While You Wait For David Chase’s ‘Sopranos’ Prequel, Watch ‘Not Fade Away’

Last week, the showbiz press was abuzz with the news that writer-producer David Chase might soon be revisiting the world of his groundbreaking HBO drama The Sopranos. Chase has co-written a screenplay (with Lawrence Konner) called The Many Saints of Newark, set during the 1967 New Jersey race riots, when black and Italian gangs clashed with each other. This prequel may not be the “Whatever happened to Tony Soprano?” the show’s fans crave, but Chase hasn’t exactly been prolific since the series ended, so any new work from him is welcome.

That said, it’d be great if everyone who’s anxious for more Sopranos would take a moment to watch — or perhaps re-watch — Not Fade Away, the semi-autobiographical 2012 film that’s the only thing Chase has written and directed since the show wrapped in 2007.

Set between roughly 1963 and 1968, the movie follows a young man named Douglas Damiano (played by John Magaro) who rebels against his conservative working-class Italian-American father Pat (James Gandolfini) by growing his hair and joining a rock band. Not Fade Away has all the hallmarks of a David Chase production: the Jersey setting, the intergenerational conflict, and the rich detail about everything from what the characters eat to what they watch on TV. The film even adopts some of The Sopranos‘ more surreal elements, particularly in its haunting final sequence, where Douglas strolls through Los Angeles and hears radio signals from the future.

Not Fade Away flopped in theaters, and has been slow to build up much of a cult following (although the people who love the picture do so passionately). The failure can partly be blamed on a misguided release strategy. The movie arrived in the thick of the 2012 awards season, when critics are generally inclined to make snap assessments of whether or not a film is “list-worthy.” I myself recall seeing an advance screening in early December — probably between scrambling to catch the likes of Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained — and while my gut told me I’d just seen something special, my brain told me it was too odd and ungainly to place among the best of the year. I filed a mostly positive review for The A.V. Club and moved on, while worrying I’d just done a disservice to a remarkable work of art.

I should’ve trusted my instincts. I’ve seen Not Fade Away four times now (not counting re-watching some scenes repeatedly), and each time I’m struck anew not just by how vividly Chase recreates his memories of the 1960s, but also how densely he layers each of his little nuggets of bittersweet nostalgia.

In covering a half-decade of one kid’s life in under two hours, Chase takes a lot of shortcuts, zipping from incident to incident. Three main storylines hold the picture together: how Doug’s disdain for “square” values rankles his dad; how Doug’s seemingly perfect upper-class girlfriend Grace (Bella Heathcote) privately copes with her mentally ill sister; and how Doug and his bandmate Eugene (Jack Huston) disagree over whether they should start writing their own material. At times, Not Fade Away plays like an entire season of a TV show, compressed into a highlight reel.

But those highlights are outstanding. Nearly every scene stacks up multiple meanings. When Douglas and Grace go see Michaelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up, for example, their whispered conversation — in which he expresses irritated confusion at what he’s watching — takes up only about a minute of screen-time, but reveals so much. It grounds the movie in a specific cultural moment, and shows how Doug’s more like his reactionary father than he’d like to admit, while also hinting at the growing fascination with cinema that will lead him to L.A.

So it goes throughout the film. From the way Doug eats Italian cured meats while arguing with his dad about Vietnam to the way that he and his friends listen to Frank Sinatra at their New Year’s Eve party, Chase keeps illuminating how these characters’ relationships to each other, their upbringing, and their surroundings is more complicated than they may realize.

There’s no stronger indication of this then in Gandolfini’s performance (one of his last), playing a man almost irrationally angered by his son’s shaggy mop and Cuban-heeled boots. Gradually, he comes to admire — or perhaps envy — Doug’s freedom to pursue his dreams. After the boy leaves home, there’s a brief shot of Pat on his sofa, getting emotional watching South Pacific on TV, while sitting next to the wife he’d recently considered leaving. The movie reminds him of the war he didn’t fight in, and the island paradise he’ll never visit. It’s a fine illustration of how popular culture can distill all our passions and disappointments.

That’s far from the only moment like this in Not Fade Away. Inasmuch as the movie is famous for anything, it’s known for its daring final five minutes: that aforementioned stroll through a spooky Los Angeles, cued to a purposefully anachronistic Sex Pistols’ cover of the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner,” culminating in Doug’s little sister Evelyn (Meg Guzulescu) breaking the fourth wall and saying that America’s most lasting contributions to the world will be the atomic bomb and rock ‘n’ roll. “Which is gonna win out in the end?” she asks, as she dances in the middle of a trash-strewn street.

Will The Many Saints of Newark contain anything so strange and magical? Chase reportedly isn’t directing it, so maybe not. (In his 40 years in the business, he’s only directed about eight total hours of TV, plus Not Fade Away.) All the more reason then to treasure this movie, which like the best of The Sopranos is shot through with startling contradictions.

In one of the film’s other magnificent sequences, Doug’s band works on a cover of “Bo Diddley,” part by part. Though archival footage, Chase eventually compares the rehearsal to the work of the real Bo Diddley, demonstrating how hard it is to copy a true original, even if you understand how it’s put together. Art demands a fusion of hard-won craft and a distinct personal perspective. Not Fade Away has so much of both that it slops everywhere, making a beautiful mess.

Noel Murray (@noelmu)is an Arkansas-based freelance pop culture critic and reporter who’s been writing about movies, TV, music, and comics for nearly 30 years. His work appears regularly in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Week, and The A.V. Club.

Where to stream Not Fade Away