Tag: Chris McCoy

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Music Music Features

1000 Lights: Zen and the Art of Stooges Covers

There’s only one band in Memphis, and everyone is in it. The truth in that old pearl was underlined by last Saturday’s tribute to Dr. John’s Gris-Gris, a party that ended at Cooper-Young’s Bar DKDC — after the musicians took the revels to the street. The performers included members of Marcella & Her Lovers, the Sheiks, and, yes, Memphis’ new alternative goth-rock band, 1000 Lights. The historically amorphous lineups of Memphis bands is of note because 1000 Lights is something of a Bluff City supergroup itself. The band will release its debut album, 3NC EP, on Forbidden Place Records this Friday, August 16th, at B-Side.

The lineup includes Jesse James Davis (Yesse Yavis, Model Zero) on vocals, Joey Killingsworth (Joecephus & the George Jonestown Massacre, Super Witch) on guitar, Flyer film editor Chris McCoy (Super Witch, Pisshorse) on bass, and drummer Russ Thompson (The Margins, Static Bombs, Pisshorse).

1000 Lights: (l to r) McCoy, Thompson, Davis, and Killingsworth

“I just love Russ. There’s a lot of good drummers in town, and I think he’s the best rock drummer in town,” says McCoy of his longtime bandmate. The two go way back. Back in their days in Pisshorse, they used to share bills with the Oblivians and the Grifters. “We were one of the first bands to play Black Lodge,” McCoy adds.

Pisshorse played a set of Black Sabbath covers at Barrister’s, a now-shuttered venue in Downtown Memphis, which secured the band an invitation to perform a “secret set” at the infamous “Hell on Earth” Halloween party series. They decided to cover The Stooges’ Fun House. Unfortunately, they never got to play that night. “The cops came when people started setting off smoke bombs,” McCoy says. “So we never got to play. And I was always bitter about that.”

So when a recently broken-up Super Witch was invited to play Black Lodge’s Halloween celebration, McCoy saw his opportunity to play Fun House, at last. Of course, McCoy and Thompson would make up the rhythm section, because “there’s something about a rhythm section that’s been together for a really long time,” McCoy says. “You get a telepathic relationship.” To handle guitar duties, McCoy and Thompson tapped Killingsworth from Super Witch. All that remained? “We needed someone who could be Iggy,” he says.

The then-trio wanted arguably one of the best front-persons in Memphis. “I met Jesse James Davis at that Bowie [tribute] show,” McCoy explains, further adding to the mosaic of musical influences that helped inform 1000 Lights. Memphis songwriter Graham Winchester put on a David Bowie tribute concert in 2016 to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and McCoy and Davis both performed. “Everybody was good that night, but Jesse just blew me away.” Who better to be the band’s Iggy than someone who had already played Bowie?

They planned to play the Halloween show and, if everyone felt good about it, pursue the band as a full-time project. “We walked off stage at that Black Lodge show,” McCoy says, “and Jesse turned to me and said, ‘Let’s do it!'”

“The name 1000 Lights comes from a line in ‘Down on the Street,’ the Stooges song,” McCoy says. So the band set about crafting its sound, influenced by their roots but branching out to cultivate music based on their varied tastes. Killingsworth “wanted to do something really gothy,” McCoy says. “He’s really into Bauhaus and he loves Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.”

There is a darkness and a sense of drama to 3NC EP, recorded at Move the Air Audio, but there are also shades of punk, post-punk, and early alternative music.

The first two tracks, “Shark Tooth” and “Exile Your Life,” open the album with a grit-your-teeth, Stooges-like momentum, but as the record plays, the band lets the songs spool out a little longer. “Isolation Line” has an opening rhythm that recalls Joy Division’s “The Sound of Music.” The multifaceted structure of the songs speaks to the collaborative nature of the project — and the songwriting chops on display. Memphis’ newest supergroup, 1000 Lights, burns brightly. 1000 Lights record release with Alyssa Moore and Glorious Abhor is Friday, August 16th, at B-Side, 9 p.m.

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Cover Feature News

It’s Memphis vs. Nashville. When It Comes to Barbecue, Who Does It Better?

CREDIT: Courtesy of the Nashville Scene

Some would say it was the hell-naw-iest of hell naw headlines: “Sorry, Memphis, but Nashville does have the best barbecue.” It appeared in The Tennessean back in April, stirring up a hornet’s nest of hurt feelings, civic pride, and apple-wood-smoked talking points.

Could it possibly be true? Nashville has all the money and the glam, but Memphis … well, Memphis is Memphis: soulful and fun and ridiculous, just like our barbecue.

We had two ‘cue-perts speak in their city’s favor. Steve Cavendish is the former editor of the Nashville Scene and is leading the effort to launch a nonprofit news organization in Nashville. Chris McCoy is the Flyer‘s film editor and a barbecue savant. What results is a sort of meeting in the middle, where we all agree that barbecue is made for eating and not for arguing.

Meanwhile, this year, Memphis’ 200th, Memphis in May (MIM) decided to honor our city, instead of a country. Usually, the MIM-honored country has a team in the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. This year, MIM assembled a team of super barbecuers. We check in on them.

…

Nashville Twang

Greetings, Memphians. I come in the name of peace and barbecue, two things you might not normally associate with Nashville.

We’ve been fighting a lot online about ‘cue lately, Twittering about who has the best this and Facebooking about who has the better that and calling each other names in the process. But our two cities have less of a problem with delicious smoked meat than they do with the newspapers that keep trying to stir up trouble.

Recently, a reporter at The Commercial Appeal took offense at a Nashville joint being selected over someplace from Memphis in a Southern Living list of top barbecue places. So she did what every click-chasing writer seems to do these days — she blogged about her indignancy. The digital weasels at The Tennessean, seeing her post trending on social media, had their own resident clickbait artist return fire.

You see, these Gannett hucksters make their money online by ginning up controversy and getting you to click and comment on it. And over what? Another list in a magazine we’re reading less and less each year?

They’re playing us, barbecue fans. What we should be concerned about is where to get our next great sandwich, wing, or rib. And if you haven’t been to Nashville in a while, it’s as good of a time as there has ever been to eat great barbecue. Is it better than what you have in Memphis? I’m not here to say things like “Rendezvous is criminally overrated,” I’m here to invite you to dinner. Here are five places you shouldn’t miss and what they do best:

Courtesy of the Nashville Scene

Martin’s

Martin’s

Most Nashville barbecue has roots in the same traditions that Memphis has made famous. For Pat Martin, who grew up in West Tennessee, that means the smell of whole hog hits you in the face as you walk into one of his many locations around town. The near-perfect pulled pork sandwiches of Martin’s — topped with slaw, of course — have that deep umami mix of smoke and sweetness that makes every bite satisfying. Martin started with an original joint in Nolensville and then peppered the area with five more places, including a two-story temple to pig Downtown that has become the go-to destination for many folks pregaming a Predators or Titans game. Martin’s redneck tacos (meat, slaw, and sauce on top of a hoecake) are a fine alternative to the traditional sandwich, and every time I’m in there with a group, I order one of his thick pieces of bologna and slice it up for everyone. It’s charred on a griddle and topped with pickles, onion, and mustard and there are never, ever any leftovers.

