Tye Sheridan, Matthew McConaughey, and Jacob Lofland in “Mud”
The nominations for the 2014 Indie Spirit Awards were announced today, and there are a number of films with local ties in the mix.
Jeff Nichols, brother of Lucero’s Ben Nichols, was nominated for Best Director for his work on Mud which was made not too far away in Arkansas and released in Memphis this past spring. Mud is also the winner of the Robert Altman Award for it’s director, casting director, and cast.
Short Term 12, which premiered at and won Indie Memphis’ Best Narrative Feature Audience Award, received 3 Indie Spirit nominations, including for Best Female Lead (Brie Larson), Best Supporting Male (Keith Stanfield), and Best Editing.
And Nebraska, which also got it’s regional premier at Indie Memphis a few weeks, ago, received 6 Indie Spirit nomination, including for Best Feature, Best Director (Alexander Payne), Best Male Lead (Bruce Dern), Best Supporting Female (June Squibb), Best Supporting Male (Will Forte), and Best First Screenplay (Bob Nelson). Nebraska is scheduled for wide release in Memphis on December 22nd.
Finally, The Act of Killing is nominated for Best Documentary. The film had an exclusive screening in October at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
See the full list of Indie Spirit nominees at the bottom.
Best Feature: “12 Years a Slave” “All Is Lost” “Frances Ha” “Inside Llewyn Davis” “Nebraska”
Best Director: Shane Carruth, “Upstream Color” J.C. Chandor, “All is Lost” Steve McQueen, “12 Years a Slave” Jeff Nichols, “Mud” Alexander Payne, “Nebraska”
Best Screenplay: Woody Allen, “Blue Jasmine” Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater, “Before Midnight” Nicole Holofcener, “Enough Said” Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber, “The Spectacular Now” John Ridley, “12 Years a Slave”
Best Female Lead: Cate Blanchett, “Blue Jasmine” Julie Delpy, “Before Midnight” Gaby Hoffman, “Crystal Fairy” Brie Larson, “Short Term 12″ Shailene Woodley, “The Spectacular Now”
Best Male Lead: Bruce Dern, “Nebraska” Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave” Oscar Isaac, “Inside Llewyn Davis” Michael B. Jordan, “Fruitvale Station” Matthew McConaughey, “Dallas Buyers Club” Robert Redford, “All Is Lost”
Best Supporting Female: Melonie Diaz, “Fruitvale Station” Sally Hawkins, “Blue Jasmine” Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave” Yolonda Ross, “Go for Sisters” June Squibb, “Nebraska”
Best Supporting Male: Michael Fassbender, “12 Years a Slave” Will Forte, “Nebraska” James Gandolfini, “Enough Said” Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club” Keith Stanfield, “Short Term 12”
Best First Feature: “Blue Caprice” “Concussion” “Fruitvale Station” “Una Noche” “Wadjda”
Best First Screenplay: “In a World,” Lake Bell “Don Jon,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt “Nebraska,” Bob Nelson “Afternoon Delight,” Jill Soloway “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete,” Michael Starrbury
John Cassavetes Award: “Computer Chess” “Crystal Fairy” “Museum Hours” “Pit Stop” “This Is Martin Bonner”
Best Cinematography: Sean Bobbit, “12 Years a Slave” Benoit Debie, “Spring Breakers” Bruno Delbonnel, “Inside Llewyn Davis” Frank G. DeMarco, “All Is Lost” Matthias Grunsky, “Computer Chess”
Best Editing: Shane Carruth & David Lowery, “Upstream Color” Jem Cohen & Marc Vives, “Museum Hours” Jennifer Lame, “Frances Ha” Cindy Lee, “Una Noche” Nat Sanders, “Short Term 12”
Best Documentary: “20 Feet From Stardom” “After Tiller” “Gideon’s Army” “The Act of Killing” “The Square”
Best International Film: “A Touch of Sin” “Blue Is the Warmest Color” “Gloria” “The Great Beauty” “The Hunt”
Robert Altman Award (given to a film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast) “Mud”
Piaget Producers Award: Toby Halbrooks & James M. Johnston Jacob Jaffke Andrea Roa Frederick Thornton
Someone to Watch Award: “My Sister’s Quinceanera,” Aaron Douglas Johnston “Newlyweeds,” Shake King “The Foxy Merkins,” Madeline Olnek
Truer Than Fiction Award: “A River Changes Course,” Kalvanee Mam “Let the Fire Burn,” Jason Osder “Manakamana,” Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez
About 1/2 of MGMT played a sort of homecoming show in Memphis at The Orpheum Theatre last Saturday night. Lead singer Andrew VanWyngarden is from Memphis and went to White Station High School, as you may know. MGMT guitarist (and frontman for opening act Kuroma) is from here, too — VanWyngarden and Sullivant cut their teeth with the ca. 2000 local band Accidental Mersh. And Will Berman, MGMT’s drummer, has family here.
