Latest / STOPTIME: Live in the Moment. / Paula Leggett Chase & David Chase: Dancing to the Tempo of Life

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Paula Leggett Chase & David Chase: Dancing to the Tempo of Life · STOPTIME: Live in the Moment.

• 0:23
  Lisa Hopkins: This is the stop time podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Hopkins, and I'm here to engage you in thought provoking motivational conversations around practicing the art of living in the moment. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm excited to dig deep and offer insights into embracing who we are and where we are at.
• 0:47
  Lisa Hopkins: So we're gonna try something a little different today and chat with not one but two fabulous creative human beings who between them have over 50 Broadway shows dozens of TV and film credits, a nomination for an Emmy Grammy Drama Desk Award.
• 1:02
  Lisa Hopkins: Their work has been featured at Hartford stage city center, Boston Pops Tanglewood festival Corps, the BBC concert orchestra, the Kennedy Center Honors essential voices USA and Radio City Christmas spectacular together they've created and raised two beautiful sons. And somewhere along the way, there's a Harvard biology degree in there. It's my great pleasure to welcome Paula Leggett Chase, and David Chase. Welcome Paul and David. Hi, thank you. Great to be here. It's so great to see you. I really have to ask right off the top wasn't really a Harvard biology degree.
• 1:40
  David Chase: As far as I know.
• 1:44
  David Chase: Yeah, I left for college, having no knowledge of what a life in theater or music would be like, and having no expectation that that was something you could spend your life doing.
• 1:57
  David Chase: And biology seemed to be the best sort of combination of my interests at the time, and the possibility of like covering all the pre med requirements. And I still love biology I still love all of you know it's not that different from what I do. It's all about taxonomy and organization and how things in a real interrelate and interact.
• 2:21
  David Chase: It's just, instead of doing it with with things in the natural world, I do it with bits of music.
• 2:30
  Lisa Hopkins: That is super interesting. When did you start music? Like when did music come into your life?
• 2:35
  David Chase: Oh, there was always music. My mother grew up playing piano and clarinet in high school marching band, and she was a fairly accomplished or is a fairly accomplished pianist, especially in her high school years, she won the West Virginia Chopin championship.
• 2:50
  David Chase: But she never really pursued it that much beyond that my dad played in marching band as well.
• 2:59
  David Chase: But my dad's mom was a self taught pianist who became her church pianist and remain so for about 35 years on a, you know, small little church on a mountaintop. And so even in this tiny farmer's house that my grandparents had, there was an old pump organ. So I grew up mostly with hymns. And with choral singing, I think we probably had a radio in our house and it wasn't like anybody said, No, you can't listen to anything else. It's just, you know, we grew up taking piano lessons and singing in choirs. I hated every second of piano lessons, or at least the practicing. So after about four and a half, five years of piano lessons, I quit then. So the last real music lesson I had was probably eighth grade.
• 3:47
  Lisa Hopkins: No kidding. So how did music come back into your life? You mentioned.. I thought I heard you say that you never really considered it as a potential viable career. Is that right?
• 3:56
  David Chase: Well, I think the better way to say it is that it never seemed I didn't know anybody who did it for a living other than piano teachers. So it wasn't that I didn't consider it a viable career so much as I wasn't even aware that it could be a career. I mostly performed onstage in high school and into college by the towards the end of college I started doing at Harvard, the Hasty Pudding show actually did all four years, and ended up writing the music and lyrics for for three years of that. And I was never interested in writing music as a composer, I was always interested in again, the biological side of it, which is, how do you create something which sounds like this other song or this style? Or how do you define the Elements of Style? How do you sort of make something that draws from different sources and create something new? There was an advisor who was the first person Peter Mansfield that I had ever met, who actually was working as a professional musician. And I said, Oh, I see people can actually do music for a living and after college, I still didn't know what I was going to do. After I graduated. I played mostly bass and some piano at a at a summer musical theater place in Maine with the expectation that I'd walk away saying, well, I got that out of I didn't get it out of my system.
• 5:16
  David Chase: my system.
