Month: February 2006

Categories
Music Music Features

Craft Over Controversy

Toby Keith is a country singer who has released 10 studio albums in 13 years. He’s got two greatest-hits albums under his belt and is halfway to a third that is sure to sound better than the first two. But despite his considerable body of work, for noncountry fans, Keith is nothing but Mr. Boot in Your Ass.

Keith’s post-9/11 anthem “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” a frightening celebration of military vengeance, was the most controversial confluence of country music and politics since Merle Haggard’s hippie-baiting “Okie From Muskogee” and much harder to dismiss or laugh off.

The song made Keith an instant enemy on the political left, and not without reason. “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” may have been motivated by justifiable post-9/11 anger and may have been, as Keith later insisted, a rallying cry for invasion of Taliban-hosting Afghanistan — not Iraq — but those details are nonexistent in the song. Keith never sounded too concerned about which “you” was being put at the top of Uncle Sam’s list or which “you” the “whole wide world” was raining down on.

Four years later, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” holds up better than most of its liberal detractors at the time (myself included) could have suspected. It’s well written, musically stirring, rooted in an honest anger. There’s a reason the song is remembered today while Darryl Worley’s similarly themed hit “Have You Forgotten?” has already been forgotten.

But “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” wasn’t even the most ideologically insidious song Keith released in 2002. Far more troubling now is “Beer for My Horses,” a duet with Willie Nelson.

An intensely catchy vigilante-justice anthem that equates terrorists with “gangsters” and posits lynch-mobbing as an old-fashioned good time, “Beer for My Horses” not only drags Nelson into the muck but every listener who sings or hums along without considering the implications of the song’s bloodlust, a group that includes most of the audience for Nelson’s performance at AutoZone Park last summer.

Keith embraced his new role as right-wing spokesman with the title of his next album, 2003’s Shock’n Y’All. But while Keith may have had a hit with the pro-military “American Soldier,” the song’s success seemed more dutiful than anything else. Musically, it was a dud. Instead, Keith struck gold with nonpolitical fare such as the alt-country-worthy rocker “Whiskey Girl” and the big-tent sing-along “I Love This Bar.”

Keith’s audience seemed to be suffering political fatigue, a subject addressed in Entertainment Weekly writer Chris Willman’s interesting new book, Rednecks & Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music (The New Press; $25.95).

Keith and Nelson share space with the Dixie Chicks on the cover of Willman’s meticulously reported book, which focuses on the role of politics in country music between 9/11 and Bush’s reelection. Rednecks & Bluenecks is rooted in the polarity of Keith and the Chicks, between his ostensibly pro-Bush bent, the Chicks’ potentially career-killing attack on the president, and in the spat that followed between the two acts.

As much as people like to position Keith and the Dixie Chicks as opposites, Willman is sharp in recognizing how both acts helped to spur country music from its artistic doldrums in the late ’90s. As different as they are, both Keith and the Dixie Chicks were more (musically) and less (temperamentally) traditional than what had become the Nashville norm before these outsiders (from Texas and Oklahoma, respectively) helped change the template for country stardom.

But what’s most revealing about Keith in Willman’s book isn’t his politics but his sense of craftsmanship and his self-consciousness. When Dixie Chick Natalie Maines criticized “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” Keith was less bothered by the political disagreement than by the suggestion that it wasn’t a good song and that someone like Maines, who isn’t a songwriter, would dare say so. Keith’s constant harping on his losing streak at industry awards shows is probably more revealing than he’d prefer. Keith may sound like Waylon Jennings sometimes, but bitching about not getting an award isn’t exactly befitting an outlaw. I don’t think Hank woulda done it this way.

So, though he may now forever be known as Mr. Boot in Your Ass, Toby Keith is really more a country-music craftsman than badass right-wing mouthpiece. Don’t believe it? Take a listen to his latest album, Honytonk University, a calculated retreat from the culture wars where the songs are so polished and performances so colorful that Keith now seems to have moved beyond mere songwriter. The likes of “As Good As I Once Was” and “Big Blue Note” aren’t so much songs as video soundtracks, and if you turn on CMT you’ll see Keith trading neo-con boogeyman for a new persona that fits just as well: redneck teddy bear.