The venue was close to capacity, made up predominantly of fans with a 1 in front of their age and those for whom that wasn’t so long ago the case. (At age 37, I found myself in the 97th percentile — or, as I was corrected by Twitter friend @meghanshelby, “If you’re over 19 you’re in the 99.9th percentile.”
The show was terrific in many ways, though much of it can be condensed to: MGMT played about as broadly embraceable a set as they could based on the wide range of types of fans in attendance.
You wanted to hear their big hits, like “Kids,” “Time To Pretend,” and “Electric Feel?” Score.
You wanted to hear the trippy stuff like “Siberian Breaks” and “Of Moons, Birds & Monsters?” Score.
You wanted to hear material from the new album? Score.
MGMT’s set list broke down cleanly, with 6 cuts from Oracular Spectacular, 5 from Congratulations, and 5 from the newest album, MGMT.
You could use those numbers as a guideline and come up with many permutations of set lists, but MGMT elected to play their most accessible material. So they didn’t play “4th Dimensional Transition” but they did play “Weekend Wars”; they didn’t play “Lady Dada’s Nightmare” but did “Flash Delirium”; didn’t play the 2nd half of MGMT but did the first half.
The band’s musicianship was fully on display, if you chose to look for it. I don’t know that you call MGMT a rock band, and you certainly don’t in the traditional sense. As such, a guitar’s place is secondary to the hooks, noises, and environmental such and sundry produced by Ben Goldwasser. With an ear toward disassembling the construction to pick out the pieces, you can hear it all there, emanating from the stage. And the lyrics and vocals, though not always as conspicuous, are uniformly excellent. (A line like “I hope I die before I get sold” is pretty easily buried among a dozens of others in a song like “Siberian Breaks,” but it’s no less terrific.)
Set List Saturday, November 23rd The Orpheum Theatre, Memphis, TN
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Alien Days Time To Pretend Song for Dan Treacy Of Moons, Birds & Monsters Introspection The Youth Mystery Disease Flash Delirium Weekend Wars I Found a Whistle Siberian Breaks Electric Feel Cool Song No. 2 Kids —Encore— Your Life Is a Lie Congratulations
The architect of MGMT’s visual performance is Alejandro Crawford. The Orpheum show extensively featured imagery from Optimizer, MGMT’s companion video piece to their newest album, which was made by Crawford and a few other contributors.
Crawford uses Xbox360 Kinects to capture movement, and then runs the information through software he has written (references below). He also uses a remote control quadrocopter, which could be seen droning unmanned above the band during the show. (Upon seeing it, my wife said, “That’s STEM, baby.”) I’m sure there’s other technological stuff happening to that I don’t have the vocab for.
“Alien Days” was backed by a video of the travails of an alien shrimp guy with eyes on his nipples, natch.
For many of the songs, a camera captures the band and projects their image, shot through with color-bar ambience, to the audience. The concept’s ne plus ultra was reached during MGMT’s cover of Faine Jade’s “Introspection.” It’s a great obscure song for MGMT to record, with a simple, direct lyrical approach to material that gets covered a lot in music. The chorus, “Introspection: What am I really like inside?” punctuates navel-gazing lines like “Colors, thoughts, emotions/Are trapped within the heart.” The notion of self-examination is punched up in the live show as VanWyngarden uses a camera to record closeups of himself and bandmates as they perform the song — with saturated color layered into the mix. It’s a clever bit of meta-commentary, as if we are to believe that what the camera shows of these music celebrities is the same thing as who they really are (and as if asking “Who am I” is the same as giving an answer.)
“I Found a Whistle” features a spinning day-glo rose, turning the song into a kind of romantic ballad. At the least, that’s what the couple in front of me thought as they slow-danced.
Two songs that really stood out to me at the show were “Of Moons, Birds & Monsters” and “Mystery Disease.” I guess I’ve heard the former, from the band’s first album, several times, but never before have I been as impressed by VanWyngarden’s rock-god guitar chops. I always find it interesting when great traditional-rock-instrument musicians turn their attention to less normal tools of their trade, like synthesizers and pedals and what have you. (See also: Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood). VanWyngarden can wail when he wants. “Mystery Disease” was probably my favorite live version of a song from the new album, a percussive, propulsive delight.
“Siberian Breaks” was arguably the highlight of the show, though I’m weird like that. I’m on record saying, “It’s the best of all MGMT songs, and if you don’t agree I’ll fight you.” Well, I would’ve had a lot of fights to get into at the show. (More on that shortly.) “Siberian Breaks” is not for the faint of heart, and I’m not sure how it played in the Peoria of the Orpheum’s non-die-hard fanbase. The head-scratcher of a song has multiple false endings, and the uninitiated clapped dutifully a few times when they thought it was over. “Hahahaha!” I laughed derisively at the clappers, “this song has got 9 minutes and 7 iterations to go!” (Please note extreme self-deprecation.) “Siberian Breaks” is a marvel, though, and quite rewarding. It was a near-note-for-note recounting of the album version, though I don’t mean that in a bad way. Pretty amazing stuff.
