David Chase on Jersey rock, the Stones, and a ‘Sopranos’ prequel

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 28, 2012 - 0 Comments

James Gandolfini (left) and John Magaro in 'Not Fade Away' / courtesy of Paramount Pictures

This week David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, makes his feature debut as the writer/director of Not Fade Away, a coming-of-age story of a garage band trying to make it in New Jersey during the 1960s. The movie has elements of memoir. Like the film’s lead character, Douglas (John Magaro), Chase spent some of his youth as a drummer in an obscure New Jersey rock band, and his romance with the era’s music has never left him. Chase cast Sopranos star James Gandolfini to portray the drummer’s exasperated father. Springsteen guitarist Steve Van Zandt, who played Silvio Dante in the TV series, serves as the movie’s meticulous music producer.

I talked to David Chase earlier this month in Toronto:

Q: I’ve seen a lot of attempts to dramatize the Sixties music scene, and I don’t think any film has nailed the details with more authenticity than Not Fade Away.

A: Glad to hear you say that. We worked pretty hard at it. I knew it was a dangerous proposition to do another ’60s movie. but I knew for sure I didn’t want to see any tie-dye or trips to San Francisco or naked girls in the mud. We’ve seen all that. Continue…

The Whacky World of THE SOPRANOS

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, November 10, 2008 at 5:07 PM - 0 Comments

‘Tis the season for bulky, pricey complete series box sets, and the bulkiest and priciest of them all is The Sopranos: The Complete Series, available starting tomorrow. The set consists of all the previously-released DVDs of the show, plus the soundtrack CDs (featuring music used in the series), and two newly-produced DVDs of bonus material. The show itself is a known quantity, as are the previous season sets. If you don’t have The Sopranos on DVD yet, buying this set is cheaper than buying all seven DVD sets individually (and only a little more expensive than buying used copies of all seven of them). If you have no Sopranos in your collection, it makes sense to save up for the complete set — though I have the sinking feeling that Time-Warner might try to spring a Blu-Ray version on us sometime down the road, forcing us to buy it all over again. (It depends on whether you think that Blu-Ray will supplant DVD or whether you think it won’t. I’m with the nay-sayers, myself, and so I’m not afraid to buy standard DVDs. Perhaps I should be, though.) So the question is, are the new bonus features worth the price of this set if you already have some or all of the season sets?

I think they might be, but only because most of the earlier sets kind of skimped on bonus features — apart from commentaries and a Continue…