UFOs invade California in Jordan Peele's Nope.
(Courtesy Universal Pictures)
The most crucial visual moment of Nope comes disguised as a simple establishing shot. It’s easy to miss it in the tornado of arresting images and brutal scares that make up Jordan Peele’s explosive deconstruction of the alien-invasion genre.
Take the opening shot, for example. A girl’s shoe stands upright, toes pointed to the ceiling of what is revealed to be the set of a ‘90s era sitcom. A pair of feet — one of which the shoe apparently belonged to — protrude, unmoving, from behind a blood-splattered couch. A chimpanzee emerges, wearing a pointed birthday party hat. Blood drips from its mouth; its hands are covered in viscera. The enraged primate scans the room until it seems to notice the camera. It looks directly at the audience for a horrible moment. Then, the bloody chimp comes at us with murder in its eyes.
Stephen Yuen as Ricky “Jupe” Park in Nope.
We later learn that the chimp was looking at Ricky “Jupe” Park, played as a child by Jacob Kim and as an adult by Stephen Yeun. Jupe was a child star of a Western TV show called Kid Sheriff. Then he was cast to co-star with a friendly chimp in a Family Ties-type sitcom called Gordy’s Home. One day, Gordy the chimp got fed up with all these humans telling him what to do and murdered the cast while the cameras were rolling. Only Jupe escaped unscathed. Now grown, Jupe runs a dude ranch called Jupiter’s Claim. The rootin’ tootin’ wild west shows he mounts in the dinky amphitheater allude to his Kid Sheriff days, but Jupe knows most of the people paying admission are there to see the kid who was in the room when the angry ape ate people’s faces on live TV.
On the other end of the California valley is Haywood Hollywood Horses, a sprawling ranch where Otis Haywood (Keith David) raises and trains horses for TV and movie stunt work. When Otis is killed by a mysterious rain of objects from the sky, his son OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) tries to keep the family business afloat with the help of his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer). But when his star horse Lucky acts up on set in front of legendary cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), business dries up and he’s forced to start selling his horses to Jupe.
Daniel Kaluuya as OJ, Keke Palmer as Emerald, and Brandon Perres as Angel in Nope.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, something’s lurking in the sky. OJ and Emerald catch fleeting glimpses of a flying saucer which seems to be abducting their horses. Between puffs of “that Hollywood weed,” Emerald hatches a plan: They will take the first photographs of an alien spaceship — not just a bright smudge on a Navy gun camera, but a clear, definitive picture the media will go wild for: The Oprah Shot. They enlist Angel Torres (Brandon Perres), a tech support guy at a big-box electronics retailer, to help them wire the ranch with cameras. But in true flying saucer fashion, their quarry proves elusive. The trio comes up with increasingly elaborate schemes to trick the alien visitors into a photo op, eventually convincing Antlers to help them get the shot, as their close encounters get more dangerous.
The alien arrival is announced by the failure of the ranch’s electronic devices. To track the saucer, Emerald and OJ set up dozens of air dancers — those weird sock-like things roadside businesses use to attract attention — across their sprawling ranch. When one of them stops working, they know the UFO is near. Here’s where the director drops his thesis image: Peele’s cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, slowly pans his IMAX camera across the valley, where legions of writhing bodies plaintively reach for the sky, hoping to attract the attention of a spaceship that will sweep them away to immortality.
A mysterious rider chases UFOs in Nope.
Those air dancers are us, obsessed with what used to be called fame, but which social media and the quiet desperation of late-stage capitalism has reduced to simple attention. It doesn’t matter if it’s an irresistible TikTok dance, a selfie you took while storming the Capitol, or definitive proof that we are not alone in the universe. All that matters is that people are paying attention to you.
The film trade, modern fame’s crucible, is not spared from Peele’s stiletto satire, but as in his masterpiece Us, the director’s targets are much broader. Peele’s been compared to Hitchcock and Carpenter, but Nope finds him channeling Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind without mindlessly aping them. When Spielberg menaced Roy Neary’s truck with an alien light show, Neary stuck his head out the window to get a better view. When OJ finds himself in a similar situation, he locks the door. Where Spielberg sees cosmic wonder, Peele sees existential horror.
Nothing in a Peele joint is ever what it seems on the surface, but none of the high-minded stuff matters unless the film works on a visceral level. The director teases and baits his audience with misdirection before unleashing a literal tornado of blood. As he pulled the rug out from under me for the umpteenth time, I sat in the theater muttering “Jordan Peele, you magnificent bastard.”
Mama Honey (a.k.a. Mama Honey. or mamahoney.) is just what the pop world needs: a Memphis power trio fronted by a funk/psych/blues groove goddess whose voice ranges from a lilt to a rock banshee wail, slinging a guitar, flanked by bass and drums, putting the world on notice. Watching them live or listening to their latest album, Out of Darkness, one can’t help thinking, “this could get very big,” so spot on are the elements the group brings together. If one of those elements is their rawness, all the better.