Courtesy of the Nashville Scene

Peg Leg Porker

Peg Leg Porker

Carey Bringle, like Martin, has deep ties to the western grand division. After years of success on the pitmaster circuit, including a third-place finish at Memphis in May, he opened his own place near Downtown in the Gulch in 2013. But instead of adding more stores, Bringle built straight up to create a three-story tower complete with an apartment on top. And while his place does some great things with pork shoulders, Peg Leg Porker’s best feature are the ribs, dry-rubbed racks of tender goodness a la the version Charlie Vergos made famous. I’d stack them up against anyone’s. The restaurant’s name comes honestly — Bringle lost part of a leg to bone cancer in his youth — as does the decor of white cinder block and polished concrete. It’s like stepping into the past. If chicken is your thing, his smoked, Springer Mountain yardbirds are scrape-off-the-bone delicious and come with a side of Alabama white sauce that’s also the perfect accompaniment to French fries.

Gambling Stick

For the longest time, I have believed that it was near impossible to get great brisket on this side of the Mississippi. Kansas City? Tulsa? Austin? Dallas? Sure. Tennessee? No way. The cut of meat is too finicky and, besides, our tradition has been pig (unless you’re one of those freaks in central Kentucky that insists on barbecuing mutton). Then the guys at the Gambling Stick changed my mind. Located in the East Nashville parking lot of the best meat shop in town, CIA-trained Matt Russo turns Porter Road Butcher’s immaculate beef into amazing, tender brisket. The simple equation — dry rub plus cherry wood smoke — yields the best thing you will find on this side of the Texas border, and the burnt ends make for some truly decadent baked beans.

Slick Pig BBQ

I grew up driving around during summers with my dad, an insurance salesman, and we hit every meat-and-three and barbecue place between Covington and Cookeville. Not long after moving to Murfreesboro in the 1990s, he called me up to rave about a place called the Slick Pig and the best wings he had ever eaten. I’m not sure what the father-and-son team of Jerry and John Robinson marinate those wings in before they go on the smoker, but they come out blackened, lacquered, and perfect. Every bite is a little bomb of flavor. After trying these, you will have a hard time going back to standard hot wings. Well worth the 30-minute drive south.

Courtesy of the Nashville Scene

Edley’s Bar-B-Que

Edley’s Bar-B-Que

When the Nashville Scene held a bracket-style sandwich contest a few years ago, I put my bet on the Tuck Special, a fixture on the menu at Edley’s Bar-B-Que since it opened in 2011. It is decadence on a bun: layers of smoked brisket are topped with pimento cheese, pickles, red sauce, white sauce, and an over-easy egg. My friend Ashley describes it as being “like Whitesnake or US Weekly, it’s bad for you and embarrassing to consume in public.” Christ, it’s good. Traditionalists are sure to be horrified, but it’s their loss. Pro tip: You can get Edley’s wonderful banana pudding as a side item instead of as a dessert, making this just about the richest meal in town. — Steve Cavendish

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It Came from Memphis

People of Nashville, I send you greetings from Memphis, Tennessee, the country music capital of the world!

See how silly, how completely out of touch with reality, that sounds? The Memphis-Nashville rivalry is also silly, and counterproductive. The people of the state’s two biggest urban areas have much more in common than we have differences. We’re all just trying to make a living in a fast-changing, mid-sized Southern city. Let’s not allow those who do not have our best interests at heart to divide us over the narcissism of small differences.

Which brings us to the silly thing we’re supposed to be fighting over, barbecue. Specifically, slow cooked barbecue pork. The truth is, as Anthony Bourdain once pointed out, cultures all over the world figured out thousands of years ago that the tastiest way to eat a pig is to cook it slowly over low heat. In Hawaii, they bury the pig in the sand with hot coals and let it get acquainted with itself. Here, we cook swine over indirect heat, using smoke to impart the meat with a distinctive flavor. At the risk of sounding like the arrogant loser Memphian who exists in the Nashville imagination, our way is the best way.

Or is it? This clickbait brouhaha has shaken my fragile Memphis arrogance. I needed to reconnect with our source of civic culinary pride. This is my investigative journalism duty, not just a way to get the paper to pay for three lunches.

Chris McCoy

Tops Bar-B-Q

I stand in the parking lot of Tops Bar-B-Q, buffeted by sound waves. Next to me is a tall man whom I deduce from the badge on his belt is a police detective. We watch a helicopter ambulance land on the roof of Methodist Hospital in a stiff crosswind. “That guy’s got a tough job,” I say, and the detective agrees.

Tops is fast food, but it’s not a late-stage capitalist branding playground. On the walls are faded pictures of Elvis, and an American flag hangs in the window. The detective, who clearly has a lot on his mind, says when he was growing up, his father used to be a dedicated backyard barbecuer. I tell the detective that my job is to explain how Memphis barbecue is better than Nashville. “That sounds like an easy job,” he says.

Last month, Tops Bar-B-Q announced a new ownership group, who took pains to emphasize their commitment to keeping tradition alive. Restaurateur Tiger Bryant called it a “special institution in Memphis … a true gathering place where people from all walks of life — of all ages — come to enjoy.”

A businessman with a bluetooth headset chooses fries to go with his pork-covered Tops burger, as smartly dressed young men throw around terms like “systems integration.” An older married couple sits in comfortable silence. Two middle aged women are catching up over a pair of sandwiches and Lay’s chips. “That baby’s got enough onesies!” one exclaims, and they both laugh.

I choose the regular pork sandwich with beans and slaw. “You want slaw on it, right?” the young lady behind the counter drawls. It’s not really a question.

The sandwich is modest perfection. The key to great Memphis barbecue, as in most things, is balance. The meat is sweet, smoky, and spicy, all at once, in pleasing proportions. The slaw on the sandwich is mostly a texture thing for me, a little contrast, but it also balances out an excess of spicy sauce.

At $7.59, the meal is less expensive than most fast food, and I actually feel good after I eat it. As I walk to the parking lot, I tell two of my fellow diners my mission. They scoff at the assertion that Nashville barbecue is in the same league as Memphis’. “We started it, they copied it, that’s the truth,” one says.

As I start my car, one of my new friends gives me the “roll down your window!” signal. Being true Memphians, they want to tell me about their favorite barbecue spots: A&R in Hickory Hill. The Neely’s on Winchester. Arnold’s on Shelby Drive.

