Month: August 2018

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

It’s High Time Larry Finch was Immortalized in Bronze.

The year 2017 will forever be a significant year in Memphis history for a pair of statues that came down. Let’s make 2018 (or at least 2019) a significant year for a statue we erect.

I’ve been campaigning for years now to see Larry Finch in bronze, a larger-than-life Memphian we lost too soon. (Finch died in 2011 at age 60 after being confined to a wheelchair for almost a decade following a stroke.) After years of uncomfortable and divisive debate about statues that represent a form of history to some and racial oppression to most, let’s make Memphis better by saluting one of this city’s great unifiers with the ultimate, perpetual tribute.

Larry Finch’s credentials for such an honor? After starring at Melrose High School, Finch chose to play basketball for his hometown college, then known as Memphis State University. This was not a blue-chip recruit choosing to join a winner. Memphis State finished the 1968-69 season (Finch’s senior year at Melrose) 6-19, the previous season 8-17. But Finch and his Melrose running mate, Ronnie Robinson, felt they could transform a program. And with the arrival of coach Gene Bartow for Finch’s sophomore season — his first playing for the varsity, as freshmen were not then eligible to play — a program was indeed transformed.

Larry Finch

Having gone 6-20 without Finch in 1969-70, the Tigers finished 18-8 in 1970-71, made the NIT with a 21-7 record in 1971-72, then secured the status of legends by reaching the 1973 NCAA championship game. Finch finished his playing career with a school-record of 1,869 points. The only three men currently above him on the Tiger chart needed four years to pass Finch’s total. His career scoring average of 22.3 points per game remains a Memphis record, unlikely ever to be broken.

Finch was an assistant coach for the next Tiger team to reach the Final Four (1984-85), then coached his alma mater for 11 years, guiding the likes of Elliot Perry, Penny Hardaway, and Lorenzen Wright. He’s one of only two men to win 200 games at the Tiger helm and fell one victory short of a third Final Four in 1992.

Those are Finch’s credentials as a basketball player and coach. But he deserves a statue as much for the when of his life as the what. Finch had just completed his junior season in high school when Martin Luther King was killed at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968. The ensuing years were ugly, divisive, and painful, TIME magazine going so far as to label Memphis “a decaying Mississippi River town.” Integration efforts felt forced, perhaps because they were. School busing proved to be a disastrous experiment.

Amid all the social discomfort, Larry Finch thrived. And a town without a major-league sports franchise found a team around which to rally, as one. Finch was as Memphis as the Mississippi River, and the life he brought this region is precisely the opposite of decaying.

How do we get Finch’s statue built? And where does it go? The plaza at FedExForum would be a great spot, though I’ve heard nonsensical protests: “Finch never played for the Grizzlies. He never played in FedExForum.” A statue of Cool Papa Bell stands today in front of Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and Bell never played in the major leagues, let alone for the Cardinals. Might the Grizzlies step up and spearhead this movement? They’d sell more tickets, not fewer, with a statue of Larry Finch in the background of fans’ pictures. (If not the FedExForum plaza, put the statue in front of the new Laurie-Walton Family Basketball Center, the palatial training facility for the program on the Park Avenue campus.)

As for how . . . contact your favorite Memphis booster. This remains a small town. Anyone remotely close to the Tiger program knows a booster with deep pockets. Surely enough could be collected to pay the right sculptor to bring Larry Finch (and his magnificent jump shot) to life once more. The handsome statue of blues legend Bobby “Blue” Bland that now stands on Main Street cost upwards of $50,000. This can be done. And it should be done. Memphis has cleared itself of imagery that divided for decades. Let’s create an image that will unify and inspire for decades to come.

Frank Murtaugh is managing editor of Memphis magazine.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Home Spirits and Vintage Memories

Last weekend, a friend and I made the 420-mile drive to Gulf Shores, Alabama. We both wanted to swim, bask in some sunshine, and check out from reality for a few days, but the main reason for the trip was to visit my mother, who lives a few miles from the beach on the Bon Secour River. The weekend was full of surprises — my dog managed to lock himself in the workshop next to the garage, and on the way home, we blew a tire while driving at 70 mph — but most of the time, we relaxed regardless.