• 5:22
  Lisa Hopkins: Clearly
• 5:23
  David Chase: I had a phenomenal I mean, this is the power of teachers, my mother who is a very, very chatty person and very social person. So she was just driving home from somewhere and saw a kid on the side of the road walking home. And I guess he wouldn't do this now. But she offered him a ride. And of course, she found out everything about him. And what he mostly was talking about was he worked in the theater department. And he was so passionate about it, and so and so loved the woman who ran the department, my mother came home and said, Oh, that sounds really fun. Why don't you go and get involved in that? And for reasons that I don't entirely know, I did, I went up, and I introduced myself to Joan Berenger, and said, I know how to play piano. Can I play piano for something, but the most interesting part was a senior year we did cabaret, we got the script and the score from the rental place. And we realized very quickly that Wait a minute, those songs are different. And the script is different, and it's not the same. And it was one of the first times that I sort of registered that the sheet music you looked at is, especially for theater is not what is printed.
• 6:37
  David Chase: And I asked, Well, can we just take for example, don't tell mama and just put it in the show. And maybe this time. And of course now that would be highly illegal. Or it still was then but and but I've told john Kander, the story, and he enjoyed it, so it's okay. But it was the kind of thing where you, Joan Berenger, the theater director said, Sure, go ahead.
• 7:03
  David Chase: And so I listened to the recording, and I wrote it down, and I wrote out parts for all the instruments. I had no idea what I was doing. But the fact that I had a teacher say, Yeah, go ahead, do it. And I'm sure she knew it was illegal. But she didn't stop me. And I learned more probably from that process than I even realized at the time.
• 7:28
  Lisa Hopkins: Hmm. Amazing. And it's so funny, because with that reference to biology, and I'm thinking about you dissecting the score.
• 7:35
  David Chase: a great analogy.
• 7:35
  David Chase: Yes.
• 7:39
  Lisa Hopkins: Brilliant. So your worlds really started to come together there. And it seems like there's a really a lot of passion around that. The like you said, the execution of that kind of Yeah, love it. So Paula, tell us a little bit about your background.
• 7:52
  Paula Leggett Chase: I grew up in Evansville, Indiana, and my grandfather was a sound man.
• 7:55
  Paula Leggett Chase: Both my my grandpa Kyler. And, and my dad, jack Kyler. Were sound men, and they ran Kyler sound service. And I spent a lot of time around the collars. And they did sound for everything in town. So every show that came through every political person, I mean, presidents, future presidents, so all kinds of politicians. I remember my grandpa Kyler talking about Elvis Presley. Well, he's he was, he was lovely. And he was such a gentleman in such great manner seen by Johnny Cash, he was terrible, trying to open a beer on one of my microphones.
• 8:40
  Paula Leggett Chase: And I've listened to all these stories, and he would talk about this Russian ballet company and like, ah, they're crippled. It's terrible. If you do that, you'll be crippled. And he would tell me all of these stories and the more he told me the more I loved it, and I would go with them sometimes to the hottie shrine circus and sit there ringside and get to do testing 1234 testing on the microphones. And so I was around that, and I was very, very active. So my mother put me in dance lessons when I was very small, but the bummer is, I didn't do it for very long. I did. I took like tap jazz and ballet when I was six, seven, like 567 years old. And then my mom said, okay, you have to pick one. I mean, I think it was expensive, and it was time and and I was taking acrobats and I said okay acrobats, because that that seemed the most fun probably not a great thing for a long skinny tall so not the right but that's what I that's what I did. And so I did gymnastics and stuff through school, but I didn't really and I I could clear a dance floor.
• 9:57
  Paula Leggett Chase: No and I did leads in the school musicals. I was Nancy in Oliver and I sang, I did all this stuff. And then I went to iu Indiana University and I was in the singing Hoosiers. I was a voice major there. And I also choreographed for the singing Hoosiers. I couldn't do a double pirouette mind you . I didn't know any ballet terms and I I remember like seeing, I remember seeing Flashdance and, and seeing like things with dancers and knowing though in like God if I had the training that I could do it, but I kind of thought that. I don't know I didn't really. I remember having a teacher in high school that I loved actually was a vocal music teacher say, oh, you're too tall to be a dancer. Can you imagine?
