Month: November 2004

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

This Is the Life

Biopics are awful. Let’s just get that out of the way, shall we? No film genre is so historically stodgy, so dull, so consistently conventional. No matter the subject, they all have the exact same story arc — rise, fall, redemption. Rinse and repeat. And the bad news about Taylor Hackford’s Ray is that it could be the archetypal example of this sorry genre.

Ray Charles is an irresistible subject for this kind of treatment. As a beloved and recently deceased cultural hero who triumphed over addiction, racism, and disability, it’s a role waiting for an Oscar moment, and you’d better believe Jamie Foxx is already clearing mantel space.

From the stiff chronology to the slideshow segues to the hackneyed flashbacks to a truly awful final stretch that goes from a too-snappy Freudian deus ex machina to a classroom-doc wrap-up, Hackford and co-writer James L. White do everything in their power to trip this film up. And yet Ray succeeds in spite of it all.

A lot of this success has to do with acting. Given the blindness, the sunglasses, and the identifiable mannerisms, Charles might be easy to mimic, but give Foxx credit for nailing the role. Following excellent performances in Any Given Sunday, Ali (a far more failed biopic but supplying perhaps Foxx’s best performance as Ali’s cornerman), and Collateral, Foxx’s Ray completes his transition to A-list status.

But it’s the “Hey, it’s that guy!” factor in the supporting cast that’s really special. Ray may boast more immensely likable but underrecognized actors in good roles than any movie this year: Kerry Washington plays Charles’ gospel-singer wife Della Bea. Best known for her supporting role in Save the Last Dance but best seen in her lead role in Jim McKay’s great indie Our Song, Washington might have the most glowing face of any young actress in movies today. Energetic Regina King (who hasn’t had a role this juicy since playing Mrs. Show Me the Money in Jerry Maguire) is a joy as Margie Hendricks, the lead Raelette who has Ray’s illegitimate child and whose torturous relationship with the star feeds scorching duets such as “Hit the Road Jack” and “(Night Time Is) The Right Time.” David Krumholtz, the Sizzlin’-lovin’ eldest son in Slums of Beverly Hills, gets to grow up as savvy, constantly bemused agent Milt Shaw. Ike Turner lookalike Thomas Jefferson Byrd (brilliant in Spike Lee’s Get on the Bus and Bamboozled) pops up as a bandmate who helps Charles get hooked on heroin. Best of all are Richard Schiff (intensely mopey Toby on The West Wing) and Curtis Armstrong (“Booger” from Revenge of the Nerds and the “Sometimes, Joel, you just have to say ‘What the fuck'” guy from Risky Business) as the patron saints of record geeks, Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun, respectively.

That brings us to the other thing that Ray gets right: the music. That Ray Charles isn’t a cultural figure on par with Elvis, Dylan, and the Beatles can only be explained through racism, a case this movie doesn’t make. But the genius of “The Genius” is something it nails. Recording-session scenes — such as the one where Charles begins to break away from his influences (particularly Nat King Cole) by playing with Ertegun’s “Mess Around” or the excitement you see on the faces of the Raelettes as they’re coached to greatness –are thrilling even if they’re mostly too brief. An obviously embellished if not outright fictional scene where “What’d I Say” is written on the spot to fill time at the end of a concert is electric. The song surely wasn’t conceived this way, but the experience of the scene is true to the sense of spontaneity you get whenever the song is played.

If Ray misses anything it’s in not underscoring enough the historic transition Charles presided over merging gospel and R&B into soul. You get the reaction of his audience to the new sound, but without the on-screen presence of the gospel standards that Charles rewrote, the audience doesn’t hear it. But what the audience does hear is still plenty. Ray is a music movie in which the music — and the film’s attitude toward it –makes up for the deficiencies in moviemaking.

— Chris Herrington

In Birth, the latest film directed by Sexy Beast helmer Jonathan Glazer, an extraordinary premise is set forth against a realistic backdrop and acted out by realistic people. Anna, an ordinary woman (played by the unordinary Nicole Kidman), has just announced her engagement to Joseph (Danny Huston — director John’s son). It’s been 10 years since her beloved Sean died suddenly while jogging in the park, and now Anna is ready to move on. Or is she? As if on cue to spoil her potential happiness, a young boy who shares Anna’s departed husband’s name wanders into the home of Anna’s affluent mother and makes a startling announcement: He is Sean. The Sean.

At first, the boy is doubted, of course, but then he starts to demonstrate that he knows things. Things that only the departed Sean could have known. He recognizes furniture. He remembers that he and Anna got married 30 times in 30 churches. He remembers places where he and Anna “did it.” Surely this is a joke, right? Well, it’s not very funny. “Does Mr. Reincarnation want some cake?” asks Anna’s mother (played by wry and wonderful Lauren Bacall). He does.

