Month: March 2011

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Whole Truth

I loved the old Perry Mason reruns in which that peerless lawyer would get the alleged wrongdoer to admit to a crime in open court. But, of course, those of us who live in the real world understand that people do not always abide by the rules of honesty and full disclosure, even when caught in the act.

Several questions have been raised regarding the intentions of Steve Cooper for Stella Marris, his now dormant “restaurant” located in Cordova just off Germantown Parkway on Fisher Steel Road. Is he telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I’ll let the facts speak for themselves.

Cooper, a known proprietor of what lay-folks call strip joints, has done very well for himself in the adult-entertainment industry. It could even be argued, despite what you may think of him personally or of his tactics, that he has been successful at building businesses.   

Several years ago, Cooper purchased the property on Fisher Steel, just across from First Tennessee Fields, a nationally renowned Little League baseball park. He claimed he had no plans to open another strip joint. Instead, Cooper said he was interested in using his wealth of business knowledge on behalf of the riskiest business model in the nation. He claimed he wanted to open a restaurant. 

Notwithstanding Cooper’s business savvy, he seemed ill-prepared and uncommitted to any sound business philosophy, changing the name and type of restaurant several times before he opened. At first, he said he intended to open an Italian restaurant called “La Italiano.” Next, it was to be a seafood restaurant called the “Ocean Club.” Then Cooper finally settled on “Stella Marris,” a high-end steak and seafood restaurant. 

Here was an experienced businessman deciding to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in a restaurant, similar to what one would find in Las Vegas, in an industrial section of Cordova, with no clear plan of success. 

It would seem Cooper’s past business success did not translate well into the restaurant business, because he closed after only a few months to “remodel.” Perhaps the fact that the “restaurant” does not have windows was the problem, or the fact that the building was built with dance stages typically not found in upper-end restaurants. Or it may have been the fact that there were so many private rooms in the building. 

Did Cooper change any of these flaws during his remodeling?  No, instead, he increased the size of the parking and filed for what is called a “compensated dance permit.”

Now, a compensated dance permit, if granted by the Memphis City Council, would enable all of the following:

Beer and liquor could be sold; women could be paid to dance in the club; they could take tips from customers; they could take customers to back rooms (of which the Germantown Parkway facility, as mentioned, has several) for private dancing; they would not be allowed to be totally nude — the relevant code specifies only that the dancers must cover up “the breast below the top of areola or any portion of the pubic hair, anus, cleft of the buttocks, vulva, or genitals.” They could not engage in prostitution, nor “touch, caress, or fondle the breasts, buttocks, anus, or genitals of any other person,” but they would be allowed to dance in front of and next to customers.

Should the dancers violate the “no touching” rule or expose more skin than the law permits — say, in one of those many back rooms — they could incur fines ranging from $50 on a first offense to as much as $1,500 for multiple offenses. Experience has taught us that operators of sexually oriented businesses are typically willing to accept the risk of such fines — mere slaps on the wrist — given the income generated by performers, coupled with the volume of alcohol sales.

We need to reconcile our adult-entertainment laws with our regulations regarding obtaining a compensated dance permit. That means, at a minimum, increasing the financial penalties and suspending beer sales on first offense.

Perhaps all Cooper wants to do, as he claims, is to open a fun club with live bands and lively dancers — something like, say, Coyote Ugly on Beale Street, which stays well within the bounds of legal propriety.

In that case, he should have little problem in joining with us to insist that the loopholes alluded to above be eliminated. 

Brian Stephens is a founding member of the Cordova Leadership Council.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Satire and Song

It was a thoughtful and forgiving audience that showed up at the Hattiloo Theatre for the opening-night performance of The Trial of One Short-Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae. The patrons howled with laughter even when the show’s humor lurched in uncomfortable directions. They applauded mid-scene when the performers in this absurdist courtroom drama made their points. A couple sitting behind me maintained a loud running dialogue throughout the entire show that consisted of little more than “This is fantastic,” repeated over and over again. To be fair, Marcia L. Leslie’s script is a comic wonder, and the uniformly strong cast was committed to some brave character choices. But the show was not fantastic. More’s the pity, because it’s a funny, provocative play, and with a little less pretension and a little more polish, it could be something special indeed.