Toby Keith’s Big Throwdown Tour II

FedExForum

Saturday, February 18th

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Taking Your Chances with Cheney

The man the Vice President shot last week said, during his remarks to the press upon leaving the hospital, that “we all assume some risk in what we do, no matter how careful we are,” the implication being that by going hunting he was assuming the risk that he would be shot by a fellow hunter. I understand the need for this die-hard Republican to be obsequious in the face (excuse the expression) of Cheney’s assault, but what I don’t understand is his utter mischaracterization, especially given his training as a lawyer, of a long-standing legal doctrine to justify that kind of brown-nosing.

The doctrine known as “assumption of the risk,” is a legal construct, established in the common (i.e.., court-made) law which says, in essence, that someone who is injured in an activity that is inherently dangerous can’t claim damages from being injured during that activity. So, for example, if you’re beaned by a foul ball that hits you while you’re a spectator at a baseball game, you’re SOL (another legal construct, loosely translated as “sadly out of luck”) as far as being able to sue anyone for your injuries. Similarly, if you’ve served honorably in the armed forces and decide to run for public office against a Republican opponent, you’re not going to be able to complain when s/he questions your service and suggests you were actually a coward, because being “Swift-boated” is just a risk you assume when you take on a Republican opponent.

There are many other things we do where we assume the risk of something bad happening. Running with the bulls in Pamplona, riding one of those “crotch rocket” motorcycles down a city street at 100 plus miles per hour, and jumping out of an airplane from 20,000 feet with nothing more than a few yards of silk to slow your fall all come immediately to mind. But there are some consequences of potentially risky activities we all undertake which we definitely do not assume the risk of. Food preparation, electricity and driving all involve elements of risk, but none of us assumes the risk of contracting salmonella from eating in a restaurant, being electrocuted by our computers or being run into by an 18-wheeler on the road. When any of those things happen, it’s not because of a risk we assumed, it’s because someone screwed up royally, which is what Mr. Cheney did when he shot Mr. Whittington.

In bending over backwards (or maybe forward) to kowtow to the Vice President, Mr. Whittington would have us believe that hunters assume the risk of being shot. Yes, hunting entails a certain amount of danger, if for no other reason than that lethal weapons are involved, but a steak knife is a lethal weapon, yet no one assumes the risk that they’ll be stabbed by one while having a steak dinner with friends. The worst a hunter anticipates is wetting himself because the zipper on his hunting garment jammed at an inopportune moment. Strangely enough, statistics show that fewer people are injured in hunting accidents than in dozens of other activities, from taking a bath to playing golf.

Now maybe it’s a different matter if one of your hunting companions is taking a potent mix of pharmaceuticals to keep his heart from stopping, has a history of alcohol abuse, and is willing to admit he only had “a beer” shortly before he slung his shotgun over his shoulder. If being shot while hunting were as risky as Mr. Whittington would have us believe, then hunting attire would be made with kevlar (which it isn’t), and hunters wouldn’t be able to get life insurance (which they can). No, the only risk Mr. Whittington assumed by hunting with Dick Cheney was that if he was shot, someone would try to blame him for it.

