‘The Sopranos’ Creator David Chase on LSD Movie, Trump Concerns

Television legend David Chase, the creator of the multi-award-winning HBO series “The Sopranos,” told Variety he is independently working on a film “that deals with LSD” while also developing a series on the subject for HBO. While he could not go into much more detail, he briefly mentioned that it involves “a young woman” who is “a college DJ,” so “there is a lot of music.” Chase is planning to both write and direct the feature film project, his first directorial effort since 2012’s “Not Fade Away.”

The seven-time Emmy winner is at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival to deliver an industry talk about the everlasting impact of his TV drama about an Italian-American mafia boss in New Jersey, which ran from 1999 to 2007 and forever changed the face of cable television. Last year, it was announced that Chase was reteaming with HBO to deliver a series titled “Project: MKUltra.”

Based on “Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA” by John Lisle, the series is set to revolve around real-life chemist and spymaster Sidney Gottlieb, also known as the Black Sorcerer, who is credited as the unwitting godfather of the LSD counterculture. A previous HBO line on the project said Gottlieb “headed the CIA’s MKUltra Psychedelic program, which conducted dangerous and deadly mind-control experiments on willing and unwilling subjects during the height of the Cold War.”

Asked about the current status of the project, Chase says he is still “in this story stage.” “There is so much to it,” he says of the original book. “It turns out maybe Charles Manson was given LSD by [MKUltra]; all these other people took LSD, like Cary Grant…. For me, it’s almost funny. It’s absurd. I like the irony that they wanted to make [LSD] into a weapon, but it became a party drug and a very spiritual experience.” 

Asked whether he has a particular focus for the project, the writer says the “trouble” is that he is faced with “an embarrassment of riches.” “There is so much stuff to narrow down. You hear about something else and go, ‘Oh, that’s got to be in it.’ Then you hear about some other incredible thing and, oh well…” 

Is Chase worried about working on a project intricately tied to American politics under the current political climate in his home country? “Since Trump, I’ve been concerned it’s only a little big or a hop, skip and a jump up to censorship,” he says.

While Chase is not concerned about conspiracy theorists and right-wing political commentators online swarming the discourse about his upcoming project, he is reticent about a future where creatives “are being told you can’t say that and you can’t do that.”

“I used to work on network television and you couldn’t have a person burp on camera, you couldn’t show the toilet bowl, the gun going off, the person getting shot… It was rules, rules, rules. And those are minor things. When you get to the political stuff, that concerns me.” When asked in response if he feels something like the Hays Code could be reinstated, Chase immediately says: “Exactly.”

In the almost two decades since “The Sopranos” ended, Chase has tried to produce several other projects without a bite, a mind-boggling thought given his track record. It has now been 19 years since the creative wrote for television, having worked only on “Not Fade Away” and the 2021 “Sopranos” film prequel “The Many Saints of Newark” since. Looking back at the ideas he mourns the most, Chase mentions the now-defunct “A Ribbon of Dreams,” a series about the early days of cinema that HBO passed on.

“I think that could have been really good and a lot of fun,” he says, quickly adding that the project “could have been made” in Europe but “would have been expensive.” “They wanted us to make it somewhere in the middle of Canada,” Chase notes of the collaborators he approached at the time. 

On the occasion of his first visit to Eastern Europe, the writer says he would be very open to making something on the continent. “I have a bunch of ideas. They’re mostly movie ideas, but there are two different things: there is shooting a project here because it’s cheaper, and then shooting a project here because it belongs here,” he emphasizes, adding that a project like the “MKUltra” series would not work well in Europe, but he would “love to shoot” something else in France. “I hear the crews work for 10 hours and then you can have some wine,” he notes with a chuckle. 

Another project Chase is willing to try bringing back to life is his “Superman” spoof “Ultimo,” an idea he worked on years before “The Sopranos.” The series would follow an Italian-American kid who eats moon rocks, fails to digest them, and ends up with terribly inconvenient superpowers. Unable to function in the real world, the kid then surrounds himself with publicists, lawyers and all sorts of professional help to smooth the transition. 

“If someone wanted to do ‘Ultimo,’ I’d be interested in that,” he says. “But I think the idea is well used by now. I think it was kind of original back then, but I don’t know that it’s original anymore.”

Asked if he believes the idea could be made contemporary by adding elements like artificial intelligence, which blurs the lines between what looks real or not (would people believe footage of a real-life superhero today?) and could therefore further muddle the complications for his young hero, Chase’s face lights up: “Oh, I like that. I could see that. Maybe you’ll help me get it made…” 

As for Hollywood, Chase is not nearly as hopeful. Commenting on whether he keeps up with television today, the writer recalls how difficult it was to watch new films and TV while making “The Sopranos.” “When you’re writing for a series, you’re creating a whole universe. And then I would go to the movies, and I didn’t understand [their] universe. It’s not like the universe I live in all day long, which is ‘The Sopranos’ universe. That’s when I started watching less.” 

Chase then stops himself, taking a long pause before adding: “I have to say… Well, no. I’m not going to say it.” Before killing this reporter out of curiosity, the creative lets out the words hovering at the tip of his tongue: “Well… They’re not taking a lot of risks in Hollywood.”