The plaintiff’s name is Victoria. And as the title of the show explains, she’s a black woman. She’s also short-sighted, because, well, that’s also mandated in the title. Although she’s been to college and has a fancy title, her job description is, essentially, dust management. That’s right, she’s the high-tech, possibly hot-to-trot cleaning lady at a firm that adapts old movies to newer viewing technologies. She blames her lower income and lack of upward mobility on the stereotypes of African-American women who appear in the same entertainments she adapts. The co-defendants are Mammy Louise, a ball of buttery love, and Safreeta Mae, her lazy, hyper-sexualized daughter who can’t speak three sentences without incriminating herself. They are both fictional slaves and appear in broad caricature.

Leslie is a fierce satirist who uses burlesque and the natural tensions of a courtroom drama to keep the audience engaged in a didactic discussion about history as it relates to some unflattering media-generated images.

Patricia Smith, wide-eyed and grinning like she was posing with a pile of pancakes, is fearless as Mammy Louise. She bounces around the stage like a Max Fleischer cartoon, although she’s anything but two-dimensional. Nicole Wilbourn is titillating and tragic as the unrepentantly sensual Safreeta Mae. Nia Glenn-Lopez shows a flair for physical comedy as the show’s rolling-pin-wielding judge, and Meghann Oglesby makes a formidable defense attorney. Bart Mallard gives a confident performance, nearly stealing the show as he plays a variety of white male (and occasionally female) stereotypes. Sadly, all of this good work is in the service of a play that just doesn’t seem like it is ready to open. The set, which functions both as a slave ship and a courtroom, looked unfinished and unstable. The lighting was so erratic it seemed like the operator might be making his cues up on the spot.

Hopefully, the cast and crew will become comfortable with their lines and with director Thomas “TeKay” King’s overly artificial staging, and future audiences will get to see something truly fantastic.  

Through April 10th

Truth be told, I’m more fascinated by the public’s obsession with the Beales and Bouviers of Grey Gardens than I am with Grey Gardens itself. The 1975 documentary by the Maysles brothers was enough for me. I didn’t need an HBO film and am still somewhat baffled by the appearance of a Broadway musical. What is it about this study in dementia and decay that keeps us coming back for more?

Appropriately, director Jimmy LeDuc treats this unusual musical’s first act like some lost collaboration between Noël Coward and F. Scott Fitzgerald, documenting a time when the Edies of Grey Gardens were glamorous, eccentric examples of American royalty. The second act cleaves closely to the Maysles’ grimy documentary but plays out like a more tuneful version of Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls, as mother and daughter maintain a strained, complex relationship in the ruins of the family mansion. Circuit’s cast is first-rate and includes Bates Brooks (the elderly Edith), Carla McDonald (the younger Edith/older Little Edie), and Emily Pettet (young Edie).

I didn’t think I could sit through a Grey Gardens musical, but as with the original documentary, I couldn’t look away. And if Saturday night’s capacity crowd is any indication, the Playhouse on the Square family of theaters has another hit on its hands.

Through April 17th

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: The Great Homogenizers

A couple of weeks ago, a high school pal added me to a new Facebook group made up of people from my home town of Mexico, Missouri. I checked it out and found a couple dozen folks who’d graduated from Mexico High School in the 1960s and 1970s chatting about school, former teachers, sports, local businesses, etc. It was oddly addictive, and within two weeks, there were more than 300 people involved. It was an online flash-mob reunion.

I found myself chatting online with people I hadn’t thought of in 40 years and unearthing memories I’d forgotten I had. And I was struck by how diverse the group was. We’d been children of blue-collar workers, executives, doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, gas station owners, factory workers, black and white, Catholic and protestant. But we all had similar childhood memories of our school and of the town.

The big economic drivers for the area were two large plants that made “fire-brick” that was used in kilns to make steel. The plants paid well, had hundreds of blue-collar and white-collar jobs, and made it possible for the many small local businesses to thrive.