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Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick. What in the world were you thinking when you went and blasted your hunting buddy’s face with a shotgun down in Texas on Friday? Is it because you’ve gotten so comfortable with the idea of “friendly fire”? I just hate that for you. Not to mention the guy you shot. But just how did this happen? The report I heard on NBC was that you were out on a ranch near Corpus Christi hunting quail, and a member of your hunting party came up out of the grass behind you and that’s when you fired your gun. Did you not hear or see him, or did you hear something and get a little jumpy thinking it might be a big ol’ jackalope about to pounce on you? Whatever the case, according to the report, you showed your usual sense of compassion by stopping by the hospital to visit the man, who was stable but in intensive care. You told reporters you were pleased that he was in good spirits, and then you returned to Washington. You know, if I had accidentally shot a friend in the face with a shotgun and landed him in intensive care, I think I probably would be glued to his side measuring every second of his progress. Are you human? I’m surprised your image even shows up in photographs. Which begs another question: The only time we ever see you is when you are hobbling around in your special shoes and using a cane trying to make it from the hospital to the White House or to sneer your way through a speech. What in the world were you doing romping around the ranch shooting at little quail? Don’t you have a defibrillator or a pacemaker (certainly not a “peacemaker”) implanted in your chest? Would shooting a shotgun not be a bad thing for that? Well, I just hope you are more careful from now on, and you might want to head back down there to the hospital and see about your friend. Now, speaking about a lack of compassion, did anyone see the interview with Emily Hughes — that little skater girl who is taking Michelle Kwan’s place in the Olympics? I know she’s only 17 and was probably nervous, but she had little to say about Kwan’s very difficult decision to drop out and her very dignified way of making that news public. Hughes said simply that she had respect for Kwan and hoped she would recover quickly and then yammered on and on and on about how excited she was to be taking her place. Ever see All About Eve? She said nothing about how painful it must be for Kwan, nothing about Kwan being an inspiration to her, nothing about her new opportunity being a bittersweet one in that she’s getting it only because Kwan injured herself during practice. Maybe I am just getting old and bitter, but she appeared to be quite a brat to me. And what about the Olympics’ first gold-medal winner, Texas skater Chad Hedrick? Again, I’m sure I’m being old and bitter and should just celebrate the guy’s success and be happy for him, because he does seem like a decent guy. But really. Breaking down and crying and having to consult with his “sports psychologist” before skating because it was the 13th anniversary of his grandmother’s death and he had her nickname, “Nanny,” inscribed on his skate along with the date of her death? Dude, let it go. It’s been 13 years. I loved my grandmother as much as anyone in the world, and she died just a few years ago, but I don’t have a breakdown every year on the anniversary of her death. But that’s just me. I did almost have a breakdown, however, when I looked up and saw Sophia Loren, Susan Sarandon, and some others carrying a big flag during the opening ceremonies while the Village People’s “YMCA” played in the background. First Brokeback Mountain and now music that defined the disco era for a generation of gay men played during the opening ceremonies at the Olympics? I think I might have to draw a cartoon about that one!

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Act One

Already winner of the award for “best local feature” at last fall’s Indie Memphis Film Festival, Act One (from East Memphis filmmaking collective Old School Pictures) joins even more exclusive company this week by becoming the first local indie feature since Craig Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry to get a weeklong theatrical run.

A clever post-collegiate romantic comedy about a young Hollywood screenwriter juggling professional and personal crises, Act One isn’t a work of art on the level of The Poor & Hungry, but it might be the most polished all-around local feature since Brewer’s breakout movie.

Sharply directed by Brad Ellis, shot in film-like digital video by Matt Weatherly, and written by and starring Allen Gardner, Act One displays a more mainstream sensibility than most successful local indies. The film’s milieu of shallow but (ostensibly) engaging young men on the make brings to mind Swingers, while the journey from frat-sex-comedy set-up to a stab at maturity compares favorably to Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy. And the film wraps these twentysomething concerns in a conceit — Gardner’s screenwriter is writing his next movie as he lives it — that evokes Adaptation.

Though Act One is the ninth film from the Old School crew, it has the coming-of-age feel of a first film and is such a huge step forward from the group’s 2002 Indie Memphis winner The Path of Fear that it may well be a “first” film of sorts. There’s a film-geek self-consciousness here common to movies by young videophiles but also an honest yearning to move past that. But, more importantly, Ellis and Weatherly demonstrate the technical ability to make movies at a much higher level if given the chance. And Gardner does an able job of carrying a movie. He’s the focus of almost every scene and transitions from lowbrow comedy to convincing drama.

Opens Friday, February 17th,

at Studio on the Square

Categories
News

KUSTOFF NAMED U.S. ATTORNEY

President Bush on Friday named Memphis lawyer David Kustoff to be the next U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee.

Kustoff — whose ultimate appointment has been taken for granted for some time, even by other aspirants for the position — is a partner in the Memphis law firm of Kustoff and Strickland. He was Bush’s Tennessee campaign director in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Kustoff also ran unsuccessfully in the 2002 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat eventually won by then state Sen. Marsha Blackburn.