• 10:50
  Paula Leggett Chase: I mean, nobody's to anything to be a dancer. So then I come, I come to New York, and I started taking classes. I knew how to work because I had done gymnastics all those years. But I had no technique. And so I, you know, I started taking dance all the time. So it was my very first production contract was cabaret, and I went to the open call for the Broadway company.
• 11:24
  Paula Leggett Chase: And I got typed out, because I went to the singers call, you know, they're like, okay, the singers and like, we don't need any singer that looks like her time goes on. Meanwhile, I started dancing. And I was just like, Where have I been all my life. This is like this is meant to be. I wonder someti mes if, if I had had a different path, I might have been in a ballet company.
• 11:46
  David Chase: And we would have never met.
• 11:48
  Paula Leggett Chase: and we would have never met, that would have sucked. But during so then the show runs for a year, come around again, it's going to go on the road. It's going to go on a tour. Well, by then, I had done several shows I'd done chosen Atlantic City, I could tap really well I had learned to I could turn now. I had learned quite a few things. And I went into the dance call for cabaret.
• 12:13
  Paula Leggett Chase: And I remembered I got through the dance call. And then it was time to sing. And I'm like, Yes, yes. And I, you know, I booked it. And that was amazing. But later on, I came in, and they had kept my picture and resume.
• 12:31
  Paula Leggett Chase: And I, I can really, I can really dance by then. And I remember the stage manager coming down and going, Paula, you've changed, you've changed, and then called me up and I booked my first Broadway show, the last year of the original run of a chorus line. And then for from that I played Judy Turner on the tour. And then I left the tour, came back home to New York, and a phone call comes that they're doing a chorus line at papermill. And they've lost one of their understudies. And when I come in and do it and all roles that I'd done before except for one Maggie, I would never be a Maggie who sings at the ballet at the ballet, the ballet. Just from my pure my physicality. I would never be a Maggie. But the the music director didn't know me. And so I had to send a recording the people that I knew from the Broadway company were not available. And I'm like, Okay, how am I going to do this? And then I hear from the music director. It's like, Okay, my associate is David Chase. And here's this number and call him.
• 13:40
  Paula Leggett Chase: And I went over, he was staying in his aunt's townhouse over on the east side and the 30s. And that's when I met David Chase.
• 13:49
  Paula Leggett Chase: And I went over there and screamed "AT the Ballet".
• 13:53
  David Chase: We made a recording,
• 13:54
  Paula Leggett Chase: W e made a recording and he said you don't have to send it. You know, I'll tell them you could totally do it. And I'm like, No, send it they want it. And so then we ended up doing the show together. And we he would come and talk to me and we stayed in touch and like a year later or so. He would send me postcards.
• 14:12
  Paula Leggett Chase: He was in Italy doing "La Cage" and all kinds of things.
• 14:19
  David Chase: We weren't dating during this.
• 14:20
  Paula Leggett Chase: No,we weren't dating. We were just like staying in touch. And I liked him so much. And then he was playing Forever Plaid. And I was doing Crazy for You. And he was subbing in at the Guys and Dolls, Jerry Zak's Faith Prince Nathan Lane, Guys and Dolls down the street. And he we started going out and we would talk and I was so nervous about it because I liked him so much. And I could tell it was maybe going to go to a different level from being platonic. And I thought oh, and what if that is bad, and I know we'll work together and I just I was really the stakes being so high. I was so nervous about it in a way I never been dating anyone. I was really nervous about it. And then one day we were sitting in I had to park my car you know, you deal with the parking car. You move your car from one side of the street. He's sitting there with me waiting for the parking God and he leans over and he kisses me me and it was lovely. And two weeks later we were engaged. And four months later we were married.
• 15:32
  David Chase: Completely coincidental story there is that I actually had been saving money for the first five years or so.
• 15:40
  David Chase: And also I'd been in Boston for five years before that. Yeah, you made me late for my show, a first show. And, and I, I bought an apartment, a one bedroom apartment on 55th Street. And this is Wait, this is like at the bottom of the housing market. So this apartment, like we couldn't renovate our bathroom for what this apartment cost. That was so smart to do.
