the chance to ask
(17:57):
the man himself, we were curious about what else might
be in David's script that was deemed too edgy. What
other secrets did the lost episode hold? Unfortunately David doesn't
have a copy of that script.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
But I wasn't on the staff on that show. I
wasn't a producer on that show. So I was going
to write one episode. That was it.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Although David can't check the original script, he did give
us a lead on where we might find his lost
work buried somewhere in the files at twentieth Century Fox,
which produced the show with ABC.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Well, they must have records. There was a legal contract
to write it, and I was paid for it. Now,
I mean ABC might have a copy of it too,
So if they have, our gives is probably there. If
they don't, then some of those people clear out stuff
after a while, So I wish I had that script.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So with David's lead, we were one step closer to
finding the lost episode. It should be no surprise. The
rejected episode of The Wonder Years wasn't the only roadblock
in David Chase's career. The want to Be bad Boy
(19:07):
in New Jersey faced several setbacks working in network television.
One setback occurred while filming the show Almost Grown. Part
of the series took place in the same era as
The Wonder Years, but as seen through a different lens.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
And I also did a series dentical Almost Grown, which
was about a rock and roll fanatic from the sixties
who met his future wife in high school in the sixties.
Three and then the pilot was two hours long, and
it followed them. We did the early sixties, the last
(19:42):
sixties with you know, campus craziness and all that, and
then them as a divorced couple, and that was all
about to meet. In fact, the whole point of the
show was to have each episode had a kind of
the theme set forward from a famous or copylar start.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
The series starred Tim Daily and Eve Gordon as the
high school sweethearts turned devorceeeds.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
And it worked pretty well, I really did. Tim and
Eve were great, the kids were great. It was on
Monday nights so CBS at ten o'clock and it just
was not catching on, and then it started to catch
on and critics started to write favorably about it because
it was different. And then CBS canceled it. And it's
(20:31):
always been my theory that CBS canceled it because Universal,
who did a lot of business with all the networks,
it was too expensive, and Universal asked not to cancel
and probably said, you know, we'll give you some other
d detective show to reduced to eight or something. That's
(20:53):
just my thought. There's no proof of that, but it
was odd the way it happened.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Remembers exactly where he was when the show was canceled.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
We were doing pickups for the first half of the season.
For episode thirteen. CBS had ordered four more that we
were writing scripts for, and then all of a sudden,
out of nowhere comes this cancelation. And I went went
down to the set on the stage and we were
shooting a scene between Tim Day and another actor as
(21:25):
two young like long hair guys in sleeping bags. So
it didn't need much of a set, needed like a
one ball. Meanwhile, in that stage, bulldozers were tearing down
our sets. That's how fast they were. Because the next
day they had sold that space already to something else,
(21:46):
so something was fishing. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Watching the almost grown set be dismantled by the heavy
equipment was a devastating blow for David Chase. What was
it like? Oh?
Speaker 4 (21:59):
It in still the hatred in me?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Frankly, But despite the fact David constantly struggled against the
rigidity of working in network television, he kept writing and
developing new projects. At each of his TV development deals,
he wrote movie scripts on the side, much like his
Wonder Year's episode. Many of his TV pilots and feature
films were turned down for being too dark. Despite the
(22:23):
constant rejections, David had this one pitch he loved. It
was for a feature film about Quote, a mobster in
therapy who was having problems with his mother. His manager
at bryl Stein Gray Lloyd Brawn suggested David's film would
make a great television series. At that same time, a
cable TV show on HBO called The Larry Sanders Show
(22:43):
caught David's attention. It was an Emmy Award winning sitcom
starring Gary Shanling. The show gave a behind the scenes
look at a fictional late night talk show.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
The characters, they were cowardly, they were narcissistic, they were
full of shit. They were real people, and they were
very funny. And that's why when I first signed a
deal was berl Stein Gray, another development deal. I started
pumping them right away about selling the Sopranos idea to HBO,
(23:16):
and they said, no, HBO hadn't completely turned their business
modelation and this was going to be expensive. It was
an hour show and they didn't want to do that.