On the square in my hometown were three locally owned drugstores, a “department” store, two or three clothing shops, restaurants, a JC Penney, a couple of banks, a music store, a bakery, a hardware store, a shoe store, doctors’ offices, you name it. It was a bustling little town.

And most of us, no matter our income, religion, or race, attended the same schools, not charter schools, optional schools, private schools, black schools, white schools — just the public school system, the great homogenizer.

Memphis, of course, is no small town. The city and the county systems both have a number of excellent schools, but too many of our children are still segregrated by income levels, race, and religion. I don’t think the answer lies in combining our two large systems into an even larger one. The opposite direction is a better way to go, I suspect: well-funded smaller sub-districts throughout the county, tailored to the needs of each’s constituency.

The other side of that coin is the growing income inequality in the U.S. Our middle-class is shrinking as more and more money is concentrated in the hands of the upper 5 percent. Good public schools and a large, healthy middle-class are the solid bricks we used to build this country. That’s a lesson we ignore at our peril.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News The Fly-By

Siren Song

Anyone downwind of the Wolf River last Friday evening may have felt a peculiar and undeniable calling to the mythical beings in its murky waters.

Folks gathered in the mist along the shoreline of the Wolf on Friday to listen to the siren’s song of mermaids for the closing of artist Emily Stout’s week-long sculpture installation off the bank of Mud Island. The mermaid statues, made of silicone-coated insulation foam and burlap, were the product of nearly six months of work as a part of Stout’s master of fine arts thesis for the Memphis College of Art (MCA).

“I’ve concentrated on art in the public sphere in the past, and for this project, I wanted to play with the whimsical, the grotesque, and the unexpected,” Stout said.

Indeed, Stout’s mermaids have taken eerily misshapen and otherworldly forms. Stout said that, in creating their bodies, she was interested in manipulating the human form by exaggerating their twists and folds, a statement on society’s tendency to view the human body as unnaturally disfigured.

“They were strangely grotesque,” said MCA sophomore Clare Freeman, who attended the closing reception on Friday. “It was startling because, growing up, mermaids were never portrayed that way. [Stout’s mermaids] were beautifully crafted and fantastically ugly, and along with the music, there’s kind of a treacherous undertone. It leaves you feeling like nothing is quite what it seems.”

The mermaids’ whispered song, which Stout wrote and recorded, played from speakers placed inside the figures’ tails, creating an accompaniment to the strangeness of the sculptures themselves.

Though the mermaids were removed from the Wolf River after the closing reception on Friday, they will be on display at the Jeff Nesin Graduate School at 477 South Main from April 16th through May 14th, with a reception held on April 29th during the South Main Art Trolley Tour.

Because the mermaids have held up remarkably well for a week in the Wolf, Stout said she thinks it would be fun to implant tracking devices in the mermaids and set them adrift in the Mississippi.

“They just lose something when they’re out of the water,” Stout said. “It’s where they were meant to be.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Club Clearpool was the scene for the 1964 Les Debs dance, and the girls had hired my band, Randy and the Radiants, to supply the music. At evening’s end, there was an argument between the club owner and the band over what time to stop. He had flipped the lights on 15 minutes early, and we were contracted to play to the hour.

When the partygoers were herded out, a tussle broke out between band members, the owner, and his two greaser bouncers, one of whom followed me outside and punched me while my hands were filled with musical equipment.

I was just 16, and when I entered my parents’ home with a bloody shirt and a busted lip, my mother lost her mind and my father called the police. We went to court, where the club owner and his bouncers received stiff fines for assault and battery and malicious mischief, which would have been great were we not scheduled to appear at Club Clearpool again the next weekend. This time, I hired a security guard with a sidearm to join the band, but when we set up on the stage facing the concession stand on the opposite wall, the same three men were glaring at us with blood in their eyes.