That may keep them from the commercializing clutches of corporate rock, and that’s for the better as well, though I wish them all the success they can muster. Regardless of all that, band leader Tamar Love already lives in her songs like a star, her voice having so evolved in strength, nuance, and confidence since the group’s 2019 debut EP, Punk Blues, as to render all other trappings of success meaningless. Hearing the sheer variety of ways she approaches her songs, from deadpan bluntness to wailing lament to soaring cries — all with a sure melodic footing — is one of the delights of this record.
Love’s playing, too, has evolved, growing hand in hand with her songwriting, as each vocal moment is clearly crafted with the riffs, fills, and solos she spins so deftly on the frets. Her breakdowns, intricate figures, and choogling grooves are well-complemented by drummer David McNinch and rock-solid bassist Fields Falcone. Both know when to leave space for Love’s intricacies and when to bear down.
The end result is an eclectic Funkadelic-meets-the-Minutemen mash up. Both classic bands were plenty eclectic in their own right; if Mama Honey is their love child, expect even more twists and turns. And while the style changes flow naturally enough, their real power is when there are dramatic shifts in a song’s mood. Given that Love is also a fine cellist, one can only imagine the fresh combinations of sounds and styles they’ll pursue in the future.
Though many of the tracks kick off with a classic blues/rock boogie riff, be sure to buckle up for sprinklings of psychedelic or prog rock, as meters and keys skip subtly here and there along the way. The end result gives one the sense that Mama Honey are rediscovering and reinventing blues rock, unmindful of the various approaches to it in the past, now seemingly dug up whole-clay from the Mississippi’s banks and sculpted into a uniquely personal creation.
As for the punk element, it’s yet another thread worked into the weave of styles, a residual anger lurking in the attitude of “Victims of America,” “You Don’t Own Me” (not, incidentally, a cover of Leslie Gore’s chestnut), and others. To be clear, though the group’s debut EP was titled Punk Blues, it did not feature a song by that name. As if picking up where they left off, the lead track of Out of Darkness now bears that title. And yet the song is more subtle than the blunt title might suggest, seemingly a wail of frustration at what society deems worthy or not worthy of discussion. Such a wail is a closer cousin to Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” than, say, “Clash City Rockers.” Then again, who says there wasn’t something punk about “Higher Ground”?
Mama Honey will present and discuss their new album, Out of Darkness, this Saturday, July 23, at the Memphis Listening Lab, at 6:30 p.m.
My first of many Burger Week hamburgers for 2022 was the peach and peppers burger at Farm Burger Memphis (Credit: Talyn Anderson)
Merry Burger Week to all! And to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year, I stopped by restaurants participating in the annual Memphis Flyer event to take photos of merrymakers who ordered the $6.99 burger specials. That’s about half the price of what a burger sells for before and after the (hamburger) holidays at many places.
I ran into photographer Keith Renard at Belly Acres on Poplar. I didn’t know this at the time, but, after I talked to him, I realized Renard could be the Flyer’s Burger Week poster boy.
This was on Thursday, June 21st. He says he had the Burger Week special the night before at Pimento’s Kitchen & Market. The burger has “sautéed pepper,” Renard says. “It was good.”
He also liked the Belly Acres burger. “The crispness of the fried green tomato on it was pretty amazing.”
Renard is going to Burger Week restaurants — every day. Friday, he was going to Loflin Yard, Saturday, Tops Bar-B-Que, Sunday; Huey’s, Grill Grabz food truck on Monday; and Tenero Cafe & Butcher and maybe Farm Burger Memphis on Tuesday.
That’s a lot of hamburgers. “Listen. I’ll eat fish and chicken the rest of the year.”
Renard, who has participated in Burger Week for three years, says, “I like to see what people do differently with burgers. Plus, it’s for a good cause.” Burger Week benefits Memphis Tilth.
Here are photos from my visits to Burger Week restaurants. I’ll be visiting more places and posting more photos later. (And where are the women Burger Week fans? We want to see you, too.)
Keith Renard with a Burger Week hamburger at Belly Acres (Credit: Michael Donahue)Mario Young at Tenero Cafe & Butcher (Credit: Michael Donahue)Dustin Scott at Farm Burger Memphis (Credit: Michael Donahue)Zachary Westfall at Tenero Cafe & Butcher. (Credit: Michael Donahue)William Keith from Belly Acres with their Burger Week burger (Credit: Michael Donahue)Dex McCune at Farm Burger Memphis (Credit: Michael Donahue)Ryan Azada, John Michael, and J. D. Reager at Farm Burger Memphis (Credit: Michael Donahue) We Saw You
Y’all means all, y’all. (Photo: Nashville LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce)
Tennessee’s Attorney General celebrated a win for discrimination last week after a federal judge blocked a move that would have allowed trans kids to play sports on a team of their gender and more.
