Not Fade Away

Lori and I saw David Chase's new romanticized semi-autobiographical movie Not Fade Away last night. It's a new release with a spectacular soundtrack (Little Steven was its executive producer), but it was a private showing: we were the only ones in the theater at 9:30. That begs the question of whether something can fade away if it was never really there at all.

Not Fade Away is not the first "Beatles era coming of age in New Jersey" movie; I Wanna Hold Your Hand covered that ground way back in 1978. That movie was also more "down home" to me, as it started within walking distance of my childhood home. Not Fade Away's New Jersey feels more ersatz: It sure looks like New Jersey, and is full of the types of artifacts and references that one might have found there in the '60's. It doesn't take more than a minute in to the opening scene for the "We're in New Jersey!" announcement with a name check of Delbarton Academy (a private Catholic school in Morristown). But unlike in Chase's HBO series The Sopranos, it's not quite the New Jersey I remember, either for its artifacts or location: the movie was filmed just over the state line in Pearl River, New York.

The plot details are hardly worth recalling;  let's just say there are more contrived and sometimes ridiculous plot twists than any 3 movies should reasonably have, with too many obscure nods to people and things gone by (that I caught a few no doubt means I missed dozens more), and the movie drags on at least 15 minutes too long. There are too many cliches, too many caricatures, and too many set pieces to really get the "feel" of "the way it was." That included a scene near the beginning of the film when the protagonist Doug first heard The Beatles; it felt more borrowed from how Bob Dylan first heard them (according to the story, he heard them on the radio while driving, and immediately "knew they were pointing the direction where music had to go"), than from any accurate account of either how or when the Beatles were introduced to the suburban New Jersey masses. The movie had some great use of archival clips; I'd have given it bonus points for including this one. The would-be apocrypha continued through Not Fade Away, until a scene near the end of the movie when Doug spotted Charlie Watts leaving a party; it felt more borrowed from The Commitments than from anything that might have happened in "real" life.

Not Fade Away also suffers from its casting: John Magaro is beautiful to watch in his eventual transformation in to a dead ringer for mid-60s Dylan, but he's also 29 and he's not even the oldest actor in this "just out of high school" band. A key moment in the film shows the would-be band "The Twylight Zones" meeting in New York with songwriter and record producer Jerry Ragovoy; Ragovoy would have been in his 30s at the time. But Ragovoy is played by Brad Garrett; Garrett is 52, and looks every bit his age.

The music, however, is another story: It is solid, even wonderful, throughout. Music is presented as being somewhere between religion and salvation here; the characters live, breathe, and know their version of it. Had I been able to view the movie purely in those terms, I might even have loved it. I could almost even believe that there were lots of aspiring musicians who, but for an unlucky break here or there could have "made it" just like Bruce Springsteen and Little Steven. Chase got rights to put on songs by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and not just the singles, either: The Beatles cuts included album tracks such as their cover of Please Mr. Postman and also George Harrison's composition I Want to Tell You. The band's playing in the movie was strong; their covers were reverential, that point driven home by a sequence alternating their interpretation of Bo Diddley with an archival film clip of Bo Diddley performing the original. My musical highlight, though, was an original song called The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. It was obvious to me within a few seconds that this song was no '60's number, but a Steve Van Zandt composition; it may as well have had fingerprints in it. Presented with a 12-string and a '60's band set up, though, it fit perfectly. "McGuinnish," almost. Really, it's too good: I have a hard time believing that any band with material that good would have had to suffer fictional Ragovoy's lecture. Little Steven also contributed another composition, a wickedly wacky jingle for a surgical supply company.

For those of us who have followed New Jersey musicians, it might also be worth noting cameos by Jay Wienberg and by Bobby Bandiera. The soundtrack (though it is missing the Beatles songs used in the movie) may end up being the best real artifact from Not Fade Away.