Suddenly, the front door crashed open and in walked Sputnik Monroe, followed by our young DJ manager, Johnny Dark. The entire room erupted, and the dance stopped cold. Then, like Babe Ruth at bat, Sputnik pointed directly at the concession stand, saying, “I want to tell everybody” (then he paused for dramatic effect and jerked a thumb back over his shoulder in the band’s direction), “these boys are Sputnik’s boys, and if you mess with them, you’re messing with Sputnik.” Thanks to Johnny Dark, Sputnik took a rare Saturday night off to attend a teenage party and put the fear of God into some bullies. The following morning, the club owner called and apologized for the entire mess, telling me that he had fired his two associates and we were always welcome to play at Clearpool. I have been one of “Sputnik’s boys” ever since.

Like others of the Mouseketeer generation who grew up in Memphis, I was addicted to Saturday-morning TV wrestling and especially fascinated by the blood feud between good-guy Billy Wicks and the evil Sputnik. After one particularly violent encounter, Sputnik swore revenge at the Monday-night matches at the downtown Ellis Auditorium. I had never been to the live matches before, and I begged my father to take me. He said, “Call your grandfather. He loves wrestling.” My eyes widened. I couldn’t believe my immigrant grandfather, with his continental manners and ever-present jacket and tie, could be a closet wrestling fan.

We drove downtown in a taxi and got ringside seats to view the mayhem. I watched fascinated as toothless men screamed epithets at Tojo Yamamoto and howled at the shoulder-length hair of Mario Galento, but the main attraction was Wicks and Monroe. When Sputnik entered, the arena burst into open hostility, with boos and calls of  “Commie” and “Skunky,” referring to the white streak in Sputnik’s hair. Wicks arrived like the Golden Boy. It was a two-out-of-three fall marathon match, which Sputnik won by cheating. He hit Wicks with a foreign object and held his trunks while applying the pin, but the referee raised his arm in victory anyway. I was aghast that he could get away with it, and it was left to my grandfather to explain to me that sometimes the good guys have to lose for the sake of the gate.

As a Billy Wicks fan, I could never have imagined myself 15 years later, hanging out at the Phillips Studios on Madison, sharing a joint with the evil Sputnik. It was the early ’70s, and Sputnik was frustrated because he couldn’t get the fans to hate him like before. I said that in these times, everything was upside down and what the fans truly despised were the hippies preaching peace and love. My friend Skip Ousley, a black man, suggested that Sputnik find a black wrestler to tag-team with.

The next Saturday on studio wrestling, Sputnik appeared with Norvell Austin, the “Black Panther.” Their hapless opponents were tangled in the ring ropes when Sputnik retrieved a bucket of black paint from ringside and poured it over their heads. Grabbing the announcer’s microphone, Sputnik declared, “Black is beautiful.” Norvell shouted, “White is beautiful.” And linking arms they said in unison, “Black and white together is beautiful.” The next time I saw Sputnik, he was a happy man, and proclaimed, “They hate me again.”

Last Thursday was declared Sputnik Monroe Day by the mayors of Shelby County and Memphis, and Representative Steve Cohen read a declaration into the Congressional Record commending the late professional wrestler for his role in desegregating public accommodations. The honor was to coincide with the premiere of the new documentary Memphis Heat: The True Story of Memphis Wrasslin’, and it was such a success, I would like to offer a suggestion. Make Sputnik Monroe Day an annual event, and then the congressman can take it national.

We need this, people. Directly on the heels of Valentine’s Day, where you are required to cough it up for cards, candy, and flowers, there needs to be a day when you’re allowed to tell somebody to kiss your ass. (Not you, sweetheart.) Every March 24th, in Sputnik’s honor, you would be entitled to spill your boss’ coffee in his lap and smash him over the head with a folding chair. (What would pro wrestling be without the folding chair?) 

But listen good: Anyone who recalls a packed Mid-South Coliseum with Jerry “The King” Lawler, Bill “Superstar” Dundee, “Handsome” Jimmy Valiant, or the antics of Andy Kaufman on the bill and doesn’t see this film is just another ignorant, pencil-neck geek.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

What About Us?

We’re all for economic outreach on behalf of Memphis and Shelby County and generally approve the thinking behind the newly formed Economic Development and Growth Engine (EDGE) umbrella, devised jointly by city and county administrations. Our metropolitan area is in a state best described by Arnold Schwarzenegger, back when he was a bodybuilder and daily flogging his muscles to get them up to a competitive level. “They had to grow just in order to survive,” said the then Mr. Olympia and now former California governor.

