Tag: Brad Ellis

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The Return of Russell: Cinematic Panic Brings Different Kind of Film Festival to Black Lodge

This weekend, the second Cinematic Panic film festival unspools on the big screens at Black Lodge. “Like last year, the big idea is, half of the submissions are from Memphis; the rest from all across the country and from other countries,” says Matt Martin, proprietor of the recently revived video store and hangout spot. 

In total, filmmakers from 25 different countries submitted entries to the Panic, which includes dozens of short films and features in and out of competition. “Our only criteria is, whatever you make, it’s gotta be weird.” says Martin.

The festival competition begins on Thursday, December 5 with Flesh City, a gonzo horror fantasy from Berlin director Thorsten Fleisch. This is a film whose own trailer proclaims “It will make your eyes bleed”.

The Return of Russell: Cinematic Panic Brings Different Kind of Film Festival to Black Lodge

Cinematic Panic also features weird and shocking classics, such as Thursday’s second film, the infamous J-horror nightmare Ichi The Killer. 

The Return of Russell: Cinematic Panic Brings Different Kind of Film Festival to Black Lodge (2)

Friday night sees the return of a Memphis classic. The Importance of Being Russell was a big hit at the 2006 Indie Memphis Film Festival. Directed by Sean Plemmons, the film stars one of the Bluff City’s independent film pioneers John Pickle as the titular Russell, a self-proclaimed redneck who finds himself drawn into a plot of world domination via mind control, also known as “getting city-fied”.

Pickle says the film grew from a character he created for Pickle TV, which weirded up cable in Memphis for the better part of a decade. “I used to do multiple characters on the cable access show, and Russell was one that I came up with one night out of necessity,” says Pickle. “That particular character seems to resonate with with people more than 80 characters that I had done previously. So I just started writing more skits with Russell.”

The Return of Russell: Cinematic Panic Brings Different Kind of Film Festival to Black Lodge (3)

While filming his horror feature, The Last Man on Earth, Pickle and his collaborators, which included Jimmy Ross, had the idea to give Russell his own film. “We all just kind of giggled at it, but the more we thought about it the more just kind of evolved. And so we started getting together like every Sunday night for almost a year, and hashing out the story of what it would it could be and what it should be. … It just evolved over time, because when we first started digging around with it the the Russell character wasn’t like he ended up being in the movie. He was he was a lot more offensive and brash and pretty much just a kind of person you wouldn’t really want to be around. I didn’t necessarily agree with that at the time, but I’m glad we got we went with it because the Russell character turned out to be very likable.”

The Importance of Being Russell is a marvel of DIY filmmaking that includes a special-effect-heavy finale visually inspired by Forbidden Planet courtesy of special effects artist Greg Stanford and makeup artist Maddie Singer.

The Return of Russell: Cinematic Panic Brings Different Kind of Film Festival to Black Lodge (4)

After Russell is the 1985 Lovecraftian classic, Re-Animator, which was a major influence on Pickle’s short film “Cannibal Records”.

The Return of Russell: Cinematic Panic Brings Different Kind of Film Festival to Black Lodge (6)

Saturday includes sci-fi shorts and the David Cronenberg adaptation of William Burrough’s Naked Lunch.

The Return of Russell: Cinematic Panic Brings Different Kind of Film Festival to Black Lodge (7)

Then, Brad Ellis and Allen Gardner of Memphis’ Old School Pictures present their latest feature, Cold Feet. The horror comedy, which puts a bachelor party in a haunted house with a ghost who has motives of her own, sold out at Indie Memphis 2019 and won a screenplay award at the New Orleans Horror Film Festival.

The Return of Russell: Cinematic Panic Brings Different Kind of Film Festival to Black Lodge (5)

Sunday features a full day of films, including the competition horror comedy The Curse of Valburga from Slovenia.

The Return of Russell: Cinematic Panic Brings Different Kind of Film Festival to Black Lodge (8)

Tickets are $20 for the weekend, and you can see the full schedule here. 

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Harriet, Mystery Train, and Frankie Lead Indie Memphis 2019 Lineup

Cynthia Ervino as Harriet Tubman in Harriet, the opening night film at Indie Memphis 2019

The Indie Memphis Film Festival has announced the lineup for the 22nd iteration of the home-grown cinephile celebration, which will run October 30-November 4, 2019. The opening night film will be Harriet, a biopic of abolitionist leader Harriet Tubman by director Kasi Lemmons.

