Frog Squad is a Memphis collective dedicated to the kind of electronically infused space jazz pioneered by Sun Ra and His Arkestra.
“Solar System in Peabody” is a musical tribute to sculptor Yvonne Bobo’s Around We Go and Without Boundaries, both located in Peabody Park on Cooper. It was written by Khari Wynn and David Collins, and features saxophonist/flutist Hope Clayburn, keybaordist Dave Hash, drummer John Harrison, and saxophonists Michael Shults and Aaron Phillips.
This performance of the epic suite was filmed live in Peabody Park by Brett Hanover for the Urban Arts Commission. Frog Squad’s new album will be released on Halloween, and they will be at B Side for a record release party on Friday, November 1st. Get spaced!
Music Video Monday: Frog Squad
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
Hanover’s full interview for the cover story last year was brilliant, so I have expanded my original story with new quotes about this remarkable film and the decade-long journey of self-discovery that produced it.]
Brett Hanover’s first documentary short “Above God” premiered at Indie Memphis 2006. The subject of “Above God” was Gene Ray, who became one of the first internet celebrities when his strange website filled with borderline nonsensical ramblings about a “Time Cube” went viral. “I was interested in internet cultures,” says Hanover, who was 16 years old when he made the film. “I was interested in how this one guy’s words got spread and interpreted by so many people.”
Another internet subculture that fascinated Hanover was that of furries, a small group devoted to dressing up in elaborate costumes that transformed them into anthropomorphic animals. Back then, furries were picked out for ridicule as weirdos with an incomprehensible sexual fetish. But Hanover saw something deeper in their endless Livejournal posts and secretive conventions.“As it evolved, and as it opened up to the internet, it became less focused on anthropomorphic comic books and more focused on having your own anthropomorphic avatar that people were playing online or with costumes. Then it became the site of identity play. Without being directly connected with mainstream LBGTQ culture, it got people thinking about their identities in the same way, almost in parallel. Now there’s a ton of crossover there. It’s interesting, because it used different kind of artwork, different ways of representing the body, different identity. It got to a similar place.
“The characters in furrydom are similar to other ways of using masks or clown personae throughout history. This is in the in-between space. Furries aren’t usually dressing up purely as a character, it’s a character based on you. You’re not dressing up as a Disney character. There’s an element of, ‘it’s me, but it’s not me.’ There’s also an element that is very tactile, but you’re playing a cartoon. It’s somewhere between performance and puppetry, between being the subject and being the object. It’s right on that boundary that a lot of theater traditions dance on.”
A mutual friend introduced him to a person in the online furry community who called himself Rukus. “Initially, when I first met him, I had a lurid fascination with what he was writing, because it was really intense, personal and raw. I was totally enamored of that. It was a way for me, someone who — as a teenager — had a lot of hangups around things that were sexual, a way to look at furry and exploring it vicariously through his life as a documentary filmmaker at age 17. When I say I am a documentary filmmaker, what does that mean at that point? It means a way to relate to somebody at a distance. I also think I had a crush on him.”
But Hanover soon discovered that Rukus was different things to different people. Little of his life story checked out, and he maintained a number of conflicting online personae.“It became an interesting mystery, to figure out what was real and what was embellished…If he’s not telling the truth about something, that means he’s not telling the truth about it for a reason. It says something about him.”
Director Brett Hanover
Hanover and Rukus became online friends, and even met in person after a Memphis furry convention. But eventually they drifted apart, and in 2008, Hanover got word that Rukus had committed suicide. “He was a survivor of trauma, he had been struggling with mental health issues his whole life,” Hanover says. “I became very obsessed with finding every trace of him online.”
In 2008, Hanover, with the help of his collaborators Alanna Stewart and Katherine Dohan, set out to make a documentary about Rukus and the online world where he had found connection. But Rukus could not be a conventional film. “The more I read through all his things, the more I wanted to tell the story from my perspective, and have it be very clear that this is a partial view of Rukus. That view is very much skewed, but it at least shows the audience the way it’s skewed…If I’m going to make a documentary about someone else that’s really personal, I need to do the same thing with myself. I had not done that, put myself into my other films.”
Hanover continued to work on Rukus for a decade, a time in which he went to college and became a teacher of film and media. “I never gave up. I despaired and agonized plenty. I feel like there’s ways in which the film took too long, just by virtue of being a perfectionist, and moving across the country for a new job, and stuff like that. But there’s also ways in which it needed to take that much time…Having a few years distance on things really helped. There was an outline in the beginning, but it was being written as it went along. Early on, I did an interview with Rukus’ boyfriend, and wrote and shot some scenes based on that. Some of them didn’t work out that well, so a few years later I interviewed Rukus’ boyfriend again and told him what had gone wrong with those scenes, and asked him to reflect on that. Then I wrote more scenes based on that. It became a feedback process with the subjects.”