One of the first responses to Kustoff’s appointment came from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) :“I’m pleased the president has selected David Kustoff to serve as the next U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee.  David’s personal integrity, legal acumen, and attention to detail are well-known.  His lengthy history of community involvement indicates he will act as a tireless advocate for the people of West Tennessee.  I appreciate his willingness to serve the region in this capacity and look forward to his confirmation.”

Lamar Alexander, the other Tennessee GOP senator, responded this way: ““This is a good appointment. I know David. I look forward to his speedy confirmation by the U.S. Senate.”

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Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Out of the Ordinary

On busy New Byhalia Road in Collierville, there’s a typical shopping center with a Target, a Schnucks, and various other businesses. In the corner space is Lee Kan’s Asian Grill, a Chinese restaurant which appears to be as ordinary as its environs.

Look closer, however, and Lee Kan’s Asian Grill is much more. Kan and her husband, Simon Huang, opened the 4,500-square-foot restaurant in October. Since then, business has been steady, and it keeps picking up.

“When they first come in, they think we’re a regular Chinese restaurant,” Kan says. “Then they see our presentation and how we prepare our food, and they’re surprised.”

For one thing, Lee Kan’s is not simply an Asian grill. The food is nontraditional, mixing and matching cooking techniques from different Asian countries. Many of the dishes have American and European influences as well.

Two of Kan’s favorite examples of this are the grilled jumbo shrimp and scallops and the pan-seared sea bass. Both are prepared with an Asian/French soy/beurre-blanc sauce, or a white wine sauce mixed with soy.

“It tastes clean from the white wine,” Kan says. “Then you can taste the Asian influence, and it’s like, ‘Is that soy sauce or what?’ People guess and try to figure out what it is.”

The presentation of the dishes is also unconventional.

“The French influence is not only about the taste but also the presentation of the food. It’s always so gorgeous,” Kan says. “It’s interesting to take a Chinese dish and add a French sauce or to present it in a way the French would.”

Another dish that Kan’s customers appreciate is “Fried Rice for the Brazen Fool,” a medley of Asian dry red pepper, Thai pepper, jalapeno pepper, red pepper, and bell pepper with sweet onions, carrots, and egg. It’s very hot. “People order that, and we look at them and ask, ‘Are you crazy?'” Kan says.

The range of foods extends to the children’s menu, which features both grilled chicken with teriyaki sauce and macaroni and cheese. A nice touch to the children’s menu is the inclusion of instructions for making an origami swan.

Kan got much of her inspiration for cooking while traveling.

“Because I traveled around, I saw many other different countries’ food,” Kan says. “I always thought about how to arrange it differently and make it fun and not just traditional Chinese food.”

Kan is from the Chinese city of Canton. Her family moved to Memphis when she was 17 years old to join an uncle who lived here. Growing up, she helped out in the family kitchen. During the summer, she worked as a waitress in Chinese restaurants, learning about the restaurant business.

Kan and Huang also own the Hunan Gourmet Buffet on Germantown Road in Bartlett.

The main room of Lee Kan’s has a large fish tank. The restaurant walls showcase original artwork, including paintings by Memphis artist Billy Price Carroll and Collierville artist Rene Platten. One of those paintings features Kan and her daughter, Vivian.

Huang and Kan also have an 8-year-old son, Kevin. The family lives nearby. They decided to open Lee Kan’s in Collierville because they saw a need for unique dining in the area, the sort of place that feels like home.

“When I’m working at a restaurant, it’s not just about making money. It’s about developing relationships with the customers. You make friends with them,” Kan says.

Categories
News News Feature

Burning Questions

Winter finally arrived in Memphis, along with these headlines on natural-gas prices: From The Wall Street Journal last week, “Warm Winter Eases Natural-Gas Heating Bills” over a story about a price decline of 50 percent from $15.40 per million BTUs in December to $7.48 per million BTUs last Friday. A separate Journal story headlined “Natural-Gas Prices Feel a Chill As Report Sparks Fear of a Glut” said total gas in storage “is in danger of ending the heating season at its highest level ever.”