I had my first drink — a vodka and tonic — when we arrived late Thursday night, after a somewhat white-knuckled drive over the Mobile Bayway. On Friday, I hit the vodka bottle once again, immediately after the locksmith sprung the dog free for a $75 fee. Saturday night, we drank white wine on the back porch while comparing sunburns and waiting for the barbecue shrimp to come out of the oven. Sunday, I longed for a cocktail while waiting for the AAA representative to rescue us on the side of the highway outside Meridian, Mississippi, but as the driver of said vehicle, it would’ve been irresponsible to drink.

Otherwise, we enjoyed penny drinks — a Tequila Sunrise apiece for me and my friend Jenny, and a Cosmopolitan for my mom — at Ginny Lane, one of our favorite restaurants at the Wharf.

Beach traffic was a nightmare, so we skipped the blackberry mojitos at one of my favorite restaurants, the Gulf in Orange Beach. Likewise for the margarita menu at Lulu’s. We discussed heading to the legendary Flora-Bama Lounge in Perdido Key for a round of Bushwackers, but the situation with the locksmith derailed us. Too bad — my brain could’ve benefitted from the numbing power of the frozen Bacardi, Kahlua, and coconut milkshake after that drama.

Thankfully, my mother was generous with her home bar. She even sent me home with a few unopened bottles of booze that have sat, full, since they were purchased by my father over a a decade ago. Truthfully, they’re nothing too special — just a bottle of Christian Brothers brandy and a bottle of Tribuno vermouth — but they make me feel close to my dad, who died in December 2007.

My father loved to drink just about any kind of liquor, but alcoholism didn’t get him like it did others in our family; he was felled by Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma instead. He was a south-Louisiana-born airline pilot who frequently brought home beers and bottles of booze from exotic places. In the 1970s and 1980s, I remember him downing cans of Stroh’s after a day of yard work, or cutting up bowls of fruit to make homemade batches of sangria. In fact, I’m sure that’s why he’d purchased the bottle of brandy I brought back to Memphis.

Sometime in the mid-1980s, my dad discovered Frangelico, the Italian liqueur that comes in a bottle shaped like a monk. For years, every time we had dinner guests, we’d end the evening with Frangelico Affogato served in my grandmother’s crystal. The dessert drink — a splash of Frangelico, a shot of coffee, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream — was my first taste of hazelnut, years before I enjoyed a spoonful of Nutella.

He loved discovering a liqueur or a wine and making it “his.” One of my proudest adult moments was when I uncorked a bottle of cheap Chilean wine, Concha y Toro’s Casillero del Diablo. We drank the peppery white wine with takeout barbecue from Cozy Corner, and my dad declared it so delicious that immediately after dinner, he drove to my neighborhood liquor store to purchase a case.

The Tribuno, I know, was a key ingredient in another of my dad’s favorite cocktails, the Manhattan. The whiskey-based drink isn’t one I particularly enjoy, but the tall green bottle, which retails for well under $10, now occupies prime real estate in my home bar. Purchased in the early aughts, it’s now aged to a particularly rare vintage never intended by the distiller. It’s too precious to drink, and so the screw top stays sealed tight.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Buses, Bikes, & Birds: Fixing Memphis’ Transportation Issues

CREDIT: Facebook

It’s hard to miss the new shiny toys popping up around town. The shareable Birds and bikes are cool, and I’m sure they earn the city a few extra bucks, while making Memphis more attractive to tourists. But the real question we should be asking is: Are the new shared-mobility options equitable and accessible for Memphians that live beyond the city’s core?

The answer is — for a few reasons — probably not. Let’s start with the bikes, which, apart from a few stations located near Orange Mound and South Memphis, are concentrated in Midtown and Downtown, like most of the city’s amenities.

This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if the mission of Explore Bike Share (EBS) was not to “implement a bike-sharing program for the benefit of the general public with access to as many Memphians as possible.”

You simply can’t reach as many Memphians as possible if you’re only operating in certain neighborhoods. Next year, 300 more bikes are slated to join the fleet, and it would only make sense that these are dispersed at stations in low-access neighborhoods where residents actually need transportation, if in fact, EBS is committed to being easy, accessible, and affordable.