(l to r) Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny, and Adam Driver star in Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die.

Director Jim Jarmusch, who put Memphis on the arthouse map in 1989 with Mystery Train, will return for a 30th anniversary screening of the seminal independent film. Since the festival runs through Halloween this year, Jarmusch will also screen his latest film, zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die.

Producer/director Sara Driver, Jarmusch’s longtime partner and sometimes co-creator, will be the subject of a retrospective, and present the “spooky inspirations” for her work, which critic Johnathan Rosenbaum called “a conflation of fantasy with surrealism, science fiction, comics, horror, sword-and-sorcery, and the supernatural that stretches all the way from art cinema to exploitation by way of Hollywood.”

William Marshall wants to have a drink on you in Blacula.

On Halloween itself, there will be a special screening of the cult classic Blacula starring William Marshall as a vampire loose in ’70s Los Angeles.

Memphis director Ira Sachs returns from France with his latest picture Frankie, starring Isabella Huppert as an ailing movie star who summons her family and friends for one last gathering.
 

Harriet, Mystery Train, and Frankie Lead Indie Memphis 2019 Lineup

The Hometowner category, which spotlights films made by Memphis artists, boasts a healthy six features this year, including Cold Feet, a bachelor party horror comedy by Indie Memphis stalwarts Brad Ellis and Allen C. Gardner, which just won the writing award at the New Orleans Horror Film Festival. Musician and artist Lawerence Matthews makes his feature film debut at the festival with vérité documentary The Hub. Cinematographer and producer Jordan Danelz presents his first feature documentary In the Absence, which deals with blight and gentrification in Memphis. Jookin’ is the subject of Louis Wallecan’s Lil Buck: Real Swan. Jim Hanon profiles Memphis saxophonist Kirk Whalum in Humanite: The Beloved Community. Director Jessica Chaney makes her premiere with the girl power drama This Can’t Be Life.

Penny Hardaway (right) stars with Shaquille O’Neil (center), Matt Nover (left), and Nick Nolte (bottom) in William Friedkin’s Blue Chips.

The celebrated director of The Exorcist, William Friedkin will have a mini-retrospective with two films. The first is Blue Chips, a 1995 film set in the world of college basketball starring Shaquille O’Neil, Nick Nolte, and University of Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway. The second is Sorcerer, a film Friedkin called his masterpiece, but which had the misfortune to be released in 1977 on the week Star Wars went wide.

Another sure-to-be-anticipated screening will be Varda by Agnes, an autobiographical film by the late, revered filmmaker Agnes Varda, made when she was 90 years old.

The great director says goodbye in Varda by Agnes.

The Narrative Feature competition will feature five films from as far abroad as the Dominican Republic, four of which are by women directors. The documentary competition will be between four features, including Best Before Death, director Paul Duane’s portrait of artist Bill Drummond, which was filmed partially in Memphis.

The Memphis Flyer will have full coverage of the festival in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, you can find more information, festival passes, and tickets to individual screenings on the Indie Memphis website. 

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Memphis Filmmakers Allen Gardner and Brad Ellis Get The Band Back Together For Cold Feet

Memphis filmmakers Allen Gardner and Brad Ellis had such a good experience working on their last feature film, Bad, Bad Men, that they wanted to do it again. “I just wanted to get the old band back together for a new movie,” says Gardner.

Cold Feet

While in post production on Bad, Bad Men, Gardner had an idea for a follow up. It had been years since the long time partners made their last horror movie, and Ellis was thirsty for some onscreen blood. Gardner had been scoring with funny screenplays lately, so why not a horror comedy? Gardner was on a layover on a flight from Los Angeles, where he now lives, to Memphis when the setup came to him: A bachelor party in a haunted house.

Cold Feet takes eight actors who have worked with Old School Pictures before and locks them in a rambling, Modernist East Memphis bachelor pad, complete with hot tub, pool, and disco room. “Allen had the story in mind, but we tailored the scenes to match the layout of the house,” says Ellis.