When “Electric Feel” kicked in after “Siberian Breaks,” it was the perfect palate cleanser. Plus: The heavy bass in “Electric Feel” knocked the amps out on my end of stage. (I’m sure that makes technical purists cringe at the notion, but I thought it was cool.)
Up next was “Cool Song No. 2” from the new album. Introducing the song at The Orpheum, VanWyngarden said it was the first time the band had played it live. One dude shot a video of it from Saturday night. The bass on the song kind of overwhelms the video, but you can still get the idea.
Even better is the official video of the song, which stars Michael K. Williams metaphorically reprising his role as Omar from The Wire.
“Kids” closed out the first set. The response was overwhelming. As soon as that catchy keyboard hook hit, the crowd screamed in girlish delight. (All screams at that pitch are girlish, even from men, myself included.) For The Orpheum at least, “Kids” was regarded as MGMT’s favorite song.
When I interviewed VanWyngarden for a Memphis magazine profile, he said, “In college, MGMT was much more ironic, a sarcastic take on mainstream pop music in a way. And that’s when we wrote ‘Kids,’ our most popular song. After touring and playing that song over and over and doing it karaoke-style, we wanted to make an album [Congratulations] that was music that we really felt good about that wasn’t overly serious but wasn’t joke music. I don’t think ‘Kids’ is a joke song, but I think it does have that air of sarcasm about it.”
The Huffington Post Canada did a story on MGMT and why for a while they didn’t want to play “Kids,” and why they’ve decided to play it again during this tour. Ben Goldwasser is quoted in the story, “It’s not necessarily because we don’t want to play [‘Kids’], it’s more just we don’t want to play a song live if we can’t make it sound good and fit with the rest of the music.”
Hearing it live again, I noted how VanWyngarden took the mic off the stand and walked around with it to sing, which reminded me of karaoke. Maybe he’s owning his own critique of the song? And also, during what is the album version’s brief quiet spell before the denouement, MGMT made a jumping off point for some lovely, intense, elongated jamming that gives the song some long-lost spontaneity.
When the song ended, the fans’ appreciation was enormously vocal. I know the Beatles and others of their ilk have gotten the same treatment, but few have had it louder than MGMT did for “Kids” Saturday night. It was the perfect time for MGMT to leave the stage hot and the crowd poised for an encore.
The glee over “Kids” was, I think, a pretty great set-up for the thematic knock-down of “Your Life Is a Lie,” which the band played when they took the stage again. Conjoining the two songs was probably by favorite moment of the show. “Your Life Is a Lie” features VanWyngarden’s wit and wisdom at its most trenchant, outside of “Flash Delirium.” Especially on the heels of “Kids,” “Your Life Is a Lie” felt like healthy nourishment after too much candy. The song begins with the downer, “Here’s the deal/Open your eyes/Your life is a lie/Don’t say a word/I’ll tell you why/You’re living a lie” and gets more acidic from there.
To counterpoint the message, “Your Life Is a Lie” features the most absurd of instruments, the cowbell. To play it, MGMT brought on stage local music-scene stalwart Steve Selvidge, who Memphian VanWyngarden got to know when his high school/briefly college band Accidental Mersh played shows with Selvidge’s Big Ass Truck more than a decade ago. (Selvidge is now a guitarist for the Hold Steady, so that’s cool.)
MGMT closed the show out with the exceedingly lovely “Congratulations,” a great capstone to a set that featured dense musicality and catchy riffs undercut by sardonic self-effacement.
Additional, Superfluous Commentary (Read at your own risk) A few more thoughts brought to mind by the concert and some reactions to it I’ve read.
I think Memphis has earned a reputation as being a relatively poor audience at concerts. I don’t know when this started or even if it’s an idea that exists outside of my own head. I first became aware of the notion during the Smashing Pumpkins concert at the Pyramid in 1996, when Billy Corgan yelled at everybody for not selling out the arena and not really being into the show, either. For the record, I was loving the concert, but I knew what he meant because there were a lot of people around me who weren’t nearly as engaged. However, I didn’t really appreciate Corgan griping about me. I didn’t know the phrase at the time, but “STFU” depicted my attitude about his comments. And is it the audience’s fault they’re not engaged or the band’s?
This idea was furthered during a Wilco show at Memphis In May in 2003. The crowd was annoyed by the band’s set and mere existence and eager for whoever was playing after them — some pop-rock act with some big hits, though I can’t recall who. Someone yelled, “Go back to Seattle!” at Wilco, a band from Chicago. Lead singer Jeff Tweedy said something like, “Um, we like Seattle, but…”
It was embarrassing as a Memphian. The other takeaway I had from that show was that my friend and I almost got in a fight with some bros in front of us. We were there for Wilco, the dudes in front of us (and their girlfriends) were not. They were obnoxious and kept backing into us intentionally to be annoying. It almost got ugly, but didn’t.
