{"id":748832,"date":"2026-07-07T16:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T16:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/748832\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T16:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T16:52:09","slug":"the-sopranos-writer-on-hbo-lsd-project-james-gandolfini-karlovy-vary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/748832\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sopranos Writer on HBO LSD Project, James Gandolfini: Karlovy Vary"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sopranos<\/a> creator David Chase<\/a> held court during the 60th edition<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Karlovy Vary\u00a0International\u00a0Film Festival<\/a>\u00a0(KVIFF<\/a>) in the Czech Republic on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

A day before appearing at the expanded and\u00a0broadened<\/a>\u00a0KVIFF Industry Days<\/a>\u00a0program\u00a0of the festival, the seven-time Emmy winner was in much demand but took time to chat with groups of reporters about his work and the state of the industry.<\/p>\n

Of course, much time was dedicated to The Sopranos. But Chase\u00a0was also asked about his new project at\u00a0HBO<\/a>, which was unveiled in the fall. He optioned John Lisle\u2019s nonfiction book\u00a0Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA and the Tragedy of MKULTRA\u00a0to adapt it as a limited series. The drama project, entitled\u00a0Project: MKUltra, should it go to series, will be Chase\u2019s first HBO effort since his Sopranos\u00a0prequel film.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in the story stage,\u201d he shared before outlining key elements of the story: \u201cLSD was invented in Switzerland, developed in Switzerland and our CIA bought millions and millions and millions of dollars of it because they wanted to weaponize it,\u201d Chase said. \u201cThey said maybe we can [do that so] that people won\u2019t have to get shot anymore in a war; they\u2019ll just go crazy. That\u2019s what their excuse was, but that was not what they cared about. So, there was a very large famous program called MKUltra in the United States, where they tested LSD on people. People have said that Charles Manson was probably given LSD somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

HBO has described\u00a0Project: MKUltra\u00a0as \u201ca dramatic thriller centered on the infamous chemist and spymaster Sidney Gottlieb, often known as The Black Sorcerer, who headed the CIA\u2019s MKUltra Psychedelic program which conducted dangerous and deadly mind control experiments on willing \u2014 and unwilling \u2014\u00a0subjects during the height of the Cold War. Gottlieb is also known as the unwitting godfather of the entire LSD counterculture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about global audiences\u2019 lasting love for The Sopranos, Chase shared on Tuesday: \u201cObviously, my heart explodes. It makes me feel so good,\u201d before adding: \u201cAt the same time, you have seen the show, so you know what my mother was like. So, at the same time, feeling good like that is not allowed. So when you say, \u2018I\u2019m so happy people like it,\u2019 I say to myself, \u2018You sound so conceited.\u2019 And if it has an effect on people and how they live, or on the politics, or the socioeconomic situation, sure, but that\u2019s not why I did it. My main goal was to be entertaining. But yeah, it\u2019s the high point of my creative life.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Chase is not convinced that the show will remain popular forever. \u201cI\u2019ve always been worried about Sopranos,\u201d he shared with reporters. I thought for sure that a lot of the references wouldn\u2019t work after a while, especially the comedic references, or when you mention a real person. I thought that\u2019s going to fade away.\u201d Concluded the creative: \u201cIt\u2019s going to happen, right? It hasn\u2019t happened yet, but we know it\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chase doesn\u2019t have major regrets, but he acknowledged that there is something that he would change about The Sopranos now. \u201cWe did a show where they went to Italy, and I would change that,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cI think we made the woman in the show too sexy and too hot. It just didn\u2019t seem real when I saw it\u201d again.<\/p>\n