Hanover and Stewart co-wrote and acted in many of the staged sequences, some of which reflected the ups and downs of their own relationship “During the time we were shooting, part of the time we were in a relationship, and part of the time we weren’t in a relationship any more, but we were still friends and collaborators. It was a lot of stuff like, we just worked through something in our relationship, and now we’re going to write a scene about it, and play out the scene, and now we realize that something else is wrong with the scene, and that something is also wrong in real life. It turned into a psychodrama for a couple of years.”
The finished film is a kaleidoscope of documentary and narrative, sincere and put-on, real and fake. “The reason it’s like that is that everyone who is in it has different personae, who are all sort of real depending on what media they’re using to communicate, or who their audience is. Rukus had all these different characters that he would use. I think now, there’s more of a sense of, here’s your real identity, and if you’re pretending to be something else online, that’s fake. Back then, it was understood that these different facets of you would be expressed through different identities.
“I think the closest you can get to capital-T Truth in a documentary is to show your perspective. Give people a sense of your own biases, of how the thing you’re watching is being framed. Making myself into a character is a way of doing that, as opposed to saying that this is the story of Rukus. Which it’s not. It’s the story of Rukus told by this kid who was still figuring out his own story.”
If there is a common theme among the best films of 2018, it’s wrenching order from chaos. From Regina Hall trying to hold both a restaurant and a marriage together to Lakeith Stanfield navigating the surreal moral minefields of late-stage capitalism, the best heroes positioned themselves as the last sane people in a world gone mad.
Dakota Johnson in Fifty Shades Freed
Worst Picture: Fifty Shades Freed
In her epic deconstruction of the final installment of everyone’s least favorite BDSM erotica trilogy, Eileen Townsend called Fifty Shades Freed a “sequence of intentionally crafted visual stimuli” that “bears coincidental aesthetic similarity to a movie … But I believe Fifty Shades Freed is nonetheless not a movie at all, but something far more pure — a pristine document of the market economy, a kind of visual after-image created as an incidental side effect of the exchange of large sums of capital…We literally cannot perceive the truest form of Fifty Shades Freed, because to do so, we would have to be money ourselves.”
Sunrise over the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey
Best Moviegoing Experience: 2001: A Space Odyssey in IMAX
The Malco Paradiso’s IMAX screen, which opened last December, has quickly earned the reputation as the best theater in the city. During the late-summer lull, a new digital transfer of 2001: A Space Odyssey got a week’s run to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. Even if you’ve watched Stanley Kubrick’s film a dozen times, seeing it the size it was intended to be seen is a revelation. Also, all lengthy blockbusters should come with an intermission.
Chuck, the canine star of Alpha
Best Performance by a Nonhuman: Chuck, Alpha
Director Albert Hughes’ Alpha is a sleeper gem of 2018. The star of the story of how humans first domesticated dogs is a Czech Wolfhound named Chuck, who dominates the screen with a Lassie-level performance. Chuck and his co-star, Kodi Smit-McPhee, spend large parts of the movie silently navigating the hazards of Paleolithic Eurasia, and the dog nails both stunts and the occasional comedy bits. Chuck is a movie star.
KiKi Layne and Stephan James in If Beale Street Could Talk
Best Scene: The Family Meeting, If Beale Street Could Talk
Most of Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel is an intimate, tragic love story between Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne) and Fonny Hunt (Stephan James). But for about 10 minutes, it becomes an ensemble dramedy, when Tish has to tell, first, her parents that she’s pregnant out of wedlock with a man who has just been arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, then his parents. If you pulled this scene out of the film, it would be the best short of 2018.
Rukus
Best Memphis Movie: Rukus
Brett Hanover’s documentary hybrid had been in production for more than a decade by the time it made its Mid South debut at Indie Memphis 2018. What started as a tribute to a friend who had committed suicide slowly evolved into a mystery story, an exploration into a secretive subculture, and a diary of growing up and accepting yourself.
Ethan Hawk stars as a priest in existential crisis in First Reformed.
Best Screenplay: First Reformed
Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader penned and directed this piercing drama about a small town priest, played by Ethan Hawk, who undergoes a crisis of faith when a man he is counseling commits suicide. 72-year-old Schrader is unafraid to ask the big questions: Why are we here? Is it all worth it? His elegantly constructed story ultimately looks to love for the answers, but the journey there is harrowing.
Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger in Black Panther
MVP: Michael B. Jordan
Michael B. Jordan played a book-burning fireman with a conscience in HBO’s Fahrenheit 451 adaptation and the heavyweight champion of the world in Creed II. But it was his turn as Killmonger in Black Panther that elevated the year’s biggest hit film to the realm of greatness. Director Ryan Coogler knew what he was doing when he put his frequent collaborator in the the villain slot opposite Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa, making their personal rivalry into a battle for the soul of Wakanda.
Regina Hall in Support The Girls
Best Performance: (tie) Regina Hall, Support the Girls and Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade
In a year full of great performances, two really stood out. In Support the Girls, Regina Hall plays Lisa, a breastaurant manager having the worst day of her life, with a breathtaking combination of technique and empathy. We agonize with her over every difficult decision she has to make just to get through the day.
Elsie Fisher as Kayla in Eighth Grade
Elsie Fisher started work on Eighth Grade the week after the 13-year-old actually finished eighth grade. She carries the movie with one of the most raw, unaffected comic performances you will ever see.
Emma Stone takes aim in The Favourite.
Best Director: Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ previous efforts has been bracing, self-written satires, but he really came into his own with this kinda true story written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara. Everything clicks neatly into place in The Favourite. The central troika of Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne and Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz as backstabbing cousins vying for her favor are all stunning. The editing, sound mix, and costume design are superb, and I’ve been thinking about the meaning of a particular lens choice for weeks.
Daniel Tiger (left) and Fred Rogers, star of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
Best Documentary: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Once in a while, a movie comes along that fills a hole in your heart you didn’t know you had. Morgan Neville’s biography of Fred Rogers appears as effortlessly pure as the man himself. Mr. Rogers’ radical compassion is the exact opposite of Donald Trump’s performative cruelty, and Neville frames his subject as a kind of national surrogate father figure, urging us to remember the better angels of our nature.
Sorry To Bother You
Best Picture: Sorry to Bother You
Boots Riley’s debut film is something of a bookend to my best picture choice from last year, Jordan Peele’s Get Out. They’re both absurdist social satires aimed at American racism set in a slightly skewed version of the real word. But where Get Out is a finely tuned scare machine, Sorry to Bother You is a street riot of ideas and images. When his vision occasionally outruns his reach, Riley pulls it off through sheer audacity. No one better captured the Kafkaesque chaos, anger, and confusion of living in 2018.
Kiki Lane and Stephan James in If Beale Street Could Talk
Director Barry Jenkins’ highly anticipated followup to his 2016 Best Picture Academy Award winner Moonlight will have its Mid South premiere at Indie Memphis 2018.
If Beale Street Could Talk (which is named after a W.C. Handy song, but not set in Memphis) is based on a 1974 novel by James Baldwin in which a woman, played by Kiki Lane, seeks to clear the name of her wrongly convicted husband, played by Stephan James. Jenkins made his Indie Memphis debut in 2008 with his first feature Medicine For Melancholy.
Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk Anchors Huge Indie Memphis Lineup (2)
Jenkins’ film is one of more than 40 features which will screen during the festival, which will take place November 1st-5th, with encore screenings November 7th-8th. The opening night feature is Mr. Soul, a documentary by directors Melissa Haizlip and Samuel D. Pollard, about Ellis Haizlip, the first black talk show host who regularly featured musicians like Stevie Wonder and Patti LaBelle on his program. Closing night is director Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls, about a day in the life of the employees of a sports bar. Bujalski previously appeared at Indie Memphis in 2013 with his groundbreaking feature Computer Chess.
Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk Anchors Huge Indie Memphis Lineup (3)
Boots Riley, the director of this year’s sleeper hit Sorry To Bother You, will be the keynote speaker at the Black Creatives Forum, a new program debuting at this year’s festival. Riley will also present a screening of Terry Gilliam’s 1985 surrealist masterpiece Brazil.
Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk Anchors Huge Indie Memphis Lineup (4)
Amy Seimetz, director of The Girlfriend Experience series and star of Upstream Color, will be on hand to present Barbara Loden’s Wanda, a rarely seen 1970 film that has been called a founding document of feminist cinema.
Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk Anchors Huge Indie Memphis Lineup (5)
On a lighter note, comedy legend Chris Elliott will be honored with a screening of his so-bad-its-good cult film Cabin Boy. No word on whether Elliott, who was a writer and performer on the original Late Night With David Letterman, will hide under the seats.
Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk Anchors Huge Indie Memphis Lineup (6)
A record 112 Memphis directors will have films in the festival this year, including Brett Hanover’s Rukus, a documentary/narrative hybrid years in the making which won the Grand Jury award at this year’s Nashville Film Festival.
Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk Anchors Huge Indie Memphis Lineup
Indie Memphis will take place at the Orpheum Theatre’s Halloran Centre and at Playhouse On The Square, Studio On The Square, Theaterworks, and the Hattiloo Theatre. By popular demand, the block party will return, with the Cooper street blocked off during the weekend of the festival, and music and panels hosted in a giant tent. Festival passes are currently available on the Indie Memphis website. The Memphis Flyer will have continuing coverage of the festival throughout October and November.
After a pause caused by the festival itself, here’s the next-to-last installment of Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits, where we count down the winners of the Best of Indie Memphis poll. You can get caught up with part one, part two, and part three.
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011)
Paradise Lost directors Joe Berlinger (left) and Bruce Sinofsky (right) pose with Jason Baldwin (center).
The West Memphis Three case is one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in American history. But if it weren’t for a couple of struggling directors pitching a true crime documentary to HBO in the early 1990s, Damian Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelly would still be in jail for a crime they didn’t commit. Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger’s came to the Mid South asking, how could three normal teenagers commit such a gruesome crime? But once they got here, they quickly became convinced that the accused were innocent. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills would prove to be one of the most consequential documentaries ever, and has influenced a generation of works from Serial to True Detective. Berlinger and Sinofsky followed the case for 18 years, and when new DNA evidence came to light, their cameras were there. In 2011, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory had its second public screening at Indie Memphis weeks after the West Memphis Three walked free. When Jason Baldwin walked onstage unannounced at the Q&A, it was one of the most electric moments in Indie Memphis history. Later that year, the film was nominated for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards.
Undefeated (2011)
The same film beat Paradise Lost 3 at both the Oscars and Indie Memphis’ documentary category that year. Undefeated was directed by Daniel Lindsey and T.J. Martin told the story of the Manassas High School Tigers and their coach Bill Courtney as they attempt to turn around their school’s historic losing streak on the football field. Today, Undefeated remains a sports movie staple.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks
Antenna (2012)
The Memphis punk scene started in January 1978, when the Sex Pistols played at the Taliesyn Ballroom—now the site of the Taco Bell on Union Avenue. A bunch of kids who thought they were the only ones listening to punk rock in Memphis found each other that night. Months later, some of them descended on The Well, a down-on-its-luck country western bar a few blocks from the Taliesyn, on Madison Avenue. In 1981, The Well became Antenna, the most radical music venue in the south. For the next fourteen years, Antenna was a haven for freaks and the home of new music in Memphis. National bands like R.E.M., Black Flag, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Green Day played at Antenna years before they were filling arenas. It was ground zero for Memphis’ alternative creative explosion that flew under the national radar while spawning groups like Panther Burns, Pezz, The Oblivians, The Grifters, and Jay Reatard—just to name a few.
When I was approached by Ross Johnson and John Floyd about making a documentary about Antenna and the music scene that thrived there, I knew it was something the Memphis community sorely needed. But I balked at the opportunity. I worried about the availability of archival footage. Antenna existed before the age when everyone had a cameraphone in their pockets. Would there be tape of bands like The Modifiers playing at Antenna? Turns out, I needn’t have worried. Antenna owner Steve McGehee knows everybody. By the time Antenna premiered at Indie Memphis in 2012, we had amassed more than 100 hours of vintage video, hundreds of still images, and 88 interviews, some of which were three hours long.
It’s difficult for me to talk about Antenna today. After winning the Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize at Indie Memphis 2012, we have tried in vain for years to find finishing funds to pay for the music licensing fees. I am extremely grateful that enough people remembered Antenna to vote it onto the list. Hopefully one day, everyone can see it. Until then, this is the only bit of untold Memphis music history I can share with you:
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (2)
Very Extremely Dangerous (2012)
One of the highlights of Indie Memphis 2017 was Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell proclaiming Friday, November 3 Best of Enemies Day. Director Robert Gordon, who helped originate the project he co-directed with Morgan Neville, has had a long and distinguished career as a writer and director before winning an Emmy for Best of Enemies. In 2012, a film he produced with Irish director Paul Duane made waves at Indie Memphis. Very Extremely Dangerous opens with Gordon and Duane almost getting in a car wreck with their subject Jerry McGill, a 70 year old junkie, criminal, and Memphis musician. McGill had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and he brought along Duane and Gordon’s camera to record his final comeback performance/crime spree. To call Very Extremely Dangerous a harrowing watch is a dramatic understatement, but somehow, McGill comes out of it as a sympathetic character.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (3)
Keep The Lights On (2012)
Memphis-born Ira Sachs has long been one of the most intimate and truthful directors of the indie era. He got his start in the Bluff City before Indie Memphis got rolling with The Delta, an autobiographical coming-of-age story. In 2005, when Hustle & Flow won the audience award at Sundance, Sachs’ film Forty Shades of Blue won the Grand Jury Prize. Keep The Lights On is the story of an extremely dysfunctional relationship between Erik (Thure Lindhardt) and Paul (Zachary Booth), a filmmaker and lawyer living in Sach’s adopted home of New York who can’t help but bring out the worst in each other. Sachs keeps the audience’s expectations vacillating between “I hope these two kids can get it together in the end” and “They need to stay the hell away from each other.” It’s a story about the joys and limits of romantic love.
