In the April 20, 2000, issue, the Flyer introduced many
Memphians to a new name they’d get to know much better over the years:
Craig Brewer.
The filmmaker, who would go on to make a splash with his Sundance
hit Hustle & Flow and who will debut his MTV series $5
Cover in May, was then a relative unknown just finishing his first
homemade feature, The Poor and Hungry.
In “Home Movies,” a feature on “the budding Memphis independent film
scene” by staff writer Mark Jordan, the Flyer captured a
28-year-old Brewer setting up a Poor and Hungry shot at the
P&H Café featuring bluegrass band the Riverbluff Clan and
watched as Brewer created a makeshift peep-show booth in his Midtown
living room while shooting the short film Clean Up in Booth
B.
“In just the past few years, a bona fide independent filmmaking
community seems to have sprouted up in Memphis, one that is apparently
thriving far away from the lights of Hollywood and all the happier for
it,” Jordan wrote. He also reported on other then-new local features
such as exploitation auteur J. Michael McCarthy’s Superstarlet
A.D. and the group project Strange Cargo, as well as two
local film festivals: the Memphis International Film Festival and
the Independent Memphis Film Festival.
Nearly a decade later, Brewer and McCarthy stand as the godfathers
for a vast, vibrant local filmmaking scene, and those two festivals,
since rechristened On Location: Memphis and Indie Memphis, have grown
alongside the local film scenes they support. — Chris
Herrington