One reporter asked about how, in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance recounts that his grandmother was a big fan of the HBO mafia family drama. How does that make Chase feel? \u201cIt doesn\u2019t surprise me. The particular details surprise me,\u201d he replied. \u201cOne of the things about The Sopranos is that a lot of people in it were depressed, and this is going to sound so bad, but there\u2019s a lot of unhappiness in the United States. There\u2019s a lot of unhappiness everywhere, but \u2026 [traditionally,] America is supposed to be a happy country, and everyone wants to go there. So, we\u2019re not used to thinking of ourselves as unhappy. We don\u2019t like to deal with that, or it used to be that way. Now, I think, it\u2019s changing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the streaming age, the willingness to take creative risks may also be on the wane, the legendary creator suggested on Tuesday. \u201cIf HBO hadn\u2019t sought that out, it wouldn\u2019t have been there,\u201d Chase said about The Sopranos. \u201cI don\u2019t have much to do with it anymore, but it feels more like network television again \u2013 [there are] just things you can\u2019t do. \u2018Don\u2019t say this, don\u2019t do that!’\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sopranos premiered in 1999 and went on to become one of the most celebrated works in the history of cable television. The mafia saga and pop culture phenomenon ran for six seasons (1999\u20132007) and won 21 Emmys.<\/p>\n

Chase made his feature film directorial debut with 2012\u2019s Not Fade Away, a musical tale about growing up in a U.S. suburb in the 1960s.\u00a0In 2021, the Warner Bros.-produced The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel to The Sopranos that Chase wrote and produced, opened in cinemas. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Chase had actually initially conceived the series as a movie. \u201cI wanted to do it as a movie at first, and my agent said, \u2018The mob is finished. People don\u2019t care anymore, forget it!\u2019 So I had that in my pocket for three years, and then HBO wanted me to do a series, and so I brought that back. \u2026 The mafia was kind of overused, but people who knew me told me that my mother was such a wild person and very funny that I had to do something about her. So I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, film was his first focus. \u201cI never wanted to be a TV writer. I wanted to be a filmmaker,\u201d Chase explained. \u201cBut I just couldn\u2019t break out of [TV].\u201d Creatives didn\u2019t move between film and TV as naturally as today back in the day. \u201cI was telling somebody the other day that in the 1970s when I got into Hollywood, it was like apartheid. If you were a TV writer, you couldn\u2019t jump across. You couldn\u2019t get a meeting with people in the movie business, and I happened to start out in TV, but that was never what I wanted. So, The Sopranos was a chance for me to do something that was as movie-like as I could.\u201d<\/p>\n

The late and great The Sopranos star James Gandolfini had to come up in Tuesday\u2019s discussion, and he did. \u201cHe was just a great actor,\u201d Chase told reporters in Karlovy Vary. \u201cI\u2019ve said it before: I think it\u2019s all about his eyes. One of the things about him was that you could see the little boy in there. Even though he was 40 years old, you could feel in his face that little boy \u2014 kind of mystified by the universe and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if there are any actors he\u2019d like to work with, Chase responded: \u201cYeah, plenty. I\u2019d still like to work with [Robert] De Niro.\u201d<\/p>\n

The creator doesn\u2019t have any plans to return to The Sopranos universe but he shared something that interests him that has to do with Americans with an Italian family background living in New Jersey and beyond. \u201cI\u2019m interested in Italian Americans,\u201d Chase said. \u201cPeople are buying a lot of property in Italy because they sell these houses very cheap there \u2014 in these towns that are emptied out and everybody has gone to the city. I\u2019m interested in that \u2013 Italians going back and trying to get back to the way it was, and having a rude surprise. I mean, I would do mob movies again, but I just don\u2019t have one right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sopranos creator David Chase held court during the 60th edition\u00a0of the\u00a0Karlovy Vary\u00a0International\u00a0Film Festival\u00a0(KVIFF) in the Czech Republic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,133947,88,1035,2091,305967,305968,305969,33911],"class_list":["post-748832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-david-chase","tag-entertainment","tag-hbo","tag-international","tag-karlovy-vary-international-film-festival","tag-kviff","tag-kviff-2026","tag-the-sopranos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}