Even if the bikes do extend into lower-income neighborhoods, a smartphone and credit card is required to rent one. What about the population of Memphians who don’t own those? There has to be a real effort to make these amenities truly accessible to not only the people who want them, but also to the ones who need them.

Facebook

Three little Birds

Especially in a city like Memphis, with a huge wealth gap, there should be intentionality by the people in charge to level the playing field. If the city is going to endorse new programs like bike sharing, then isn’t it also the city’s responsibility to ensure that people on both ends of the income scale can access and use them?

Adequate and reliable transportation for everyone is a key piece of equality in any city. Vehicle ownership is expensive, and to get from place to place, people without cars here are forced to rely on their own two feet and the city’s transit system, which clearly has room to grow. It is no secret that Memphis’ public transportation system is lacking in many ways and needs improvement.

If you compare the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) to systems in other cities, well, there really is no comparison. Buses in Memphis don’t come frequently enough for most people to depend on them to get to school, work, and other necessary places. People have to wait up to an hour for a bus that ideally should be coming every 15 minutes.

I will give it to Gary Rosenfeld, MATA’s CEO, though. Since he took on the role about a year ago, he’s been pushing and advocating for a better transit system. One of the main obstacles standing in the way of MATA being a high-quality system is its lack of funding. For MATA to operate at the level it needs to, an additional $35 million would be needed each year.

If MATA can secure that funding, frequency on 70 percent of its routes would increase, reducing the wait time for passengers and bringing more — and useful — frequent service in close proximity to 70,000 additional people. With additional funding, MATA could also increase the number of people with access to service by 5 percent and bring transportation service to about 100,000 jobs in the city.

Rosenfeld recently said that maximizing the effectiveness of all social initiatives and programs implemented to address poverty or unemployment in the city relies on the effectiveness of the transit system.

He’s right. Creating new jobs and opportunities here is a solid step forward, but at the same time, people have to be able to access these opportunities on a consistent basis. Most often, the people who are in need of these programs and jobs are also the ones who lack transportation.

As Rosenfeld also said, good transportation provides mobility, equality, and increases the quality of life in a community. Whether it be buses, Birds, or bikes, access to transportation must improve in order for all Memphians to be able to live to their fullest potential. That’s for their benefit — and for the benefit of the entire community.

Maya Smith is a Flyer staff writer.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

A visit to Josh Steiner’s restaurant garden.

Josh Steiner wears a chef’s jacket instead of overalls when he steps outside his restaurant, Strano! by Chef Josh, to gather produce for his culinary creations.

Steiner, 27, grows vegetables and herbs in a 50-foot-long stretch that runs along a building behind his restaurant on Perkins Extd. in East Memphis. “Broccoli, zucchini squash, peppers and tomatoes, eggplant, fennel,” he says. “And, of course, every herb: kale, rosemary, lavender.”

He also grows herbs in containers right outside his back door.

“We do this for every caprese and every margherita pizza. We literally go outside, pick it, wash it, chop it. It’s a really cool garden.”

His urban garden isn’t his only supplier of produce for the restaurant; Steiner also grows vegetables at his family’s one-acre garden in Germantown. He used to grow vegetables on a 30-by-30-foot plot in the backyard of his Midtown home, but he moved.

Steiner inherited his love of gardening from his dad, Dr. Mitchell Steiner. “My father is a gentleman farmer, if you will. When I say ‘gentleman farmer,’ I use that term because he doesn’t grow for other people. He’ll give people vegetables, but he grows vegetables and gardens for pleasure.

Josh Steiner picks fresh vegetables from the garden.

“This acre garden on our farm in Germantown, that’s where I learned how to garden. What was growing there was everything from zucchini to squash, melons, tomatoes, all kinds of peppers. So, every year, there was a garden. Springtime and summertime.”

Produce from that garden went to Russo’s New York Pizzeria, a restaurant operated by Josh’s uncle, Brett Steiner.

Josh remembers when he and his mom compared tomatoes from their garden and those from the grocery store. They’d examine “how shiny and perfect” the grocery store tomatoes were. “But try a homegrown tomato — an ugly one will blow out the flavor of the perfect one.”

When his father got away from gardening to concentrate on his businesses, Josh took over the garden, which had gotten overgrown. “The farm helpers and myself got the garden back up, and it’s been going ever since.”