Keep The Lights On was the first film in a trilogy of sorts from Sachs about trying to stay human while living in New York. 2014’s Love Is Strange stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as a pair of longtime partners whose love is finally legal, but who are unexpectedly ripped apart after they finally tie the knot. 2016’s Little Men is a story Sach says was inspired by his Memphis childhood about friendship between kids from different social classes who find their lives disrupted by the creeping gentrification of Brooklyn. Sachs’ work is humane, beautiful to a fault, and absolutely required viewing for Memphis film fans.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (4)
What I Love About Concrete (2013)
Remember when you were in high school and thought, “We should make a movie about our crazy lives!” Well, Alanna Stewart and Katherine Dohan actually did it, and their film is probably much better than yours would have been. The two White Station High Schoolers, with the help of Brett Hanover, created a home grown, magical realist masterpiece—imagine if Pretty In Pink had been written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Morgan Rose Stewart (sister of the director) stars as Molly, a woman who finds herself growing very-not-metaphorical wings in her senior year, just as she is preparing for college and the big essay contest. The practical special effects and handmade animation sequences carry considerable visual punch, but it’s the unmannered acting and wild expanse of it all that elevates What I Love About Concrete to the level of the sublime. The film won at Indie Memphis, and has the distinction of being Commercial Appeal movie writer John Beifuss’ only acting credit.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (5)
“I Wanted To Make A Movie About A Beautiful and Tragic Memphis” (2013)
“I sometimes find it easier to reveal intimate details about myself through art. This is prime example” says Laura Jean Hocking. After spending years locked in a small dark room with me editing Antenna, Hocking wanted to do something completely different. She wrote, produced, and directed this Midtown memoir completely by herself. It is at once a celebration of place, a confession, and a series of visual experiments. Hocking collaborated transatlantically with Memphis expat musician Jimi Enck, who scored the film while living in London.
At the 2017 Indie Memphis festival, Hocking and her co-director Melissa Anderson Sweazy won Best Hometowner Feature and the Audience Award for their documentary Good Grief about kids who have experienced tragedy and the counsellors who help them at the Kemmons Wilson Family Center for Good Grief in Collierville.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (6)
Short Term 12 (2013)
By 2013, Indie Memphis’ profile had risen high enough to land the biggest films on the festival circuit. Destin Daniel Cretton’s film Short Term 12, loosely inspired by his time as a counsellor in a group home for troubled teens, swept the Independent Spirit Awards and launched the career of Brie Larson. As one of the biggest vote-getters in the poll, it remains a favorite of Indie Memphis audiences.
It Felt Like Love (2013)
Here’s a little story that tells you what film festival life is like. In 2013, I was on the screening committee for Indie Memphis. We were tasked with finding the eight best features out of the hundreds of applicants that flood into Indie Memphis every year. Late in the season, we had whittled the list down to about a dozen when we noticed that no female directors were represented on the short list. Since it was pretty inconceivable that, in 2013, no women had made and submitted a decent movie, we dug back into the pile of DVDs. At the bottom was It Felt Like Love by Eliza Hitman, and when we popped it into the player, we were absolutely riveted. It was clear that this coming of age film was by far the best thing we had seen that year, and we almost lost it in the shuffle. Later, at the festival, the judges (who are not members of the screening committee) agreed, and It Felt Like Love won 2013’s Best Narrative Feature award.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 4: Football, Swans, and Punks (7)
The polls are closed, and our list of Indie Memphis classics is coming at you. Here’s part 1 and part 2 if you need to catch up.
Bunnyland (2008)
Bret Hannover was doing investigative documentary thrillers long before Gone Girl and the “Serial” podcast made them fashionable. Bunnyland foreshadowed many of the now-familiar tricks of the genre with a slightly less serious subject: An East Tennessee man with a pocket full of grudges and a loose relationship with the truth.