I was reminded of all this during MGMT’s show. My wife and I were surrounded by a crew of people in their 20s or so who all knew each other and were clearly not into the show like we were. This was manifested by lots of loud talking (not paying attention to the concert) and, worse, these drunk people near us who kept drawing attention to themselves by dancing ironically (kind of like having a laugh at some of the songs) and leaving the rows for the aisles on purpose to get in trouble with the security staff, who kept warning them to stop, and distracting me and a few others around me who just wanted to pay attention to the show.
The worst was this giant drunk dude immediately in front of me who kept flexing his arms and turning in a 360-degree circle to get attention and show off for his friends, and kept almost hitting me in the face as he swiveled. I came as close to losing my temper as I have since the Wilco show. The guy would’ve beaten my brains in, because he was much bigger than me, but for awhile I thought it might be worth it to try. (Note: I’ve never gotten in a fight in my life. Never. I think I would probably lose.)
I looked around at the rest of the crowd and didn’t see any other overtly problematic people, but it made me wonder if most every little pocket of crowd had some annoying behaviors happening. How many others were like me, mad at their neighbors who weren’t at the show for the same reasons, who didn’t like the same songs, who weren’t enjoying or respecting the concert to the same degree? And is this a problem in Memphis or everywhere? What about during “Siberian Breaks,” when even some people in the front row (ostensible uber-fans) weren’t as engaged in the song as I was? Was this just Memphis being a bad town for concert crowds?
That’s when it finally hit me how ridiculous I was being. How can I judge that others aren’t watching a concert the way I am? I still think it’s impolite to talk loud to the extent that it diminishes what others can hear. But if someone wants to pay to go to a concert and then talk with their friend, are they doing it wrong? If some frat guys (I’m being uncharitable) want to make jokes to each other by how they dance and make jack-off gestures, are they doing it wrong?
The answer, I’ve decided, is no. They might not be my future BFFs, but it’s not my place to say I’ve got it figured out and they don’t. Contextualize that to the Huffington Post piece, and I think MGMT might have had it wrong to not want to play “Kids” because it’s the only thing some people want to hear. I’m glad MGMT is playing “Kids,” if that was the only reason to stop playing it. If they decide they hate the song and don’t want to play it, I can live with that. But it shouldn’t be predicated on people attending their concerts properly. (See also Arcade Fire’s suggested dress code for concerts.) I bet of 3,000 people (or however many) at the show, there were about 3,000 reasons for wanting to be there.
Flip this argument one more time, though, and I think it strikes more directly at the heart of the pop-sociology of Memphis music audiences that I’ve constructed here in this long-winded straw man argument. Just as a band shouldn’t impose a behavior litmus test to an audience, so also is it not fair for the crowd to impose one on the band itself. We’re spoiled with a large population of terrific musicians and performers. If MGMT doesn’t strike your fancy, with their relaxed stage presence and heavily synthesized music, maybe they’re not for you. It’s not that they’re not doing it right. They’re just not doing it like you would. Extrapolate to whatever band playing whatever style. Maybe they’re not your cup of tea. Maybe there’s a show across town or one tomorrow night more to your liking.
Different strokes, as they say, but not a matter of right and wrong. Memphis sometimes needs to check the provincialism and self-satisfaction at the front door. I’ll start trying to do so myself.
The Hunger Games was a fun movie that had more going on thematically than you usually get from Hollywood spectacles ostensibly aimed at a YA audience. Plus, to quote my Flyer review, “the baseline lesson of The Hunger Games is don’t trust whitey, and I think that’s a good one to teach kids.”
The sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, is thankfully cut from the same cloth. It starts a few months after the last ended. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is back home in Panem’s District 12 (American Appalachia). She still illegally hunts game, but her family is better off than they were at the beginning of the Hunger Games cycle. Now they all live, along with Katniss’ boy toy Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and mentor Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), in mansions in Victor’s Village, part of their prize for having won the Hunger Games. Katniss’ pal Gale (Liam Hemsworth) works in the coal mines, and they still have a chaste, platonic-plus relationship.
Katniss suffers from PTSD, which is intensified when she and Peeta are forced to go on a victory tour of Panem, including District 11 (the South), which we last saw in riot after the tragic death of their tribute, Rue. In Catching Fire, District 11 is illustrated with cotton fields and impoverished faces. The crowd demonstrates its appreciation for Katniss, but the Capitol stormtroopers see it as political defiance and murderously respond. It’s a horrifying, effective scene.
Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) — lord, these names — takes over as the head gamesmaker who wants to make the event mean something. Every 25 years, the Capitol throws a curve ball to remind the districts that they are subjugated. The dastardly twist in this year’s Hunger Games: It pits previous victors against each other, a sudden-death all-star game. So back into the fray goes Katniss, like a premise too profitable to quit.
Catching Fire is on surest ground when the games begin, contextualizing the entertainment value of the battle scenes for the real audience better than the first film did; you don’t really want any of these gladiators to die. Lawrence, Hutcherson, and Harrelson are all very good. Jena Malone and Sam Claflin stand out in smaller roles. And Stanley Tucci returns as the scenery-chewing showman Caesar, filling a role that might’ve otherwise gone to Robin Williams, for which I am thankful.
Director Francis Lawrence capably administers the film. The districts have a tactile griminess and despair, and the Capitol is portrayed as a neon techno-Rome, equally shrewd and vapid.
Catching Fire is a significant upgrade over the book. The script by a couple Oscar winners, Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt, does a better job balancing Katniss’ vulnerability and strength — the book settles on passive — and finds a satisfying gait for the fastidious romantic three-legged race. Here’s hoping the third film is a tactical victory over its own disappointing source material.
Even with six weeks to go, it’s safe to say 2013 is the best in film since 2003. Two offerings opening in Memphis this week — Dallas Buyers Club and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire — continue that trend.
Dallas Buyers Club is a true story based on the life and particulars of death of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a Texas bull rider who contracted the AIDS virus in the mid-1980s. The film starts in 1985. Rock Hudson is in the newspapers for having the deadly disease culturally thought of as a homosexual problem.
After an accident at work, Woodroof is taken to the hospital. The usual tests are run, but they come back with unusual results: He has tested positive for HIV. He doesn’t believe Drs. Saks and Sevard (Jennifer Garner at her most compassionate and Denis O’Hare), much less their prognosis that he has a month to live. “There ain’t nothing out there that can kill fucking Ron Woodruff in 30 days,” he says.
More than anything, Woodroof struggles with the news because he is not gay, as he tells everyone who knows his diagnosis. This usually comes out in some variation on, “I ain’t no faggot, motherfucker.” His temperament is so stabby because he’s a Texas cowboy, the apex of aggressive masculinity, who, we see through several early cock-and-bull scenes, rides the rodeo for fun, has a lot of sex with women, and can hold his liquor (and cocaine).
The first act follows Woodroof for those 30 days he’s been sentenced to, during which he loses all his friends, fights to be legitimately treated by the health-care industry, gives up and illegally procures the new drug AZT from a hospital orderly, and goes to Mexico to be treated by an expatriate physician, Dr. Vass (Griffin Dunne).
There, the doc tells Woodroof AZT is toxic and is killing him. Vass prescribes instead a battery of meds and dietary supplements not approved by the FDA but in common use elsewhere in the world. Woodroof gets better — not cured, of course, but not at death’s door. And he hatches a plot with Vass to get the medicine into the hands of other AIDS victims back home.
With the help of Rayon (Jared Leto), a transgender woman with AIDS, Woodroof organizes the Dallas Buyers Club, selling not drugs but memberships to a plan that consequently includes medicine. He makes an enemy of Sevard, whose patients are leaving traditional medical routes for the buyers club, and ultimately the FDA. Saks is in the moral middle ground. She believes in science but also wants health care to be more about cures than profit.
Director Jean-Marc Vallée tells the story with appreciated economy. The script (by Craig Borten, who interviewed Woodroof years ago, and Melisa Wallack) contains a few cutesy missteps. (“Screw the FDA, I’m going to be DOA.”) But Dallas Buyers Club is an exceptional film about living with severe illness, and considerably accessible considering the subject matter. The 80s must’ve sucked to live during as an adult.
Dallas Buyers Club‘s great success comes largely via McConaughey, who lost considerable weight for the part. McConaughey’s Woodroof is skin-and-bones rancor with a Dale Earnhardt mustache. His irascible, slow acceptance of others and then himself comes through in his relationship with Rayon. The film doesn’t overplay the odd-couple dynamic of the pair. Instead, it simmers, allowing the characters to get under each other’s skin and convey warmth and goodwill in nontraditional ways. Leto, too, is fantastic. Both will be showered with awards-season accolades.
Devil’s Knot, Atom Egoyan’s adaptation of Mara Leveritt’s book about the West Memphis Three, has long been in development. Tonight, we finally got an official trailer and poster release.
The film stars Reese Witherspoon as Pam Dobbs, mother of murder victim Stevie Branch. Colin Firth is Ron Lax, a Memphis private investigator who assisted the defense of the West Memphis Three. (Note: the real Ron Lax died just a month ago of brain cancer.)
For years, Craig Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry has held the title as the most famous least-seen movie in Memphis history. After years of production in Memphis, with a modest $20,000 budget, The Poor & Hungry was released in 2000 to much fanfare, including winning Best Digital Feature at the Hollywood Film Festival. It was a triumph of personal filmmaking for Brewer and the cast and crew.