In September, Tennessee AG Herbert Slatery led a 20-state coalition in a lawsuit to stop anti-discrimination guidance from President Joe Biden. The order was issued in January and strives to prevent discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
Biden’s guidance challenged state laws on whether schools must allow biological males to compete on girls’ sports teams, whether employers and schools may maintain sex-separated showers and locker rooms, and whether individuals may be compelled to use another person’s preferred pronouns.
Herbert Slatery (Credit: State of Tennessee)
“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports,” reads Biden’s order from January. “Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes.”
However, Slatery claimed in September that Biden’s order “threatens women’s sports and student and employee privacy.” To get there legally, Slatery and his coalition (including Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and more) claimed only Congress — not the president — can change “these sensitive issues” of “enormous importance.” The coalition’s complaint asserts that the claim that the order simply implements the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock decision on anti-discrimination is faulty.
“The agencies simply do not have that authority,” Slatery said in a statement at the time. “But that has not stopped them from trying. … All of this, together with the threat of withholding educational funding in the midst of a pandemic, warrants this lawsuit.”
Last week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee blocked the guidance, which Slatery called “expansive and unlawful” and would have forced, among others things, the use of “biologically inaccurate preferred pronouns.”
“The District Court rightly recognized the federal government put Tennessee and other states in an impossible situation: choose between the threat of legal consequences including the withholding of federal funding, or altering our state laws to comply,” Slatery said in a statement. “Keep in mind these new, transformative rules were made without you — without your elected leaders in Congress having a say — which is what the law requires. We are thankful the court put a stop to it, maintained the status quo as the lawsuit proceeds, and reminded the federal government it cannot direct it’s agencies to rewrite the law.”
The court ruling drew scorn from LGBTQ advocates, who were quick to point out the judge in the case, Charles Atley Jr., was appointed by former president Donald Trump.
“We are disappointed and outraged by this ruling from the Eastern District of Tennessee where, in yet another example of far-right judges legislating from the bench, the court blocked guidance affirming what the Supreme Court decided in Bostock v. Clayton County: that LGBTQ+ Americans are protected under existing civil rights law,” Joni Madison, interim president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “Nothing in this decision can stop schools from treating students consistent with their gender identity. And nothing in this decision eliminates schools’ obligations under Title IX or students’ or parents’ abilities to bring lawsuits in federal court. HRC will continue to fight these anti-transgender rulings with every tool in our toolbox.”
This preliminary injunction will remain in effect until the matter is resolved. The matter could get a further decision from the federal court in Tennessee, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, or the Supreme Court of the United States.
Facing Down Storms: Memphis and the Making of Ida B. Wells. (Image courtesy Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change)
Ida B. Wells is a hero among journalists. The publisher of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper documented lynchings throughout the South, beginning in the 1890s. She was an outspoken suffragette who eventually ran for Senate in Illinois, where she relocated after fleeing violent white supremacist mobs in Memphis who had destroyed her newspaper offices.
A new documentary by University of Memphis’ Daphne B. McFerren and Nathanial Ball, and Spotlight Productions’ Fabian Matthews argues that Wells’ formative experiences in Memphis served as a catalyst for what would become the Civil Rights Movement. Facing Down Storms: Memphis and the Making of Ida B. Wells pulls no punches when it comes to showing the horrors of white supremacist violence in the Jim Crow South — much like Wells herself.
Exquisitely researched, as you would expect from McFerren and Ball, who are, respectively, the executive director and assistant director of media for the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, the film adds rich detail to the story of the woman who was “smart as a steel trap, and had no sympathy for humbug.”
Facing Down Storms will screen at Malco’s Studio on the Square on subsequent Thursdays, July 21st and 28th, at 7 p.m. You can buy advance tickets here.
The project to forever eliminate parking on the Overton Park Greensward got $3 million in federal funding Wednesday.
The U.S. House passed six spending bills Wednesday totaling more than $400 billion. Some of that money includes discretionary spending for projects all over the country, including the $3 million to further the Overton Park parking plan.
U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen announced the funding Thursday morning, noting that he voted for the bill that includes it. Cohen said the bill includes more than $17 million for Memphis projects, including $4 million for the renovation of the historic cobblestones at the river’s edge Downtown.
The new Overton Park parking plan was announced in March (more at the link below). It came after decades of complaints about Greensward parking, testy debates during Memphis City Hall meetings, a mediation process that ended at an impasse, a compromise plan that would have taken some acres from the Greensward, a hopeful new plan that would have built a parking deck on Prentiss Place and left the Greensward intact, and then the removal of that proposal after it proved too costly in favor of the previous compromise plan that would remove part of the Greensward.
The new plan preserves the entirety of the Greensward, restores 17 acres of parkland that has stood unused behind chainlink fences, swaps land between the park and the Memphis Zoo, and forever ends the zoo’s use of the Greensward for overflow parking.