There is an immensely rewarding pace in Birth that makes itself evident just when Anna starts wondering if there might be something to the young boy’s claim. Instead of sinking into a race-against-time format or conjuring up some urgency that requires car chases, death wishes, or, heaven forbid, special effects, Birth allows events to unfold in a deliberate but unforced near-crawl. Every day — be it an exceedingly important one or one like any other — still has 24 hours in it, and Birth treats time with the utmost regard. Sean, while claiming to be a reincarnated dead husband, still has to go to school. People have to go to work.

Everything about the way Birth unfolds seems exactly how real people might behave in these circumstances. They are skeptical to the point that we too would be skeptical, angered at the point when we ourselves would be angry. Its characters are bestowed with a respectability in that regard. Even as Anna becomes more and more obsessed with the boy’s claims, her surrounding family gets more and more worried about the potential harm of the situation. A lesser film might have them plot against the boy or send Anna to therapy or Do Something Drastic. Instead, they just worry aloud — as I think most people would do.

When the ever-patient Joseph erupts against the boy in the middle of a private concert (for sitting behind him and kicking his chair, as young boys do), his attack is not merely a dramatic, cinematic outburst; it is a fit of rage. These emotions are those of a confused, angry person instead of a Hollywood construct of the jealous boyfriend. His actions, like those of each of Birth‘s characters, are unpredictable and palpable. When Anna allows young Sean to take off his clothes and join her in her bath, one gasps, not because it’s sensationalistic or even sexual (it’s not), but because it is so honest and true to what Anna must be feeling.

Cameron Bright plays the boy, Sean. He is deadpan almost throughout yet has the presence of a little adult. There is a staidness and a posture that makes it very easy to believe that there is a husband — a man — somewhere inside the boy. He makes it easy to believe that Anna is confused. So are we. Is this a hoax? Is this boy the real thing or a gifted liar?

A pall hangs over the wealthy condominium where most of Birth takes place. Everything’s just a bit dimmer than it should be. The atmosphere is thick. You can almost smell it. There is, likewise, a musicality to the film that helps articulate its themes of birth, life, and death within that pall. The film’s beautiful scoring is filled with near-sacramental themes that evoke baptism, childhood, marriage, funeral. In one scene, Anna and Joseph have gone to the orchestra, and for almost a full minute, the camera indulges in a close-up of Anna’s face as a tempestuous movement is played that is reflected clearly in Anna’s eyes. This moment is like the rest of the film, edging us slightly to a place we may not want to go, to a mystery we may not want to solve but feel we must

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

[City Beat] School Choice in Memphis

Twenty-five years ago, a new Memphis City Schools superintendent threw his considerable clout behind a controversial program that gave students and parents a choice in the school they attended.

Optional schools were one of those imperfect real-world “solutions” that probably angered as many parents as it pleased and possibly hurt as many or more schools as it helped. The rich and nimble got richer and the poor and immobile got poorer as the best and brightest students flocked to optional schools that were often outside of their assigned district. Some optional schools became majority-white schools within majority-black schools. For years, there were long lines, sign-up lists, camp-outs at the board of education, and an unwritten set of rules for getting one of the limited number of transfer slots into the school of choice.

But over the years, the system got fairer and the rules got publicized so that today nearly all of the 11,300 students in the optional program got the school of their choice, despite the overworked political slogan that public school students are imprisoned in failing schools.

“Every person who applied on the first day last January, whether it was at 6 a.m. or 6 p.m., mail-in or drop-in, got into the school of their choice if they met the entrance requirements,” said optional schools coordinator Linda Sklar.

The superintendent who made it possible was Willie Herenton. Two of his grandchildren in elementary school are in the optional program. That’s called eating your own cooking, always a good public policy but one not always practiced in Memphis, where private schools and county schools attract most affluent families.

On November 14th, Memphis City Schools will hold an optional-schools fair at the central office at 2597 Avery Ave. The 31 optional schools specialize in college preparation, creative and performing arts, technology, the Montessori method, individually guided education, and focused literacy.

Last year, more than 3,000 parents and students attended the fair. This year, given the extra attention given to schools in the presidential and school-board elections, there should be more participants than that. Optional schools give Memphians a chance to turn the rhetoric of school choice, accountability, and parental involvement into action.

Some of the success stories are well known. White Station High School annually leads the state’s public and private schools in the number of National Merit and National Achievement scholars. John P. Freeman, which has an entrance requirement of test scores in the 75th percentile, not surprisingly posts the highest test scores in the city. Wooddale High School graduates many of the future pilots and airplane mechanics that are so vital to the Memphis economy.