But the “local indie film does good” story became a much more significant cultural touchstone when Brewer signed with John Singleton. The director of Boyz n the Hood and Shaft produced and financed Brewer’s followup, Hustle & Flow, based on the strength of The Poor & Hungry. And everybody knows what Hustle & Flow did: won Sundance, got a major theatrical release, and was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning one of them. Then there was another big release, Black Snake Moan, and then the biggest yet, a remake of Footloose.
It’s like an urban legend, but it happens to be true. And, because of the vagaries of the film industry, it means that most people haven’t seen the work that started it all, The Poor & Hungry. Apart from its initial release and festival tour, a few local screenings over the years, and a copy of the film that’s been M.I.A. from Black Lodge Video for years, The Poor & Hungry has been much more widely known by reputation than by viewings.
At last, that can change. Brewer, filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox, and producer Erin Hagee have spent a few years (about as long as it took to make the film in the first place) remastering and enhancing the film for its first release on DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital download. This week, The Poor & Hungry drops. It lives up to every bit of its mythology, like an untold origin story.
The Poor & Hungry is an out-of-circulation, missing link of Memphis filmmaking between Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train and Hustle & Flow. Filmed in black-and-white and depicting lives led on society’s margins, weeds growing up through the cracks in abandoned parking lots, The Poor & Hungry immerses itself in a gritty but realistic milieu. Watching it is like unearthing a time capsule: You’ll probably see some old friends and a few ghosts, including the since-scraped Butler Street Bazaar.
Lauren Rae Holtermann
Eric Tate stars as Eli, a thoughtful thief who procures cars for a chop shop run by the sinister Mr. Coles (John Still). Eli’s best friend is Harper (Lindsey Roberts), a hustler who’s never met a stranger, begging, grifting, cajoling, and otherwise earning every penny she can to get by. In the opposite of a meet cute, Eli spies Amanda (Lake Latimer): He’s stealing her car and peeping through her window as she plays her cello, oblivious to it all. One terrific chop-shop procedural montage later, Eli and Amanda encounter each other again at the police impound lot. They talk, and thus is a dramatic-romantic plot launched.
The Poor & Hungry is wonderful — and, maybe, because of the expectations, surprisingly so. First, the performances are all terrific. Tate is a quiet but engaging presence in the film. Listening to Amanda’s music, as he does in a few scenes, Eli’s eyes take on a kind of relaxed, joyful reverie. He’s convincing as a man who found something he didn’t know he was looking for. Brewer’s script gives his character ample meat, including a scene I love where he puts model cars together.
Roberts is fantastic but for all different reasons. Harper is a ball of fire, complicated and charming. You don’t believe her street patter but want to. Roberts’ performance is ecstatic, layered with energy properly wielded. “If there’s one thing I know about a Memphis stripper is they’ve got a warped sense of economics,” Harper says. In another scene, she hits the bathroom, peels a tampon, and uses the paper wrapper to roll a joint.
Latimer is the third, crucial leg of the ensemble, and it’s a heartfelt role. She has probably the most difficult assignment of the three leads: to appear the least complex and to slowly reveal who she is. Amanda has a fresh face like a John Hughes or other 1980s heroine: Molly Ringwald meets Ione Skye (and maybe a ’90s dash of Joey Lauren Adams). Amanda and Harper shares a scene at the P&H Cafe that’s reminiscent of the “50 eggs” sequence from Cool Hand Luke.
The Poor & Hungry was a true indie, starring a nonprofessional cast and shot guerrilla-style with a two-man crew — Brewer and his brother-in-law, Seth Hagee, credited as master technician — when everyone’s schedule allowed it. They filmed in real chop shops, massage parlors, and strip clubs. “Sometimes, Memphis can be dangerous,” says actor T.C. Sharpe (who plays a cowboy pimp) in the DVD extra Poor Man’s Process, a 27-minute making-of/retrospective doc. Brewer, Tate, Roberts, Latimer, the P&H’s Wanda Wilson, Hagee, Singleton, producer Stephanie Allain, and the P&H Cafe itself are at the fore in the documentary. Among the highlights are scenes from an aborted color version of the film, the origin of the film’s premise, reminiscences by Brewer on his father’s role in the film’s existence, and the scene that made and still makes Roberts cry.
You can buy The Poor & Hungry in several special packaging iterations, which, in addition to the film, including signed posters, a T-shirt that harkens back to the old P&H mural, a limited-edition silk-screened print (designed by Flyer graphic designer Lauren Rae Holtermann), and other goodies. You can also opt to get just a digital copy of the film for free download at thepoorandhungry.com.
“I really wanted the film’s rollout to be about love and friendship,” Brewer says. “The goal isn’t to make money. It’s for as many people to see The Poor & Hungry as possible.”
