Tony Soprano dreamed of talking fish and getting intimate with his therapist. The Sopranos creator David Chase dreams of someone asking him about his Wikipedia.
Deadline published a lengthy interview with Chase on Tuesday that covers the Sopranos prequel movie, The Many Saints of Newark, and the HBO’s show legacy. The whole thing is worth a read (out-of-context quote: “I didn’t say I pleasure myself. I said please myself… I don’t do that either very often”), but my favorite section is at the end, when the interviewer asks Chase if there’s anything he wants people to know. This is a common technique by reporters to get a subject to discuss something that may have been missed — but Chase’s answer was anything but common.
“Well, I’ve dreamed about people asking me this question because I’ve dreamed about finally giving the answer to it. And the answer to the question is this,” he said. “It says in Wikipedia that my name was David DeCesare, but that’s not true. My name was never David DeCesare, and I’ve tried to get them to remove all this.” Chase continued:
“My father was born with the name DeCesare, and he changed it back in the ‘30s. So I didn’t change my name. That was never my name, and when we first started the Sopranos, I said to HBO, should I go back to my Italian name, our family name? And they said no because you’re known. I wasn’t even that well known, but people know you by this name…”
It goes on from there, but you get the idea. His griping must have worked: the only Wikipedia mentions of Chase’s last name being “DeCesare” are “his paternal grandmother had changed the family name from DeCesare to Chase” in Early Life and “says his name was not David DeCesare at birth in this interview” in References.
Chase must have sent a guy to Wikipedia HQ to “fix” the problem. Wink.
(Via Deadline)