“The film is such an interesting portrait of a complex man who MAY HAVE murdered hundreds of bunny rabbits at the golf course he was fired from days earlier. A man who MAY HAVE caused a fire that left a tenant dead on his teepee-graced land. A man who claimed to hold the largest pre-historic rock collection in the world. A man who claimed to be “the last Indian on the trail of tears.” In classic Brett Hanover fashion, the film is composed of strange angles and is filled with pragmatic figures who readily spout elusive prevarications that Brett just allows to talk, and talk.” -Morgan Jon Fox
“And He Just Comes Around And Dances With You?” (2008)
Towards the end of the 00s, a new subgenre of indie film emerged when a group of Chicago filmmakers made a big splash at South by Southwest. It was (unfortunately) called “mumblecore”, for the quiet, thoughtful, sometimes improvised dialog in the films. But Memphis filmmakers had been doing the same thing since the turn of the century. Kentucker Audley emerged from the Memphis scene in 2008 with a pair of short films: “Bright Sunny South” and “And He Just Comes Around and Dances With You?” The latter is a slow burn story of fiercely controlled emotion. The audience gets half of a phone conversation between a rootless young man and his girlfriend, who has met a new guy while on vacation. It’s a front row seat to the dissolution of a relationship, and you can see it at this link.
“This was an Andrew Nenninger film, before he became Kentucker Audley. Going thru the years of programs I realized how many of his early films have been big influences on me. I think about this one a lot.” -Laura Jean Hocking
“Bohater Pies” (2009)
Corduroy Wednesday, a film collective consisting of Edward Valibus, Ben Rednour, and Erik Morrison, made their Indie Memphis debut in 2006 with Grim Sweeper, a comedy about guys who clean up murder scenes for a living. “Bohater Pies” is a fan favorite of the raft of comedy shorts they produced in the 00s on the buildup to their magnum opus The Conversion. This five minutes of cinematic chaos takes no prisoners as it takes you back to an inscrutable Cold War Eastern European setting. Look for not only the usual Wednesdays, but also cameos by experimental auteur Ben Siler and comedian Jessica “Juice” Morgan. YOU MUST OBEY.
“I’m thinking there are a lot of people who saw this and thought, “WTF are these guys (Corduroy Wednesday) smoking?”; I saw it and thought, “Oh cool! WTF are these guys smoking?” -Laura Jean Hocking
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 3: Cannibals, Pies, and Love In Action (2)
Open Five (2010) and Open Five Two (2012)
Kentucker Audley’s second and third features took the mumblecore genre on an extended road trip to and from Memphis. It’s an unfailingly intimate peek into the desperate but free the lives of young millennials trying to make sense out of the world. Both films won Best Hometowner Feature at Indie Memphis and kickstarted Audley’s career as an actor and director.
“Even though we often butted heads back in the day, Kentucker Audley and I also always bonded over one thing…many people (ok, maybe only about 5?) loved to accuse us both of somehow rigging Indie Memphis. Our films both sucked, we both didn’t deserve awards, and jurors gave us accolades because it would benefit them! Ok. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Team Picture. I was both in awe, and sorta jealous, and I sorta hated it. I was in awe because I knew I was witnessing something cool, I was jealous because I knew now I would have someone else who would also be able to rig the juries!!!! But mostly, I just liked knowing another prolific filmmaker who I knew was about to take off and connect with a world outside of Memphis, as he is currently doing. Love that guy.” -Morgan Jon Fox
It was just nice to see Memphis in a mumblecore film. -Anonymous
“There was a moment when I was watching [Open Five Two], the scene in the van at night, that I thought, ‘Damn, he looks like a movie star.'” -Laura Jean Hocking
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“Cannibal Records” (2010)
John Pickle started making short comedy films in the 1990s, when he became a legend for his out of control cable access show Pickle TV. Former Indie Memphis executive director Les Edwards once described Indie Memphis’s 1999 lineup as “mostly John Pickle movies.” He starred in the 2006 feature The Importance of Being Russell as the titular redneck character he created for his cable access show who travels back in time. “Cannibal Records” was the short film he created for Indie Memphis 2010, which he not only wrote and directed, but also wrote and performed all of the music. Think Little Shop Of Horrors meets Reanimator, and you get a sense of where this genius comedy short is coming from. Pickle is still active as a musician, animator, and music video director. This year, he breaks a long Indie Memphis hiatus with “Return of the Flesh Eating Film Reels”.
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 3: Cannibals, Pies, and Love In Action
This Is What Love In Action Looks Like (2011)
In June, 2005, Collierville teenager Zach Stark came out to his parents as gay. They forced him to enroll in a gay reparative therapy facility called Love In Action. The night before he left home, he posted a long, tearful message about his plight on the early social media network MySpace. A grassroots protest movement sprang up in response to the injustice, and director Morgan Jon Fox was there with his camera. At Indie Memphis 2005, he screened a rough cut of the documentary that was as moving as it was raw and angry. “The movie evolved over time. I’m not used to spending so much time on a film, so I put out a prelim cut of it that was a whole ‘nother feature film on its own that doesn’t even exist any more. I literally do not have a cut of it. it’s gone. It’s just an entry in a program now,” says Fox.