• 16:04
  David Chase: But it was April 15 1992. And I remember it because it was not only tax day, but it was a day I had to pick up my my keys for the new apartment and it was a Wednesday. So the fact that I was going to be in Midtown to pick up these keys. I reached out to Paula and knew that she was a tw o show day. So you know, you want to have dinner between shows? Just to catch up.
• 16:30
  David Chase: So we did and I said I have to go pick up the keys to this department, you want to come with me. So she was actually the first person to walk into this apartment.
• 16:38
  Paula Leggett Chase: And we're just friends were mind you we were married at the end of 1992.
• 16:40
  Paula Leggett Chase: But at this point, we're just friends.
• 16:44
  David Chase: So this is April.
• 16:44
  David Chase: And we're just hanging out by August. We're engaged by December we're married. So it worked. We were also old enough, each of us, you know, at that point that we knew.
• 16:57
  Paula Leggett Chase: Yeah. It's true, though. We say it's like we just knew. Yeah, it was clear. I had had not had a relationship where I could see more than a year or two down the road, you know? And with David, I was like, Yes. And I remember at one point, he said to me, this is the last relationship - we were sitting, we were sitting on like 76th Street. And Broadway in the middle of the boulevard, really late at night, you had your dry cleaning over your shoulder and you said, This is the last relationship I ever want to have. And I said me too.
• 17:37
  Paula Leggett Chase: And yeah, and then that was that was that. And then I moved in your apartment? And you said, What about your cat? What about my cat?
• 17:52
  Lisa Hopkins: That's amazing.
• 17:52
  Lisa Hopkins: You know, I'm so curious to know, like, what that felt like, like literally like this really what you know, when you when you know something? I'd love to hear from each of you like how you knew and when you talked about you guys just knew that you were for each other.
• 18:07
  Paula Leggett Chase: If I'm going to be very, very practical about it, I was like, Oh my goodness, this person is I think this person is smarter than I am. I was really, there was that. And I, I mean really it was that it was that thing of being able to see down the road, I could see down the road. And I remember a sitting in one of those. It was a one of those like Greek diner places, and it was on Eighth Avenue. And we were talking and I felt compelled. And I think we both did this, we both felt compelled to, well, I came from this, and I grew up like this. And we both like spilled out all and it was like necessary. It's like I need I need you to know this. And he, he did the same, you know, this was we spilled out all of these things to each other. And I could just, I could see the road stretch out in front of us. I could see I just knew that. I felt like in the back again, if I'm going to be practical to like being a practical looking at it from a biology point of view. Like you are good for me and I am good for you. And I knew that we would fill in things for each other. And that's true. You know, you you get married and you make you form a corporation. And and it's been a it's been a beautiful thing. And it's Yeah, I knew I knew because I could see all the way down the road.
• 19:51
  Lisa Hopkins: David, tell me a little bit, if you will, what you're sort of knowing was with with with you guys.
• 19:59
  David Chase: Well, I know that I am at heart. A fairly shy person. But I'm also a very confident person. Or I'm secure in what I do and what I know that I know and what I am things that I know that I don't do well in I don't dwell on and I don't obsess over and I, what I what I think I recognized even intuitively right away is that it was a perfect fit, like a glove relationship. Hmm. That everything that I was lacking or was sort of not I that wasn't part of my regular life. She had and she represented and, and vice versa. You know, we've just spent 14 months basically holed up together just mostly the two of us. And it's great. You know, we like to be together like to be together, we're passionate about what we do. There are wonderful things that I've been introduced to, by her that that I didn't know about, and vice versa. And we delight in that.
• 21:12
  David Chase: We strangely come from both very similar and very dissimilar backgrounds,
• 21:18
  Paula Leggett Chase: Your dad and my mother really humble background, they were country, people, no electricity, you know, kerosene lamps, the whole thing.