His idea when he took over the garden was to grow hops for his homemade beer. “I wanted to grow hops, but hops take years to grow.”

Remnants of the hop plants, which haven’t yet produced, still remain, but, for the most part, they burned up and “got imbedded with the weeds.”

Josh opened his first restaurant, Strano! Italian Restaurant, in 2014 in Cooper-Young. “When we were building the restaurant, I was building the garden as well. My garden in Midtown and my garden in Germantown originally was for the restaurant. We grew eggplants, zucchini, squash, onions, melons, tomatoes, peppers — things that we use often in the restaurant.

“We always wanted to highlight the freshness of our garden, so we’d try not to do too much manipulation of the vegetables. When you see the fresh caprese salad, you could see the fresh tomatoes. And you could taste them.”

He even grows the watermelons for his gazpacho. “It’s a blend of bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, watermelon, cilantro, and basil. And we highlight that often. We let people know that we grew everything in it.”

In addition to providing his diners with vegetables and herbs, which, he can proudly say immediately arrive to the table right from the garden, Josh enjoys the satisfaction he gets from gardening. “It makes me feel that I’m not going to go hungry, if that makes sense. I always have that confidence I can go to sleep and wake up and everything’s going to be okay.” Strano! by Chef Josh, 518 Perkins Extd., 275-8986, stranobychefjosh.com

A visit to Josh Steiner’s restaurant garden.

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We Recommend We Recommend

The Big Lebowski at Malco Paradiso

“Sometimes there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there, and that’s The Dude.” — The Big Lebowski.

The Big Lebowski was not the movie for its time or place. This here story I’m about to unfold took place in 1998 — just about the time American movie fans were having a tragic love affair with Titanic. I only mention it because The Big Lebowski sank at the box office.

Coen Brothers associate Bill Robertson said it best in a 2008 interview with Rolling Stone. By following a perfectly austere, Academy Award-winner like Fargo with a gaudy bauble like Lebowski, the brothers were like, “opera stars who sang a perfect aria – and farted as they walked offstage.” Within five years of its underwhelming release, the Coen’s marriage of gritty L.A. noir (Raymond Chandler-style) and wordy screwball comedy (Preston Sturges-style) had become a generational touchstone. In 1998, it baffled audiences and split critics down the middle. TV critic Gene Siskel described The Big Lebowski as a “big disappointment.”

As Malco prepares for a 20th anniversary screening of this late-blooming landmark, we looked back into the movie archive to see what the Flyer thought about this once-divisive, now-beloved comedy about a man and his area rug. According to reviewer Susan Ellis, “The Big Lebowski possesses none of the dark undertones that flavored [the Coens’] last big hit, Fargo. Nor does it — despite all of its sundry characters and brief plot detours (such as the dream sequences) — try to do too much, as in The Hudsucker Proxy. Rather, this film harks back to Raising Arizona, another happily goofy kidnap caper … Laugh out loud funny.”

It was a good review. And thorough. And if it makes you want to see Dude, Donny, Maude, Walter, Jesus, Bunny, The Stranger, and a whole bunch of nihilists, the Malco Paradiso theater participates in TCM’s 20th Anniversary screening of The Big Lebowski Wednesday, August 8th.

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We Recommend We Recommend

“Female Form” at Jay Etkin Gallery

“Female Form,” an exhibit opening at Cooper-Young’s Jay Etkin Gallery, “explores the way the female body is glorified, fractured, obfuscated, multiplied, and rebuilt through the artist’s gaze.” It also announces the arrival of Awakened Space, an education center for young moms and moms-to-be, that Etkin’s daughter Zoe is opening inside the gallery.

After living in Los Angeles for 8 years, younger Etkin decided to return to Memphis shortly after becoming a mom herself. In L.A. she’d worked as a doula, helping women have safe, meaningful birthing experiences. She wanted to continue that same kind of work here, in a creative, welcoming environment.

“Female Form” and Awakened Space at Jay Etkin Gallery

“The female form has been represented in art since the beginning,” Etkin says, referencing goddess paintings, images of Mary in western religious art traditions, and the inevitable conflict and controversy images of the female body would seem to inspire. “We have both male and female artists showing,” she says, finding interest in the way various perspectives distort and obfuscate.

