Posted by Hextall at spider-tl043.proxy.aol.com on April 16, 2000 at 09:41:29:
Jersey fresh The Garden State has grown a crop of great entertainers
By MICHAEL PRITCHARD
Staff Writer, (609) 272-7256
For many residents of New Jersey, David Chase is the latest entertainment hero.
Chase is the creator of the hit HBO series "The Sopranos." Raised in northern New Jersey, Chase not only sets the series about dysfunctional family man and mob boss Tony Soprano in the Garden State, he actually films it here.
Though its main characters are killers and mobsters, New Jersey is depicted as a normal, even nice place to live. The northern New Jersey locations may be the best use of the state on film since the 1981 movie "Atlantic City" was shot in the gambling resort and southern part of the state.
Finally, after years of cheap and usually very unfunny jabs at the state by the New York dominated entertainment world, residents feel they have a New Jersey voice on TV.
The truth is, however, that New Jersey has been pumping out entertainment giants for years.
Start with Frank Sinatra and work your way through acts such as jazz great Sarah Vaughan to Academy Award-winning actors such as Jack Nicholson. Other entertainers, such as Bruce Willis and Tom Cruise, were raised here even if they weren't born in the state.
The problem is that usually these New Jersey folks are indistinguishable from the crop of New Yorkers and Californians that dominate the entertainment industry.
Which is why it's easy to pick the No. 1 entertainer from New Jersey. Not only is he a music superstar, his name is synonymous with New Jersey.
"The first person you'd have to think of is The Boss, Bruce Springsteen," said Jack Livingston, state librarian. "Certainly Frank Sinatra may have been the biggest star, but people didn't spend a lot of time associating him with New Jersey. You hear he's from Hoboken occasionally. But everything about Springsteen is associated with New Jersey."
The state library has an extensive collection on New Jersey history, but Livingston was hard-pressed to come up with an entertainer that has done more for New Jersey's image.
In the late '70s, Springsteen single-handedly brought the Asbury Park sound to national attention, introducing the world to the rock music played along the Jersey Shore.
Though northern New Jersey areas such as Newark, which gave us Whitney Houston and rapper Queen Latifah, and the Oranges, which produced Lauryn Hill and the hip-hop group Naughty by Nature, have turned out many entertainers, they aren't identified by most people as being from New Jersey.
The reason seems easy to explain. Anyone hoping to make it in entertainment finds that eventually they have to relocate to either New York or Los Angeles. People from northern New Jersey, however, can simply commute to New York.
"I think we suffer in comparison to the aura of New York City," Livingston said. "There is no way to compete with that. Most people consider (northern New Jersey) to be part of the New York area. Go into Manhattan on any work day and half the people there are from New Jersey, but nobody realizes that."
But things may be changing. Director and film producer Kevin Smith ("Dogma") has located his studio in Red Bank in Monmouth County. And Grammy winning music producer Rodney Jerkins has put southern New Jersey in the game by locating his headquarters in Pleasantville.
Atlantic City, meanwhile, has been gaining steadily in prominence as a film location, attracting recent films like "Rounders" and "Snake Eyes."
Eventually, the rest of the country may catch up on just how much the state has contributed to entertainment. That is, after they forgive us for Joe Piscopo.