So we went to see the outlier of the network's Fox.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
At that time, his stubbornness paid off. David finally got
the green light to develop his new project about an
Italian American mafioso seeking therapy, and just like the Wonder Years,
once again he would be writing for network television. That
could be a frustration.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Really, if you look at the pilot of The Sopranos,
that's really kind of what you see. However, the one
that I did for Fox, I thought, work, sorry, don't
have anybody get killed. Now, Okay, this is a gangster
show where nobody gets killed. And as I was writing it,
(24:10):
I began to in the language and I began to realize,
man if this thing goes. If they buy this, it's
going to be a catastro show. It's going to be
this coalition of differing expectations that they want and what
I want. They're going to be like Howl like that.
(24:31):
I wrote this pilot that didn't have any merger, and
every other network passed off, so on CBS, NBC and ABC,
and I thought, idiot, you gave a mob show and
nobody gets nobody gets robbed down. So I fixed that.
I made a c story before we went to HBO,
(24:52):
and they brought that. Somebody got killed, there was an explosion,
a restaurant got destroyed.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
In nineteen ninety seven, the Soprano found its home at HBO. HBO,
also known as Home Box Office, was a premium cable
channel network that was known for airing sports events and
first rate movies. Their secret new formula for TV was
that they started funding television series while keeping movie quality
scripts and production, and thanks to David Chase and the Sopranos,
(25:19):
HBO would go on to revolutionize TV.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Sopranos was these were sociopaths and career criminals. There was
no cops. I mean there were, but the cops for
this there was a doctor who was a psychiaterst it
was about a family of chrominals. There hadn't done anything
like that on TV. And also the thinking about it
(25:44):
having somebody's mother play the bad guy, the villain, that
was different.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Just like his script for The Wonder Years, David relied
on his own life experiences to tell the stories of
The Sopranos. The show takes place in these same New
Jersey suburbs where David Chase grew up. Its fictional DeMeo
crime family was based on the local New Jersey wise
guys David heard about growing up, and it should be
no surprise that David's relationship with his mother is what
inspired Tony's conflicted relationship with his mom. In order to
(26:15):
truthfully delve into Tony's journey in therapy with the psychiatrist,
doctor Melfie, David drew on his own experiences with a therapist.
The Sopranos is thoroughly infused with David Chase's obsessions, his fears, frustrations,
desires and aspirations. Even David Chase's dream to be a
filmmaker gets reflected in the character Christopher Molta, Santi, Tony's
(26:37):
nephew who starts writing screenplays to try to break into Hollywood.
David Chase's remarkable personal storytelling was amplified by the incredible cast.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
I mean, I felt we had done something pretty good.
You know, when it comes to the mesaorizing department, you
really also have to go see who would you name?
Jim somebody, Jim Gandalfen. You know, he was exceptional.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Actor, James Gandolphine. He brought Tony soprano to life. He
was terrifying, but he was equally compelling. His iconic performance
earned him three Emmys, five Screen Actors Guild Awards, one
Golden Globe, and the love of millions of fans. Unlike
The Wonder Years and other network shows David worked on,
his crime Family series wasn't seen as quote too dark
(27:25):
or quote too edgy. Instead, working with HBO was vastly
different from a traditional network.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
Oh my god, are you kidding me? It had been
like making a show in the Soviet Union. What you
could say, what you could sir, where you could be
disrespectful or what was considered disrespectful. Literally, it was like
the fucking Politbureau of the Soviet Union and HBO. We
(27:53):
had two arguments one was about the name of the show,
and one was about the first episode where Tony himself
commits to Murdy Straum was a guy goal college. We
had those two arguments and that was it forever. Not
that they didn't voice their opinions, but there were somebody
(28:16):
we could talk with each other. There was listening and
speaking going on, and you knew that their goal was
completely different than the networks. Their goal was to present
something dynamic, original, nervous making, and that loves those role
of things that the networks don't want, at least at
that time.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
It was the college episode to change the course of
television history forever. It was high art about low characters.
It was a visceral illustration of Tony's role as a
family man, but one with a twisted moral code. Tony's
internal complexities paved the way for other anti heroes, think
Breaking Bad's high school chemistry teacher turned crystal meth dealer
(28:58):
Walter White. But as we've heard, Tony Soprano wasn't the
first anti hero. David Penn, his self confessed tendency to
write toward a quote unquote bad Boy followed him around
for a while.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Well.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Tony soprano is the ultimate anti hero in television history.
Olden Coffield was the old school anti hero and thus
the ghost that gave meaning to David's Lost Wonder Year's episode.