The artwork ranges from contemporary to traditional/tribal and showcases artists like Alla Bartoshchuk, Mary Jo Karimnia, Roy Tamboli, and Juan Rojo, among others.

Etkin’s Awakened Space specializes in childbirth education and breastfeeding support, with new mom groups and specialty workshops like an upcoming baby sleep class.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1536

Dammit, Errbody

Ryan Poe, the Gannett-owned Commercial Appeal reporter-turned-columnist, began a recent installment of his daily 9:01 with a hearty, “good morning from Memphis, where we’re waiting with bated breath for West Memphis to open a proposed waterpark,” which, not to exaggerate, may be the fiercest act of podunkification ever committed in an opening sentence, in history.

Thankfully, if not at all fortunately, Poe followed that with, “But first …” and plowed headfirst into a column about Shelby County Mayoral hopeful David Lenoir, whose campaign sent out a color-shifted mailer featuring a darkened image of the candidate’s African-American opponent, Lee Harris, juggling a great big wad of cartoon cash.

With this column, Poe joined a growing number of public critics, including Memphis Flyer editor Bruce VanWyngarden and MLK50 organizer Wendi Thomas, when he described the altered image as “race baiting at worst,” while generously suggesting that a “mea culpa” might be the right thing to do. Rather than owning the whoopsie, Lenoir answered his various critics by describing the complaint as being, “all cooked up by Wendi Thomas,” the lone African-American journalist who’s been giving him the business on social media.

“You know how divisive she can be,” he told a bunch of dudes sitting around the Local24 news table.

Memphians who agree with his assessment of Thomas’ often provocative approach may also want to note Lenoir’s selectivity, and hegemony’s predictable resistance to criticism — particularly in areas of vulnerability.

But so much emphasis has been placed on the alleged darkening, I fear we’re running the risk of not realizing how juvenile the image is, also. Juggling cartoon $$$? Why not go ahead and black out a tooth? A “Memphis AF” T-shirt, even?

Categories
News The Fly-By

‘Goodbye to the Past’

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Memphis Greenspace started removing the remaining Confederate memorabilia from Memphis Park Saturday “to say goodbye to the past” and now also has full state approval to relocate the Confederate statues the nonprofit removed from two parks late last year.

On Saturday, the nonprofit began the process to temporarily relocate the Jefferson Davis statue pedestal, two additional Confederate markers, a sculpture of the Ten Commandments, the battlement cannon, the fencing around the statue pedestal, and the MPD SkyCop.

The Confederate materials will eventually be moved to an undisclosed, safe location. The cannon, fence, and MPD SkyCop will also eventually be returned to the city of Memphis.

Justin Fox Burks

The now-gone statue of Jefferson Davis in Memphis Park.

“We’re expediting our efforts to relocate current Memphis Park items because we feel the dramatic increase of positive energy flowing up and down Riverside, and we want to continue to be a part of its success,” said Van Turner, director and president of Memphis Greenspace. “There are many incredibly forward-thinking organizations in Memphis that all share a vision of a diverse, inclusive future for Downtown public space, from the Downtown Memphis Commission to Fourth Bluff and Memphis River Parks Partnership. To create that future, we need to say goodbye to the past.”

However, no similar moves are under way at Health Sciences Park.

“For Health Sciences Park specifically, the ongoing litigation about the relocation of Confederate markers has been a roadblock,” Turner said.

The Memphis Brigade of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) said on Facebook last week that the suit is the “only reason the monsters in Memphis” haven’t removed the graves of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife from Health Sciences Park. That post included a link to the nonprofit Citizens to Save Our Parks, a group organized to pay legal fees for the suit. In 2016, the group raised $31,164, according to tax documents.

“They stole the story from the park, but they can’t hide the truth,” the SCV wrote on Facebook of the news of the weekend’s removal activities at Memphis Park. “It is up to all of us to tell the story of our Confederate ancestors. THEY CANNOT SILENCE US!”

In plays for donations to the legal fund, SCV wrote in several posts over the weekend, that “we still have a chance to preserve the Forrest Graves and historical markers there,” and that “cities destroy our history yet we patronize their restaurants, stores, and hotels,” and “by our apathy, our enemies have gained the upper hand. They don’t have to raise a finger, we are handing our heritage over to them.”