That could have been the end of it, but Fox continued to work on the project on and off for the next five years. By the time the final documentary was ready for Indie Memphis 2011, Love In Action had closed and its director John Smid had come out as gay and reputed his former actions. The film transformed from a vitriolic tirade into a testament to the power of compassion and acceptance. “That protest embodied that. I felt like the process of making a film for six years, it’s easy to get lost and angry and upset. But once I finally got to edit it, with the help of Live From Memphis—Sarah Fleming and Christopher Reyes were such huge elements in bringing that film over the finish line. I just wanted to embody what made the protests so successful: We love you for who you are. To quote Natural Born Killers, only love kills the demon.”
This Is What Love In Action Looks Likes is a landmark in LBGT cinema and helped kick off a national movement against so-called “ex-gay” treatments. In a world where political protests are regularly organized via social media, it’s more prophetic and relevant than ever. “I think documentary get people involved. It’s an uplifting story that touches on something that is still very current. It was my favorite Indie Memphis premiere of one of my films, because I got engaged. I was nervous as hell, because I had a secret. I was going to propose to my now-husband, Declan Michael Dealy Fox. Looking up at the totally sold out audience at Playhouse On The Square was an incredible way to premiere a film that was six years in the making.”
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 3: Cannibals, Pies, and Love In Action (4)
The countdown of our Best Of Indie Memphis poll results rolls on! In case you missed it, here’s part 1.
“Above God” (2005)
Brett Hanover is one of the best talents to emerge from the Media Co-Op scene. He was still in high school when he made a big splash at Indie Memphis. From the beginning, it was clear he has a knack for finding exactly the right subject for his documentaries. In 2005, he fielded two short docs: “Shaivo”, an experimental treatment of the line between life and death, inspired by the conservative cause celeb Terri Shaivo case, and the now classic “Above God”. One of the crazier sites that went viral in the early days of the internet was Time Cube, which presented an unbelievably extensive theory of the universe that made flat earthers look like pikers. Hanover managed to track down and get an interview with Time Cube guru Gene Ray, who described his mental powers as being “above God”. Hanover didn’t take the easy way out and just point and laugh at Ray—he tried to understand him. And that’s what made the first short film on our list something really special.
“Brett Hanover made this in high school and it featured one of the best scenes in a documentary ever. When the main subject falls asleep on camera. And being 15 or however young he was at the time, Brett was already smart (and ruthless) enough to keep that epic shot in his final cut rather than view it as a misstep. Brett’s style was both antiquated, yet somehow very fresh, and when I first saw this strange film I instantly knew Brett was one of the most promising filmmakers around, and I couldn’t wait to see what he would create in the future.” -Morgan Jon Fox
What Goes Around… (2006)
2006 was a banner year for local filmmakers at Indie Memphis. After Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow made a big splash at the box office in 2005 and at the Oscars in 2006, it seemed that anything was possible. The first generation of digital rebels were making their second features, and a whole new crop emerged as both the technology and know-how got better. In 2006, there were seven Hometowner features (“And all of them good!” said Les Edwards in my Memphis Magazine history of Indie Memphis.) Since the very beginning, the Indie Memphis crowd had been diverse in terms of sexuality and gender, but it was overwhelmingly white until Rod Pitts and his crew stormed into Indie Memphis 2006. PItts was a University of Memphis film student when he followed the Poor & Hungry blueprint and got his friends together for What Goes Around… The film is a sex comedy with a big heart featuring outstanding performances by soon-to-be local indie film legend Markus Seaberry, Christina Brown, Arnita Williams, and Domino Maximillian. Pitts also contributed heavily to that year’s Hometowner winner Just The Two Of Us by Keenan Nikkita.
Rod Pitts on the set of What Goes Around…
Pitts threw himself into helping others with their projects, most notably DeAara Lewis’ 2007 film Tricks. But he never directed another film himself. He faced a series of escalating health problems, including a stroke, and was diagnosed with lupus. He died in May, 2012; that fall, he was awarded Indie Memphis’ first ever Lifetime Achievement Award.
