When Memphis-raised filmmaker Ira Sachs needed a desolate location to end his Sundance Film Festival-winning Forty Shades of Blue, he settled on an isolated stretch of blue-collar Broad Avenue in Midtown, just across from Broadway Pizza. Since the extension of Sam Cooper Boulevard closed off Broad to East Parkway a couple years ago, the few blocks of beer joints and industrial shops that surround the city’s finest pie palace have felt hidden. But if that has added a few extra turns to my semiregular pizza runs, Broadway (which doesn’t deliver) is well worth it.