Some danger. Meanwhile, the only relief for customers of Memphis Light, Gas & Water is a return to 50-degree temperatures this week and a warm January that kept complaints in check. City councilman Dedrick Brittenum, one of the council’s toughest questioners of MLGW during a recent session with utility executives, said he has received only a few calls from constituents. Wait until they get those February bills.

MLGW bills include the purchased gas adjustment calculated to seven decimal places and a footnote that says increases and decreases are passed through to consumers. But the “hometown utility” that touts its supposedly streamlined operation under CEO Joseph Lee fails to tell customers the one thing they want to know: Why haven’t gas bills come down as they have in other cities?

Is it possible that virtually every adult in Memphis is a registered voter? Or are the voter rolls badly in need of a purge?

The population of Memphis, according to the U.S. Census estimate for 2004, is 671,929. The number of registered voters, according to the Shelby County Election Commission, is 436,345. There are 118,000 students in the Memphis City Schools, most of whom are too young to register to vote. The dropout rate is around 30 percent, so there are at least a few thousand more minors who don’t go to school. There were 14,155 births in Memphis in 2003, the most recent year for which the Shelby County Health Department has records. Let’s estimate, then, that there are some 70,000 Memphis children under the age of 5 and not in school. After doing the math, let’s say there are 190,000 Memphians under the age of 18 and 482,000 Memphians 18 and over.

If the election commission’s records are accurate, 90 percent of adult Memphians are registered voters. It takes as much effort to register to vote (admittedly, a one-time event) as it does to vote, but apparently three out of four Memphians do one and not the other. Voter turnout in Memphis in recent elections has ranged from low single-digits in primaries and school board races to 23 percent in the 2003 mayoral election.

Fair play for Mayor Herenton? The Commercial Appeal‘s editorial page says it was unfair of a Memphis television station to use the Super Bowl to hype an unflattering and ambiguous Herenton story. A week later, the newspaper gave page-one coverage to Herenton recall proponent Thadeus Matthews, before the first recall petitions have been filed.

Herenton wrote an op-ed column last week about media coverage for the CA, which declined to publish it in the dead-tree paper but did put it online. Anti-Herenton letter writers and Memphis bashers have no trouble getting their missives published nearly every day.

The daily seems to have increasingly taken to branding its reporting, which is fair enough. What’s annoying is that the CA rarely credits anyone else, even when it is late to the party. Tuesday’s front-page story about panda underperformance at the Memphis Zoo and other zoos followed a similar story in Sunday’s New York Times. It was reported last summer by the Flyer, among others. The CA was a major booster of panda-mania in 2003 and managed to put a positive spin on Tuesday’s story and photo (“No panda panic”). It failed to mention that although the pandas have increased attendance, the increase fell short of projections by more than 50 percent in the first year, and the shortfall has continued.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

All Tomorrow’s Parties

Bored, bored, bored. Everybody in Douglas Carter Beane’s The Country Club is rich, spoiled, drunk, horny, and bored. All the sad, beautiful darlings do is drink, screw, count their money, admire one another’s bone structure, and hop from one party to the next: They are surely to be pitied rather than despised.

At every turn, The Country Club threatens to become a funny, biting satire of the shortsighted American aristocracy, but at every turn, it stalls, sputters, and goes nowhere. Every time it seems like the play has something to say, the playwright goes out of his way to say nothing.

Will Soos get back together with Zip? Will Hutch find out about Zip and Chloe? Does everybody have a worse nickname than Froggy? Oh the drama is high at Theatre Memphis.

John Moore is charmingly slimy as Zip, a young Republican horn dog. Melissa Walker is earthy and likable as Chloe, the Italian outsider and object of the WASPy set’s 19th-century prejudice and lurid ruling-class desires. Shaun Green is appropriately inarticulate as Hutch, the country-club drunk, and Renee Davis Brame is wickedly funny as Froggy, an obnoxious Junior League matron-in-training. On the other hand, excellence in portraying uninteresting and unsympathetic characters is a mixed blessing.