Sing All Kinds has a meme alert involving Dana from Homeland (played wonderfully by Morgan Saylor).
Many people hate Dana. It’s a thing. I actually like her, but just not on Homeland. Spin her off. Let her get into hijinks that don’t involve national security — or that do, but don’t have anything to do with Carrie and Saul. I’d love to watch Dana try to date boys in the insular, inside the Beltway District of Columbia. What happens when Dana dates the Muslim son of the Iranian ambassador? How does her Mom feel about that? I’d watch that.
Until then, we’ll just have to amuse ourselves with Dana memes. Interestingly, her image is finding purchase in the pop cultural Zeitgeist ancillary to college football.
I wrote the cover story (plug, plug) in the November Memphis magazine, on the Grove scene in Oxford, Mississippi, during football season.
A sharp-eyed reader — Flyer Managing Editor Susan Ellis — noticed something odd on the Memphis magazine cover, and paired it with a Tweet she saw last weekend.
It appears Dana is on the cover of Memphis magazine. Play Where’s Waldo? and see if you can find her, or just take a gander below:
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Closeup of Memphis magazine
So, someone appears to have a large poster of Dana in the Grove. Homemade signs are nothing new to college football, of course. Not even when they feature idiosyncratic subjects, such as Dana from Homeland.
The art of homemade fan signs finds its ultimate exhibition on the set of ESPN’s College GameDay. For the more casual fan, it’s just as entertaining to spot the signs in the background of GameDay as it is to hear the talking heads blather. GameDay is like MOMA for homemade signs.
Last weekend, GameDay was in Tuscaloosa for the LSU-Alabama tilt. The folks at the Twitter account @LostLettermen noticed Dana in the background, behind Kirk Herbstreit.
Dana at “GameDay”
One is a coincidence. Two is a trend. Anybody know of any others? Or why this is happening in the first place (other than that it’s awesome)?
UPDATE (6:27 p.m.) It wasn’t until the drive home that I realized the obvious connection between these two photos (I’m no John Nash). Though one was in Oxford and the other in Tuscaloosa, the home teams shared a common visitor on separate game days: LSU. I’m gonna conjecture that the anonymous Banksy behind the Dana sign is a Bengal Tiger.
“The Mathis Project” airs tonight at 9 p.m. on BET
TV’s Judge Greg Mathis, of Memphis, stars in a new show tonight on BET.
From a release from the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission:
BET’s new docu-series, The Mathis Project, premieres tonight at 9 p.m. The production, an effort by BET and TV’s Judge Greg Mathis, filmed some episodes in Memphis and was assisted by the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission.
As described by BET, “Judge Mathis unites local volunteers and law enforcement to gather information that has the potential to solve the case — and get community members to do what, for some, is unthinkable: reveal what they know. Mathis’ investigative skills will bring these cases to a close by exposing the truth that witnesses, anonymous tipsters and ‘word on the street’ sources have kept hidden for years.”
The no-nonsense retired judge is well known for his NBC reality court show, Judge Mathis, which began its 15th season in September.
Earlier this year, Fox13’s Les Smith did a piece on the filming of the show. His story is here.
As Judge Mathis says, “Last year, more than 6,000 African Americans were victims of homicide. More than 2,000 of those homicides are still unsolved. We’re going to reopen some of those cold cases and go into some of our toughest neighborhoods to see what I can do to help solve them. It’s time for things to change from the ground up.”
For one hour a week, I’m completely engrossed in Showtime’s Homeland. For the other 167 hours I kinda forget about it.
It’s not that the show isn’t good. For two and a half seasons and counting, Homeland has presented an unrealistic, militaristic, borderline xenophobic thrill ride about American spies and the Islamic terrorists they attempt to foil. The star is Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, a CIA intelligence officer who wrestles with bipolar disorder while trying to prove her brilliant deductions of where the next attack is coming from and who will be the perpetrator. She thinks the wolf in sheep’s clothing is Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), a Marine who was an Iraq war POW before escaping. Carrie thinks Brody was turned by terrorist mastermind Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban). Carrie’s superior, Saul (Mandy Patinkin), doesn’t know what to think. Brody’s wife (Morena Baccarin) and kids (Morgan Saylor, Jackson Pace) don’t know what to think. The first season is a tense bit of gamesmanship but takes a long time to get really rolling. Each episode ends on a cliffhanger to hook you back, but, for me at least, I wasn’t invested enough in the characters to remember to be anxious.
It’s not that the show isn’t superbly acted. Danes has got the “best dramatic actress on TV” thing on lockdown right now. Watching her face, as she cycles through 100 emotions a minute when she goes on and off her bipolar meds, is an amazement. That her character is thematically linked to jazz is almost too rich a metaphor for Danes’ acting. Both she and Lewis have won Emmys for their work. Can’t say I agree with Lewis’ accolades, in light of the competition, though Patinkin is wonderful as a steadying presence on the show, and Rupert Friend is exceptional as fellow CIA agent Peter Quinn.