There are also some overlooked stories and pleasant surprises every year in a 120,000-student school system that is always undergoing subtle changes and shifts of population. One of them is Keystone Elementary School, located on Old Allen Road between Frayser and Raleigh.

Keystone has been an optional school since 1991. Its only principal during that time has been JoAnne Jensen, an educator since 1962. She could have chosen a comfortable pension and retirement 10 years ago.

This week, Jensen was invited to Washington, D.C., in recognition of Keystone being named a 2004 No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. It is one of five schools in Tennessee and the only one in West Tennessee so honored.

“You are a national model of excellence from which others can learn,” wrote Secretary of Education Rod Paige in a letter to Jensen.

Keystone third- through sixth-graders have tested in the 60th-70th percentile on standardized tests for three years in a row. Eighty percent of the students live in the working-class neighborhoods surrounding the school; 47 percent qualify for free and reduced-price meals, and that number has increased in the last five years, according to MCS.

“It shows what can be done if you have extremely high expectations for students, teachers, and parents,” said Sklar.

Herenton and Sklar are two of the last public-employee survivors of an era of idealism and experimentation that followed the drastic changes caused by court-ordered busing in the early 1970s. Along with MCS employees like JoAnne Jensen, they have been crucial to the survival and success of optional schools, which have foundered in other urban school districts.

School choice will always involve mobility and awareness. The word has to get out about the best and worst schools and the procedures for getting into them or out of them. In 25 years, MCS has done a reasonably good job of doing that. The rest is up to the customers. If you’re one of them, the dates to remember are November 14th, Optional Schools Fair day, and January 28, 2005, the first day that transfer applications will be accepted.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Critical Care

Janet Chapman has been in the hospital with her mother before. Sitting at her bedside in a Baptist-Memphis emergency evaluation room, Chapman waited again for her mother’s test results and word from her doctor. But before the physician appeared, Chapman was visited by one of the hospital’s emergency room volunteers as part of the Experience Critical program.

The program, which employs volunteers as additional ER support staff and patient liaisons, has been so successful that Baptist Hospital has packaged the program for nationwide marketing.

“The Experience Critical Volunteer Corps grew out of a program in New York,” said Baptist chief nursing officer and vice president Beverly Jordan. “We took the program and put a different spin on it. What we do want is satisfied patients who feel confident and comfortable, and we want the experience of our volunteers to be happy.”

The program was instituted a year ago as the final part of a three-phase plan dealing with emergency room patients in the tri-state area. Patient research in this region, as well as nationwide, revealed the public’s misunderstanding and discomfort with hospital emergency rooms. Parts one and two of the plan educated residents and patients on the purpose of ERs. Phase two also educated the ER staff on easing patient and family anxiety.

“With the Experience Critical piece, our plan was also to expose 18- to 25-year-olds to health-care in hopes that they may see this as a potential career. The response has been tremendous,” said Jordan.

The volunteer corps of the program is geared toward students enrolled or interested in some type of medical curriculum, who are able to keep pace with the busy ER environment. Each branch of the Baptist Hospital system has its own set of volunteers who work and manage their own shift schedules throughout the day. Volunteers participate in three separate training sessions before beginning their first shifts.

The 40 Baptist-Memphis volunteers, like 19-year-old Devin Little, are introduced to the emergency room by head nurse Trais Hutcherson. Little, a general-nursing student, said her fascination with hospitals was fostered by her mother — a nurse at Methodist Hospital — and television’s hospital drama, ER.

“I don’t really know what to expect, but I know I’ll be helping people,” said Little prior to her first shift. She signed on to work from 3 to 10 p.m. each Thursday.

While some of the volunteers may be medical students or have prior hospital experience, they are not allowed to treat to patients. “We allow the volunteers to do customer-service activities and see to patients’ well-being: providing water, ice, and blankets, running items to the lab, assisting with patient transport, and communicating basic messages to patients’ families in the waiting room,” said nurse manager Brenda Ford.

In return for their services, volunteers receive internship or community service credits from their respective colleges. For some volunteers, serving others is enough.

Alongside the twentysomethings, Karen Woosley stands out. Woosley is one of Baptist-Collierville’s 12 volunteers. At 39, Woosley is in her fourth career. A former international business employee in St. Joseph Hospital’s insurance department, Woosley never forgot her love for medical centers. Between that career and her current enrollment at Baptist’s nursing school, Woosley took a 10-year hiatus to raise two children and teach preschool.

“This is a perfect experience for me,” she said. “I try to treat the patients the way I would want to be treated if I were in their situation, and the patients are so receptive to that.”

At the Collierville hospital, the pace is slower and more to the liking of volunteers like Woosley. The ER consists of only a few examination rooms compared to the bustle in Baptist’s East Memphis location. To make her shift run smoother, Woosley has typed index cards to keep track of each patient. The cards document patient requests, whether they may receive fluids, and whether or not the volunteer may enter the room.