Justin Fox Burks

Payne’s BBQ

The parking lot of Payne’s on Lamar is crowded even at 2 p.m. If your idea of a great dining experience is a long-term real estate play cleverly disguised as a hip, yet rootsy restaurant revitalizing a post-industrial space, know this: The look and feel those places are trying to emulate is basically Payne’s. Sitting at the red-and-white checker-clothed tables with a rib sandwich in front of you is a quintessential Memphis experience. It’s a sandwich in name only — the white bread’s function is not to contain the meat, but rather to act as an edible napkin to keep your fingers clean as you slither the thews from the bone.

Justin Fox Burks

Cozy Corner

At the Bar-B-Q Shop on Madison, Eric Vernon diplomatically declines to comment on the Memphis-Nashville controversy — except to shout out Cozy Corner as another barbecue restaurant that “gets everything right.” We start with a Memphis creation, barbecue nachos. The ballpark food was made popular at AutoZone Park, but this plate is elevated by the Vernons’ pulled pork. Then, the blockbuster main course. Frank Vernon’s glazed rib recipe must be experienced to be believed. There’s nothing like that whiff of wood smoke that wafts up as the rib slabs hit the table. The slightly crunchy, caramelized exterior contrasts perfectly with the juicy, tender interior. As we dig in, the dining room fills up with families. It’s graduation day.

Eric’s dad Frank Vernon was a backyard pitmaster turned struggling restaurateur. He was tapped by the owner of Brady and Lil’s, the favorite barbecue joint of the Stax Records, to carry on their legacy. Mr. Brady and Vernon sealed the deal by signing a Bible. Their story is typical of so many black families in Memphis who clawed their way into the middle class by devoting themselves to perfecting barbecue — and thus preserving a vital part of African American and Southern culture. The cuisine sustained the people and reached across racial barriers. If we can dine together at the same checkered tablecloth, are we not all humans, in this thing together? That’s what barbecue is to Memphis. Not a new foodie frontier to conquer, or a flag to capture, but a pillar of the community, a tangible example of who we are. — Chris McCoy

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Team BBQ

Yeah, Tony Stark may have that fancy Iron Man suit, but I heard his pork shoulder ain’t worth a damn.

A Memphis superhero makes good barbecue. Period. And when the whole world descends upon Tom Lee Park, we’ll need an elite team of ’em to defend our fair city. Good news. We got one.

Memphis in May (MIM) honored Memphis this year for the city’s 200th birthday. So, the honorary barbecue team is from Memphis. Imagine how hard it would be to pick that elite team of barbecue all-stars.

Walter Crutchfield made the cut. You’ll know him from Crutchfield’s BBQ on Hollywood or from his recent appearance on Food Network’s Chopped.

We caught up with another part of the team, a battalion from Hog Wild — Real Memphis Barbeque & A Moveable Feast Catering — John Oborne, executive chef; John Caldwell, sous chef; and Schuyler O’Brien, chef de cuisine. Here they come now, slo-mo walking through a fog of barbecue smoke, tongs in hand.

Schuyler O’Brien (l to r), John Caldwell, and John Oborne

Memphis Flyer: How did Hog Wild get together?

John Caldwell: Hog Wild and A Moveable Feast Catering have been in the Memphis market for 23 years this summer. [Company founder Ernie Mellor] started out by cooking catfish in the back of his truck. He had some skill on a barbecue rig, and it exploded from there. We think we’re the premier caterer in the Memphis area, and we love what we do.

Ernie, because he cooks on a competition team, is not a member of the — and I’m doing air quotes because we don’t consider ourselves this — the all-star team cooking at the Memphis in May tent.

MF: Have you competed at Memphis in May in the past?

JC: Yes, but it’s the [Hog Wild] team not the company, if that makes sense.

MF: It does. What is the Hog Wild company’s barbecue philosophy?

JC: You’re going to hear it all week long — slow and low.

MF: Talk about your cooking methods.

JC: We’ve had a line of retail and dry rubs available for years. We lay the dry rub on their shoulders, let them sit in that love for a couple hours before it goes on the smoke. Run [the shoulders] at about 210 for 16 hours and then that’s it. It’s a feel thing.

You’ve got to have a little touch, and John Oborne is the master at it. He can tell you when they’re done just by opening the door on the smoker.

MF: All right, well, John, tell me about it.

John Oborne: It’s a process. It takes a long time. You can’t rush good barbecue.

MF: Even though y’all put it in air quotes, you have been picked for the all-star team. It’s got to feel pretty good.

JC: We can’t tell you how excited we are. We are slammed busy. But every day after we finished our shifts and all the parties have gone out and we completed our parties, we’re sitting down and taking notes about the things we want to do for the all-star team, and how much fun that’s going to be and how excited we are about being selected, and representing Memphis on its 200th anniversary. That’s a big deal. — Toby Sells

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News News Blog

Flyer Wins Three National Awards at Newsweekly Convention

The Memphis Flyer won three writing awards at the national Association of Alternative NewsMedia convention in San Diego last week. The Flyer competes in the “large paper” category (circulation 40,000 and over) against major city newsweeklies from around the country.

Flyer winners were:
Bruce VanWyngarden, who won first place in the Column category for his weekly Letter From the Editor.
Chris McCoy, who won second place in Arts Criticism for his movie reviews.
Chris Davis, who won third place in Beat Reporting for his story, “The Art of the Deal: What Happened at MCA?”

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Cover Feature News

Big Show! Big Tent!

In 1998, Kelly Chandler, a University of Memphis film student, got some of her fellow budding filmmakers together at a coffee shop in Midtown. Frustrated that there was no place to show their work, they decided to take matters into their own hands. The ad hoc film society attracted the attention of James Patterson’s arts philanthropy, Delta Axis, which took over running what would soon come to be called the Indie Memphis Film Festival.

Twenty years later, it’s a big birthday for Indie Memphis.

The first year, about 40 people attended the festival. In 2016, that number was more than 11,000. Indie Memphis Executive Director Ryan Watt says that even though the festival began as a niche event for filmmakers, it now ranks among the city’s most important cultural events.

“We’re bringing people to Memphis every year who would not be coming to Memphis otherwise — filmmakers, storytellers, journalists, and industry people who come from L.A. and New York,” Watt says. “They are people who tell stories about us when they go home. So for us to be in the conversation nationally, internationally in the film world is important.”

But the most important element is the audience, which is overwhelmingly from Memphis and the Mid-South area. Indie Memphis’ mission is to offer Mid-South audiences experiences they won’t get anywhere else. It’s what has kept the festival going at a time when other regional festivals are vanishing. It’s why Watt and company have plans to use the 20th edition of Indie Memphis to thank the people of the Bluff City.

When the festival invades Overton Square on Friday, November 3rd, it will kick off a three-day block party. Cooper between Union and Monroe will be closed and a giant tent erected. The space is a nexus between three of the festival’s weekend venues — Playhouse on the Square, Circuit Playhouse, and the Hattiloo Theatre. Equipped with a portable outdoor screen, the tent will not only be a gathering place for the audience, it will become a venue itself.