Much work is to be done before that happens, though, said Tina Sullivan, executive director of the Overton Park Conservancy (OPC), which oversees the park for the city. The $3 million, she said, will help that work get done, make for quality work, and, maybe, get that work done more quickly.
Memphis Flyer: How big of a deal is this federal funding to the project?
Tina Sullivan: This is a huge deal. We knew we had this wonderful solution in hand and we knew we had the support of stakeholders on both sides and the city of Memphis. But we also knew it was going to cost a lot to implement, and that was gonna require everyone to go out and raise more money. Congressman Cohen delivered in getting this to sail through the House process.
I know there is still work to be done, and that we have a little bit more to go before it’s completely finalized, but this allows us to implement a better solution in a shorter timeframe than we would have. This will allow us to have a high-quality result on every piece of property that we’re going to touch with it.
What needs to be done?
TS: The project moves the zoo maintenance facility over to that southeast corner [of Overton Park] and allows the zoo to repave that current maintenance area [current home of the city’s General Services facility] for members parking.
There’s a lot of work that needs to be done in that southeast corner to make it ready for the zoo to move in and make it ready for the Conservancy to move in to the Southern portion of that. There is a lot of work to be done on the zoo’s current maintenance area demolishing buildings and designing a new parking lot over there.
A lot of work needs to be done on the Greensward. We’re going to need to remediate the Greensward. Our vision is to have some sort of permanent barrier between the zoo parking lot and the rest of the park. So, I think the “berm” that was discussed in our early negotiations, that may soften into something that’s a visual and a physical barrier, but maybe not. Maybe it’ll be something a little more appropriate to the design of the park. So, that still needs to be designed and then implemented.
Then, finally, part of this solution includes reclaiming that 17-acre tract of forest that’s been behind the zoo fence since for a couple of decades, at least. So, the zoo’s gonna need to move its exhibit space out from behind Rainbow Lake. And we need to take that big, chainlink fence down and move it over to establish a new zoo boundary in the forest. From there, we’ll have we’ll have some work to do in the forest, like invasive [plant] removal.
There is a large amount of work yet to be done. That’s going to cost a lot of money.
The president and CEO of the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority (MSCAA) will step down at the end of this year.
Scott Brockman joined the Airport Authority, which oversees operations of Memphis International Airport (MEM), in 2003. He served as executive vice president and then as the airport’s Chief Operating Officer. In 2014, Brockman was named as the airport’s CEO.
Brockman. Credit Memphis International Airport
In his 37-year career, Brockman also served in executive roles with Tucson International Airport, Des Moines International Airport, and Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.
“Scott’s impact on the success of MEM cannot be understated,” said Michael Keeney, chairman of the MSCAA. “He will leave an ongoing legacy of success, having navigated the airport through significant challenges such as the transition to [origin and destination] operations, the pandemic, and the transformational concourse modernization project.”
In his time as CEO, Brockman has overseen a number of historic milestones and projects for the airport including:
• Delta Air Line’s de-hub of the airport in 2013
• Reinventing the airport into an original and destination airport.
• Overseeing one of the busiest cargo airports in the world.
• Bringing in new airlines and new destinations to help keep airfare lower.
• Modernizing Concourse B, a $245 million construction project, that opened in February.
• Competed the $55 million Mission Support Center, which houses airfield operations, maintenance, police, procurement, and warehouse activities.
The MSCAA board will now begin the process of selecting Brockman’s successor.
Less than a week after judges allowed Tennessee to resume work on its long-stalled private school voucher program, the program’s website roared back to life, and forms are available online for families and private schools in Memphis and Nashville interested in participating.
By Wednesday, Gov. Bill Lee announced, some 600 families had completed the form, and 40-plus private schools in the two cities had committed to making seats available for them when the school year begins — just three weeks from now.
The July 13 court order lifted an earlier order that blocked the program from launching as originally planned in 2020. Within hours, Lee directed his administration to speed ahead to roll out the program, despite the tight schedule and looming legal efforts by voucher opponents seeking to block the start again.
“There was an urgent need for school choice in 2019, and finally, parents in Memphis and Nashville won’t have to wait another day to choose the best educational fit for their children,” Lee said in a statement.
Lee, who met with private school leaders in Memphis on Wednesday, surprised even his own education department by announcing last week that work would resume immediately “to help eligible parents enroll this school year.”
The flurry of activity shows Lee’s determination to swiftly enroll as many students as possible — up to the 5,000 allowed in the first year — after two years of delays and fierce legal battles over the state’s voucher law. Tennessee lawmakers had debated vouchers for more than a decade before a GOP-controlled legislature passed Lee’s 2019 education savings account proposal with a dramatic, razor-thin, and controversial House vote.
Tennessee has been a battleground in the national fight between those who want to use taxpayer money to give parents more education choices and others who say that approach diverts money from already underfunded public schools.