“Each Saturday, when I get ready to come here, my kids say, ‘Mommy’s going to the hospital to be a doctor,'” said Woosley. “I have to tell them that I’m not a nurse just yet, but working with these patients has let me know that my heart is in the right place.”

E-mail: jdavis@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News The Fly-By

Covering the Kettles

Holiday shoppers will no longer be able to unload their change and a little holiday cheer in front of Target stores. After many years of allowing Salvation Army Santas to collect donations in red kettles at store entrances, the retail chain is enacting a “no solicitation” policy for all of its stores, including the three Target locations in Memphis and the nearby location in Horn Lake, Mississippi.

Target Corporation’s decision began making news across the country a few weeks ago, although the company notified the Salvation Army of its decision in January. Requests from other organizations for similar fund-raising campaigns led to the policy, according to the company. “If we continue to allow the Salvation Army to solicit, then it opens the door to other groups that wish to solicit our guests,” said a written statement from the company’s headquarters in Minneapolis.

The local red kettle donation campaign of the Memphis Salvation Army is handled by area commander Lt. Col. Danny Morrow, who has overseen kettle drives throughout the country for 40 years.

“The Target decision decreases our ability to serve people year-round,” he said. “From the beginning, we understood that we were guests. We knew that it was their store, and we were always aware of that, but this is tough for us.” According to Morrow, Target store collections account for 30 percent of the total red kettle drive, which raises about $200,000 annually in the Memphis area.

“I don’t really know what to say about it. All I can do is encourage local Target management to contact the national office to get the kettles back,” Morrow said.

Nationally, collections in front of Target stores have raised about $9 million for the charity, surpassed only by the $14 million raised in front of Wal-Mart stores. Collections at Kmart rank third with $7 million. Local Wal-Mart stores will allow kettle collections to continue outside its locations, but Super Kmart locations, which are the only type of Kmart stores in the Memphis area, will not. The Memphis Salvation Army has obtained permission from Big Lot stores to hold kettle drives this year. The closeout chain has four locations in the city but draws fewer customers than the Target stores.

Local Target store managers would not comment on the decision, referring all inquiries to the company’s headquarters. Morrow said all negotiations with area stores are handled on the corporate level.

In addition to the Target locations, Memphis’ Salvation Army holds kettle drives at approximately 40 locations throughout the city beginning the weekend before Thanksgiving and extending through Christmas Eve. In addition to retail locations, kettle volunteers position themselves at grocery stores and mall entrances.

“We heard about the decision here [in Memphis] in the late summer,” said Morrow. “Not only does it hurt our collections, but the few people we hired to ring the bells to help them make at least some money are out of a job.” The remaining locations will be manned in four-hour shifts by volunteers or the few paid employees that the organization is able to hire.

To supplement the lost collections, the Salvation Army will focus efforts on existing fund-raisers, including mail solicitations and Internet donations. Although Target has banned sidewalk solicitations, the company will continue its ongoing commitment to communities, donating more than $2 million each week to organizations like the Salvation Army.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

EDITORIAL

With George W. Bush achieving the popular-vote majority that eluded him in 2000, the tumultuous election of 2004 is now in the record books. And while most of the television networks, as we go to press, have not declared the president’s electoral-college victory official, it’s all over but the shouting.

But there should not be too much shouting about a Bush electoral mandate. Not now, not in a country as bitterly divided as ours is at this critical juncture. Election 2004 confirmed all of our worse suspicions, namely, that the polarization that began during the Clinton era has continued. The divisions worsened after Bush/Gore 2000, hardened with the invasion of Iraq, and are now etched in concrete. As NBC’s Chris Matthews observed in the wee hours Wednesday morning: “This was not an election about issues, but one about the kind of country we want to be.”

Much to the pundits’ almost universal surprise, the exit polls demonstrated that the single issue voters most cared about in 2004 was not the war in Iraq, not the state of the economy, not even the specter of “terrorism,” but something they labeled “moral values.” In a nutshell: President Bush swept to victory on the strength of the perception that he was somehow more ethical, and more true to himself, than Senator Kerry. To 51 percent of the voters, the better “man” won.

However correct or absurd that notion may be, it is a stark political reality. Indeed, the hard mathematics that have ensured Bush’s reelection may be the only reality this country can currently agree upon. Otherwise, we Americans dwell in two parallel universes.

Nor do these universes correspond neatly to the now-ubiquitous red-state/blue-state geography favored by the TV pundits. Here in Tennessee, for example, all four major newspapers in Nashville and Memphis (including this one) endorsed Senator Kerry, and while the president carried the state by 15 percentage points, Senator Kerry carried Tennessee’s two most populous counties by 14 points.