• 21:28
  David Chase: I feel very lucky that on both sides of the family, there's high value placed on education. One of the things that that was very clear to me with Paula is that she loved to read, she was inquisitive, she, you know, all of these things. And so we could have serious, smart conversations together. It wasn't just about the physical attraction, it was the mental attraction as well. As far as seeing down the road a long way.
• 21:56
  David Chase: I think that's a great way of putting it I think, if I'm remembering correctly, and I'm remembering this being in Shubert alley, probably when I picked you up at the stage door to go for a meal or something.
• 22:12
  David Chase: The way that I recall broaching the subject of a longer term relationship, was by asking what she thought about having kids, which is a kind of an odd question to ask someone you're just dating. What I say? Well, we have we have to. So I think it works. I grew up in a family that was not particularly physical in terms of either, you know, athletic pursuits, or just even awareness of physicality.
• 22:45
  David Chase: And she is very much all about awareness of physicality and understanding how her body moves, and yet I'm, you know, most of my time, most of my career has been spent with dancers, I love how the body functions, my body just doesn't function like that.
• 23:07
  Lisa Hopkins: So you talked about being together during this. This long period is unusual for for all of us, right? I mean, yeah. And I'm just so curious to know, like, it sounds like it was great.
• 23:20
  David Chase: I mean, it sounds like you guys love being together. But I'm curious, is there anything that you kind of discovered along the way that you maybe wouldn't have otherwise, you know, had you not been sequestered to be out here for this long and to watch the seasons change to watch the the world transform to watch things but to watch the leaves for up to this point in our life, we had seen snapshots by having been here for a day or two or three or four, but to be here for 14 months, and watch now we're watching the movie. We're watching the continuous reel and you know, and it's thrilling to watch here's the biologist speaking again, thrilling to watch the natural world go through these cycles.
• 24:06
  Paula Leggett Chase: To be able to all the time, you know when you have to be at the theater and you're you know all the time every night and that's your whole you you miss a lot of this so that's to me, that's one of the the things that we're we all Weren't we were all on this treadmill, we're on a treadmill or a little hamster wheel, you know, just go and we got knocked off the bed and it was terrible.
• 24:33
  Paula Leggett Chase: You know, it was just, you know, we were kind of like oh, okay and and then terrified about money and all of that. And then finally you kind of had to least for us, you know we had this place. So we were really fortunate and we relaxed into it. And we had our sons with us.
• 24:52
  Paula Leggett Chase: And for the first for the first four months or so four or five months. And and then you're like you're planning the dinner and you're cooking and you're you're eating at seven o'clock at night which you didn't do before.
• 25:06
  David Chase: And going to bed at 10 and getting started to get Yeah.
• 25:13
  Paula Leggett Chase: And it was all there and kind of set aside because we've been in our urban life. And not that this is like out on a farm but just going on Go and walk every night. And I would, I realized, like, Oh, you know what all of this stuff is you you know what all these things are, and reconnecting with it. That's been amazing for me because it was something that I, I guess I didn't even really know I missed.
• 25:43
  David Chase: One of the challenges now is as we're heading back towards whatever normality is, you know, with broad waist, you know, setting reopening dates and all of that.
• 25:56
  David Chase: It's, it's going to be hard to leave this existence. I mean, I've been very lucky, I've been able to do a lot of mostly remote work from Pennsylvania, on, especially on TV stuff, with the occasional trip into the city to do a recording session or something like that. And there's a part of me that if I could continue to live that way, I maybe would. I don't know that, you know, I mean, I know Paula is going to perform in a show again. Obviously, we can't(please God.) We're too far to do a commute. Right now it feels like in Manhattan, we have a very expensive mailbox. Yes.
• 26:42
  David Chase: With a couple of beds attached.
• 26:48
  Lisa Hopkins: Isn't it interesting, though. I mean, it's, it's I love what you said about the seasons, that we experienced very much the same sort of thing. But it's, you know, when you talk about, you know, weather was just happening around us all the time while we were working, and it was just something we had to go through, or that maybe sometimes we'd acknowledge when we were tired.
• 27:07
  Lisa Hopkins: And we're like, wow, it's nice, let's sit out and have a beer.