Leaders of the pro-voucher American Federation for Children have been key allies of the Republican governor in lobbying for the state’s voucher law and promoting the program, including organizing Wednesday’s meeting between Lee and about 45 private school leaders from the Memphis area.
The gathering was at St. Benedict at Auburndale High School, a Catholic campus located in the mostly white and affluent suburb of Cordova, east of Memphis, and where tuition costs over $13,000 a year. The average taxpayer-funded voucher would provide about $8,000 this year to help families pay expenses including tuition, fees, textbooks, computers, exams, and tutoring services at approved private schools.
Asked later by reporters how families might fill the gap, Lee said that “every school has a different strategy” for financial aid and that many already provide scholarships to students needing help.
The governor added that his education department was still working through a lot of the details.
In an interview earlier Wednesday with Chalkbeat, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn acknowledged that her department faces a heavy lift with the expedited launch, starting with getting students and private schools to sign up, then making sure participants meet the state’s eligibility standards. The state also has to set up systems and processes for redirecting public education spending in Memphis and Nashville, the only two cities where the program is operating, to private schools and vendors.
“We’re really trying to catch up and meet the governor’s office’s expectations on this,” Schwinn said, “and to do so with a very clear focus that we will roll out when we feel like we can meet our commitments to families.”
State officials hoped to roll out the full program at the start of a new school year. But the timing got tricky when the state Supreme Court upheld the voucher law in May, and a lower court cleared the way for work to resume on the program just weeks before the Aug. 8 start of classes.
Lee’s administration settled for a rolling launch that gives families and private schools that want to participate three possible start dates to choose from.
“I think the timeline in July is very challenging for us,” Schwinn said, “and so right now, we just want to know how many parents are out there that might want to participate, and do they want to do it this August, this January, or next August?”
Managing the program is another challenge, and Schwinn is looking to Eve Carney, her chief of districts and schools, to oversee the application process and financial systems. The commissioner expects to hire an outside vendor to help with that oversight in the 2023-24 school year and said the department will seek bids for that work in the next few months.
The department already oversees a statewide private school voucher program for students with disabilities, but it is small in scope and had more time to launch in the middle of the 2016-17 school year with 36 families. Even so, the program has experienced some glitches responding to participating families as it has grown to 284 students amid staff turnover in the department.
Another challenge is the capacity of private schools to accommodate families who want to participate.
For the original launch planned for the 2020-21 school year, 62 schools had signed on to participate. But the pandemic has created tremendous enrollment shifts, as more students than usual moved from public to private schools, especially in Nashville and Memphis, where districts stuck with remote learning and mask mandates the longest. Students in early grades pivoted the most, essentially filling up those private sector seats.
As private school leaders try to work with Lee’s administration under the expedited timeline, not everybody will get what they want, they say.
“Capacity will vary by individual schools,” said Sarah Wilson, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Independent Schools. “Some schools, particularly in the Nashville area, may only have room in one grade, if at all. Other schools have the capacity to add several students and are interested in doing so.”
Brad Goia, who leads a coalition of independent schools in the Nashville area, said “the likelihood of adding students now is not great.”
“Private schools by and large have benefited from a relatively strong economy and the popularity of Nashville, with lots of people moving in,” said Goia, who is also headmaster of Montgomery Bell Academy. “Most, if not all, private schools are close to capacity. I’m sure some schools would view this as a good opportunity to perhaps enlarge their base of diversity. And a few would look at it as a way to fill some seats.”
His counterpart in Memphis, Bryan Williams, said enrollment is “pretty much set for the year” at the city’s most competitive schools. But a small number of slots could be available at some schools, he said.
“There’s definitely some room for students to come in through ESAs, but that will vary from school to school,” said Williams, head of Christ Methodist Day School and director of the Memphis Association of Independent Schools.
Williams said his school could accommodate between five and 10 students at some grade levels. “If you spread those numbers across 30 schools, it can add up,” he said.
Admissions processes for private schools generally kick off a year before students enter, with most students applying by December and the most competitive schools setting their enrollment for the following school year by mid-March.
“Right now, the ESA program isn’t matching up with how private schools do admissions and enrollment,” Williams said.
Voucher opponents behind two lawsuits against the state are expected this week to seek a court order blocking the program for a second time while they challenge the constitutionality of the law based on several remaining claims.
Both groups asked for an expedited schedule for the judicial panel to consider their motions.
Asked Wednesday about the prospect of another bruising legal fight, the governor suggested that his administration will take matters one at a time.
“There’s been talk that that could possibly happen,” he said, “but we’re just working on the high-quality implementation of the plan right now.”
Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent who covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org. Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Kelly McGillis and Tom Cruise hug it out in Top Gun.
Muck Sticky is a Memphis rap legend. He has traveled the world bringing his party music to the stoned masses, and he shows no signs of letting up. He just released his 16th album, the 22-track Man in Pajamas.