The divisions in this country are not as simple as the colors on a map might suggest; we are divided by communities, not states. And unless we’re prepared to indulge in our own version of ethnic cleansing, oversimplifying these divisions, as the national media is wont to do, does no one any good.

In his second term, President Bush must now do the right thing. With his campaigning days officially behind him, he needs to send Karl Rove into graceful retirement and turn his attention to the one problem that dwarfs even the Iraq quagmire in significance. This time around, Bush must become the once-promised “uniter not a divider.” A continuation of the winner-take-all approach so evident in his first administration will make losers of us all.

Senator Kerry, on the other hand, should not be consigned to the dustbin of history. He ran a superb campaign — he will go down in history, for example, as the first candidate to win the presidential debates and yet lose the election — and can legitimately lay claim to the position as spokesperson for the 49 percent of Americans whose views will continue to need representation. Tom Daschle’s defeat in South Dakota creates a natural opportunity for that “leader of the opposition” role to become official. We strongly suggest that the Democrats place John Kerry in the position of Senate minority leader.

But the loser in this race can only do so much. The burden is upon the president to reach across the partisan divide, to work with Senator Kerry and other Democrats to begin the healing process so essential for our future. Should he choose to do otherwise, George W. Bush runs the risk of presiding over “evening in America” and leaving as his legacy a truly dysfunctional nation.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Grape Divide

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus — or so we were told by psychologist John Gray in his bestselling paean to gender stereotypes. But do wine-buying habits reduce psycho-theories to dust and reunite us? I conducted an informal poll of 15 men and women of varying wine interests to find out what enters their minds when facing a wall full of wine. I found out — gasp! — we’re all pretty much the same.

Seeking Advice from Retailers

Although asking for directions isn’t manly, both sexes seek advice from wine retailers. Marty Young, a computer geek, observes, “My girlfriend tends to ask about flavor: ‘Do you have an oak-y red with chocolate tones?’ But I shop by varietal and region: ‘Can you recommend a Chilean Cabernet?’ I think that is probably because, in classic male fashion, I flatter myself that I know what a Chilean Cab should taste like.”

Susan Edwards, an editor, confesses her bumbling humbleness, “I wish I could say I always make a list based on what my favorite wine writers have recently recommended, but the best I can do is hazily remember the topic and ask the person at the wine store which ones they recommend.”

One thing stood out: Men didn’t trust the retailers as much. Computer-systems troubleshooter Paul Hart admits, “I like [store-owner recommendations], but only after I get to know the owner. Are they just moving inventory or are they truly interested in meeting my expectations?” Tom Chandler, a project manager, notes, “If I am in a wine store, I usually try to squeeze the owner to hear what he likes but not particularly what he sells a lot of.”

Oooh Pretty

Some wineries openly admit they package their crappy wines in eye-catching bottles, and women fall for it more often. Amber Abram, a manager, confesses, “[I’m] totally a sucker for wine-label art and even the color/shape of the bottle. I figure if they have a sense of humor, the wine can’t be bad either.” Artist Katy Alderman says, “I am drawn to certain labels. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll buy the wine because of the label, but I often find myself asking about the wines with the intriguing labels.” Looking beyond beauty for once, men tend to study the labels to glean more information. Winery rep Bob Kreisher: “The other day, I chose between two Argentinean malbecs. Same price. One said its grapes come from two specific high-altitude vineyards. The other one didn’t specify. I chose the one that specified.”

The Price Factor

Believe it or not, price doesn’t dominate, but it does influence the final decision. Museum maven Simone Bennett says, “I’m willing to pay a lot more for a wine that I know is good. But if I’m exploring a new wine, I’m a little bit more frugal.” Tom Wagner, a photographer, admits, “When memory fails (as it usually does), I fall to looking for [shelf tags with wine-magazine ratings] and affordable prices. I figure if an expert (at least someone clever enough to get paid to rate wines) says something is better than others, far be it for me to disagree.” Financial-services slave Jim Sutherland sums it up: “I’m not really influenced by price because I’ve tasted inexpensive wines that were terrific and expensive wines that I wasn’t wild about.”

Other people mention buying wines based on tastings, but the hazy aftereffects often clouded their memory. Don’t we all hate it when that happens?

Wine

Recommendations

Tamas Estates 2002 Sangiovese San Francisco Bay Livermore Valley — Strawberry and vanilla, like Neopolitan ice cream. Plenty of acids and backbone to please with food as well. $16.

Quivira 2002 Sauvignon Blanc Fig Tree Vineyards — Full-bodied, full-flavored like a Chardonnay, but surprise! It’s Sauvignon Blanc. Vanilla and white peach gush from its elegant drops. $18.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Want a Revolution?