On Friday night, it will host the music video competition, where bands and directors from all over the world will present their latest works, followed by a special screening of Thank You, Friends: Big Star’s Third Live … And More. The documentary is a record of the night musicians from all over the globe came together to pay tribute to the legacy of Alex Chilton and the band of Memphis misfits who grew from obscurity into one of the most influential acts in rock history. The free screening will be hosted by Big Star drummer and Ardent Studios executive Jody Stephens.

Saturday night, the official 20th anniversary celebration street party, featuring DJ Alex Turley and “visual treats on the outdoor big screen,” will rage until midnight.

Here’s a look at some of the highlights to catch at the 2017 Indie Memphis Film Festival. Thom Pain

Two days before the festival moves to Overton Square, it will open on Wednesday, November 1st with a gala red carpet show at The Orpheum Theatre’s Halloran Centre. The opening night film is Thom Pain, starring Rainn Wilson, who became internationally famous during his eight-year run as Dwight Schrute on The Office, the wildly successful NBC comedy. The film, which was adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated play, Thom Pain (based on nothing) by Will Eno, is basically a one-man show, in which the lead character’s rambling comic monolog reveals deep truths about himself and life itself.

The play has been translated into more than a dozen languages and is regularly performed around the world. This adaptation was recorded during Wilson’s starring run at Los Angeles’ Geffen Playhouse and will make its world premiere at Indie Memphis.

Wilson, Eno, director Oliver Butler, and producer Gil Cates will all be in attendance for a Q&A after the screening. New York Times reviewer Charles Isherwood said Thom Pain “can leave you both breathless with exhilaration and, depending on your sensitivity to meditations on the bleak and beautiful mysteries of human experience, in a puddle of tears.”

You Look Like

You Look Like

Back in May, The Memphis Flyer‘s Chris Davis reported on You Look Like, a made-in-Memphis comedy phenomenon created by Katrina Coleman and Tommy Oler.

“I had gone to see it and was really inspired by it, so I got local filmmakers to make a show,” says Craig Brewer. “Sarah Fleming was in charge of shooting it. Edward Valibus was in charge of cutting it together. We made a sizzle reel, and then we took that sizzle reel and sold the concept to [independent studio] Gunpowder and Sky.”

With the backing of a national production company, Brewer’s BR2 Productions, led by producer Erin Hagee Freeman, created 10 10-minute episodes of the most radical game show you are likely to see. Two comedians face each other on the P&H’s tiny stage and trade insults. The only rule is each line must start with the phrase “You look like …”

It’s no-holds-barred shade throwing, but despite all the wildly offensive vitriol, the mood is convivial. “It was very important for us to capture the atmosphere we felt at the P&H Cafe. You felt very safe to laugh,” says Brewer. “It just felt inspiring. It didn’t feel insulting. That was the key thing we had to figure out about the show. How do we capture that feeling in that live audience?”

This will be the world debut of the show, which will screen four episodes. You Look Like is in turns shocking and side splitting. An audience applause meter determines the winners, but some of the best moments take place in the heavily graffitied bathroom of the P&H, where comedians who lose the duel of wits are forced to stare into the Mirror of Shame and insult themselves.

Producer and editor Valibus was responsible for cutting down the hours of filmed material into a coherent, fast-paced contest. “The closest comparison is a roast battle, but they usually tell about three jokes per comedian. That’s a bazooka. We’re more like a machine gun. … I think what’s really funny is watching a comedian take a hit. Sometimes they’ll be like, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty true. That’s spot on.'”

Valibus says the edgy humor is ultimately empowering. “I think it’s because everybody gets theirs. There’s self-depreciation in just being attacked. It’s finding that we’re all screwed up. It’s nice that someone took the time to find out what’s screwed up about you.”

King

MLK 50

Next year is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, a tragedy whose consequences are still being felt today, in Memphis and all over the country. In the first of many upcoming commemorative events, Indie Memphis’ programmer Brandon Harris has put together a slate of films built around the theme of civil rights history and protest, beginning on Friday, November 3rd at the Hattiloo Theatre with Uptight!, a 1968 film directed by Jules Dassin. Shot in Detroit, the groundbreaking independent production, which tells a story of hope, paranoia, and betrayal among black militants, was inspired by John Ford’s The Informers and features a soundtrack by Stax legends Booker T. and the MGs.

Later that night at Studio on the Square, is Working In Protest, a documentary by Indie Memphis veterans Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley. “This film covers 30 years of protest,” says Hawley. “We were documenting these events in a short form kind of way, because we felt like we had to. It was happening around us, and we are natural documentarians. We never really intended to make it a feature or something that would go to festivals. We just wanted to put it up on the internet and say, ‘Look what has happened around us yesterday.’ But then when we looked back, we realized that they all kind of connect. They show an evolution in the last 20 years of protest in the U.S.”

The film includes footage of demonstrations from both Democratic and Republican national conventions, as well as Occupy Wall Street, and the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina. “You see the rise of the militarization of the police,” says Galinsky. “It’s not a critique of protest, but you see a layer of ineffectiveness in our protest, and it raises a question of what we might do if we really want change.”

On Saturday afternoon, Wade Gardner will bring the conversation into the present day with his startling documentary. “Marvin Booker Was Murdered tells the story of a homeless street preacher whose family is from Memphis, Tennessee,” says the director.

Marvin Booker’s father was Rev. B. R. Booker, an AME church elder who was involved in the 1968 protests that brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis. Marvin met King as a child and, after the assassination, devoted his life to memorizing the civil rights leader’s speeches and spreading the message of justice and acceptance. “He was in Denver,” says Gardner, “and as he was waiting to be booked into jail, he was beaten to death by five jail guards. It was caught on video, witnessed by more than 20 people.”

Booker’s assailants were never indicted. “As soon as Marvin was killed, the cover-up began. The deputies got together to get their stories straight, and the demonization was in full force. The way they treated the Booker family was as if they had committed the crime.”

After the screening, Garner and the Booker family will be present to discuss the latest developments in the case and answer questions from the audience.

The MLK50 program includes a bloc of short films by Memphis filmmakers, including Katori Hall’s Arkabutla, Mark Goshen Jones’ Henry, and Myles by Kevin Brooks.

The BLM Bridge Protest: One Year Later is a documentary short by Commercial Appeal photojournalist Yolanda M. James, who was on hand on July 10, 2016 when 1,000 protesters shut down the Hernando De Soto bridge.

“One of the thoughts that ran through my mind was that I was documenting an historical moment, and I could not screw it up,” she recalls. “Memphis had not seen a protest this large since the 1960s, and it was important to record as much of this spontaneous event as possible. It was my day off, but I needed to be there to capture the news as it unfolded. At times I had to catch my breath because the scene had an overwhelming sense of captivating energy that genuinely touched my heart and spirit.”