The actors, who include Bad, Bad Men’s Nathan Ross Murphy and Adam Burns, had their parts chosen by chance. “We had a cold read before the first Memphis screening of Bad, Bad Men,” says Gardner. “It was really exciting to me, because none of the guys had read it before. So instead of putting names into a hat, we put names on the bottom of shot glasses. Whatever shot you got, that was the role you played. I was curious to find out who was going to be who. It was like Christmas.”

Cold Feet

“That was our way of putting a lot of trust in the actors,” says Ellis. “It worked out for the best. Two weeks into the production, and you couldn’t imagine any of these guys being anyone else.”

Joining the core cast is Lindsey Roberts and Kenneth Farmer as cops who crack down when the party gets a little out of hand. “Lindsey is playing the straight man, essentially, which can be a thankless role, but without that balance, you have nothing,” says Ellis.

“Hearing her do the hard-nosed cop with Kenneth, who is just so on the other side of that equation, has been hilarious,” says producer Gabe Arredondo, another Bad, Bad Men veteran.

Cold Feet was shot over the course of three weeks last month. Now the producers have started a crowdfunding campaign to help with post-production. For more information, visit the campaign page on IndieGoGO.

Cold Feet

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Memphis Comedy Bad, Bad Men Premieres on Amazon Video

Bad, Bad Men, an independent comedy made by Memphians Allen Gardner and Brad Ellis, is now available on Amazon streaming video.

Drew Smith, Allan Gardner, and Matt Mercer in Bad, Bad Men.

Gardner, who wrote and co-directed the film, stars as Josh, a schlubby, down on his luck real estate agent. After Josh is humiliated in a coffee shop by a rude stockbroker named Jerry (Adam Burns), he is persuaded by his co-workers Royce (Drew Smith) and Steven (Matt Mercer) to find the offending jerk and give him a piece of his mind. They enlist Rex (Gabe Arradondo), a comically shady ex cop, to track Jerry to his office, where they confront him and his cronies, beer reps Clive (Matthew Gilliam) and Owen (Nathan Ross Murphy). From there, things spin wildly out of control, with a Cohen Brothers-esque kidnapping of Josh’s would-be girlfriend Natalie (Maria Waslenko) and a confrontation with an omnipotent bookie (Richard Speight Jr.).

Gardner and Ellis expertly skewer the fragile male ego and the layered absurdities of their suburban Memphis setting. Gardner gives a nuanced comic performance as the terminally insecure office drone who still lives with his mom, played by his actual mother, Mae Jean Gardner. Smith has a field day as the perpetually aggrieved Royce, who is working out his own ex-wife issues as he plots petty suburban revenge. On the other hand, Mercer’s Steve is a stable family man who gets drawn into the hi jinx for a little adventure but ends up with more on the line than anyone. Memphis comedy legend Dennis Phillippi provides an indelible cameo as the unluckiest man in the bowling alley.

Bad, Bad Men is a briskly paced, often hilarious comedy, expertly executed by Ellis and Gardner, veteran Memphis independent filmmakers with multiple Indie Memphis trophies on their shelves. The release on Amazon, available free to all Prime members, gives the film exposure to an enormous national audience. You can read an interview with the duo as part of the Flyer‘s Indie Memphis 2016 cover story.

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Strong Local Offerings Lead Indie Memphis Lineup

Indie Memphis announced its full lineup for the 2016 festival at a bustling preview party at the Rec Room last night. 

Bad, Bad Men,

The most striking feature of the 150-film collection is the strongest presence by local filmmakers since the early-2000s heyday of DIY movies. The Hometowner Competition boasts six feature films, including Old School Pictures’ Bad, Bad Men, a wild comedy of kidnapping and petty revenge by directors Brad Ellis and Allen Gardner, who have racked up several past Indie Memphis wins. Bluff City indie film pioneer Mike McCarthy will debut his first feature-length documentary Destroy Memphis, a strikingly heartfelt film about the fight to save Libertyland and the Zippin Pippen rollercoaster. Four first-time entrants round out the Hometowner competition: Lakethen Mason’s contemporary Memphis music documentary Verge, Kathy Lofton’s healthcare documentary I Am A Caregiver, Flo Gibs look at lesbian and trangender identity Mentality: Girls Like Us, and Madsen Minax’s magical realist tale of lunch ladies and gender confusion Kairos Dirt and the Errant Vacuum. 