Greenspace said it has also received word from Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s office that it is free to solicit formal requests for the relocation of the Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest statues that were removed last year.

“We’ve already had numerous requests from many organizations willing to take the Confederate statues and other memorabilia,” Turner added. “We will entertain requests from parties interested in housing the statues, but the Memphis Greenspace board of directors will use discretion when vetting those interested.”

Categories
Music Music Features

Lucero: Among the Ghosts

With the release of Lucero’s first album since 2015’s All a Man Should Do this week, a new page has been turned in the band’s life. With Ben Nichols, the group’s singer and songwriter, settling into married life and fatherhood, and the band celebrating its 20th year this spring, the new songs strike out for new territory with a wistful nod to the past. As with the cover image of Among the Ghosts — a homespun church blurring into reflections of the floodwater surrounding it — the sounds of the new album are deceptively spare, but full of shadows.

Ghosts has the cinematic sweep of classic Springsteen, but it’s a cinema filled with dread and ominous foreboding. It’s no great stretch when, near the album’s end, Nichols’ voice drops out and one hears a noir-inspired monologue by actor Michael Shannon. Not unlike Harlan T. Bobo’s recent foray into fatherhood, which resulted in the darkest music of his career, Nichols turns from his new grounding in parental life to cast an eye at the broken world our children will inherit.

When Nichols called me from his home in Ohio, he contrasted the bliss of his current life with the brooding songs he’s created.

Flyer: It seems your lyrics have become more writerly. Does this grow out of being more of a dad and homebody these days?

Ben Nichols: It’s kinda like living in the witness protection program. Nobody knows me. We’re out here in the middle of nowhere. We’ve got a couple acres out in the country. It’s all dairy farms and fields, and it’s real nice. I don’t do anything, I just hang out at the house with the family. I’m happier than I’ve ever been, but I’ve written some of the darker songs that we’ve written recently. Now the stakes are higher. I’ve got something to lose. I’ve got something I actually care about. In the past, it didn’t matter which direction the world went, but now, I’ve got a little girl. And things matter more now than they used to. And things are scarier now than they used to be.

I love all the old Lucero songs, all the drinking songs and heartbreak songs, which pretty much came straight out of my life, but I don’t have to write those again. It was nice going in a slightly different direction this time. I was trying to think of the songs more as short stories. I think it fit the music as well.

What authors have you been inspired by?

For “Long Way Back Home,” which we just filmed a video for, I was definitely thinking about Larry Brown and Ron Rash. And also my little brother, Jeff Nichols, and his films, like Shotgun Stories and Mud. I wanted to capture that kind of Southern storytelling. Songs like “Everything Has Changed,” the whole idea of that song, the guilt in that song, is straight outta that Tim O’Brien story, The Things They Carried.

There’s a yearning for home that plays through the record. It’s very specific in the title track, “Among the Ghosts.” That one is most directly from my point of view: being on the road and missing my family. But then you’ve got “To My Dearest Wife,” which is more from a soldier’s perspective. It’s based on some Civil War letters that I found, but I didn’t wanna make it too specific.

Dan Ball

Lucero at Sam Phillips Recording

The tracks also evoke wide open spaces, but with big guitar tones instead of horns.

We were taking a step back from what we’d done on the last three records, recorded at Ardent, which was a very Memphis-centric sound. We had the big horn section and the boogie-woogie piano that Rick Steff was playing. With this one, I was deliberately taking a step away from that. We changed studios; we went to Sam Phillips. And we changed producers; we worked with Matt Ross-Spang. And we deliberately went in more classic rock direction. Something that was more cinematic and more melancholy.

Does touring have a more melancholy edge now?

It’s a whole new kind of heartbreak, leaving a two-year-old daughter at home. Before, you’d leave a girlfriend or your friends behind for a month or two. Leaving your little girl behind is tougher. But overall, it’s a pretty sweet setup. Come up with guitar parts at home with my daughter running around, and then go down to Memphis and record ’em in a place like Sam Phillips Studio? Yeah, you can’t beat it.

