# "Not Fade Away" (David Chase's first movie)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-fade-away-david-chases-first-movie/646178>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [January 5, 2013, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-fade-away-david-chases-first-movie/646178 "2013-01-05T18:03:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2013, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-fade-away-david-chases-first-movie/646178/1 "2013-01-05T18:03:09Z")

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Highly autobiographical – and concomitantly self-indulgent and overlong – but once you relax into the style and pace, it’s absorbing. Dude has a great eye – some wonderful images, including the secne that ends the movie – and the music is, as advertised, brilliantly curated by Steve van Zandt.

My guess that anyone under the age of 50 would just find it self-indulgent and overlong, but for those of us a little older, it’s very, very evocative of the times.

Anyone else seen it? What did you think?

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**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2013, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-fade-away-david-chases-first-movie/646178/2 "2013-01-05T18:14:31Z")

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I was thinking about seeing this. I like when the actors actually play the music that the musician characters are playing, which I understand to have been the case here.

Does the band play any songs written to be original for the movie? Or do they just do covers? It’s Steve van Zandt’s musical involvement that got me interested, I’ve never seen _The Sopranos_, so I’m not coming into it as a David Chase fan. How does it measure up as a Rock n Roll movie? As compared to something like . . . say . . . _Almost Famous_ or _The Commitments_?

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**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2013, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-fade-away-david-chases-first-movie/646178/3 "2013-01-05T18:30:24Z")

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They start by playing covers, but also do some original music as well.

Not entirely comparable to either of the movies you mention, in that the band didn’t become a success. (No spoiler here – this is mentioned in the opening voice-over.) As a look at the role of music in the lives of a bunch of suburban kids in the '60s, though – spot on.

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**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2013, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-fade-away-david-chases-first-movie/646178/4 "2013-01-05T18:57:27Z")

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Thanks, **twickster**. Sounds interesting. Still, seems like something I’d like just as well on the small screen so I don’t know how high it will climb on my movie priority list. Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that my local discount cinema will pick up, so I’ll either try for a matinee sometime or I’ll wait for DVD.

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**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2013, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-fade-away-david-chases-first-movie/646178/5 "2013-01-05T20:12:10Z")

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Nah, you don’t need to see it on the big screen – as long as your TV is hooked up to a decent sound system.