“Rod Pitts was a brilliant filmmaker, and What Goes Around was an interesting love story.”- Markus Seaberry
“Rod Pitts, man! Damnit it breaks my heart when I think about what a beautiful soul he was and how much he had left to offer the world with his incredible talent. He knew how to capture real humanity on screen, something that it seems you either have in your arsenal or you don’t. He had it, and he was just getting started.” -Morgan Jon Fox
Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island (2006)
The biggest box office hit of 2017 so far is It, which finally brought Stephen King’s Pennywise to the big screen. But eleven years ago, Memphis producer/director Mark Jones was way ahead of the game. Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island, Jones’ first feature, was a slasher movie parody whose villain was, you guessed it, a knife-wielding clown. To add a little social satire edge to the comedy, Jones’ lead character decided to confess his love for another fraternity brother at the same time they’re being stalked. Which one is scarier to toxic masculinity, Jones asks: Serial killers or coming out of the closet?
“The only film I’ve ever known of to be shot almost entirely on Mud Island. Killer clowns, adventure, hilarious and a great cast.” -Anonymous
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 2: Triumph, Tragedy, and Restaurants
Eat (2006)
Here’s a pro tip for you: If you’re a low-budget filmmaker, don’t write a film with 54 speaking parts. Still, if I could go back in time and tell my 2006 self what a logistical nightmare it would be to keep track of all those actors on a production that cost less than most used cars, I would have probably done it anyway. Heady from the success of Automusik, my then-girlfriend Laura Jean Hocking and I wanted to do something more ambitious. We had met while working in restaurants together, and we collected funny waiter stories for years. It’s the perfect venue for comedy, so we decided to write a screenplay mashing up our story file. Our setting was three restaurants—a fine dining establishment, a corporate fast casual, and a dive bar—each with a girl named Wendy on the floor. I would direct and Laura, who had been working as crew on Memphis productions for years, would use the opportunity to learn to edit. We held auditions and got together a huge cast to simulate the crush of people you meet working in the service industry. Among our Memphis a-list acting crew were two then-unknown musicians named Amy LaVere and Valerie June. The shoot was an extraordinarily difficult two weeks—especially considering we were all working full time day jobs. We made many lasting friends on that shoot, and soon after our sold-out premiere at Indie Memphis, Laura and I decided to get married.
“A generation from now, Eat will be the film people look to for a Who’s Who of the mid-’00s Memphis film scene.” – Adam Remsen
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 2: Triumph, Tragedy, and Restaurants (2)
The Book of Noah (2007)
Hardcore punk musician Patrick Cox made his debut in Eat before becoming the breakout star of Drew Smith’s first directorial feature, The Book of Noah, and he capitalized on it in a big way. He soon left Memphis behind for the wilds of Los Angeles, where he was cast in a series of bit parts and heavy roles (including Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Rising) until landing a major role in Two Broke Girls. Now he’s got 48 IMDB credits under his belt and will be appearing in the new DC movie Aquaman.
“There were a lot of “firsts” in that movie for all of us,” says Smith. “It was the first time I wrote a feature, the first time I directed, the first film Ryan Earl Parker shot, and the first that Pat Cox starred in. It was intimidating, not only for the amount of work we had to do, but more so for the amount of people that believed we could do it. We spent just about every weekend together for two years shooting it. I was terrified I’d let them down, but I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to help get the film done.
“We had no budget, so everything you see in the film was donated: actors, locations, gear, crew, editing. That is with the exception of Noah’s van. It had been abandoned, and I paid a tow truck company $300 for it. It was a piece of junk, but it ran, and we used it to haul gear to the locations. It finally died with about five scenes to shoot, so we shot those scenes by towing in with a rope to the location, or Ryan shooting while I bounced on the back bumper to simulate the motion. When we were finished, we left it in front of Ryan’s house until someone reported it as abandoned and the city towed it away.
“Because I wanted the dialogue to be as natural as possible, I told the actors to reword the script to fit their speech patterns. Apparently for me, that meant cursing a lot more. When we screened at Indie Memphis, my family came along with a lot of folks from my church. I must have counted myself saying the F-word about 40,000 times. At the end of the movie, I was embarrassed and already trying to figure out how to cut out some of my cursing. My priest came up and shook my hand, and he leaned into my ear and whispered “Great F-ing Movie.” It was kinda my proudest moment. Indie Memphis gave me that moment, and that’s why I still try to help with the festival as much as I can. It’s a great F-ing Festival.”
Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 2: Triumph, Tragedy, and Restaurants (3)
The American Astronaut (2007)
Filmmaker Corey McAbee created The American Astronaut in 2001, and it slowly spread through the festival circuit for the next decade. Festival director Erik Jambor brought it to Indie Memphis as one of his first acts, and its mix of sci fi and musical comedy made it a cult favorite. In the years that followed, McAbee returned to Indie Memphis with Stingray Sam and Crazy and Thief.