“It’s almost a revolution, what’s going on in New Orleans’ kitchens today,” says Chef Joseph Carey, founder and chief instructor at the Memphis Culinary Academy, whose new book, Creole Nouvelle, explores the latest trends in New Orleans’ oldest cuisine.

Carey was born and raised in New Orleans. He became a combat photographer and journalist while serving in Vietnam. When his hitch was up, he moved to San Francisco, where he lived for 16 years, opening a series of restaurants, including a Creole place in Oakland.

“I left New Orleans and only went back after many years away, so I saw it with brand-new eyes,” he says. “I saw it as a person from the outside.”

What Carey saw in New Orleans was a brilliant cuisine stunted by an excess of tradition and menus that were increasingly submissive to the tourist dollar. But in the San Francisco Bay area, that crazy quilt of colors, cultures, and lifestyles that clash and coalesce in unexpected ways, Carey wasn’t oppressed by tradition or hemmed in by tourists with expectations.

“I found this place called the Housewife’s Market in downtown Oakland,” Carey says. “It was like a European marketplace. There were butcher stalls with meat. There were stalls with fresh produce, good cheeses, fresh seafood from Louisiana, crabs, and shrimp. There was even a guy who made his own sausage: andouille and boudin blanc. Before I found this place, I didn’t know there had been a huge migration of blacks from New Orleans to Oakland. But there was, and since I was running a Creole restaurant, this was absolutely wonderful for me.

“So I was able to get all of these great ingredients. Then I started changing some things. I started learning more Asian techniques,” he says. “I started taking jambalaya, which is traditionally a baked rice dish, and preparing it as a stir fry. I kept trying more and more things, and I started to really like what was happening with all of these changes.”

Another change: Carey moved to Memphis in 1984 in order to open the Memphis Culinary Academy.

“There were already too many schools in San Francisco. And there was nothing in the middle of the country. There wasn’t even a school in New Orleans,” Carey says.

He has also opened several restaurants over the years, including the Cafe Meridian and the King Cotton. And now comes the cookbook, Creole Nouvelle, which was released this month, and two more books are in the planning stage.

In Carey’s hands, King cake, the blandest of all New Orleans’ desserts, takes on a new life. The cinnamon-laced filling is rich and creamy, and the semisweet dough leans heavily in the direction of brioche. His seafood gumbo is almost airy, emphasizing the herbed stock, the shrimp, and the crab over the charred, nearly chocolate flavors of traditional brown roux.

“Most of the recipes for gumbo start ‘First, you make a roux.’ Then you throw everything into the roux,” Carey says. “In classical French cooking, you add the roux last. That’s what I do. And I use a lighter roux [so you can treat the gumbo] more like a soup.”

Even the decidedly blue-collar oyster po’ boy, a soggy French loaf stuffed with battered oysters and slathered in mayo, is given a glamorous makeover in Creole Nouvelle. Crispy fried oysters are served open-faced on an onion roll with an aïoli spread, shredded romaine lettuce, and just a dash of Tabasco. Compared to the original, it almost seems healthy.

To round out his book, Carey has included traditional Creole recipes twisted into something new by some of New Orleans’ most creative chefs. Anne Kearney of Peristyle, Susan Spicer of Bayona, John Harris of Lilette, Donald Link of Herbsaint, and Peter Vasquez of Marisol have all contributed to the recipes collected in Creole Nouvelle.

When Louisiana cooking became a national rage in the 1980s, buoyed by the marketing savvy of Paul Prudhomme and the syndicated success of Justin Wilson, the flavors were mostly Cajun.

“Cajun cooking is a bit more rustic. I like to call that kind of cooking ‘down home New World French,'” Carey says. Creole cooking is more refined and less fiery.

New Orleans was founded by French colonists in 1718, and “Creole” is derived from a word meaning “born domestically.” Creole cooking, which absorbed elements of Spanish and Italian cooking, was America’s first fully realized domestic cuisine where Old World techniques were applied to the endless supply of nontraditional ingredients available in Louisiana. From the beginning it was defined by chefs working in restaurants, not by people cooking at home.

In Creole Nouvelle, Carey and his guest chefs expand the Creole palate by extending the list of ethnic influences. The results: crab and coconut soup, boudin-stuffed quail with fig sauce, and brazed duck on a buttermilk biscuit with blood-orange marmalade. And that’s just for starters.

For more Carey and Creole Nouvelle, watch local bookstores throughout November when Carey will demonstrate recipes and sign copies of the book.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Hustle & Flow

On Friday, October 29th, Memphis filmmaker Craig Brewer screened selected scenes from his John Singleton-produced film Hustle & Flow. The preview met with rave reviews from the audience, but what did the Flyer‘s entertainment writers think? Chris Davis and Chris Herrington go head-to-head, debating the apparent merits and possible pitfalls of Brewer’s latest project.