Director Jerry Chipman is no stranger to Beane’s Gurney-esque brand of comedy, and his staging of the playwright’s best-known work, As Bees in Honey Drown, was — from design to delivery — a lesson in how to make good theater. For a director whose worst work is smoothly professional, his handling of The Country Club is uncharacteristically clumsy, uncertain, and a perfect reflection of the script’s uncertainties.

Witty banter abounds, and there are some good laughs to be had. Still, it’s unlikely that anyone will be completely satisfied with The Country Club. That, after all, seems to be the point.

At Theatre Memphis through February 19th

One has to wonder if Bill Baker, the founder and artistic director of Our Own Voice Theatre Company, is wearing too many hats. On top of writing and directing OOV’s Ann Tigony, he is also running lights and sound. Baker’s theatricals are always thought-provoking and can be startlingly fine, but Ann Tigony seems — like the man himself — stretched a little thin.

Baker’s last offering was The Passion of Joni Dark, a righteous if redundantly anti-Bush remix of St. Joan. He knows how to reinvent a classic and has done so with humor and insight. Ann Tigony plays out a bit too much like an After School Special about recognizing the early warning signs of teenage suicide.

Antigone is the original rebel, and Creon is a sympathetic tyrant blinded by his faith and patriotism: Sophocles’ tragedy should be relevant. OOV’s adaptation, while sometimes beautifully scripted, lacks the passion of the original and the teeth. Instead of a battle over whether or not to bury a brother, Antigone and Creon fight over a rock concert — it’s not the same.

Ann Tigony feels like a good play that never got too far beyond the first draft. Baker’s use of the chorus is interesting. His development of the rocky relationship between Antigone and her sister Ismene is honest and eloquent, but the mighty Creon is never anything more than a repetitive ideologue who grows stale after the first speech.

At TheatreWorks through February 19th

Categories
News

CORKER WRITES OBAMA, SLAMS FORD

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Corker, who has focused increasing
criticism on U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., one of two Democratic candidates for the
Senate,  fired another shot Friday, writing Illinois Senator Barack Obama,
who will appear in Tennessee with Ford on Monday, urging Obama to take note of Ford’s “record on the issue of ethics.”.

Ford’s spokesperson, Carol Andrews, responded to Corker’s blast — the latest of several delivered of late by one or another of the congressman’s Republican opponents — by calling it “yet another example of big talking and big lying” by Ford’s GOP adversaries.

The text of Corker’s press release:


Bob Corker urges Senator Obama not to dodge ethics issue while campaigning
with Representative Ford

Senate Democrats’ “point
man” on ethics to campaign with

Representative Ford – top
congressional recipient of privately funded travel


 

Chattanooga – In advance of
Senator Barack Obama’s Tennessee campaign swing with Congressman Harold
Ford, Jr., Bob Corker, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, wrote
Senator Obama to inform the Senator of Congressman Ford’s questionable
record on the issue of ethics and encourage Senator Obama to address the
issue with Ford.

According to Ford’s website, Congressman Ford
will hold a lunchtime rally with Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the person
Senate Democrats have tapped “to be their point man to carry the message of
ethics reform during the midterm election year.” (Chicago Tribune, 1/18/06).

“Monday’s trip to Tennessee to campaign with
Congressman Ford is a tremendous opportunity for Senator Obama to
demonstrate that his interest in ethics reform is sincere and not merely a
partisan exercise,” said Republican Senate candidate Bob Corker.

Below is the letter to Senator Obama in its
entirety.


———————————–

Dear Senator Obama,

Through media reports here in Tennessee, I
have been made aware of your upcoming campaign visit to our state to
campaign for fellow Democrat Harold Ford, Jr.

I also understand that you are serving as
Senate Democrat Minority Leader Harry Reid’s “point man” on ethics reform.

These two facts suggest to me that your visit
with Congressman Ford is a great opportunity in regards to your efforts to
clean up Washington.  

Accordingly, I am writing to fully inform you
of Congressman Ford’s record on the issue of ethics so that you may, should
you chose, use your visit in Memphis to further your efforts to end what
your fellow Democrats have termed the “culture of corruption” in Washington.