• 27:09
  Lisa Hopkins: But, you know, winter weather was always like, it's harder to get to the theater. It's hard, right? I mean, it's like, it was something to get through, rather than something that's always there for us.
• 27:21
  Paula Leggett Chase: Yeah, something that was like finding like, Really? I mean, yes, if there was a big snowfall, you'd be like, Oh, you know, until it's filthy, which doesn't take long in Manhattan.
• 27:34
  Lisa Hopkins: What would you say is your each of your definition of living in the moment,
• 27:39
  David Chase: I think I've only ever lived in the moment in the sense that I've never had grand plans. I've never been the kind of person who said, I have to accomplish this, by the time I'm 29. Or else, forget it. Like I didn't set out to be a conductor or arranger or theater musician.
• 27:57
  David Chase: It just happened because I enjoyed it. So the idea that we can see down we can see down the road is very similar to saying, I don't know where I'm going to be, I don't know where I'm going to be 10 years from now, in terms of work, for example, but I'm going to keep doing things that I love doing. And it's going to open doors, and it's going to lead places, I guess to me living in the moment is all about doing what you're passionate about recognizing opportunity, not being afraid to step through the next doorway into who knows what and to not set. It's not about not setting goals, but it's not about it's about not setting goals that are unrealistic that limit you Yeah.
• 28:49
  David Chase: Or that force you into some narrow path. So, you know, I've I've never been one to, to be to define myself in easy terms. And I, you know, if I may find, like I said, that, I've loved being out here this whole last year.
• 29:14
  David Chase: And if we decide that we want to stay out here and change everything about the way we do things, we will if we don't, we won't, and it's all gonna be good. It's all gonna be fine. It all worked out. And it all be great in the end, and there is no end it will just keep going.
• 29:27
  David Chase: You know, I can't imagine that, that either of us will ever actually retire, per se. We'll just keep changing what we do.
• 29:36
  David Chase: or doing more of it. Do it differently. I don't know. Yeah.
• 29:40
  David Chase: Keep a passion. And I think we both been very fortunate to have people in our lives, parents, mentors, teachers, who have said, Sure, go ahead. Yep. You know, there's nobody, I mean, sure. There are people that say, Oh, you can't do that. But you as long as you have people that that go, yeah, try and if you fail, you fail, but you learn by that.
• 30:07
  Lisa Hopkins: Yeah. David, can I ask you a question? I'm just so curious. Based on what you've been been saying which is so beautiful. Is there anything that scares you? What scares you?
• 30:32
  David Chase: Well, I would certainly, if I live in fear, it's something happening to Paula or the boys. But that's not something that I live with on a constant basis. I live in some fear of just net and fear.
• 30:49
  David Chase: And fear is not the right word.
• 30:56
  David Chase: It's awareness of getting older and what that means for health and what that means for things like mobility is like, Am I going to have, you know, the Arthritis that my grandfather had, and that's going to affect the ability that I have to play piano? I, I sure hope not. But I don't live in fear of that I don't live. I'm not scared of that. I'm just I think, and this partly comes from, like, my dad's specialty is an MD is retired, obviously, but he was in preventive medicine and part of preventive medicine is to anticipate every possible outcome, you can't live, making yourself be ready for the only the worst outcomes, you also have to live, being open to the best outcomes. But to me, the key is to ask the questions, not to live in fear of the answers.
• 31:56
  Unknown: I think it's easier to live in the moment, you were talking, I'm thinking about that live in the moment, the older you get, because, you know, we do you know, there are fears and there are things but there are different fears from when you're young. You know, you use young people, we spend so much time in our insecurities worrying about, Oh, I should be this or I should be that or I need to do this.
• 32:20
  Unknown: And as time goes on, and you're you're living your life, I think it's easier to live in the moment because you start appreciating the time and you appreciate your life. And you know that so much can be gone like that, you know, it can be taken from you. And instead of living in the moment, think of all the bad things about COVID there was so much that was really really bad about COVID.
• 32:47
  Unknown: But there were really beautiful things, at least for us, for me, in my life. I I got in the car and drove 13 hours in one long, long summer day where I could do that without driving at night, except at the very end of it.