Chris Davis: It’s pretty obvious that there are things to get excited about in Hustle & Flow — and some real concerns.

In his interview with The Commercial Appeal‘s film writer John Beifuss, Brewer addressed Hollywood’s not-so-subtle racism. He also addressed Hollywood’s concern that a white guy can’t write and direct a film which deals directly with the lives of black street hustlers. I’m on the side of the filmmaker, but it’s hard to deny that there’s a distinctly white voice driving this story. But does it matter?

In the opening scene, DJ (Terrence Howard), a crazy-haired pimp, compares men to dogs: They both get little pink hard-ons, but a dog doesn’t understand its own mortality. The monologue sounds like it was ripped from a Tennessee Williams play. That should be a good thing, but in the mouth of a Memphis hustler, the poetry feels theatrical and inauthentic. Then the soundtrack kicks in, and things are back on track.

Chris Herrington: I think your point about the “distinctly white voice” and your insight into the theatrical language in the pre-credit scene come together in the last scene shown, where the white character Shelby (DJ Qualls) sits on the front porch with DJ and his sidekick (Anthony Anderson), waxing philosophic about gangsta rap and Memphis music. Now, obviously Shelby is a cerebral character and this kind of over-heated speech fits his make-up, but it still felt like the director talking.

I may be more sensitive than most to this since hip-hop was my first musical love, and I tend to find it wearisome when white folks romanticize gangsta rap. On the positive side, these bookend speeches were about the only things that rang false to me from what we saw, and even my reservations are pretty minor.

The thing that’s always stood out to me is the potential disconnect between the way Brewer talks about the project and the way it was cast. Listening to Brewer, the films that come up as a comparison are things like Scorsese’s Mean Streets and John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. But the résumés of the actors signify more like Hip-Hop Road Trip. Will there be tension between these opposed types or will Hustle & Flow bring them together? What do you think?

Davis: Over time, Brewer’s commentary has taken on a messianic tone: Make your own movie, and if it’s good, you’re saved. This isn’t a criticism.

But when Brewer compares Stax to the Hypnotize Minds camp, he sounds like the reincarnation of Sam Phillips: part salesman, part saint. Hustle & Flow feels like classic mythmaking, and it’s probably appropriate that this film drops faces like a rapper checks names.

In Brewer’s first film, The Poor and Hungry, the romantic entanglement between a car thief and a classical cellist is the sort of unreal thing that only happens in movies, but the film’s genuinely proletarian spunk gives it an edge. Brewer fancies himself a man of the people. His subject matter may be more Scorsese, but there’s some Frank Capra in the mix.

My sense was that Brewer is actively reinventing the Sun/Stax myth in a rap context in order to claim hip-hop as the third pillar of Beale Street. Is it fair to give hip-hop Southern roots?

Herrington: Well, hip-hop was born in the parks of New York City to Jamaican parents. You can draw parallels to blues but also to doo-wop.

Brewer is absolutely a salesman and that’s to his and his art’s benefit. In drawing the connections between his roots as a shoestring-budget filmmaker and his character’s struggle to make it in the so-called rap game, Brewer is shaping his own future reviews.

I also think it’s appropriate that you reference classic Hollywood. I find more Howard Hawks than Frank Capra in Brewer’s style — the unobtrusive visuals, the feel for dialogue- and character-driven comedy, the combination of spontaneous fun with tight storytelling.

All of these virtues were apparent in the two sequences screened, especially the recording scene, where a song called “Beat That Bitch” morphs into “Whup the Trick.” Some people might be prepared to flinch at finding comedy in that content, but the scene flowed so beautifully that the audience couldn’t help but get lost in the moment.

Brewer insists that he wants to work in the studio system. In the good old days, there was no disconnect between movies as mass entertainment and enduring works of art. A lot of that has been lost over the past few decades, but, at his best, Brewer seems like the kind of filmmaker who can bridge those distinctions. Hustle & Flow seems to have a shot at uniting the sensibilities of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Road Trip. I say more power to him.

Oh, and whatever else, I saw enough to know that Memphis is gonna love this movie.

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LETTER FROM MEMPHIS

Harold Ford Jr.:

November 3, 2004

Dear Congressman Ford:

Perhaps you have already seen William Safire’s column in today’s New York Times….

Actually, we at the Flyer were flattered that Mr. Safire endorsed our own Kerry as Senate Minority Leader idea, perhaps without even reading our current editorial.(www.memphisflyer.com/content.asp?ID=3060&onthefly=1 )

But seriously: I hope you will endorse the Flyer‘s and Mr. Safire’s idea. Ask your Democratic senatorial colleagues to draft John Kerry as Senate Minority Leader.