Well, that pretty much says it about our city and county — both of which are now concerned about population loss, income stagnation, and the other ills of a stagnant economy. We, too, have to grow in order to survive. So the cooperation between Memphis mayor A C Wharton and Shelby County mayor Mark Luttrell in forming EDGE has been the single most impressive and far-reaching manifestation of inter-governmental cooperation in these parts, as well as of the much-touted idea of “functional consolidation.”

But local advocates for EDGE, including the two mayors, have made a huge point of keeping their cards close to the vest on the score of public awareness. That means keeping elected members of the City Council or County Commission (“politicians,” if you’re making the case against them) out of direct policy-making or supervisory roles on the EDGE board, and it means keeping certain key aspects of negotiations with target industries away from the media. To be sure, most details of a recruitment package ultimately become known both to the members of the two local legislatures as well as to the media, but on an ex post facto basis, after the deals have been cut.

A case in point was the landing of the Electrolux plant for Memphis — or, technically, the lifting of one from Quebec, where the loss of some 1,200 jobs has been lamented simultaneous with the gaining of those jobs on this end. To land this bonanza, the city and county agreed to put up roughly $20 million each, and the state almost $100 million in start-up incentives. The company itself would supply another $40 to $50 million.

A necessary investment by government? Very likely. But little to no information was publicly disseminated in advance as the deal was being hatched. Maybe the hush-hush negotiations were necessary, as well — though a few members of the County Commission raised eyebrows.

Now we are told, via press release from the Memphis Chamber of Commerce, that an all-star cast of local luminaries involved in the nitty-gritty of industrial recruitment would be in New York this week to discuss the Memphis area’s “plan and strategies” for marketing itself. With whom? Such august national publications as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek, FastCompany, and Business Facilities, we are told.

All well and good, we say. We just wonder why the local media, which has been kept at a polite arm’s length from such advance planning, has not also been given a chance to see said plans and strategies.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Location, Location

Drivers have to head downtown to cross either of the two interstate highway bridges over the Mississippi River. But if and when a third bridge is constructed, it may offer an alternative crossing in northern Shelby County or northern Mississippi.

Those are two of seven possible locations for the proposed Southern Gateway project, a third bridge crossing the Mississippi River into Arkansas. The options were revealed last week at a public meeting to gain input from drivers on the preferred placement of a new bridge.

“In order to be competitive in a global market, we need to be able to remedy congestion,” said Steve Chipman, Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) project manager.

The plans — jointly developed by TDOT, the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department, the Mississippi Department of Transportation, the Memphis and West Memphis Metropolitan Planning Organizations, and the Federal Highway Administration — offer seven two-mile-wide corridors where a new earthquake-proof bridge and connecting highway could be built.

One suggestion simply involves modifying or rebuilding the existing I-55 bridge.

“You’d have to look at how you could handle traffic on the existing bridge and the cost to upgrade it to existing codes and seismic standards,” Chipman said.

One new location option would bypass Memphis by attaching the new bridge to I-69 in Tunica County, Mississippi, heading north to connect with I-40 on the Arkansas side. Another option adds a new highway connecting to I-22 near the Tennessee-Mississippi state line, leading over the river, and onto I-40.

Yet another option would connect to Highway 385 near Millington and cross the river near the Tipton County line, eventually connecting to I-55 in Turrell, Arkansas.

Two other options include connecting the bridge to new roadway added to I-240 in Memphis. Another would add a new roadway and a bridge connecting to Highway 51 near Frayser.

Once planners identify the top three locations, they will conduct environmental impact studies on each. A final location will be chosen by 2015, but Chipman said it’s too early to predict when construction will be completed.

Besides public input on location, Chipman said planners are also seeking input on whether to include rail or bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

“We know bike lanes and pedestrian walkways could be one of the things the stakeholders show a need for,” Chipman said. “That’s why it’s important to get input from certain users so we make the best choices for the area.”

Two more public meetings are left in the six-meeting series: Memphis Area Transit Authority board room (545 S. Main) on Monday, April 4th, and Bishop Byrne High School (1475 E. Shelby Dr.) on Tuesday, April 5th. Both drop-in style meetings run from 4 to 7 p.m.

Categories
News The Fly-By

What They Said

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

About “Moving Forward” and the demolition of Union Avenue Methodist Church:

“If CVS had agreed to replace the building with something new that was of similar architectural value, rather than another cheap-looking big box-style store, perhaps they wouldn’t have had so many protests. Those folks weren’t protesting ‘another corporate entity’ in Midtown.” — Packrat

About “Apple Pulls Anti-Gay iPhone App”:

“Darn you, Cupertino! I was just two mouse clicks away from getting my ‘gun-loving, rightwing Republican heterosexual’ certificate when you pulled the plug! How can I hope to join the GOP, NRA, Tea Party, or KKK without that diploma?”

— GrannyDawletter

About “Commissioner [James] Harvey’s Hat in Mayoral Ring,” where he’ll run against A C Wharton:

“This will be about as competitive as Cohen v. Bergmann.” — Steve Ross

About “Lake of Trash” and the recent cleanup of McKellar Lake:

“You should come over to my house Sunday for a scenic canoe tour of North Memphis via the flooded Cypress Creek. It’s not as bad as McKellar but makes a statement about litter in our community. It’s very nice otherwise since we got them to seal up all the leaking poo pipes. We even got tail-slapped by a beaver yesterday.” — sbanbury

Comment of the Week: About “Hot Stuff” and the wrestling documentary

Memphis Heat:

“It’s time to think about a statue of Sputnik Monroe outside the Cannon Center where Ellis Auditorium once stood.” — LeftWingCracker

To share your thoughts, comments, concerns, and — maybe — get published, visit memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Thrift Store Comedians

After selling out one of the two larger rooms at Studio on the Square last year, the traveling Found Footage Festival is returning to town this week at a new venue: Young Avenue Deli.

The Found Footage Festival is the brainchild of Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, two childhood friends, now in their mid-thirties, who were raised on VHS and have done for garage-sale and thrift-store video refuse what cult TV series Mystery Science Theater once did for drive-in era “B” movies: Mine it for unintentional comedy and communal, smart-ass good fun.

For half a decade, Prueher and Pickett — comedy professionals who have worked for outlets such as The Onion and The Late Show With David Letterman — have been compiling obscure footage found on used videotapes and DVDs into quick-moving film programs that they take around the country, using two rules: In this Internet era, they only use material found on a physical format (no YouTube) and the comedic effect they’re pursuing must be accidental.

In past years, this material has taken the form of regional television commercials, exercise videos, training and instructional videos, short-lived Saturday morning cartoons, and — a recurring category — “celebrity bullshit.”

Prueher and Pickett return to Memphis as part of a 75-city tour spanning the U.S., Canada, and — later this summer and for the first time — the United Kingdom.

“It keeps getting bigger,” Prueher says from New Orleans, one of the cities he and Pickett are visiting for the first time on this tour. “Last year, we did 60 stops. It’s always fun when we do a city for the first time.”

Prueher and Pickett have developed a self-renewing process, hunting for videos at each tour stop and then taking a break between tours to mine their new acquisitions for material for the next program. And new cities equal fertile ground for tape hunting.

Last year, the duo had some extra time on their first Memphis stop and spent most of it at the AmVets Thrift Center on Elvis Presley Boulevard.

“We stopped in there and spent most of the day,” Prueher says. “They had an incredible number of tapes. We had to take two boxes full of stuff home. And we’re featuring a lot of it.”

Much of the duo’s Memphis material has been compiled in a “VHS slide show segment,” a bit Prueher and Pickett have done on past programs in which the packaging of their finds is highlighted rather than the content of the tapes. ”Sometimes the video itself doesn’t live up to the cover,” Prueher says. “But we found a lot of tapes [in Memphis] where people were recording stuff and labeling the tapes. And there are some hilarious misspellings and some interesting pensmanship. Memphis is well-represented. I think we still have some stuff [from Memphis last year] that we haven’t even watched yet.”