‘Silver Elves’


Usually, Hometowner short films comprise a single, popular, programming block; This year, there are enough qualified films to fill four blocks. Sharing the opening night of the festival with the previously announced Memphis documentary The Invaders is a collection of short films produced by recipients of the Indie Grant program, including G.B. Shannon’s family dramedy “Broke Dick Dog”, Sara Fleming’s whimsical tour of Memphis “Carbike”, Morgan Jon Fox’s impressionistic dramatization of the 1998 disappearance of Rhodes student Matthew Pendergrast “Silver Elves”; Indie Grant patron Mark Jones’ “Death$ In A Small Town”, actor/director Joseph Carr’s “Returns”, experimental wizard Ben Siler (working under the name JEBA)’ “On The Sufferings Of The World”, and “How To Skin A Cat”, a road trip comedy by Laura Jean Hocking and yours truly. 

Other standouts in the Hometowner Shorts category include three offerings from Melissa Sweazy: the fairy tale gone dark “Teeth”; “A.J”, a documentary about a teenage boy dealing with grief after a tragic accident, co-directed with Laura Jean Hocking; and “Rundown: The Fight Against Blight In Memphis. Edward Valibus’ soulful dark comedy “Calls From The Unknown”, Nathan Ross Murphy’s “Bluff”, and Kevin Brooks’ “Marcus”, all of which recently competed for the Louisiana Film Prize, will be at the festival, as will Memphis Film Prize winner McGehee Montheith’s “He Coulda Gone Pro”. 

The revived Music Video category features videos from Marco Pave, Star & Micey, Preauxx, The Bo-Keys, Vending Machine, Nots, Caleb Sweazy, Faith Evans Ruch, Marcella & Her Lovers, John Kilzer & Kirk Whalum, Alex duPonte, Alexis Grace, and Zigadoo Moneyclips. 

Internationally acclaimed films on offer include legendary director Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, starring Adam Driver; Manchester By The Sea from Kenneth Lonergan; and Indie Memphis alum Sophia Takal’s Always Shine. Documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson’s spectacular, world-spanning Cameraperson, assembled over the course of her 25 year career, promises to be a big highlight.

Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck in Manchester By The Sea

The full schedule, as well as tickets to individual movies and two levels of festival passes, can be found at the Indie Memphis web site. 

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Music Video Monday: Myla Smith

Music Video Monday’s got those working blues. 

At last month’s Indie Memphis MicroCinema Club meeting, which was dedicated to music videos, New School Media’s Brad Ellis and Sean Faust recalled the meeting that led to Myla Smith‘s music video “Can’t Say No”. They ran several ideas past the artist, none of which met with her approval. Finally, Faust, digging a half-forgotten idea out of his brain, said “What about jookin’ in a Jack Pirtle’s Chicken?” 

Boom. The artist loved the idea, Jack Pirtle’s agreed immediately, and an instant classic Memphis music video was born. Let this escapist pop ditty cheer up your Monday. 

Music Video Monday: Myla Smith

If you would like to see your music video appear on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Old School Pictures Reveals Bad, Bad Men Trailer

Brad Ellis and Allen C. Gardner have been making movies together since they were in high school. Their features The Path Of Fear (2002), Act One (2005), Being Awesome (2013) have all won multiple awards at the Indie Memphis Film Festival and elsewhere, and their vampire movie Daylight Fades (2010) received international distribution.

(left to right) Drew Smith, Allen C. Gardner, Matt Mercer, Matthew Gilliam, and Nathan Ross Murphy in Bad, Bad Men

Now they have released the first trailer for their new comedy, Bad Bad Men, which stars Gardner as a schlubby real estate agent who is bullied at a coffee shop. But his scheme to get revenge on his petty tormentors backfires, and leads to an After Hours-style adventure in the Memphis underworld. The film, which was shot in Memphis last August by cinematographer Ryan Parker, also stars local actors Drew Smith, Dennis Phillppi, Nathan Ross Murphy, Donald Myers, Markus Seaberry, and singer Alexis Grace. The film is currently in post production with Laura Jean Hocking as the editor, and we should expect to see it hit the festival circuit in the fall. 

Old School Pictures Reveals Bad, Bad Men Trailer