Looking back at David Chase's Wonder Year's episode, it makes
perfect sense that he'd be chosen to take the show
in an edgier direction. That's what David did best. Pushed
the boundaries of television, whether he's enlisting the ghost of
(29:31):
bad boy Holding Coffield to choke a smoke with Kevin Arnold,
who's in the throes of full on teenage adolescents, or
if he's revealing the generational trauma and intercomplexities of a
family of career criminals. For both his Wonder Year script
and The Sopranos, David's conflicted family dynamics shaped both stories.
There's so much of David's life portrayed in the Sopranos,
(29:52):
we can infer how much of his adolescences layered in
his Wonder Year's episode. In his Lost script, with its
haunting of holding Coffee, you sense that David Chase was
the spirit of Kevin Arnold. After our conversation with David ended,
we followed his lead for where we might find his
lost script. One legal representative at twentieth Century Fox said
(30:13):
the company had been bought and sold so many times
the script was likely lost for all time. Another representative
said that even if they had the script, they wouldn't
release it, which begs the question will David's episode of
the Wonder Year's ever surface? Will we ever find what
timely advice the ghost of Olden Coffield gave Kevin Arnold,
(30:34):
or how Kevin's teacher cut him a brake? We're not sure,
but there's one person who's curious to see the script again.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
Oh, I'd love it, So I say that now until
Arry No, I love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
We may not have discovered the lost David Chase Wonder
Year's Script, but we found something far better, a conversation
about the nature of art and the artist from the man,
the myth, and the legen of television himself. In the end,
David Chase goes back to Bob Dylan to analyze the
meaning and the value of the revolution that he created Intellivision.
(31:10):
Just like how Dylan made art as pop music, David
Chase made art as TV. As David Chase says, Dylan
songs were not silly little love songs like the majority
of pop tunes of the day. Instead, Bob Dylan.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Songs became about death and betrayal, illness or rebellion, and
it changed changed to culture and we're still living through
it now. And so these shows that I'm talking about
were kind of little stabs are trying to capture that.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
In a very David Chase way. His little stabs became
great artwork.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
So my only and it's a very tenuous connection to
the Wonder Years. But I took a screenwriting class one
summer at UCLA with d Caruso, who was a a old,
long time screenwriter. He'd written on Gilligan's Island or probably
with a lot of other stuff too. But Danica mckeller,
(32:10):
who played Winnie Cooper, also took his class. It was
not the same class, but it was at the same time.
And I would always talk to us about how I
have you know people in my class, so I don't
want to say who, and managed to mention like.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Danica mckeller was telling me the other day.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
So he was so proud she and I could both
write an episode of an island based sitcom if you
needed it. If it comes up drop of a head.
I love any very special characters in this one.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Oh gosh, I wish I watched The Wonder Years is
my question. I'm like, is it worth going back? Sometimes
it's like those old classic TV shows where you're like,
is it worth like going back? Because I will say
I missed the Sopranos the first time, and it wasn't
until I was married that my husband was like, no,
we should like go back and watch the Sopranos, and surprise, surprise,
it's great. Everyone was right.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I had an interesting one with the very special character
because I was like, you know, I wanted it to
be the Holden Coffield ghost. But then something else jumped out,
which was David Chase's therapist. You're one, you're the therapist
or David Chase. That's just gotta be wild. But then, secondly,
kudos to them for never cashing in on the Sopranos fame, Like,
I don't know who they are. They never wrote a
cookbook of Italian American dishes from David Chase's therapist, right
(33:26):
with the tack of doctor Melfie on the cover. I
was like, good on you, so that's mine.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
They were always doing that thing that Jason's screenwriting teacher
was doing like well, I can't say who, but I
have one therapy patient very specific.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
You probably know his name.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people,
thanks to Nicole Lambert of Chase Films, who helped make
today's interview happen to. This episode was written by Katie Maddie.
If you go all the way back to our first episode,
Katie wrote that one too good to have her back
in the Our show was hosted by Zaren Burnett, Danish Swartz,
and Jason English.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Our producer is Josh Fisher.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Story editing by Zarren Burnett, Editing and Sam Design, mixed
and mastered by Josh Fisher. Additional editing by Mary Doo.
Original music by Alise McCoy. Show logo by Lucy Quintania.
Our executive producer is Jason English. You can email the
show at Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com. If
you secretly saved a copy of David Chase's Wonder Year script,
(34:29):
we'd love to read it. We'll send it over to
our new pal, David Chase. Very Special Episodes is a
production of iHeart Podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Dana Schwartz
Jason English
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