"Not Fade Away" premieres at NY Film Festival
By Jake Coyle, Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --David Chase has returned with his first work since “The Sopranos” went black.
The director premiered his debut film, “Not Fade Away,” at the New York Film Festival on Friday ahead of its red carpet gala Saturday. The ’60s rock ‘n’ roll drama is his long-awaited follow-up to the venerated HBO mob drama he created and produced for six seasons.
The film is set around a suburban teenager (John Magaro) in New Jersey whose garage band aspires to be the next Rolling Stones, an ambition at odds with his traditional Italian father (former “Sopranos” star James Gandolfini).
In a press conference at Lincoln Center, Chase called the film, soundtracked by his favorite rock songs, “a compilation album.”
“In ‘The Sopranos,’ one of my favorite parts of that — or maybe my favorite part of that whole thing — was putting the picture and the sound together, putting the music in,” Chase said. “I wanted to continue that. I missed that once I was gone.”
The film, which Paramount Vantage will release on Dec. 21, is about the revolutionary advent of rock ‘n’ roll, told not through its famous players but, as Chase said, from “the backstage” perspective — the regular suburban kids inspired and moved by its spirit.
“I don’t want to get into this thing, like I’m bragging about the ’60s,” he said. “But the one thing I have to say: The music was great. … Music was, at the time, a way into everything, at least for me and for a lot of people I knew, too. That’s the way I first learned about art and poetry and fashion, humor, film. It all came from there.”
The 67-year-old Chase has long aspired to make a feature film. His “Sopranos,” which concluded in 2007, was imbued with movie-like storytelling that significantly raised the bar for television drama. “Not Fade Away,” while of very different and more tender substance, shares many unmistakable elements of “The Sopranos,” particularly the familiar swirl of family tension, pop culture, philosophy and suburban life.
Though Chase said the film is very personal to him, he insisted it wasn’t autobiographical. Chase, like the main character, played drums as a youngster, but he refused to even label himself and his friends “a band.”
“I never even bought a set of drums,” said Chase. “I played on cardboard boxes and stuff. We never got out of the basement.”
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More