http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/04/sopranos200704
some excerpts:
>The Sopranos is more GoodFellas than Godfather;
>it's the Mob in the era of diminished
>expectations, when, as Tony points out, the big
>money goes to Enron. Good-bye, cashmere
>overcoats; hello, grungy bathrobes. North Jersey
>is the place that colors the fears and hopes of
>Chase's characters; it's the place from which he
>fled, but whichto everyone's surprise,
>including his ownproved fertile ground for his powers of invention.
>
>A severely truncated version of Chase's career
>goes like this: When the idea for The Sopranos
>finally floated to the surface, he had been
>laboring in the vineyards of network television
>for some 20 years. He had come of age in the
>late 1960s and 1970s, and had grown up with the
>great films of that era, particularly those of
>Federico Fellini. He desperately wanted to write
>features. Television was a byway he fell into
>when, after graduating from film school, at
>Stanford, in 1971, he was cast onto the mean
>streets of Hollywood. He made his way through
>several unmemorable TV shows while laboring over
>feature scripts on the side, none of which sold.
>"I was learning writing," he says. "I didn't
>really know about story. To me, 8½ was a great story."
>[Chase's] mother used to say, 'My worst
>nightmare is that you're going to marry an Irish
>Catholic girl, move to California, and I'll
>never see you again,'" which turned out to be
>the case. After graduating from N.Y.U., he
>disappointed both parents in 1968 by marrying
>Denise Kelly, his high-school sweetheart, and
>moving to California"to get away from them,"
>she says.....Chase started therapy in his early
>30s at her urging, after her younger sister died
>at the age of 25 of a brain aneurysm. "We went
>back to New Jersey for the funeral," Chase
>recalls. "My father opened the front door of the
>house, and he went, 'I like everything you have
>on but your shoes.' Those were his first words:
>boomlet me find the negative. My parents were
>not speaking to me, because I was spending too
>much time with her family. When we came back on
>the plane, instead of focusing on my wife's
>loss, I was focused on my problems with my
>parents. They were in my head all the time. My
>wife said, 'This is absurd. You really need to
>be in therapy.'" Not only would seeing a shrink
>change Chase's life, the experience would
>eventually provide the spine for The Sopranos.