Now, the part with spoilers through the first two seasons:
Season one ends with a great turn of events. Brody really does try to detonate a bomb, but his attempt fails. But the second season is even better. The series gets its finest moment in the S2 episode “Q&A,” wherein every lie Brody and Carrie have been telling each other is aired. It’s riveting, watching Carrie wear the man down and the relief they both feel when the ordeal is over. The climax of the season, when the CIA is bombed and Brody is blamed for it, is weird. I can’t pin down exactly what happened and why Carrie is so sure he wasn’t involved, except because of their history. It’s not great storytelling.
Now, the part with spoilers of the current season:
Season 3 is the weirdest yet. In hindsight, I very much appreciate the long con of having us fall out of love with Saul and then back in love in a fury when he and Carrie are revealed to be in cahoots. Also in retrospect, Danes’ performance is even better, walking that line between emotional breakdown and pretending to be going through emotional breakdown.
What I don’t like is the lingering anti-Muslim sentiment, most vivid when the new analyst Fara (Nazanin Boniadi) walks into the CIA to a bunch of stares — because she’s wearing a hijab and for no other reason!
Also apparent: Brody’s got to go. Now that Nazir is dead, any tension of having him on the show is dissipated. As for the other members of the Brody family, I really do like them. I would watch a show about angsty teen Dana Brody. But Homeland is not that show. And I don’t like the feeling that Homeland is going down the same road 24 did with Kim Bauer. (The two shows share a gaggle of producers.) Mental health runaways is just another way to say cougar trap.
Last, the part with spoilers from the last episode:
Carrie is pregnant? WTF? Who’s the daddy? Brody? … or Peter Freakin’ QUINN?
Best Narrative Feature Award winner “It Felt Like Love”
Another Indie Memphis film festival is wrapped up and put back in the attic until next year — though the organization has extensive year-round programming.
Last night, to close out the festivities, Indie Memphis gave out awards for the best of the fest. Winners are listed below. Many of the awards included cash prizes, and they all received a lovely trophy designed by Memphis artist Yvonne Bobo.
Best Narrative Feature Award ($1,000 cash prize) It Felt Like Love (director: Eliza Hittman)
Duncan-Williams Scriptwriting Award ($1,000 cash prize presented by Duncan-Williams, Inc.) See You Next Tuesday (writer/director: Drew Tobia)
Hometowner Award, Narrative Feature ($1,000 cash prize presented by the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission) Being Awesome (director: Allen C. Gardner)
Hometowner Award, Narrative Short ($500 cash prize presented by the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission) John’s Farm (director: Melissa Sweazy
Hometowner Award, Documentary Short ($500 cash prize presented by the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission) Bookin’ (director: John Kirkscey
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Jury Award, Documentary Feature ($1,000 cash prize presented by Classic American Hardwoods) Brother’s Hypnotic (director: Reuben Atlas)
“What I Love About Concrete” filmmakers
Jury Award, Documentary Short ($500 cash prize) Sweet Crude Man Camp (director: Isaac Gale)
Jury Award, Narrative Short ($500 cash prize) Aftermath (director: Jeremy Robbins)
Jury Award, Animated/Experimental Film The Missing Scarf (director: Eoin Duffy)
Special Jury Award, The Emerging Artist Award for the creative promise shown by their debut feature Directors Katherine Dohan and Alanna Stewart, What I Love About Concrete
Special Jury Award, Outstanding Performance Eleanore Pienta, See You Next Tuesday
Special Jury Award Great Chicken Wing Hunt (director: Matt Reynolds)
Audience Award, Narrative Feature Short Term 12 (director: Destin Cretton)
Special Jury Awards How to Sharpen Pencils (director: Kenneth Price) and Ms. Belvedere (director: Michael Reynolds)
Movie poster for “Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride”
Soul of Southern Film Award Orange Mound, Tennessee: America’s Community (director, Emmanuel Amido)
Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award Randy Moore, Escape from Tomorrow
Governor’s Award Indie Memphis Executive Director Erik Jambor
Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking Award Bob Birdnow’s Remarkable Tale of Human Survival and the Transcendence of Self (director: Eric Steele)
AIGA Movie Poster Award Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride (director: Amy Nicholson)
Audience Award, Documentary Feature A Whole Lott More (director: Victor Buhler)
Audience Award, Hometowner Film Meanwhile in Memphis: The Sound of a Revolution (directors: Nan Hackman and Robert Allen Parker)
Audience Award, Documentary Short Mabon “Teenie” Hodges – A Portrait of a Memphis Soul Original (director: Susanna Vapnek)
Audience Award, Narrative Short Cootie Contagion (director: Joshua Smooha)
Lauren Rae Holtermann 
