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CHASE REUNITES WITH VAN ZANDT AND UNVEILS CASTING FOR HIS FEATURE FILM DEBUT AT PARAMOUNT

Posted Friday, October 15th, 2010 - Comments Off on CHASE REUNITES WITH VAN ZANDT AND UNVEILS CASTING FOR HIS FEATURE FILM DEBUT AT PARAMOUNT
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For Immediate Release
Movie to Begin Production in January 2011 in New York
HOLLYWOOD, CA (October 15, 2010) – David Chase, the creator and producer of the multiple Emmy® and Golden Globe® winning critically acclaimed series The Sopranos, announced today that legendary musician, and Sopranos star, Steven Van Zandt will produce and supervise the music, as well as serving as an Executive Producer, for the director’s music-driven coming of age story set in 1960’s suburbia.

Chase, who is making his feature film directorial debut, simultaneously announced that actors John Magaro, Jack Huston and Will Brill will star in the movie, to be released by Paramount Vantage.  Principal photography is set to begin this January in New York.
Chase, who wrote the original script, will produce alongside Oscar® winning producer Mark Johnson (“Rain Man,” “The Chronicles of Narnia”).

Said Chase, “It’s exciting to be working with Brad Grey again, doing my first feature.  I look back with pleasure on our last outing.  I am also thrilled to be working with Steven again, especially on this particular subject.  It’s not just that we both worship the same songs and bands from the era—-it’s that he obviously knows so much.  About every aspect.  He embodies a particular spirit of a particular kind of rock and roll.  He actually is that spirit.”

“Everyone at Paramount is proud that our studio will be the home of David’s first feature,” said Paramount Chairman and CEO Brad Grey. “He is a gifted story-teller and a great friend. His talent, along with Steven’s, promises something uniquely insightful and entertaining. We are all looking forward to a great picture and I am personally looking forward to working with them both again.”

Best known as a member of Bruce Springsteen’s famed E Street Band, and more recently as one of the stars of Chase’s acclaimed HBO series The Sopranos, Van Zandt grew up amidst the Jersey Shore music scene, beginning first as a journeyman guitarist and subsequently becoming a songwriter and producer for fellow Jersey shore act Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.  Van Zandt later went on to join Springteen’s E Street Band, eventually serving as the arranger for the classic album Darkness on the Edge of Town, and later production credits on The River, and Born in the U.S.A. Van Zandt has hosted Little Steven’s Underground Garage, a weekly syndicated radio show, since 2002.

Rising stars Magaro, Huston and Brill landed the coveted roles after a nationwide search.  Magaro, repped by Abrams Artists Agency and Authentic Talent and Literary Management, most recently appeared in Wes Craven’s “My Soul to Take”.  Huston most recently appeared in “Twilight: Eclipse” and is repped by UTA, The Collective, and by Ken McReddie Associates in the UK.  Brill, repped by Stewart Talent Agency in New York, makes his feature film debut.

A veteran writer, producer, and director, Chase has been recognized by the WGA, DGA, PGA, Golden Globes®, and received a total of 7 Emmy® Awards in his career.

Paramount Vantage has previously released the Oscar® nominated “Babel” and “There Will Be Blood,” as well as the Oscar® -winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”  The label recently released the Sundance Film Festival award-winning documentary “Waiting for Superman” from Davis Guggenheim and Lesley Chilcott, the Academy Award®-winning director and producer of “An Inconvenient Truth.”

About Paramount Pictures Corporation
Paramount Pictures Corporation (PPC), a global producer and distributor of filmed entertainment, is a unit of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), a leading content company with prominent and respected film, television and digital entertainment brands.  The company’s labels include Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Paramount Classics, Insurge Pictures, MTV Films and Nickelodeon Movies.  PPC operations also include Paramount Digital Entertainment, Paramount Famous Productions, Paramount Home Entertainment, Paramount Pictures International, Paramount Licensing Inc., Paramount Studio Group, and Worldwide Television Distribution.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon