Month: October 2015

Categories
News The Fly-By

Choose901 Recruits New Yorkers For Memphis Jobs

Choose901, the city’s proverbial cheerleading group run by City Leadership, took a trip to the Big Apple this week to try and convince New Yorkers to trade the 212 for the 901.

The organization is partnering with the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce to help recruit New Yorkers to fill open positions at Shelby Farms Park, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, Muddy’s Bake Shop, International Paper, the Memphis Grizzlies, and other companies with openings.

The organization’s trip to New York also focused on recruiting college talent as they visited Columbia University, King’s College, City College, and New York University —Alexandra Pusateri

Luke Pruett and wife April in New York

Flyer: Why New York?

Pruett: We’re advocating for Memphis. We believe that Memphis is a premier destination for millennials to enjoy and invest their lives in. That’s always been our goal: to tell Memphians about that and tell the whole world about that.

That plays out in a couple of campaigns we run other than just Choose901, one being Teach901, which is recruiting urban educators to Memphis along with other efforts; another being Serve901. It’s a way to serve the city and showcase opportunities to invest your life here.

We’re [here in New York] to network, meet with Memphians that now live and work here, and recruit Memphians back to the city, as well as show new people the opportunities that exist.

Some people might say that Memphians need those available jobs.

That’s our focus every day — to show off Memphis inside the city and outside the city. We want every single Memphian and folks outside to find the best economic opportunity in the city they can. That’s why our presence is so large with events and campaigns in the city. This is one of the many recruiting efforts we’ve done both inside and outside the city. It really isn’t a departure; our founding mission from day one has been to advertise for the city of Memphis and opportunities here. We want to be a conduit of connection for every single opportunity to the people looking for it inside the city, no matter where they’re from. Our goal is to tell the stories here.

What other trips like these have you taken?

Teach901 went to Phoenix last month. We did a job fair in Chicago a few years ago, called the Choose901 Job Fair. I’d say we take about five to seven trips like these a year.

How’s the week going?

We’ve really been overwhelmed with how many people are excited about things going on in the city. We have an incredible opportunity to showcase the Memphis art scene, which you know has so many amazing artists. Wednesday night, we’re going to be celebrating the Grizzlies season at the Half Pint, which is kind of the Grizzlies bar [in New York City]. A lot of Grizzlies fans gather here to watch the games. Only a fourth of our staff is here [in New York], so the rest of our people are still back in the city doing what we always do.

The core things you need when you’re looking for a place to live are: Where do I live?; What do I do?; Where do I work?; and ultimately, how do I serve and invest in the city? We’re staying devoted to our mission. So much of what we do is attempting to lead through surprise, so you gotta stay tuned to know what’s coming next.

Categories
News News Feature

Memphis Noir: from Dames to Graceland.

By June 2013, Laureen Cantwell had lived in Memphis for a year — long enough to have fallen in love with Elvis (“I went to Graceland twice with the VIP pass, and I cried both times”), long enough to recognize the city’s selfdom, and long enough to notice a glaring omission on the part of Akashic Books Noir series.

“[They had] a Detroit Noir, Chicago, New Orleans. There was a Tel Aviv Noir. But no Memphis Noir. It was sort of surprising,” Cantwell says.

She found it no coincidence that she ran into the publishing company’s booth at an annual library conference that summer, so she emboldened herself to ask about the oversight.

The answer was simple enough.

“They told me they had not had the right proposal,” Cantwell says.

A business card exchange and a Labor Day later, the idea of producing an anthology recounting the Memphis experience through the noir lens was in the hands of team Akashic, and so began Cantwell’s journey of overseeing her first anthology.

Brooklyn-based Akashic Books was launched in 1997 by three musicians as an independent publishing company to “reverse the gentrification of the literary world.”

In 2004 the company released its first Noir book, Brooklyn Noir, 19 stories using death, revolvers, stalkers, and squatters to showcase the diversity and personality of the New York borough.

“In a sense they’re like a travel guide, perhaps in a creepy kind of way, and perhaps that will compel people to go and visit that place,” Cantwell says. “Akashic is very selective in their projects, and they really believe in the author or story or product they’re putting out.”

There are 72 Noir books, with 18 forthcoming, ranging from Tehran to Trinidad, and as of November 3rd, a Memphis edition will be added to the roster.

Cantwell started her process with a 2001 Flyer article that described the somewhat disjunctive writers’ scene in Memphis.

She contacted some of the writers, who put her in touch with other writers, and eventually she had 30 submissions on her hands.

Through her newfound connection with the River City writers’ sphere, she also came upon a coeditor — Leonard Gill.

“She called me out of the blue. When she proposed it to me, I thought, ‘Why not Memphis, indeed,'” Gill, longtime book columnist for the Flyer and Memphis magazine, says.

“He and I gelled very quickly. We seemed to have the same ideals and perspective on the project and what we wanted to produce,” Cantwell says.

After many dinners and coffees and discussions and possibly a little gnashing of teeth, the two settled on 15 stories. The Brooklyn offices had requested 14.

“We were hoping that they would agree that No. 15 was so good, they couldn’t produce the anthology without it,” Cantwell says.

Not only did Akashic include the 15th entry, they chose the publisher’s birthday to release it.

“That’s a high compliment,” Cantwell says.

Memphis Noir covers train cars and Beale Street, hoodoo and segregation, Nathan Bedford Forrest and, of course, Graceland, and even includes a graphic novella, the only one in the series.

“I didn’t know much about noir except for the movies I’d seen. I knew there had to be a dead body and a dame and a lot of drinking,” Richard Alley, who contributed “The Panama Limited,” says.

Veteran Noir contributor and writer Cary Holladay says she was delighted to participate in the project.

“Memphis literally has stories growing on trees. Every day, I hear about or read about or find myself involved in … stories that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, are not too strange to happen but are much too strange to believe,” Holladay says. “Memphis is quirky and feral. It should have its own entire series.”

Gill says readers will be as impressed as he was with the outcome.

“Memphis should be proud. The collection was beyond my expectations, and I couldn’t be happier with it,” Gill says.

A launch party will take place at Crosstown Art’s story booth, 438 N. Cleveland, on Tuesday, Nov. 3rd. Sponsored by the Booksellers at Laurelwood, it starts at

6 p.m. and includes a Q-and-A and signings with several of the writers.

For more information, visit akashicbooks.com.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Indie Memphis 2015: The Directors

“We serve two complementary groups of people in Memphis,” says Ryan Watt, executive director of Indie Memphis. “We serve the filmmakers and artists, to help their work get seen, and help with things like grants and workshops and panels and networking opportunities. We help artists from Memphis and beyond get their movies seen. On the other hand, we serve the audiences who are dying to see something different. I like superhero movies, too, but there’s only so much of that we can see.”

For 18 years, Indie Memphis has pursued those twin missions. What began with movies projected on a sheet in a downtown bar has evolved into one of the city’s premier cultural events. This year brings big changes to the festival, beginning with Watt, who took over as director earlier this year after the departure of Erik Jambor. Watt, a producer with seven features under his belt, was an Indie Memphis board member who volunteered to be the interim director after the January resignation of Jambor. In September, what was originally a temporary position became permanent. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I thought that would be it. But we started the search for executive director, and I got about a month into it, and I thought, ‘I’m really enjoying this.'”

This year’s festival expands to eight days, from November 3rd-10th, to allow audiences more opportunities to see movies that might have gotten lost in the shuffle in the former four-day format. “We kept the weekend, which is the anchor of the festival, and we added screenings before and after it,” Watt says. Friday through Sunday screenings, panels, parties, and events will take place at Circuit Playhouse and Studio on the Square in Overton square, while the rest of the festival will take place downtown in the Orpheum Theatre’s new Halloran Centre.

The festival takes place late in the film calendar, which means Indie Memphis can get unique films. “The Sundance and South by Southwest films have made the rounds and already have distribution. But we’re a month before the big Oscar push, so we get movies like Carol and Anomalisa and Brooklyn. Other festivals don’t get those,” Watt says.

One of the most buzzed-about films at the festival is Tangerine, director Sean Baker’s comedy that was shot entirely on an iPhone. “I think about that movie on a daily basis,” Watt says. “You think about the movies that change independent film, like Clerks or Pulp Fiction. Tangerine will be on that list.”

Director Whit Stillman

In addition to bringing the cutting edge of film to Memphis, the festival also celebrates classic cinema. The groundbreaking indie Metropolitan will get a 25th-anniversary screening, with director Whit Stillman on hand to answer audience questions and, on Saturday, conduct a screenwriting panel. For the centennial of Orson Welles’ birth, the festival is partnering with Rhodes College to screen his 1965 Shakespeare adaptation Chimes at Midnight, which the director considered to be his best film. “This is a big deal,” Watt says. “We’re showing a 35-mm print. Only a handful of copies exist in the world.”

With a new online ticketing system and a plan for expanded year-round programming, Watt wants to make sure Indie Memphis rounds out its second decade bringing even more big-deal events to the city.

Andrea Morales

Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson worked for four years on The Keepers

The Keepers

This year’s crop of local films is the strongest in recent memory. The festival opens with The Keepers, a documentary by Memphis directors Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson. The pair met at a dinner party hosted by photographer William Eggleston in 2011.

Larson is a survivor of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “One of my first films I was recognized for was, I did a super-D.I.Y. film where I videotaped everything while I was going through chemotherapy in the early 2000s.”

Andrea Morales

The idea for The Keepers came from Larson’s daily walk through Overton Park. “I was obsessed with the Zoo,” she says. “I wanted to go behind the scenes. I’d always wanted to make a real documentary. Joann said, ‘I do too!’ And that’s how it happened.”

Self Selvidge has produced and directed documentaries for 11 years. Her most recent work, The Art Academy, detailed the history of the Memphis College of Art. Her close collaboration with Larson was a first for her. “We’re both used to doing everything ourselves,” Self Selvidge says. “She and I actually think a lot alike. We have way more similarities than differences. We had lots of friction in certain areas and a lot of opinions. And it made the film stronger. I’ve always worked with really strong people and a strong crew. I didn’t go to film school. I’ve learned by doing it, and I learned from other people.”

Jamie Harmon

Carolyn Horton and Kofi the giraffe

Jamie Harmon

Fred Wagner, the big cat keeper

The pair shot more than 300 hours of footage during the four-year production. “The biggest thing we want Memphis to know about this movie is that they’re going to get unprecedented access behind the scenes at the Zoo. The whole point of making this movie was to answer documentaries that rely on sensationalism. It doesn’t matter if zoos are good or bad. What about the people who work there? What is their experience? Connecting to zoos through the eyes of the worker, it’s going to give you a perspective that you have never seen before,” Self Selvidge says.

Larson says the finished product ended up being far different from the film the directors thought they would be making. “When we went into it, we thought, ‘This is going to be such an interesting story, because we’re going to film people that love animals, but yet they have to take care of them in captivity. They’re going to be so conflicted. This will be a great story.’ But guess what? They’re not conflicted. They’re fine with it. And they should be. They’re totally zen.”

But for the Grace

But for the Grace

Emmanuel A. Amido came to Memphis at age 12 as a refugee from war-torn South Sudan. “The first four or five years are kind of a blur, because I didn’t know the language or understand the culture,” he says.

His interest in filmmaking began when his mother bought a digital camcorder. “During birthday parties and events, I always wanted to be the one holding the camera. During my junior year of high school, I took a media class. Our final project was to produce a little newspiece. I loved it. That was the first time I got to edit. That’s when I decided I was going to do this for a living.”

Amido’s films are shaped by his immigrant experiences in Memphis. “I’m very fascinated by American society. In such a short period of time, so much has happened. When you look at the world timeline, when America came into the world, it’s like nothing. But in that short period of time, it was established, developed, and surpassed nations that had been around since Moses. That’s fascinating to me, the idea of democracy, and rights, and privilege.”

His first film Orange Mound, Tennessee: America’s Community won the Soul of Southern Film award at 2013’s Indie Memphis. “It was going to be about the violence of Orange Mound, but when I started making it, it became something else,” he says. “I wanted to make something that the people of Orange Mound could celebrate. A lot of people I met were beat up and worn down from the struggle and the poverty. So I wanted to make something to lift them up.”

In But for the Grace, Amido explores questions of faith and race in contemporary America. “I started with Martin Luther King’s quote that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. I went in to look at some of the issues that keep churchgoing Americans segregated. I wanted to move along both socioeconomic and racial lines. But as the movie progressed, I discovered that race is still a very touchy subject for people to talk about in the church, on both the white side and the black side. So I focused more on the racial side.”

Amido’s unique perspective allows him to conduct frank discussions on race relations with people on both sides of the Sunday-morning divide. “America is not a perfect society, not by a long shot. But what I like about being here is that even though it’s imperfect, even though there’s a lot of inequality, somebody like me, who’s not even from here, can make a documentary calling people out on these issues. I’m not saying that after this movie comes out, blacks and whites are going to hug each other. But I’m able to do that, and there are people who will see it, and will think about it, who don’t think they have to defend a certain point of view. The majority of the world doesn’t have that, and Americans take it for granted.”

Girl in Woods

Girl in Woods

“We sort of made the movie twice,” says Memphis native Jeremy Benson about his psychological horror movie Girl in Woods.

After completing and selling his 2008 film Live Animals, he and his producing partner Mark Williams were trying to sell investors on a vampire film. “We were in a pitch meeting, and the investor said he liked the business plan, but he didn’t want to be attached to that kind of story,” he recalls. “I blurted out that I was working on a short story about a girl with some mental problems who gets lost in the Smoky Mountains. From that statement to about two months later, we had the money, but we didn’t have the script.”

Over the course of an 18-day shoot in East Tennessee, the crew, which included ace Memphis cinematographer Ryan Earl Parker, battled the elements. “We underestimated how hard it would be to shoot in the mountains. Out of the 18 days we were there, it rained nine of them. It looks great in the movie, but it really slows you down.”

Juliet Reeves London, who plays the lead character Grace, turned in a nuanced performance despite the harsh conditions.”Juliet was a trooper, having to shoot around snakes. She’s in 90 percent of the movie. She does a great job.”

But when Benson got the hard-won footage back to the editing room, he and editor Brian Elkins discovered their problems were only beginning. “We cut it, but there were big sections of the story that were not coming across like they should.”

So the crew convinced their investors to finance a series of reshoots that would add a backstory in flashbacks that was previously told in dialogue. “We went back and shot half the movie again,” Benson says. “Honestly, I’m glad we did it. I’m 10 times more proud of this cut than I was two years ago. It forced us to go from the in-town, D.I.Y.- style to getting a casting director, go through the unions, and get a breakdown, and do it the way we’re supposed to do it.”

The reshoots added Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Charisma Carpenter and Party of Five‘s Jeremy London to the cast. Girl in Woods is also the last film role by the late Memphis actor John Still, who was a fixture in Craig Brewer’s films. The finished film is dense and twisty, not relying on gore and jump-scares to build tension. “It’s a horror film, but it’s definitely pushing the genre in all sorts of different directions.”

Benson says the movie is a tribute to the power of persistence. He recalls asking experienced filmmakers for advice on how to improve after his first film. “And they always said ‘Just do it.’ We thought they were being sarcastic. But after doing it, we realized they were telling the truth. You just do it.”

Wind Blows

Syl Johnson: Any Way the Wind Blows

“Syl’s story really found me,” says director Rob Hatch-Miller. The New Yorker met the soul singer in 2009 while filming for a radio station’s website. “I didn’t know a lot of his music at the time. I knew his name, and I knew he had a reputation for being sampled a lot in the hip-hop world. But I didn’t know much beyond that. Seeing him interviewed that day, it was clear that he had a fascinating story about his career in music and that he was a fascinating character. He’s a super interesting guy: funny, quirky, great personality. The character is the most important part of deciding to do a documentary.”

Johnson is not as well known as Al Green or Marvin Gaye, but he had an astonishingly prolific career that spanned three decades. “He’s not someone who made one album and disappeared. The boxed set of his album that was nominated for a Grammy while we were filming is six LPs, and that doesn’t even cover half of his career. He did everything, from early 1960s, heavily blues-influenced R&B music, to super funky James Brown-style hard funk, to Hi Records-Memphis-style, to even doing some great disco-y stuff towards the end of his main recording career. His music went on to influence hip-hop in a major way, as much as James Brown or Al Green influenced hip-hop. Syl’s song ‘Different Strokes’ from 1967, recorded in Chicago for an independent record label, is one of the most sampled songs of all time.”

Johnson is a native of Holly Springs, Mississippi, and the film brought him back to the Memphis area. “We were going to these places in Memphis with Syl that he hadn’t been for years, seeing people whom he hadn’t seen in years,” Hatch-Miller says. “Hearing these stories that we had only had glimpses of previously, it was a really exciting time filming, and probably the most fun we had shooting. You can see it in the scene when he shows up at Hi Records where all of the stuff was recorded with Willie Mitchell and Al Green and Syl and Otis Clay and O.V. Wright. It was a wonderful day. The audience walks in the door with him and meets the family of Willie Mitchell, and you really feel like you’re being taken back in time. It’s one of my favorite parts of the film.”

Orion: The Man Who Would Be King

Orion: The Man Who Would Be King

Twelve years ago, English director Jeanie Finlay was at a car boot sale — “You would call it a yard sale” — when she found an old vinyl record called Orion Reborn. “On the cover there was a man with a mask, his hands on his hips, and big hair. For a pound, you can’t go wrong! So I took it home and played it. It was confusing. It sounded like Elvis, but it was after Elvis died. It was on Sun Records. What’s going on here?”

She went on to forge a career as a documentary filmmaker, but she never forgot about the mystery of Orion. She struggled for years to get funding for Orion: The Man Who Would Be King and traveled to the States to shoot whenever she could. “I never gave up. I feel like filmmaking sometimes is a test of your own resilience,” she says.

She gathered together 80 hours, 5,000 images, countless hours of archival material, and 337 crowd-funders before winning backing from Creative England, Ffilm Cymru Wales, BBC Storyville and Broadway. “Once I had gotten all of those things in place, everyone else came on board. There’s no magic bullet when it comes to making films. I felt possessed by Orion’s story, and I knew that one day, in some way or another, I was going to make it into a film.”

Orion’s Elvis-esqe appearance and singing style was cooked up by Sun Records, at that time owned by Shelby Singleton, and was the origin of the persistent myth that Elvis faked his death. “People just want it to be true. Every time there’s something people want to be true, those are the stories that go viral.”

Finlay says Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, which closes Indie Memphis, is, like all her films, “about what music means to people. It’s a different take on the things that were going on in the wake of Elvis’ death. Elvis is not actually in the film, but he casts sort of a long shadow over it. It’s funny, it’s moving, and it’s surprising.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Evergreen Residents Plan Improvements For Williamson Park

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Williamson Park, an elongated 4.5 acres of greenspace with few amenities, is the latest slice of Memphis slated for an upgrade.

It’s a quiet neighborhood park tucked between Williamson and North Willett in the Evergreen Historic District, hidden from major Midtown arteries. It’s a city-owned park, but the residents of Evergreen, rather than the city, have been spearheading the park’s revitalization.

Currently, the park has a small playground and a large, empty grassy area. The neighbors want to see additional trees, playground improvements, and picnic tables.

Bianca Phillips

“Youth soccer teams practice there. Dog owners congregate every evening, and our kids play on the playground. We even hunt Easter eggs and host picnics there,” said Bethany Spiller, an Evergreen resident. “The park fosters relationships among people, and anything [we] can do to make it more enjoyable and safe, the stronger our Midtown community becomes.”

Sarah Newstok, a special projects coordinator for Livable Memphis, is excited about the possibility of using this project as a blueprint for communities across Memphis that want to revitalize their own neighborhood greenspaces.

“We want to create a how-to guide,” Newstok said. “We want this to be a pilot for other projects, so that other neighborhoods that might not have the same resources can follow these steps.”

Newstok said that it makes more sense to tackle greenspace improvements as a whole plan, rather than piecemeal. The partnership that formed between Evergreen residents and community space planners “gave us an opportunity to see what a public/private partnership would really look like.”

Livable Memphis and the crowd-funding website ioby (which stands for “in our backyards”) partnered with Evergreen residents to implement upgrades to the park.

With help from the Hyde Family Foundations, the planning project for Williamson Park was funded in less than 24 hours after it was announced through Livable Memphis. The planning process was led by landscape architects at Ritchie Smith Associates.

Some of the Hyde funds will also cover the cost of planting trees. Newstok is hopeful that some of the funds for other improvements will come from the city.

Tentative plans for the park were unveiled during Livable Memphis’ annual Summit for Neighborhood Leaders, which took place this past Saturday.

The presentation of the Williamson Park Mini-Master Plan was but one segment of the summit. The larger focus — “Engaging in Your Parks and Green Spaces in Memphis” — drew residents from all over the city who have a similar desire to create community spaces in their own neighborhoods.

Janet Hooks, the city’s director of Parks and Neighborhoods, was encouraged by the support for the Williamson Park project and noted that small projects could be a watershed moment for neighborhoods.

“If you see a park that’s run-down, the mindset is that the people living in the area don’t care or are not involved,” said Hooks, adding that, “Private ownership has a domino-effect on a neighborhood. When people are engaged, that suggests to me that we’re on the right track.”

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Giving ‘Em Hill

CREDIT: Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Congratulations, Tea Party. You set out to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama and ended up destroying the Republican party.

It’s not that they don’t deserve it. Pick your idiom: “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas;” “Reap what you sow;” “Chickens coming home to roost.” They’re all appropriate descriptions of what happens when a radical fringe takes over an organization that first gave them succor. In this case, the “Freedom Caucus,” the far-right wing of the GOP, made public fools of themselves twice in one week: first, by not being able to choose a leader of their own party; and second, with their grotesque performance at the so-called House Select Committee on Benghazi. The current chaos in the Republican party could be the parting practical joke by former speaker John Boehner, who couldn’t abide the Tea Party in the first place. He appointed the seven obscure, back-bench, malevolent mad dogs to the committee and sent them off to do battle with Hillary Clinton. Big mistake.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy

Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy had been whipping the steeds for months in anticipation of their much-publicized and nationally televised showdown with Hillary Clinton, but only the horses’ asses showed up.

I’m sorry. I know better than to criticize someone’s looks. That’s Trump’s bailiwick. But doesn’t Trey Gowdy look like someone squeezed his head in a vise? The GOP’s feral beasts tore into Secretary Clinton for 11 hours, unprecedented in American history. MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle said if the Benghazi committee had “been in charge of the Watergate hearing, Richard Nixon would have finished his term.”

Speaking of Nixon, Trey Gowdy has captured the crown as the sweatiest politician to appear on television since, well, Nixon. I was hoping an aide would hand him a towel. The attacks on Clinton were so vicious, that this was the first Congressional hearing with a cut man. The seven Republicans took turns releasing their unbridled rage at Clinton and President Obama — or anyone in his administration. Their tormented hysteria, compared to Hillary’s unflappable demeanor, made the secretary look absolutely presidential. This Republican display of “Clinton psychosis” may well have elected her president. Nice one, Boehner.

Although the perpetually damp Gowdy insisted the hearing was not about Hillary, but gathering the facts about Benghazi, nothing new emerged from the previous eight congressional investigations. All along, Clinton has admitted that there was a well-documented security breach and has accepted responsibility for the tragedy. One must only Google “Khobar Towers” to find the moral equivalency. Still, one by one, the frothing mini-mob had to get their licks in and hope for that cable-news moment when they force Hillary to confess to the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens. After all, she had previously murdered Vince Foster.

The “Freedom Caucus” acted like a bunch of frustrated prosecutors grilling a witness. All that was missing from the 11-hour harangue was the cigar smoke and a naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. I think they forgot that Clinton is a lawyer too. Like Whitewater led to Lewinsky, Benghazi led to emails. You and I both know that nobody emails anymore. The secretary could be reached by secure cable or phone at any time. This 17-month, $4.2 million inquisition was a forum to hurt Hillary Clinton politically and nothing else. Even Gowdy said the hearing produced no new information. Former Nixon aide John Dean said, “It’s really embarrassing what the Republicans have done here.”

In the end, the Benghazi hearings turned out to be a very long commercial for the Clinton campaign. No one likes to see a bunch of angry men screaming at a woman. In the final grueling hour, Hillary began to cough. I thought we were seeing a recreation of the filibuster scene from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. At long last, Representative Elijah Cummings demanded the hearings come to a close saying, “This is not what America’s about. We’re better than that.”

No, we’re not. The butt-scratchers still think Hillary is part of some shadow conspiracy to overturn the Constitution, confiscate their guns, and make everyone wear black pajamas. I may have to recalibrate my opinion of Hillary. After her debate performance, and now her escaping from that right-wing coven of ghouls unscathed, I think we should start getting used to the phrase “Madame President.” Alabama Congresswoman Martha Roby, after being told that Clinton returned to her Washington home following the Benghazi attacks asked, “Were you alone (at home)?” “I was alone,” Clinton said. “The whole night?” asked the inquisitor. “Well, yes, the whole night,” Clinton laughed, along with all the spectators, proving Hillary would have to get caught with a teenage intern for anything to stop her now.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Horrortober: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014; dir. Ana Lily Amirpour)—Like zombies, vampires are built to last. They’re scary, they’re sexy, and they’re walking metaphors for everything from urban ennui to drug addiction, bottomless greed to everlasting love. They also assimilate into other cultures with supernatural ease; the first time I heard about Amirpour’s self-described “Iranian Vampire Spaghetti Western,” my first thought was “What took her so long?” Then I remembered some of Iranian cinema’s rules and restrictions—like the one that says actresses can’t be shown onscreen unless their hair is covered—and started wondering how anyone who lived there could tell a meaningful vampire story without showing the requisite orgasmic neck biting or arterial sprays. Besides, hadn’t Michael Almeryda already done something similar with 1994’s Nadja?

Still, I thought there might be something exciting about watching a skillful, creepy contemporary feminist horror parable that had to play by the rules of the American cinema during its Hays Code heyday. However, Girl begins with a surprising and shocking dose of sex and gore that upended everything I thought I knew about Iran and the movies. That is, until I discovered that the English-born Amirpour used Taft, California as a geographic stand-in for Iran. Turns out she didn’t need to worry about censorship after all.

The locational ambiguity of the fictional Bad City, Iran, fits Amirpour’s slow, lovely-to-look-at feature debut. Its nodded-out vibe lets it slowly float into an as-yet-undiscovered fictional space somewhere between the abandoned Detroit theaters of Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive and the chilly Scandinavian hovels of Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In. Highly aestheticized yet highly scuzzy—the story takes place in one of those broken cities where people dump corpses in open pits—Girl’s secret weapon is its sense of resigned playfulness, which wouldn’t be out of place in an old Peanuts cartoon. It may not be It Follows or The Babadook, but like its unforgettable image of an undead girl in a chador cruising down a dimly lit street on a skateboard, it’s an encouraging sign of life and fresh new blood.

Grade: B+

Horrortober: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Layup Line, Game 1: Grizzlies vs. Cavaliers

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Larry Kuzniewski

Will Jeff Green look comfortable in the starting unit tonight?

The Grizzlies’ 2015-16 regular season starts tonight, and it starts at home against last year’s NBA finalists from the Eastern Conference, the Cleveland Cavaliers, who lost to the Bulls in Chicago last night in front of the President and the rest of the nation when Pau Gasol blocked LeBron James’ potential game-tying layup in a decisive manner:


One assumes LeBron won’t be happy about the way that one ended, but Cleveland rolls into town as a team that has certainly not reached their ultimate form yet: first off, Kyrie Irving won’t be back for months; Kevin Love is still playing his way into form after the shoulder injury that knocked him out of last year’s playoffs; Tristan Thompson wasn’t even back on the team until last week. They’re not where they will be, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good.

Things I’ll be paying attention to tonight:

  • Safe to assume Jeff Green will be the starting small forward. He probably won’t be able to guard LeBron—not even Tony “Give Kevin Durant Nightmares” Allen can do that consistently—but it’s more important that he look good tonight than that he drop 35 points or hold LeBron to 10. If Green looks consistent in the flow of the offense, and looks like he’s developing chemistry with the starting unit, I’ll probably be satisfied with his performance.
  • Zach Randolph used to demolish Kevin Love every chance he got, but the past two or three seasons those tables have turned and Love is a very difficult matchup for him. Who’s going to guard Love tonight? Will it work?
  • What will the Cavs do for rest, since they played last night? A road SEGABABA against a Western Conference team in November is probably one of the least important games on the Cavs schedule, so… who will play?
  • Bench rotations. The Grizzlies still have a lot to figure out here, even given the shortened rotation of the last two preseason games. I think what we see tonight will be more of a first draft than perhaps even the coach thinks it is.
  • Does Vince Carter look alive?

The season is here! The season is finally here!

Categories
Blurb Books

Wailing Wall

It isn’t the sort of book I’d normally read. I have a lot of books coming across my desk and I buy more books than I have shelving for at home. I get even more press releases emailed to me from publishers and publicists trying to entice me into pleading for a review copy of their latest offerings. The vast majority of those fall in the genre of “self-help” or someone telling a story of suffering and redemption and how you, too, might be redeemed if you only follow these 800 simple steps. No thank you. I’m a very slow reader, the father of four kids, am working to write my own novel, have a full-time job, and, therefore, am very choosey about the time I have to read.

So when I received a copy of Wailing Wall: A Mother’s Memoir by Deedra Climer in the mail yesterday, I was ready to resign it to that shelf of redemption that I would never go back to. But I read the first page. And then I read the second. And then I finished the book a couple of hours later.

At only 86 pages, it is slim enough even for me to have finished in one sitting, but its brevity doesn’t take away from its punch — this is a firecracker of a book filled with raw emotion.

Climer grew up in North Memphis to a family besotted by drugs and neglect. The daughter of a teenage mother, she would go on to become an unwed, teenage mother as well. But Climer rose above that, eventually getting married (though it ends in divorce), working to support her children, and learning along the way that there is more to life than the fragile web of abuse she grew up in. Tragedy strikes when her son Joshua is thrown from his motorcycle and killed at the age of 23. By this time, Climer is living in Michigan, making a new life with a new husband on an organic farm the couple owns. The book is the tale of her coming home, coming back into the fold of an extended family she’d loved and left, and coming to terms with the death of her only son (she has four daughters as well). 

Climer’s storytelling is economical and well-paced as she takes the reader from the past to the present day. It is a heartbreaking tale that searches for redemption, a search that we get the sense is ongoing. It’s also the story of family — those we’re born into and those we choose — and the unconditional love we call upon in our darkest moments.

Wailing Wall is published through Inkshares, a process I wasn’t familiar with. Explaining in the back of the book that they aim to “democratize publishing by having readers select the books we publish,” the house has taken up the crowd-funding torch already being carried by independent filmmakers and musicians to have their visions brought to the screen and airwaves. And why not? Without such a vehicle, we may not hear stories like Climer’s, which is all of our stories whether we’ve lost someone dear or not.   

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Three Thoughts on Tiger Football

• The 2014 Tigers broke a 10-year-old program record by scoring 471 points for the season. (They averaged 36.2 points over 13 games.) This year’s Memphis offense is making last year’s look like merely a warm-up act. Through seven games, the Tigers have scored 342 points, an average of 48.8 per game. Should that average hold, they’ll break the season scoring record in the Houston game, their tenth of the season. The Tigers will almost certainly become the first team in U of M history to reach the 500-point plateau, especially considering they could play as many as 14 games (counting a bowl game and a possible appearance in the first American Athletic Conference championship game). Need more perspective on how far Justin Fuente has brought this program in his four years on the sideline? The 2011 Tigers needed five games to score their 66th point of the season, a total Memphis put up in 60 minutes in Tulsa last Friday night.

• I bring this up every season, and will continue to do so until the university and Liberty Bowl management get it right. Where are the names of honored Tigers at the Liberty Bowl? The U of M has retired the jersey of six former players: John Bramlett, Isaac Bruce, Dave Casinelli, Charles Greenhill, Harry Schuh, and DeAngelo Williams. But you’d never know on game day at the Liberty Bowl. There’s a handsome display highlighting these Tiger greats at the team’s training facility on the south campus. There needs to be at least as much — visible to the public — when the Tigers are playing in front of their adoring fans. (More and more of whom have become “adoring” this season.) It can be temporary: a banner, a flag, or a group of banners and flags. But these honorees need to be brought out of hiding by the program that chose to honor them. How about in time for Senior Day (Thanksgiving weekend) this season?

• The Tigers’ greatest weakness hasn’t hurt them this season. At least not yet. Memphis ranks dead last in the AAC in pass defense, allowing 342.1 yards per game through the air. But they’ve beaten the league’s top two passing teams not named Memphis (Tulsa and Cincinnati). We knew entering the season the Tigers would have some growing pains on defense, having lost eight starters from the 2014 unit. Pressure on opposing quarterbacks has been sporadic, though best, it seems, in tight games late, like the wins over Bowling Green and Cincinnati. The secondary has struggled and given up some big plays (see last week’s Hail Mary before halftime in Tulsa), but rookies like Chris Morley and Arthur Maulet have also come up with a pass-breakup here, an interception there to help secure victories. Tulane shouldn’t be much of a test this Saturday, and Navy will aim to beat the Tigers the same way they do any opponent: on the ground. Houston is the highest-ranked passing team left on the Tiger schedule (269.6 yards per game, currently fifth in the AAC). It will be interesting to see if the Memphis defense can do some late-season growing, display the week-to-week improvement Fuente craves and preaches. With the Tiger offense roaring, there’s room for the Memphis defense to bend. But how much?

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Horrortober: Silence Of The Lambs (1991)

Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in Silence Of The Lambs

FILM TITLE: Silence of the Lambs (1991)

ELAPSED TIME: 100%

WHY DID I STOP WATCHING? Hannibal has an old friend for dinner.

I usually make a policy of not reading reviews of movies before I write my own, but after finishing (that’s right — I finished it. All of it.) Silence of the Lambs last night, I went on a minor googling tear about the movie’s creation and initial reception. Because as soon as you see a movie as good as Silence of the Lambs, the next thought is necessarily, “How the fuck did they do that?”

I found a Roger Ebert review, penned in 2001 following the release of Silence of the Lambs’ underwhelming follow-up, Hannibal. Ebert writes that though Silence of the Lambs is not slasher-film disturbing, it has several genuinely frightening moments: Clarice’s first meeting with the eerily still Hannibal, the Kafka-esque removal of the moth from a victim’s throat, the elevator scene after Hannibal escapes, the back-and-forth cuts between Buffalo Bill’s real house and the false one, and the extended sequence in Bill’s basement at the end. Ebert’s point is that these moments aren’t just gross or suspenseful, but psychologically unsettling in a way that makes them timeless. Because they take place within an airtight character drama, they feel necessary, rather than excessive.

Silence Of The Lambs would be a character drama, except this happens.

As a first-time viewer and someone with little-to-no horror watching experience, I have to say that Silence of the Lambs was revelatory for me. Imagine if you thought you hated comedy but the only comedy you’d ever seen was Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser. You’d probably think comedy sucked, right? But then someone showed you Airplane! You’d realize you were wrong. I thought horror sucked because I’d never actually seen a horror movie before Horrortober, and of the handful of very good movies I’ve watched, Silence of the Lambs is the one that has felt the most worth it. The element of fear is engaging, not gratuitous, because it is presented a part of that old question: what, exactly, is evil?

Jodi Foster as Clarice Starling

I think the movie’s greatest accomplishment is that, despite the grandiosity of its subject matter, it manages to feel understated the whole way through. The scariest moment in the final sequence, when Clarice confronts Buffalo Bill, is not the scene where she sees his skin suits, but the scene where he contorts his face and asks of Clarice, faking ignorance of a previous victim, “Was she a very fat person?” It is scary because Ted Levine, as Buffalo Bill, perfectly captures the hairs-breadth difference between how that question would be posed by an innocent person, and by someone fucking crazy. It is way more unsettling than the half-decomposed body in the bathtub that we run into moments later.

Ted Lavine as Buffalo Bill, animal lover.

So, readers, I think I get it now. It is possible to make a great horror film if the point is not blood and guts, but if blood and guts are a necessary byproduct of a truly frightening inquiry of human darkness. Of course, it also helps if you have Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster leading your movie. But to make horror into art, you mostly just need to take Hannibal Lecter’s advice: “Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?” 

Horrortober: Silence Of The Lambs (1991)