The film combines audio interviews with activists and MPD Director Michael Rallings with images captured on the day of the protest. “We needed to hear their voices on how the event transpired, as well as to see if any changes were made to better relations between police and the community,” says James.

Abel Ferrara

Indie Memphis was founded by a group of independent filmmakers who wouldn’t take no for an answer, and through the last two decades, it has continued to celebrate that spirit of unfettered creation and expression. Few filmmakers fit that bill better than this year’s featured guest, Abel Ferrara.

The 66-year-old director made his debut in 1981 with the now-legendary exploitation film Ms. 45, a gritty tale of a mute woman, played by Zoë Lund, who takes bloody revenge on the men who raped her.

Indie Memphis will celebrate Ferrara’s uncompromising legacy with a double feature. The first is a 25th-anniversary screening of The Bad Lieutenant, the 1992 film written by Lund and Ferrara. Harvey Keitel stars as the most corrupt policeman imaginable, who spends his days smoking crack and shaking down innocent citizens for drug money. But the brutal murder of a nun awakens something in the unnamed officer, and he struggles to choose between redemption and ultimate damnation.

Ferrara will also host a screening of The Blackout, his 1997 feature starring Matthew Modine as a troubled man trying to reconstruct what happened during a wild night on the town in Miami with his friend, played by Dennis Hopper.

Lately, Ferrara has devoted himself to music. Alive in France is the director’s documentary of his band, the Flyz, on their European tour. It will screen on Saturday, November 4th, at 10:30 p.m. On Sunday, November 5th, the Flyz will play live at the Hi-Tone in Crosstown.

Good Grief

Good Grief

Kids on the playground ask tough questions like, “What kind of tool did your daddy use to kill your mommy?” These kinds of stories are related with disarming ease in Good Grief, a lively documentary about children who’ve lost parents or close care-givers, and a camp in Arkansas, that provides them with community, a place to heal, and how to manage when the playground’s not much fun.

Hopefully, the creative team behind this tightly wrapped documentary had a considerable budget for Kleenex. It’s hard to watch all 52 minutes with dry cheeks, and the tears it elicits — as likely to arise from rage or horror as sympathy — are never cheap or easy. As this candid, often wise film from co-directors Melissa Anderson Sweazy and Laura Jean Hocking reminds, there are many different kinds of feelings, and it’s okay to work through the whole spectrum.

Sweazy had a reasonable objective for Good Grief, which was named for Baptist Memorial Healthcare’s Kemmons Wilson Family Center for Good Grief. She and Hocking wanted to make a movie about living, not dying, and to tell the sophisticated, sometimes shocking story of a camp for grieving kids to people who might not normally respond enthusiastically to any or all of those words.

Good Grief introduces siblings Connor and Ava, whose mother was murdered by their father in a terrible act of domestic violence. It introduces Meaghan, whose brother AJ mistook their father for an intruder and, having been raised to use arms and defend himself and his family, shot through the door with tragic results. It introduces AJ, who recalls the whole story with clarity and insight. Also introduced are Angela Hamblen-Kelly, the executive director and visionary force behind the center, and the camp counselors and volunteers. Everyone onscreen has lost loved ones to illness, accident, and ongoing disasters

“We know hope exists; we see it every day,” Kelly explains. “Sometimes we let people hold onto us because we know it’s out there if they don’t. We let them know they can hang onto us until they can find it themselves.”

Death is a tough sell, but a hopeful outlook, lyrical visuals courtesy of cinematographer Sarah Fleming, and a sumptuous original soundtrack by Toby Vest and Krista Wroten Combest, make this potential downer float like a helium balloon. — Chris Davis

The Blackout

Twenty Years of Indie Memphis Memories

We asked filmmakers and audience members to share with us some of their favorite memories of the last two decades of Memphis’ premiere film festival.

My first real life moment as a filmmaker was seeing a film I made on a big screen for the first time in front of an audience. It was a wild experimental film that I’m sure was very trying for the audience, but the festival screened it nonetheless and a kind man by the name of Craig Brewer came to me afterwards and told me he liked what we were doing.
Whether that was the kindness in his heart or a genuine remark, it changed my path forever. I try to return that favor these days. I love seeing new filmmakers screen new films. There’s magic in those dark rooms when those images appear onto the screen.

Another favorite memory would be when I decided to propose to my now-husband in front of 350 people at the premiere of my documentary, This Is What Love in Action Looks Like. Having all of those special people in one room at the same time and being at the place where my religion is practiced, there was no place more fitting than on the stage at Indie Memphis — Morgan Jon Fox, filmmaker

Seeing [West Memphis 3 member] Jason Baldwin walk out, unannounced, onto the stage during the Q & A for Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. — John Pickle, filmmaker

Jerry Lawler telling Andy Kaufman stories for 45 minutes after the screening of Man on the Moon. — Kent Osborne, actor, animator, and writer for Adventure Time

The entire 2011 festival is one of the best times I have ever had at a film festival. I ran into a lot of friends, made a lot of new friends, enjoyed as many of the non-screening activities as possible, and saw many great films. — Skizz Cyzyk, filmmaker, Indie Memphis jury member

I loved the days of screening on Beale Street and hanging out with filmmakers at the (then) less crowded bars after. — Stephen Stanley, producer/director

Screening my Destroy Memphis documentary last year, after waiting 10 years to find the right person to help me edit and get it on the screen. — Mike McCarthy, filmmaker

Occupy Indie Memphis. It was a timely and ridiculous premise for the Awards Show in 2011, and we shot the video sequences at the fest. People actually thought that a group of rejected filmmakers were protesting the festival. Chris Parnell even got in on the shenanigans! Every year feels like one big lock-in: You don’t sleep, you run around like crazy, and at least one of your friends cries. I love it! — Savannah Bearden, filmmaker/actor, and awards show producer
For a full list of films and a schedule of events, visit www.indiememphis.com.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Never Seen It: Watching Citizen Kane with Inside Memphis Business Editor Jon Sparks

For this installment of Never Seen It, we welcome Jon W. Sparks, editor of Inside Memphis Business. Sparks is a longtime journalist who came from a community newspaper in New York City in 1981 to work at The Commercial Appeal. Since taking a buyout 10 years ago, he’s written for several local and national publications before taking the helm of Inside Memphis Business. He is also an actor familiar to Memphis film and theater fans for his appearances in both locally produced films and on the stage. We were joined by Sparks’ wife, Memphis College of Art professor Maritza Dávila, and my wife, filmmaker Laura Jean Hocking.

Our film is Orson Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane.

Chris McCoy: Tell me what you know about Citizen Kane.

Jon Sparks: I know it makes most of the top ten, if not five, lists of the greatest movies ever. But I’ll be the judge of that.

CM: It was just dethroned in the last Sight & Sound poll after fifty years at number one.