Back before the pandemic delayed the release of Top Gun: Maverick, Muck mentioned to me that he had never seen the original Top Gun. I asked if he would do a “Never Seen It” with me. Now, more than two years later, The Sticky Muck joined me remotely from his new place on the beach in central Florida to watch Tony Scott’s 1986 summer blockbuster. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Chris McCoy: Tell me what you know about Top Gun.
Muck Sticky: I don’t know much. I know the “Danger Zone” song is from Top Gun, I did watch Hot Shots! a whole lot when I was growing up. Mostly what I know about Top Gun is what I saw in Hot Shots!, so I’m hoping it lives up to it.
CM: Well, that’s a unique perspective. You’re going to get some jokes that never made sense before. So, why haven’t you seen Top Gun? Is it just one of those things that you missed over the years?
MS: In all honesty, growing up, my cousin liked Top Gun a whole lot, and I didn’t like my cousin. So I just kind of didn’t want to watch it.
CM: Okay, we’ll see if that instinct was right!
110 minutes later…
CM: Muck Sticky, you are now a person who has seen Top Gun. What did you think?
MS: I went to the Danger Zone and took out all the MiGs!
CM: Was it what you thought it was going to be?
MS: I expected a whole lot of flying montages, and there were a lot of those, with music. That was pretty cool. I totally get a lot more of the Hot Shots! references now! It makes a whole lot more sense.
CM: Of course, the flying sequences are just incredible.
MS: Fantastic! Great footage! [Jerry} Bruckheimer, I see why he’s stayed as prominent in the industry as he has.
CM: Bruckheimer is responsible for the most expensive movie ever made. You know what it was?
MS: No.
CM: It’s Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides—$410 million.
MS: Wow.
CM: The director was Tony Scott, who was Ridley Scott’s brother. His movies always looked incredible.
MS: The cinematography is amazing. I found myself really getting into the just the way it looked over all, you know? Especially those epic shots where he’s riding the motorcycle with the sunset behind him. It’s kind of silhouetted. I mean, I’ve seen those images, before but seeing the movie in its complete form is really spectacular. I was thoroughly impressed.
CM: Those motorcycle shots… I probably haven’t seen this movie since the nineties. It’s been a long time. This time, I noticed the motorcycle shots. It’s the same shot, like, three or four times. He’s going around a corner and going down a street with palm trees. He probably spent an afternoon driving around in circles. It was like, “OK, Tom! Go around the block one more time!”
“Drive around the block one more time, Tom!”
MS: Boy, they really got their money’s worth on the licenses for “Take My Breath Away” and “Danger Zone” and “Great Balls of Fire” and “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” I think I heard those songs a half a dozen times.
CM: Let’s talk about the music, because the soundtrack was a very big deal.
MS: I really liked hearing a lot of Memphis in there—Otis Redding “Sitting on The Dock of the Bay” and, of course, “Great Balls of Fire!”
CM: Harold Faltermeyer was responsible for the synth score. My high school marching band did a medley of “Danger Zone”, “Take My Breath Away”, and the “Top Gun Theme.” What did you think about the synth score?
MS: Yeah, it was cool. I can see where Stranger Things and modern shows that are going back to that stuff came from. There’s even bands that are using that sort of sound, and I can see where that score inspired a lot of stuff.
I love a score that has a feel to it, that gives the movie a feeling. I think he captured it really well. It fits the movie perfectly, you know what I mean? I didn’t ever catch myself noticing, you’re watching a movie. You want to get lost in a movie, and I got lost in it. It’s hard to do that. I’m usually taken out of it, whether it’s from bad acting or music that doesn’t fit. There are several movies where I feel like certain musical elements don’t fit, like Django Unchained — “100 Black Coffins,” the Rick Ross song, just doesn’t fit. It takes me out of the movie.
CM: I totally get it. I’m the same way. The Dune movie that came out last year was great in every respect, except the score. It’s Hans Zimmer, who has done a lot of great stuff. But the score was just like…
MS: I’ve seen the old Dune.
CM: This one is a lot better than the old one. I love you, David Lynch. I’m sorry to say this in a public forum, but yeah, the Dennis Villeneuve Dune a lot better than the old one, except for the score. It was just a puddle of mush, didn’t shape it at all for me. I kept noticing how good the score was in Top Gun, though. You were right — it is all montage. The aerial photography, first of all, is amazing, right? But if you think about it, all they had was planes flying around and doing various maneuvers. They had to put all that together in the editing room to try and make it look like there’s a dogfight going on.
MS: Back in those days, they just sent guys up with cameras like, just shoot a bunch of stuff and we’ll figure out how to make it work.
CM: That’s exactly what happened, and to a certain extent that’s what happened with Top Gun: Maverick too! It’s always been like that, though. Have you ever seen The Aviator? Martin Scorsese?