Lucero releases Among the Ghosts (Liberty & Lament / Thirty Tigers) on August 3rd.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Memphis Film Prize 2018

Memphis Film Prize Filmmaker’s Liaison David Merrill says he’s proud of what the young film festival has accomplished since it spun off the Louisiana Film Prize in 2016. “Our $10,000 annual prize has spurred the creation of more than 120 films in Shelby County,” he says. “Some of them might have happened anyway, but the Film Prize got a lot of people off the couch … We’ve given away $20,000 to Memphis filmmakers. The first year’s winner was McGhee Monteith with ‘He Could’ve Gone Pro’. Last year, it was Matteo Servante’s ‘We Go On’ with a screenplay by Corey Mesler.”

Compared to other festivals, creating a short film for the Memphis Film Prize is a more intensive process. Prospective filmmakers must register their projects with the organization, and then check in periodically during production. The films that make it to completion are then put before a panel of judges, who pick 10 films to screen at the two-day festival. The winner is determined by audience ballot, but there’s a catch: In order to vote, audience members must watch all 10 films at the festival. This prevents ballot stuffing by people who would watch their friends films, then leave. “With this rule, we’re trying to build in a certain sense of fairness,” says Merrill.

The program’s success can be judged by the number of returning filmmakers. “Going into the third year, we’ve got ‘Opening Night’ by Kevin Brooks. I believe this is his third year to be in the top 10. Marcus Santi is also back in the top 10 for the third time with his film ‘Jack Squat: The Trial’. Rob Rokk has a film called ‘Outside Arcadia.’ All of these filmmakers have returned every year and gotten in the top 10 every year. We’ve got fresh blood — people who weren’t in the top 10 before — and we’ve got returning champions back to duke it out.”

Mario Hoyle (Don), Ricky D. Smith (Boss) in ‘Dean’s List’

Daniel Ferrell competed in the Memphis Film Prize last year, but didn’t make the cut. “That experience really inspired me to work hard and hone my craft so I could make it to the top 10 this year,” he says.

Ferrell’s film “Dean’s List” was the first to be called out at the announcement party. “I was jumping for joy. I couldn’t even believe it!”

The director, who started out making backyard movies with his friends, says “Dean’s List” came about almost by accident. “We were trying to make a movie about a female graffiti artist, but we couldn’t get it off the ground,” he recalls. “We had decided to shoot on April 28th, and we wanted to keep that date. So I got together with my friends and we quickly wrote the story about a young college kid who has to deliver a backpack to his boss, and something bad happens. It just kind of came together.”

Actor/director Donald Myers is a familiar sight on the Memphis film scene. He appeared in last year’s winner “We Go On,” written by Burke’s Book Store owner Corey Mesler. Myers says he found himself in the director’s chair when “Corey sent me the [‘Hypnotic Induction’] script and asked if I wanted to take it on.”

Myers and Mesler worked on the script over a couple of weekends to get it into filmable shape. “Corey’s a master of dialogue,” Myers says. “It’s about a bartender who has a smoking and drinking problem, and he doesn’t know how to cure it. He visits a hypnotherapist for treatment for his addictions. The encounter turns into a test of wills.”

Caroline Sposto and John Moore were tapped to play the lead roles. “I liked their chemistry, and when we put them to work at the table read, it all just came alive,” says Myers.

First time writer/director Lauren Cox was inspired to write “Traveling Soldier” by a Dixie Chicks song. “Since I was in middle school, I’ve always thought that would be a good movie,” she says.

After the birth of her first child, Cox, an actor who has appeared on House of Cards, decided to make a movie in Memphis. “My film work was out in California. I had zero Memphis connections,” she says.

2016 Film Prize winner McGhee Monteith recommended Andrew Trent Fleming, who co-directed and shot “Traveling Soldier,” while Cox took the lead role. “I would never have thought I would make an emotionally driven World War II movie, but then I just got really attached it to,” Fleming says. “It’s Lauren’s baby, but it means a lot to me. My grandad and grandma were so similar to these characters. I tried to help her achieve her vision, but I put my own touches in there, too.”

This year’s Memphis Film Prize festival takes place on August 3rd-4th at Studio on the Square. “The real winner is Memphis,” says Merrill. “Certainly someone is going to walk away with $10,000. But we get to see all these great films. Every year, they’re upping the ante.”