• 33:02
  Unknown: And I didn't have to stay overnight anywhere, you know, just like getting gas and brought my own food and went to see my mother and stayed with her for 11 days. And it was just the two of us and hanging out and that time is so precious.
• 33:21
  Unknown: And I feel like that was living in the moment by making the best of the circumstances of what they are and I had no obligations other than to be there and to hang out with her and it was a beautiful time and I will treasure it you know that was you have to just sleep take what's what's given you and I think it's I think it's easier I think it's easier for us I felt sorry for my kids sometimes through the whole pandemic and they're troopers because young people do adjust but it's it's different you know, it's different from for them. Yeah, to have their whole social life interrupted and my youngest son being a sophomore at NYU and right now he's supposed to be in a semester abroad and no that wasn't happening and all your classes are online and I'm very proud of both of them. They both dealt with it all really well but I I felt that for them on the other hand was very greedy and happy to have them with us for all that time because when does that happen when you get to have that again? What What an amazing blessing that was.
• 34:36
  David Chase: And they'll remember that.
• 34:37
  Unknown: Yeah, we you know make made the best of those things.
• 34:42
  Unknown: So you know there you have the things that you know there are so many things you can't live in fear of anything. But like David said to be aware but living in the moment you just live and you take what comes to you and and enjoy what it is try to enjoy and if you're not you know I've there been times you have to adjust your attitude when you're doing something that's hard, you know, or even you know, even times when this is so classic like back before COVID we're doing shows and whatever and you're in a long run and you're tired and it's hard and you have to remember you have to look at The good things about it, you have to like, find the beauty in it. And if you can't, then you got to change it. If you can't, then then you've got to leave and you do something else that's also living in the moon. You know, if you can't wrap your head around the beauty of something, then don't just stay in that grind. Just stay there, be brave, and that can scare you, but step into something else. It can be done, you know, whether it's a relationship or a job, or, you know, you have to do what makes you happy.
• 35:59
  Unknown: Sometimes you have to suffer through something that's a little hard and go through a little pain. But you have to just you have to do and take what comes to you and take it enjoy. And, and proceed like that.
• 36:16
  Lisa Hopkins: Yeah. Paula, how do you want to be remembered?
• 36:26
  Paula Leggett Chase: Well, I most importantly, I want I want my boys to remember me, as someone who loved them and cared for them. And that when they think of me, they think of things that, that make them laugh.
• 36:50
  Lisa Hopkins: That's beautiful.
• 36:50
  Lisa Hopkins: What about you?
• 36:52
  Paula Leggett Chase: If other people think of things about me, and that make them laugh, too, that'll be good as well.
• 37:00
  Lisa Hopkins: What about you, David? How do you want to be remembered?
• 37:03
  David Chase: I'm less interested in being remembered for what I've done. And more interested in being remembered for how I've affected people's lives or helped people or mentored or, or educated people. I do enjoy, like trying to pass knowledge on as much as possible. And if the one thing somebody said was that he was really nice to me, or he was respectful of me, you know, that, to me means a huge amount.
• 37:35
  David Chase: And, and to tie it into what Paula was saying, I want my children not necessarily whether they respect me or not, I hope they do. I want them to be respectful of people.
• 37:57
  Paula Leggett Chase: He answers that all serious and lovely.
• 37:59
  David Chase: Yeah. Well, that's why we work. That's why I get very serious and very intellectual.
• 38:06
  Paula Leggett Chase: I can be serious too.
• 38:08
  David Chase: She can be serious.
• 38:08
  David Chase: She can also be ridiculous. I can be ridiculous. I don't get ridiculous around other people.
• 38:18
  Lisa Hopkins: Okay, okay, so let's let's segue to What's your idea of a perfect date night, guys. Paula, you go.
• 38:25
  Paula Leggett Chase: Oh, perfect date night. I have been having kind of one perfect date night
• 38:32
  David Chase: for 14 months.
• 38:32
  David Chase: Well, for 29 years. Yeah. Um, think whatever it is. It has to involve laughter.