JS: I know it’s heralded for the brilliance of its writing, the concepts, the ending, the black and white cinematography. Orson Welles, of course, leaves a mark on everything he does. Maybe not always good, but he leaves a mark. And I have seen a little bit here and there.

CM: Anything specific?

JS: I’m remembering shouting crowds and Joseph Cotton. I think there were some spinning newspapers.

Never Seen It: Watching Citizen Kane with Inside Memphis Business Editor Jon Sparks (5)

119 minutes later…

JS: I’m not accustomed to being on this side of the recorder. This is uncomfortable.

CM: I know! OK. Citizen Kane. What did you think?

JS: When you see films that are biographies, essentially, this film set the standard cinematically, and in so many ways. Movies made today that are biographies don’t have the surprises and the approach this one does. This one is fresh today, because of the story angles it takes and the conclusions it reaches with each scene, the time line going back and forth, with Joseph Cotton reminiscing about the old days. But even then, it’s stitched together differently from anything today.

CM: It’s not a three act play, for one thing. It’s six or seven. It lays out the whole story in the opening newsreel. There are no plot surprises after the first ten minutes.

JS: It’s interesting that the newsreel looked so rough. It was really cheesy, the effects were pretty low grade, which is what you would expect out of a newsreel. Then it begins to tell the story, and it’s very theatrical. They even stage a lot of things in a theater.

Title card from the newsreel sequence.

CM: Does the acting feel theatrical?

JS: The acting is all uniformly good, but you can recognize the skills of the theater people doing it.

Laura Jean Hocking: When they’re talking over each other, that seems very theatrical to me. I don’t think you saw that very much before this movie. I associate it with like, Rosalind Russell and the sort of sassy dame stuff. There’s so many things that happened for the first time in this movie.

JS: You pointed out when they started the shot with a close up of a face and then pulling back into the establishing shot. But the acting was so incredibly skillful. I was knocked out by Everett Sloane’s Bernstein. I love how, in the beginning, an editor is barking out orders to reporters: ‘Go find that guy! What’s his name? Its Bernstein! The manager!’ Then the next time he’s mentioned, it’s again ‘What’s his name? Bernstein!’ It’s like he’s so inconsequential, but he’s the thread that goes through Kane’s life. He never divorced him or ran away from him. Bernstein was there and he understood Kane probably better than anyone.

CM: Bernstein’s take is the most objective of all of them. He never really took Kane seriously, but he didn’t hate him, either.

Agnes Moorehead as Mary Kane.

JS: But he understood him well enough to function with him. The same actor did him from old to young, but in a way he always looked old….And that’s just one great performance. Anges Moorehead, forget about it! She’s got that face that is so hard, and here she is a mother giving up her child.

CM: Her voice breaks when she says ‘Charlie’, and that’s the only bit of emotion that she lets slip through. It tears your heart out! One of my favorite things that has trickled through films ever since is the ‘Citizen Kane shot’, where there are two people in the foreground framing one person in the background. The two people in the foreground are talking about the person in the background, but the person in the background doesn’t know they’re being talked about. That happens at least twice in this movie. The first time it’s mom and dad and the banker, with Charlie framed in the window in the background. The second time he does it, there’s a freakin’ musical scene going on! He shows you how the composition is going to work in the first angle, then he goes to the reverse angle and boom, it’s exactly the same shot from before, with two people discussing Kane’s fate while Kane is dancing around trying to get their attention. Welles rubs your face in it.

The first instance of the ‘Citizen Kane shot’.

Ten minutes later, the second instance.

#2 in context:

Never Seen It: Watching Citizen Kane with Inside Memphis Business Editor Jon Sparks (2)


Maritza Dávila: I thought the acting was so natural. The first wife was such a lady, and you could tell she always had to act like that, so proper. And Orson Welles. Wow.

LJ: How old was he?

CM: I think he was 24. It’s ridiculous. I’ve wasted my life.

MD: His acting…even when he is so restrained, you can just feel it in him, the feeling that, ‘I have to win!’ All that childhood trauma that he was never able to get rid of. The same behavior that he has with his guardian, he continues that behavior over and over again. With everything.

CM: He would redirect that energy towards somebody else, but it was always the same energy.

…

JS: I love some of the choices Welles makes. When he gets married for the first time, they tell the whole story with a series of scenes at the breakfast table. They just get farther and farther apart….Now the other relationship, a bit more traditional.

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CM: He uses the other relationship to sneak in the jigsaw puzzle, which is really the overarching metaphor for the whole thing. He just sneaks it in there. That’s one of the things that’s great about the screenplay. Everything pays off. Everything you think is just a throwaway detail turns out to be a setup.

MD: The comedic relief throughout the whole movie is so well placed.

CM: One thing that struck me this time through—and maybe this is a result of reviewing movies all the time—is that this is so much denser than anything you see today.

JS: Part of that is at the beginning. They hit all these high points and then never visit them again. I thought, well OK, they tell the story fast, then they’re going to tell it slow. But they didn’t do that. They filled in the spaces. The death of his first wife and son is never dealt with at all. The stock market crash and the Great Depression is the same thing. They kind of go, ‘Oh, well, we don’t have as much money as we used to.’ But expanding on those obvious points is something that would be done today. They would show it with all the tears and everything.

CM: And hearing you say that makes me think, if I was giving advice on a screenplay, I would give that note. ‘Why don’t we get to see him losing all his money? Why don’t we get to see his wife and son dying?’ I would have given bad notes to Orson Welles.

LJH: Once his wife and kid leave you never see them again. You don’t have to.

JS: And that’s good writing, to only say something one time, and say it right. You see that in beginning writers. They’ll tell you the same thing a bunch of different ways, because they’re just so in love with the idea. Just express it one good way.

CM: Have faith that your audience is smart enough to put the pieces together.

…

CM: So, Mr. Editor of Inside Memphis Business, this is a movie about business and wealth and capitalism.

JS: He was a very rich man who was on the side of the poor man. He was going to devote his life to making the plight of the underdog much better. He was clearly going to make the country great again, in some fashion.

CM: It’s very relevant today, because he feels like Trump. He even does the ‘Lock her up!’ stuff.

JS: That was prescient.

CM: Obviously, the character is based on William Randolph Hearst, but he becomes Teddy Roosevelt for a minute there.

Never Seen It: Watching Citizen Kane with Inside Memphis Business Editor Jon Sparks (6)

MS: One thing that occurred to me, with all of the things that happened to him, he never matured.

LJH: When Susan leaves, he throws a tantrum and tears her room up.

MD: That was the most out of control he found himself. And then he died. Before that, he was like, ‘I want to make you a singer. Not because you want to be a singer, but because I want you to be a singer.’ He was just putting all of that need into every single person he meets..