·      
According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press,
Congressman Harold Ford ranked first among current members of Congress for
the number of trips funded by private interests.  Congressman Ford’s
privately funded travel includes trips to Las Vegas and the Virgin Islands. 
As you well know, much of this type of activity would be banned in the
ethics reform bill you are currently championing in the Senate.  (Sen. Obama Press Release, 2/1/06; Times
Free Press 4/27/05; www.politicalmoneyline.com)

·      
Congressman Ford refuses to return funds linked
to indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.  Unlike your colleagues, Senator Mark
Pryor, Senator Russ Feingold, and Senate candidate Ben Cardin, Congressman
Ford refuses to acknowledge the appearance of impropriety by accepting
contributions from those who were a part of Jack Abramoff’s lobbying team. 
In fact, Congressman Ford went so far as to call for other candidates to do
so, but still remains unwilling to do so himself. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 1/7/06;
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 1/7/06; The Hill, 2/15/06; Commercial Appeal,
1/10/06)

·      
According to the Commercial Appeal, Congressman
Ford used $2,549 of campaign funds to purchase an Armani suit for the 2000
Democratic National Convention.  According to the newspaper, the Federal
Election Commission prohibits the use of campaign funds for clothing for
campaign events.  Additionally, I would encourage you to have your staff
examine Congressman Ford’s most recent FEC report, as it is replete with
extravagant disbursements for expenses incurred by Congressman Ford. (Commercial Appeal 11/20/00)

As is clear through these and other
activities, Congressman Ford has spent these past several years in
Washington occupying the space between what is legal and what is right. 

It is my hope that you will use your visit to
Tennessee to demonstrate to your critics that your interest in ethics reform
is genuine, and not merely a partisan endeavor.

On behalf of Ford, Andrews responded to Corker’s press release with this statement:

“Bob Corker’s letter to Senator Obama is yet another example of big
talking and big lying from the Republicans running for the US Senate.

“Congressman Ford’s ethics have never been challenged by anyone other than
those seeking political office.

“Unlike Bob Corker, who, according to IRS documents, paid no federal
income taxes in the late 1980’s, Congressman Ford has called for a ban on
private travel, an end to pork barrel spending and a prohibition on gifts
from lobbyists — a comprehensive effort to clean up the ethics mess in
Washington.

“If Bob Corker wins his primary, Congressman Ford looks forward to a real
and honest debate on the issue of ethics.”

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Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Rising From the East

The name Brad Ellis probably isn’t as familiar to local film fans as that of “B”-movie auteur John Michael McCarthy or Blue Citrus Hearts director Morgan Jon Fox, much less Sundance-certified stars Craig Brewer and Ira Sachs. So you might be surprised to learn that Ellis is likely the city’s most prolific filmmaker. At age 25, Ellis has directed a whopping nine features, including two winners of the Hometowner Award for best local feature at the annual Indie Memphis Film Festival. The most recent winner, the clever post-collegiate comedy Act One, will open Friday for a weeklong run at Studio on the Square. (See review, page 48.)

Ellis, a 1999 graduate of Houston High School, made his first feature in 1998, an unauthorized remake of John Carpenter’s horror classic Halloween, starring friend and classmate Allen Gardner in a dual role as psycho killer Michael Myers and his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis. Soon after, Ellis and Gardner partnered with classmates Mark Norris and Matt Weatherly for a student film — Day of Reckoning — for their Houston High film and video production class. The foursome named their collaborative effort Old School Pictures. Half a decade and seven movies later, Ellis, Gardner, Norris, and Weatherly continue to make movies together.

And the Old School family has expanded. Ellis and his friends’ high school film teacher, Joey Watson, now a film and video instructor at the University of Memphis, became mentor and partner early on, eventually co-scripting and co-directing 2002’s The Path of Fear, which was Old School’s first Indie Memphis winner. Watson brought in a couple of his own former high school classmates, John Moore (who co-scripted The Path of Fear) and Brian Churchill, who served as co-producers on Act One.