MS: Yeah, for sure! Leonardo! I love that one.
CM: There’s that bit of where they’re filming Hell’s Angels, waiting all day to fly the combat sequences until the clouds were right. Because if there’s no clouds, you can’t tell if anything’s moving.
MS: You talked about the motorcycle shots being duplicates, but I noticed a few of those “target locking onto the aircraft” shots were duplicates, too.
CM: Or it’ll be the same shot, but it’s flipped left to right? I probably wouldn’t notice as much if I weren’t married to a film editor.
MS: I probably wouldn’t had I not edited a couple of films and so many music videos! But, you know, I love it. I feel you on being connected to editing. For me, that’s the magic of movies. You script something out, then you capture sometimes more and sometimes less than what you were hoping for. When you get home, you have to craft it in a way that makes sense. For them to just send guys up with some cameras saying, ‘Get what you can and we’ll make it work in the story,’ man…It was really pieced together very well, I thought.
Tom Cruise feels positive emotions about his F-14 in Top Gun.
CM: Young Tom Cruise. Now, he’s old Tom Cruise, but he still looks good. In Top Gun, he looks noticeably younger.
MS: Oh, yeah, for sure.
CM: What did you think about Maverick, and Tom Cruise’s performance in general?
MS: To be honest, it didn’t get me right away. I felt like everybody else was doing more acting than he was. But then there was the scene when Goose died — spoiler alert, I guess!
CM: It’s cool. The whole thing about “Never Seen It” is that everybody else has seen it except you.
MS: When Goose died, and he was got emotional about that, I felt like he was more upset about it than Meg Ryan’s character was, and she was his wife. I really bought into it. I did notice his unibrow quite a bit. I didn’t know he sported the unibrow so hard back in the day.
CM: One man, one brow, I say.
MS: I guess it kind of goes with his uni-tooth in the front too.
CM: What!?
MS: So I don’t know if you ever noticed, but his teeth are kind of aligned to one side. Like, there’s one that’s directly in the center.
CM: Oh god. I won’t be able to see anything else but that now.
Don’t look away from Tom Cruise as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun.
MS: But he’s Tom Cruise! He’s is the biggest movie star on the planet! I think that’s right. Is he the biggest one? Who’s the biggest movie star on the planet?
CM: It’s got to be him. He’s going to make $100 million off Maverick, Who can compete with that?
MS: I’m going to see Maverick. It’s still in theaters, right?
CM: Yeah.
MS: We have an IMAX here, so I’m going to go check it out this week. I’ve got Hot Shots! pulled up right now!
CM: To me, Top Gun is the most Eighties thing ever made, the distillation of the Reagan eighties. There’s this military worship, but it’s also incredibly individualistic and competitive.
MS: Everybody’s competing with everybody at all times.
CM: It makes being a dick look like virtue. Maverick is a complete dick. If you watch a lot of Eighties movies, you’ll notice the protagonist is usually an asshole. Like Purple Rain — which is one of my favorite movies of all times, but if you think about it, Prince’s arc is, he’s a complete asshole at the beginning, and he’s slightly less of an asshole at the end.
MS: Just slightly.
CM: He’s improving, and I guess it’s the same for Maverick. When he’s a wingman, he abandons his flight leader, and that ends badly. The second time, he’s a good wingman. He learned the lesson when it counted.
MS: That’s kind of like what the Hero’s Journey is about. Any mono-myth is about taking a guy who’s already one way and transforming him into something else. He has to change through the arc of the story. The Eighties, back then everybody was very, very competitive. I don’t know what the right word is for it, is but for me, artistry is about helping us find our softer sides, the better side of ourselves. Working through our pain to find our better selves. I think moviemakers and musicians and artists across the board take what’s going on currently in the world, and try to express how they feel it could be better, you know?
CM: Yep.
MS: Maybe that’s why he learned that lesson and becomes a little bit better of a dude, throughout the course of the movie. He ends up hugging his rival.
CM: Yep.
MS: The end, that’s the artist in the movie maker, wanting people that are rivals and competitors to bond and be friends. We’re on the same side here. That’s what we, as artists, want to do in the world: we take the division, and we want to create unity, you know? That’s what I do in my music — I want to bring people together through music.
CM: You think art should ultimately have a pro-social message.
MS: I guess so. The evidence is there that we’re always going to be competitive. That never goes away. But at the same time, you get that good feeling when he says, ‘You can be my wingman!’ ‘No, you can be mine!’ and they hug.
CM: You just made me think of something. Top Gun is a product of the late Cold War — the Reagan eighties, American capitalism, competition, and individualism. And it was borderline propaganda for the Navy.
MS: Maybe not just borderline!