Senator Kerry is now a proven and widely-admired national leader. If the Democrats fail to make this patently-obvious choice, they deserve the possibly adverse consequences that will follow.

With all due respect to Senator Reid, appointing a relative unknown to that position will squander valuable momentum generated by this presidential campaign. Perhaps the congressional leadership doesn’t realize how close the national Democratic Party is to oblivion.

Business-as-usual in the Senate, Congressman, just won’t do. I know I speak for many committed Democrats — Democrats who donated blood, sweat, tears and dollars to the recent campaign — when I say that IT IS TIME FOR THE CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY TO WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE. Continuity is essential if we are ever to get out of this pickle we presently find ourselves.

I am not suggesting for a moment that Senator Kerry should be the party’s standard-bearer in 2008; that decision is light years away at this point, and a thousand events will occur in the meantime. What we cannot afford, however, is to squander all the good work that has been accomplished during this recent campaign, in terms of organization, grass-roots involvment, and sheer enthusiasm, and return to business as usual within the halls of Congress.

Senator Kerry can and will be a powerful “leader of the opposition”; after today’s magnaminous concession speech, he is perhaps the most well-respected defeated presidential candidate of modern times. Give him the chance to maintain his position as de facto leader of our party during the challenging two years ahead of us.

Please feel free to pass this along to anyone who might find the contents of interest. Thanks.

Good to see you at the game tonight; go Griz! All the best, Ken

Kenneth Neill

Publisher/CEO

THE MEMPHIS FLYER, Memphis, TN

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thursday, 4

As I tap away here on my little computer, it s the eve of the election. By the time this hits the streets, it will finally be over, although who knows when we ll find out who gets his dance card full because of all the voting-machine nightmares and the probability that some ballots won t get counted? But at least it will be over. No more debates. No more ads. No more campaign rallies. I m sure some of you will miss all this, but not me. It s been like watching bad reruns of Green Acres with Oliver Wendell Douglas as John Kerry fighting against Mr. Kimble as George W. Bush. Oh, I know there are some serious issues, like the possibility of reinstating the draft and outing CIA agents and selectively blacked-out military records and threats of terrorist attacks, but you have to admit old George has had it pretty easy vacationing down there most of the time — well, until the campaign, that is — on that scrappy-looking ranch in his cowboy hats and boots. And Laura. My goodness. I really can t say too much bad about a woman who seems to take as many tranquilizers as she seems to be enjoying at any given time. I guess that s why it didn t bother her to accept a $95,000 pair of sapphire-and-diamond earrings from the Saudis last year as the war raged on. And while she stares into space, her husband s two eyebrows become one and his eyes cross when trying to read the teleprompter in an attempt to make some sense now and then. And who could blame Laura if she is out there in la-la land half the time. She seems to be pretty decent. And can you image what she has been through, raising those demon-seed twins? Not to mention having to entertain her mother-in-law all the time. I wouldn t be at all surprised if she shoved George Sr. out of that plane on his 80th birthday. If she wasn t too busy running around with key on a piece of string during a lightning storm oh, that was Benjamin Franklin? They are so hard to tell apart from one another sometimes. And who do you think Dick Cheney would resemble if he put on a fluffy white wig and a string of pearls? I bet Halloween around the White House was a riot. But enough bashing of the Bushes. It s just too easy. Between brother Neil and his savings-and-loan scandals and prostitutes in Thailand and niece Noelle with her illegally obtained Xanax prescriptions (I be she and Aunt Laura have a GREAT time together) and those drunk daughters and their lovely campaign speech, it only makes them seem remotely interesting in a twisted kind of way. But it s still like an episode of Green Acres. Throw in Arnold Schwarzenegger as Arnold the Pig (even though he s just a governor), Mr. Haney as John Ashcroft (although he bears a much more similar resemblance to Ray Bolger, especially when leading his staff in song and especially when singing that he wishes he had a brain), Mrs. Douglas as the Teresa Heinz Kerry (for the accent and money, if nothing else), and you could even throw in Mr. Drucker as Zell Miller. Yes, it has been quite a show. Let s just hope this campaign doesn t enjoy the reruns that Green Acres does. I, for one, can t take it. In the meantime, here s a quick look at what s going on around town this week. Tonight, there s an opening reception at Lisa Kurts Gallery for an exhibit of sculpture by Thomas Ostenberg. And tonight kicks off this weekend s Breeding Ground Interdisciplinary Performance of Preparing the Canvas concert at U of M with 15 modern dancers, six choreographers, three artists, and live musicians.