“In Joey’s class, we’d break up into groups and do projects, and over the year we all formed a working relationship,” Ellis says of the origins of Old School Pictures. “It became obvious that the four of us worked really well together. But that was our senior year, and it was time for everyone to split up and go their separate ways for college or whatever.”

Ellis and Norris entered the University of Memphis’ film and video program. Weatherly went to study broadcasting at Middle Tennessee State University. Gardner moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. But despite spreading out, Old School kept getting back together to make movies — comedies (Hustled and Hustled 2), thrillers (Means to an End), and another stab at Carpenter with Halloween 2000.

These movies were seen almost exclusively by family, friends, and classmates, usually at after-hours premieres at Malco’s now-defunct Trinity Commons, where Ellis worked. It was a localized phenomenon but a phenomenon nonetheless: Old School screenings sold out, and the group was learning how to make movies. An East Memphis/Germantown film scene was emerging to rival those in Midtown.

“We didn’t have much of an identity at that point,” Ellis says. “We were genre-hopping. I’ve always loved horror movies, so my background comes from that kind of filmmaking, which I think is pretty cool because horror movies tend to be low-budget and that gives you the opportunity to experiment with things. But we didn’t have a certain kind of film we would make.”

Old School took a step forward with the atmospheric thriller The Path of Fear. But Act One is a giant leap, comparatively: bigger budget, better writing and acting, more polished production values. The movie also marks a slight change in what had become the Old School formula, with Ellis as director/cameraman, Weatherly as editor/post-production specialist, Gardner as screenwriter and actor, and Norris as actor and producer.

“With Act One we decided to shake things up a little bit,” Ellis says. “I was the director, but I stayed away from the technical stuff and let Matt shoot the movie. He was the DP [director of photography] with assistance from John [Moore] on the lighting. And I was the primary editor.”

Norris continued to serve as a producer and Gardner, who stars as Kevin Hanson, a young screenwriter struggling after his first Hollywood project bombs, supplied a sharp script that had good structure, comedy, and a convincing dramatic payoff.

“I think we got lucky with Allen’s script,” Ellis says. “He surprised a lot of us with how solid it was.”

Gardner also helped bolster the film’s cast by bringing a couple of actors home with him from Los Angeles. Adam Burns, Gardner’s partner in his L.A.-based film-production start-up Hydra Productions, flew in to play Kevin’s slacker roommate and comedic foil, Trip. Old School also cast L.A.-based actress Bettina Adger as Kevin’s romantic complication, Kate, after Gardner put an ad on an actor’s message board and got 300 responses overnight.

The Old School crew shot the bulk of the film over the course of eight weeks last July at a variety of Memphis locations, including an ambitious musical sequence shot at Theatre Memphis. Moore took a sabbatical from his job at Churchill’s production company (Churchill Communications), where Ellis also now works, to concentrate on lighting the film. Other members of the crew quit their jobs to get the film finished. But even with all that, making last year’s Indie Memphis deadline wasn’t a given.

“I didn’t want to rush the project,” Ellis says. “We were always facing the Indie Memphis deadline and weren’t sure if we were going to enter the festival, but obviously I’m glad we did.” And now Ellis hopes the recognition from Indie Memphis and the opportunity of a full run at Studio on the Square can help Old School build a bigger audience.

“There are a lot of independent filmmakers in town and everyone kind of does their thing, but we’ve discovered we’re a little more mainstream,” Ellis says of the Old School sensibility. “I don’t know if that comes from how we were raised or grew up, in Germantown, but we make pretty accessible films.”

“I like the fact that we’re a combination of indie and mainstream,” co-producer Churchill says. “I think it’s something to embrace, not look down upon. That’s our identity at this point. We’re low-budget mainstream.”

“The whole purpose of these screenings is not so we can get our fans to see it again so we can make some money off of it,” Ellis insists. “It’s truly to expand our audience. There are a lot of hard-working filmmakers in town, and this is a tremendous opportunity Malco has given us. If it’s successful, then this could turn out to be good for the filmmaking community in general.”

OldSchoolPictures.net

Act One

Showing Friday, Feb. 17th-Thursday, Feb. 23rd

Studio on the Square