CM: And when she says she doesn’t want to be up there in front of an audience that doesn’t want her, he says, ‘That’s when you have to fight them!’ This time, I was like, wow, that’s exactly the wrong thing to do.

JS: He has the resources that, if people don’t want him, he can change. He can buy a newspaper. But she is stuck in that one role, playing that one thing. She doesn’t have the versatility that he has, but he doesn’t see that. If there is anything that’s repeated, it’s that insecure side of him that people kept reminding him of. You just want to be loved. You just want to love yourself. That’s what she tells him when she finally stomps out. He says ‘I need you to do this!’ She says, ‘Oh yeah. It’s about what you need. Adios! Tear up the room! I’m outta here!’

…

CM: What is this film’s view of business, of capitalism?

JS: It was not very positive, as Hollywood films often are. It had a very low opinion of business. In the very beginning, before we see him as the shabby character he really is, we see him as a heroic trustbuster. This comical character, his stepfather, is the goof. But he’s a typical trust guy. He’s a slumlord who embodies all the evils of capitalism. So Kane goes after him, but not because he believes it.

CM: Kane is not a Marxist.

JS: Kane is a Kane-ist. He’s just sticking it to the old man because he’s the old man…They don’t really make a whole lot about how Kane acquired these newspapers and built an empire. They throw a little bit at you about how he says, ‘We need to raid that newspaper and get their best people.’ Then he just does it. There’s no particular shrewdness that you see in any of that. There’s no great lessons to be learned about how to run your business. You do have the conscience, Jed, who is something of a besotted conscience, who tries to keep him a little bit honest. For god sake, don’t start a war!

Never Seen It: Watching Citizen Kane with Inside Memphis Business Editor Jon Sparks (3)

CM: The point of view that the Spanish American War was a media phenomenon was not a widespread thing in 1940. People did not think that yet. And they were literally in the middle of a media push to start another war. I feel like it has a much more sophisticated take on politics than on business.

JS: Yes. And again, just an interesting, savvy, storytelling. He runs for office and fails.

CM: Do you think we’re seeing what would have happened if Charles Foster Kane would have won?

LJH: You have the fraud at the polls headline and everything!

JS: I think it’s futile to try to draw too many parallels between the movie and today. What’s happening today has destroyed satire as an art form. Veep is one of the funniest shows on television. You can laugh at the jokes, but the absurdity of the situations aren’t quite as effective compared to our daily headlines.

CM: You’ve been a journalist for a long time. This is about journalism more than it is about business or politics. Kane today would be, who, Murdoch? Roger Ailes?

JS: He’s more of a Murdoch. Ailes was more ideological about it. Murdoch is all about acquiring the properties and getting the reach.

CM: …and this is all collateral damage from Murdoch’s drive to be number one in the ratings. Which is also kind of Trump’s thing. He really doesn’t care about anything about ratings.

JS: His stated need was to go get the people. He wanted to be the voice of the people, and for the people to come to him. He wanted people to love him, and that was through numbers, how it worked for him. Of course today it is so different. Back then one story in one place could make a huge difference. Now a story has to appear in a lot of different places to make any big deal about it.

LJH: But now you see a story that pops up in multiple places and then Fox News will go ‘No! No!’ and it will disappear. Who is even listening to them?

CM: In Kane, you see the end of that phenomenon. You see the Kane network slowly lose relevance because people stopped believing it. I feel like that’s the process you’re seeing right now, a disenthrallment. They’ve finally gone too far. There’s too much evidence. Trump not only is Kane, but Trump is Susan. He gets in the opera house and has to sing, only to discover he’s not a good singer.

JS: But Susan goes on tour. You see Inquirer papers all over America proclaiming her a great singer, and saying ‘sold out audiences!’ But then people go see her and she’s not a great singer. The truth really does matter.
…

CM: So, is Citizen Kane the best movie ever made?

JS: No. It’s not the greatest movie ever made, but you shouldn’t wait until you’re 67 to see it. It’s a movie that needs to be seen. It’s important on a number of levels. It’s an incredible story about America…In a way it’s like Death of a Salesman. It shows how business and money can take over someone’s life and crush you.

CM: What’s better?

JS: I don’t know…

CM: Vertigo is the one that overtook it in the Sight & Sound poll. Is that better?

JS: I don’t know. I do love Hitchcock.

CM: Personally, I don’t agree. I think this is better than Vertigo. I don’t even think Vertigo is Hitchcock’s best movie. I like Rear Window better. So what do you think is better than Citizen Kane?

JS: I think probably the two Godfathers, just in terms of sheer scope and artistry. There’s brilliance from top to bottom. Another one of my favorite films is Seven Beauties. And I have a real soft spot for 8 1/2.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

IndieGrants

Look to the credits of each short film represented in the 2016 IndieGrants bloc, and you’ll find recurring names of actors and crew members collaborating on one another’s projects.

That’s the film community here — a tight-knit family willing to lend a hand to artists scraping up funds to bring their vision to the screen. But what could a DIY filmmaker accomplish with a full crew and professional resources for production? Mark Jones, who started the IndieGrant program in 2014, wanted to find out.

“My starting IndieGrant is both from an artistic point of view and an economic point of view,” Jones, whose resume includes the 2012 comedy Tennessee Queer, says. “Film is art. Film is jobs. I thought that if Indie Memphis could help fund short films, then perhaps one of those short films made in Memphis could get some funding, and then it could be made as a feature film here in the city.”

What started as two $4,500 grants and two $500 grants has grown considerably in just two years. Now, two winning film proposals not only receive $5,000 while two others receive $500, but they are also awarded an additional $2,500 from FireFly Grip and Electric for lighting work and equipment, and, beginning this year, $1,500 from LensRentals and $1,000 for sound mixing from Music + Art Studios.

“I think you’d be hard pressed to find another film festival the size of Indie Memphis or perhaps bigger that gives this much out in grants to local filmmakers,” Jones says.

Seven films, financed between the 2014 and 2015 Indie Memphis festivals, will debut at 8:15 p.m. on November 1st at the Halloran Centre. That includes Sarah Fleming’s Carbike, a city-trotting, sightseer told through the perspective of two Japanese visitors; G.B. Shannon’s touching family drama Broke Dick Dog; the Flyer‘s Chris McCoy and Laura Jean Hocking’s road trip comedy How to Skin a Cat, which depicts the Collierville, Midtown, and rural divide; Morgan Jon Fox’s Silver Elves, an almost dialogue-free, true crime reverie; On the Sufferings of the World, an collaboration between experimental auteur Ben Siler, director Edward Valibus, actor Jessica Morgan, and musician Alexis Grace; Dirty Money, by Jonas Schubach, who also served as cinematographer on Indie Memphis’ closing night feature documentary Kallen Esperian: Vissie d’Arti and Jones’ black comedy Death$ in a $mall Town.

