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Weekend Pass | film
For Rock Boss, New Role
It’s a Jersey Thing Judging from the movies, New Jersey is just New York City’s backyard, where the alluring skyline of the Big Apple is visible from every window. That longing to leave the Garden State pervades “NOT FADE AWAY,” opening Friday, as well as these films. K.P.K.
1 Garden State (2004) Zach Braff stars as a mildly successful actor who returns home after his mother’s death. Then he meets Natalie Portman, and she makes everything better. Except his mom is still dead.
2 Clerks (1994) Writer/director Kevin Smith’s indie fave examines the lives of a Jersey convenience-store clerk and videorental clerk, two clerks who should not have signed up for “Clerks II.”
3 Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (2004) What’s better than hamburgers? A whole BAG of hamburgers. Especially after smoking pot. Because hamburgers, and then a milkshake and MORE HAMBURGERS.
The ‘Sopranos’ star is ‘music consigliere’ for David Chase’s new film, ‘Not Fade Away’ Screen The first time Steven Van Zandt worked with “Sopranos” creator David Chase, it was on the HBO drama, where he played Silvio Dante, consigliere — top adviser and counsel — to mob boss Tony Soprano. In some ways, the part was modeled after his role as guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. “I think the ‘Sopranos’ role was probably based on my real-life role with Springsteen as lifelong best friend/consigliere, someone you bounce ideas off of, someone who watches your back,” Van Zandt says. “It’s the real-life version of the Silvio and Tony relationship, but with slightly less criminal activity.” For “Not Fade Away,” Chase’s first feature film (and first post“Sopranos” project), Van Zandt combined elements of his real-life bond with the Boss and his fictional one with the Soprano crime boss. “You could say I was music consigliere here,” says Van Zandt, the film’s music supervisor and one of its producers. “I like that.” “Not Fade Away,” opening Friday, is the story of a New Jersey drummer named Douglas (John Magaro), who plays in a ’60s-era garage band that tries to make it
Steven Van Zandt, center, schools fictional band the Twylight Zones on the finer points of garage-rocking.
BARRY WETCHER
BARRY WETCHER
film riffs
Garage-Boogie Boot Camp To make sure the garage band in “Not Fade Away” looked authentic, Steven Van Zandt spent four months in his studio rigorously teaching the actors how to play their instruments. “By the time the cameras rolled, they were literally a band that could play,” he says. “They could play a gig right now in a bar.” R.G. big. Douglas and the band’s story plays out alongside the social and political upheaval of the decade, with Tony Soprano himself — James Gandolfini — playing Douglas’ unsupportive father. Van Zandt, who came of age in that era, was responsible for creating the sound of fictional band the Twylight Zones, which covers songs such as the Rolling Stones’ “Time Is on My Side” and Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
“We had to be very specific, year by year, even month by month sometimes, about what the band would sound like,” he says, “how in tune or out of tune should we make them.” Van Zandt doesn’t act in the film but was involved from its earliest stages, as Chase came up with the idea (based on his own experience as a drummer in a garage band) near the end of “The Sopranos’ ” run in the mid-2000s. In fact, the one original song the Twylight
Zones perform in the movie, “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” was written for “Not Fade Away” before Chase had even finished the script. “David heard the demo [for the song] and that was when he made the connection to the film,” Van Zandt says. Like the movie, which tracks Douglas’ relationship with his girlfriend, Grace (Bella Heathcote), through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, the song mentions all of those holidays and lyrically follows a similar through-line. “[Chase] said, ‘You finish the song, I’ll finish the script and it’ll all get hooked up,’ ” Van Zandt recalls. “Several years went by, but we got it made.” RUDI GREENBERG (E XPRESS)
4 Happiness (1998) Todd Solondz wins the Most Ironic Title Ever Award for this film, about the most miserable people in the entire world. One character declares she lives in New Jersey because she lives “in a state of irony.”
indies & arties Matzo Ball Soup for the Soul
VENDÔME PRODUCTION
5 The Wedding Singer (1998) In this adorable film, N.J. stands for family, big hair and awesome weddings, while NYC stands for citified jerks. Where would you rather live? We thought so. You keep spraying that Aqua Net.
WRITTEN BY EXPRESS’ KRISTEN PAGE-KIRBY
He’s no Woody Allen, but he’ll do in “Paris-Manhattan.”
Having a Jewish film festival sometimes seems a little odd — after all, the Jewish experience is so broad and varied, it can kind of feel like having a “people film festival.” That’s why it’s amazing that the Washington Jewish Film Festival, now in its 23rd year, always manages to showcase a range of films with nearly universal themes that still keep a thread of Jewish identity throughout. The festival starts Thursday night with “Paris-Manhattan,” a French film about a woman (Alice Taglioni) who believes Woody Allen to be the ideal man. Other intriguing titles include “Hava Nagila: The Movie,” a documentary about the Hebrew song even the Waspiest can hum along with, and a restored print of the 1937 early talkie “The Cantor’s Son.” Various venues; through Jan. 13; prices vary; 202-518-9400, Washingtondcjcc.org.