• 38:39
  Unknown: Yeah, definitely would have to involve laughter. I think it's just whenever we have time, just to like, hang in and be together. I don't even really think about things in that terms. Like a date night.
• 38:53
  David Chase: Well, we could spendnot so much as a date night but usually in the morning, we can spend quite a bit of time not talking and just making faces at each other.
• 39:01
  Lisa Hopkins: Perfect. Okay, so it's time to play. What makes you Here we go. Here we go. What makes you inspired
• 39:14
  Paula Leggett Chase: music.
• 39:16
  David Chase: Music is a good answer.
• 39:17
  Lisa Hopkins: Yep. What makes you sad?
• 39:23
  David Chase: incivility.
• 39:26
  Lisa Hopkins: Frustrated.
• 39:28
  Paula Leggett Chase: incivility,
• 39:30
  David Chase: Trump.
• 39:32
  Lisa Hopkins: What makes you laugh?
• 39:35
  David Chase: Paula.
• 39:39
  Lisa Hopkins: Good answer.
• 39:41
  Paula Leggett Chase: Life.
• 39:44
  Lisa Hopkins: What makes you angry?
• 39:46
  David Chase: Paula
• 39:47
  Paula Leggett Chase: David.
• 39:55
  Lisa Hopkins: And finally, what makes you grateful?
• 40:04
  Lisa Hopkins: You guys are the best. What is it? Oh, one for each of you.
• 40:07
  Lisa Hopkins: What are the top three things that happened so far today?
• 40:10
  David Chase: Um, I had a great meeting about casting the show in Australia. It's a beautiful day out and I'm looking forward to actually going and spending some time doing things in the yard. That hasn't happened yet.
• 40:21
  David Chase: And I achieved queen bee status in the New York Times spelling bee puzzle. Yeah, I found every single word that they use. I mean, yeah, I have to I can't start the day. unless I've achieved genius, which is the highest level of Is this true?
• 40:40
  David Chase: This is true and spelling anagram puzzle, so I have to at least achieve genius level. But queen bee is, is finding every single word that they deem to be an appropriate word.
• 40:55
  Lisa Hopkins: I love that.
• 40:55
  Lisa Hopkins: Amazing. What about you, Paula?
• 41:00
  Lisa Hopkins: I woke up this morning to a beautiful day. I had my coffee.
• 41:06
  Lisa Hopkins: And I'm going to go swimming.In the lake.
• 41:17
  Lisa Hopkins: Finally, what do you most looking forward to?
• 41:20
  Paula Leggett Chase: Oh, my goodness, I don't even know. I don't even know what I'm most looking forward to. I guess. I guess I'm I'm looking forward to see seeing how everything is going to play out as far as how the the pandemic and and how theater is going to reopen. And it's been so long that I'm I'm even. I'm wondering like what that's I don't know, it's almost like, like, I was almost like I was a different person or something before. So I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing what that's going to be. And I'm really, I don't I try not to think about it too much. Because then you know some things if you don't do them, you don't miss them. Like maybe the nature thing. You know, if you it's just not around and winking at you. You're not missing it. But I really, really want to dance with people in a room again. I really do. And I want to sing with people. I want to sing I want to leave my voice up against other people. And harmonise without fear I really am looking forward to when that can happen again.
• 42:39
  David Chase: Yeah, well, since she gave a very wonderful, serious answer. Oh, well, I'll give the silly answer. I'm looking forward to the delivery of rocks. From the local rock quarry. Yes, because I'm going to do things with those rocks around the house. They're puzzles. He puts together puzzles of like arranging music, you just like have to figure out how the rocks go.
• 43:06
  Lisa Hopkins: Thank you, you guys. I really appreciate having you.
• 43:09
  Paula Leggett Chase: Thank you.
• 43:09
  Paula Leggett Chase: It was fun.
• 43:12
  Lisa Hopkins: I've been speaking today with Paula Leggett and David. Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe and healthy everyone and remember to live in. In music stop time is that beautiful moment where the band is suspended in rhythmic unison, supporting the soloist to express their individuality. In the moment, I encourage you to take that time and create your own rhythm. Until next time, I'm Lisa Hopkins. Thanks for listening