In addition to the Memphis-located material, this year’s program — roughly 90 minutes — draws from some 70 to 80 videos.

“There are 12 different self-hypnosis videos — how to be better at making love, how to quit smoking, how to hypnotize yourself into being a better bowler,” Prueher says. “This was a trend in the ’80s that we didn’t know existed.”

There’s also an instructional video Prueher found in Atlantic City about how to be a ventriloquist and a bizarre video called “Rent-a-Friend.”

“We were starting to feel like we were seeing a lot of the same videos,” Prueher says. “But then on the Chicago stop we found this tape that was still shrinkwrapped. When we put it in it was this guy on screen — “Sam” — offering to be your friend and trying to have a conversation with you. He asks you questions and pauses for you to answer. It starts off serious, but he begins to run out of things to talk about and starts opening up with things he probably shouldn’t be talking about. And you start to watch him unravel.”

This was apparently part of an — aborted? — series, with other installments like “Rent-a-Grandma” advertised on the back.

“Just when you think there’s nothing new, you find something to reinvigorate yourself,” Prueher says with a laugh.

In the recurring celebrity video section of this year’s program, Prueher’s favorite is “Linda Blair’s How to Get Revenge,” in which The Exorcist actress — at this point an adult — offers some titular tips.

“You hear the title and you think they’re trying to be cute,” Prueher says, “but the stuff she suggests is too real and often illegal. Slashing tires. Putting a water hose in someone’s home mail slot.”

In addition to the Found Footage program, Prueher and Pickett are traveling with an opening act this year: a 25th anniversary screening of the cult-classic short-form documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot, which surveys the crowd before a 1986 Judas Priest concert.

“It’s an amazing time capsule. It has the same aesthetic and comes from the same pre-Internet trading tradition that we were a part of,” Prueher says. “I remember getting a sixth-generation version in the ’90s. We became friends with the two guys who shot it way back when, and they let us use the original tape, so we’re showing it on a pristine transfer.”

As for the new venue this year, it’s mostly a product of timing. Last year, Prueher and Pickett hit Memphis for a Wednesday night screening. This year, they’ll be here on Saturday, which was a tougher night to secure at Studio on the Square. The change sent them to screening sponsor Indie Memphis for a new venue.

“We remembered the screenings we used to do at the Powerhouse and how fun they were,” says Indie Memphis director Erik Jambor. “Young Avenue Deli seemed like a perfect fit for this. It’s as much a live comedy show as a film screening.”

Prueher says that most of the duo’s screenings take place in traditional movie theaters, but about a third of their events have taken place in rock clubs or other non-traditional film venues.

“Obviously at rock clubs they serve alcohol,” Prueher says. “People tend to like to drink at the show, and who can blame them?”

foundfootagefest.com

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Game 75 Notebook: Grizzlies 110, Warriors 91

With a win tonight, the Grizzlies secured their first winning season since 2005-2006 and moved a big step closer to clinching a playoff spot. I’m breaking up the usual post-game template with a few thoughts on the night’s action:

“It Was a Tale of Two Halves”: If any Grizzlies game this season warranted that deliciously awful hoops-writer cliché, this may have been it.

The Grizzlies and their fans were both pretty listless in the first half — not swarming defensively and thus not generating turnovers and getting in transition. The Grizzlies were also not hitting the offensive boards and not asserting their inside game enough against a Warriors team without inside defenders to combat Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol.

The Grizzlies coasted through the first quarter, content with a single-digit lead, but then Warriors reserve Vladimir Radmanovic came off the bench slinging three-pointers, scoring 11 points in a five-minute stretch to get the Warriors a two-point lead that they pushed to 53-48 at the end of the second quarter. Lionel Hollins watched his team incredulously from the sideline.

Tony Allen Happened: When the Warriors scored the first five points of the third quarter to take a 10-point lead, things were looking bad for the Grizzlies. But then, as has been the case in many games this season, Tony Allen happened.

Allen_shirt.jpg