CM: Right, so have you ever seen Battleship Potemkin? It’s a Russian movie made in 1927 about a mutiny against the Tsar that started on a ship in Odessa harbor. It’s definitely a Soviet propaganda movie. There’s not a central protagonist. There’s not a guy who you focus on and follow his story the whole time. It’s all about the movement of groups of people who decided together to rebel against the Tsar. You can see the values of these two societies — or at least the values these societies thought had propaganda value!
You know, ’86 was still the Cold War, and the Russians were still the big bad guy. That’s who they were training to fight at Miramar. But the Russians are not the bad guys in Top Gun. You would think that they would be, but the bad guys who they actually kill at the end are just sort of “the enemy.”
MS: They never really say who it is. It’s never against any one people. It’s funny you say that, I did notice that I caught myself laughing, wondering who the bad guys were. They were just bad guys.
CM: Is this is one of the most homosexual movies ever made, or is it just me?
MS: The vibe very much made me think of working at Adventure River back in the day, like how big volleyball was back then. I did catch a lot of that. The volleyball scene, that’s the part where it’s the most out there.
CM: If you start like looking for it, it’s everywhere. Like the pilot in the ready room going, “This guy’s giving me a hard-on!”
MS: For sure. I will say, the love scene with Tom and Kelly McGillis, I totally expected there to be some food or something, because of Hot Shots! They break an egg on the girl’s stomach. Where did that come from?
CM: I think they were making fun of 9 1/2 Weeks there.
MS: Oh yeah. That’s one I’ve seen once or twice. Now that you say that, it makes sense.
CM:Top Gun has a classic Eighties love scene, in that there’s a blue light for some reason, and a saxophone playing in the distance.
MS: Everything’s in silhouette. I totally expected there to be some nudity, but there wasn’t.
CM: This is the age of the erotic thriller! There was nudity everywhere! The way he came on to her in the bar was a little weird.
MS: What do you mean?
CM: He followed her into the bathroom. You couldn’t get away with that today. It’s creepy. I mean, back in my dating days, I’ve known guys who have done that. And now that I think about it, there’s one specific instance when somebody followed the girl that I was trying to get with into the bathroom, and it totally worked. She went home with him instead of me.
MS: I remember a time when some girls followed me into a men’s bathroom. So, you know, it happens.
CM: So, bottom line. Would you recommend people watch Top Gun?
MS: Absolutely, especially if you like movies that engage you with just a fantastic display of moviemaking. I have massive respect for the craft of movie, because I know what it takes to make them and how difficult it is. And people often write off movies just because of the content or something, but Top Gun definitely exceeded my expectations.
Thomas Crivens (Photo courtesy of Beale Street Caravan)
Beale Street Caravan has become a formidable exporter: It’s the most widely distributed blues radio program in the world, attracting more than 2.4 million listeners each week. Produced here in Memphis, it regularly broadcasts, via nearly five hundred radio stations around the world, the live performances of artists from Memphis and the Mid-South, or inspired by the region. That’s quite an ascension for a show begun in 1997 with producer/executive director Sid Selvidge working under the auspices of the Blues Foundation.
In 2001, the program broke off to become an independent nonprofit. Having a talent as formidable as Selvidge as its first executive director set the bar high for Beale Street Caravan, but for the past two decades musician/producer Kevin Cubbins has excelled at the role, blending the professionalism of a studio engineer with the eclectic taste of an artist. Now he’s moving on and Thomas Crivens is stepping into the executive director role after four years of producing shows for the program.
“After almost 20 years, I think I’d been there plenty long enough,” says Cubbins. “I did feel like the end of the pandemic brought this moment where if we were ever going to have a leadership transition, now’s the time. I am excited for Thomas, and I support the board 100 percent as he steps into that role.”
Indeed, the transition takes place with Beale Street Caravan set to return to the airwaves this fall with its first new episodes since the pandemic. After the onset of Covid, the program remained on-air by broadcasting recordings from its extensive archives. Now, with pandemic restrictions lifting, show organizers are excited to get back on the road again.
“With live music shows coming back into our lives, it’s good to know that Beale Street Caravan will be under the steady hand and institutional knowledge of Thomas,” says the nonprofit’s outgoing board chair, Cynthia Ham. “We will once again be recording, preserving, broadcasting, and sharing worldwide the sounds of Memphis and the Delta region.”
In addition to being a show producer, Crivens, like Cubbins, is a guitarist of some note. He’s also a booking agent for local and national recording artists, and the first African American to lead the globally syndicated music program.
“Being a product of Memphis and its vibrant music scene, I’m excited at the chance to lead this showcase of the city’s musical talent and influence to the world,” says Crivens. “Through the continued promotion and celebration of Memphis music, Beale Street Caravan will continue to nurture pride in our city, while simultaneously increasing Memphis’ global visibility and recognition as a hub for music creation and performance.”
A native Memphian, Crivens is a graduate of White Station High School and Morehouse College in Atlanta, and holds an MBA from the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis. He’s also served in executive positions at Memphis City Schools and Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation.