How to Skin a Cat

IndieGrant serves as a launch pad — a motivator to stay accountable and follow through with a film, says Joseph Carr. He’ll make his directorial debut at this year’s festival after a $500 IndieGrant and a few thousand dollars in personal fund-raising. Returns is inspired by the years he worked in a bookstore, watching as the digital takeover made in-store interaction almost extinct.

“The film is a profile of people who love their profession and, while struggling with honest bouts of ennui, continue to provide their service in the face of an uncertain future,” Carr says.

A testament to the community’s kinship, Carr committed to filmmaking after working on Sarah Fleming’s crew as a production assistant. Years later, he was cast in Fox’s play Claws and, later, in Feral. Fox produced Carr’s short, along with two others in the block, Fleming’s Carbike and Jones’ Death$ In A $mall Town. Carr, in turn, produced Fox’s Silver Elves.

Death$ in a $mall Town

“The Memphis scene is like a family, and, at some point, we’re all working on each other’s productions one way or another. It’s always an honor,” Fox says.

Since 2002, Fleming has captured multiple perspectives of Memphis. Carbike depicts the city through the eyes of tourists. Aside from Fox playing an amiable Airbnb host, the dialogue between lead actors Kazuha Oda and Hideki Matsushige is in Japanese.

“[Carbike] is part of a larger series focusing on stories of Memphis visitors — all of which are inspired by true stories,” Fleming says. “I’m a huge fan of this city and enjoy exploring our unique landscape.”

At last year’s festival, Jones was asked why there were only two big winners. Rather than hand two people $5,000 each, why not give 10 people $1,000?

“My response was that I want to see the bar raised,” Jones says. “The IndieGrants are important to me because I want to see Memphis grow as a film city. This is one way I can directly help make that happen.”

Categories
News News Blog

Three Flyer Writers Named Finalists for National Awards

The Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN) has announced the finalists for its annual national writing awards. Three Memphis Flyer writers are among them.

Toby Sells is a finalist in the Long-Form News Story category for “The Brady Bunch,” a deep look at the Brady Law violations and other self-inflicted problems at DA Amy Weirich’s office.

Chris McCoy is a finalist for Arts Feature for his story on the locally made documentary film, Best of Enemies, about political rivals Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley.

Eileen Townsend is a finalist in Arts Criticism for her film column on Fifty Shades of Grey, and two art columns: “Is Loving Local the Wrong Approach?” and “’I Thought I Might Find You Here,’ at Clough-Hanson.”

Finalists were chosen as the most outstanding from a field of 821 entries submitted by 70 alternative publications across the U.S. and Canada. The AAN Awards recognize the best in alternative journalism and offer a chance for alt-weeklies to compete directly against the work of their peers in cities across the continent. Judging was conducted by the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

The winners will be announced July 9 at the AAN Convention in Austin, Texas. Each finalist is assured of no worse than a third-place award.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Super Witch

This Music Video Monday promotes itself. 

Two summers ago, El Dorado Del Ray, Joey Killingsworth, and John Pickle asked me to play heavy metal with them in a band called Super Witch. I hadn’t had a band to play with in a while, and while I had played jangle pop, indie, punk, noise, and all kinds of guitar rock since I first took up the bass when I was 15 years old, I had never actually played heavy metal before. So I said yes, and I’ve been glad I did. I’ve learned a lot from these guys, made some new friends, and become a better bass player for it. We’ve been slowly recording an album with Dik LeDoux’s Au Poots studio and Rocket Science Audio’s Kyle Johnson, and now it’s finally ready for public consumption. Along the way, we also made some music videos. 

John Pickle is not just a great drummer, but he’s also a Memphis filmmaking pioneer. For years in the 1990s, he created the legendary public access TV show Pickle TV, which brought gonzo insanity to unsuspecting cable subscribers all over the land. He’s made two Super Witch music videos. The latest is “The Need”, in which he used some footage of us recording the song in the studio to demonstrate what a great editor he is. 

Music Video Monday: Super Witch (2)

The first Super Witch music video was “Army Of Werewolves”, where Pickle took the opportunity to create a video based on a simple concept he had been tossing around for a long time. All four members of the band shot our segments separately for this one, but one thing I can tell you is that if you detune your bass so the strings flop around enough to capture on camera, you’ll probably break your nut. Thanks to John Lobow for fixing it for me afterwards. 

Music Video Monday: Super Witch

And finally, here’s a Super Witch video I directed. Last year, we played an awesome show at Black Lodge Video that was captured on film by Christopher Woodsy Smith. Around the same time, the Maiden protests in Kiev, Ukraine were going on, and I noticed that some videos I was seeing from the street riots had a very similar color pallette as the Black Lodge footage. So my wife and editor Laura Jean Hocking and I cut together scenes from the two sources into this video for “House Of Warlocks”. I’m very proud of it, and I hope you like it, too. 

Music Video Monday: Super Witch (3)

You can download our album Super Witch Has Risen over at Bandcamp on a pay-what-you-can basis. 

Thank you for indulging my conflict of interest. If you would like to see your music video in this space next week, please email me at cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. 

Categories
Cover Feature News

Only in the Movies and Memphis

Friday nights are a movie theater’s bread and butter, but on Friday, January 9, 2015, the Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill theater was closed to the public. The lobby was still bustling, but on this night it was with a crowd of dressed-up VIPs sipping champagne, munching on movie-themed hors d’oeuvres, and talking about the old days. Malco Theatres has been welcoming Friday-night moviegoers for 100 years, and it was time for celebration.

Naturally, Malco treated its extended family to a movie. There were four to choose from, tracing the century-long evolution of films that had brightened Malco’s screens and drawn patrons through the doors of dozens of theaters: from Hollywood’s miracle year, 1939, The Wizard of Oz; from the post-studio system 1960s, The Sound of Music; from the auteurist 1970s, The Godfather; and from the dawn of computer-generated imagery, 1994’s Forrest Gump. (For the record, The Godfather was the most popular choice among the partygoers.)

“We as a species are biologically driven to go to the movies,” says Jeff Kaufman, Malco’s senior vice president of film and marketing. “We spent 25,000 years living in caves, being told stories by firelight. That’s how our species evolved. You can see cave drawings all over the world that are thousands of years old. That communal experience that our forefathers had translates into what we do today in the movie theater.”

Experiments with moving pictures date back to the mid-19th century, soon after the invention of photography. In the 1880s, watching a movie was a personal affair. You put a coin in a Kinetoscope machine and peered into the eyepiece to see short films of vaudeville acts or scantily clad women dancing. The first public exhibition of a projected film in America was in New York City in 1898. The 1903 film The Great Train Robbery caused a sensation with a startling innovation: a plot. “The first theater in Memphis was opened in 1905 by Charles Dinstuhl, next to his candy store on the corner of Washington and Main. It was called the Theatorium Theatre,” says Vincent Astor, historian and author of the 2013 book Memphis Movie Theatres. “It was an actual nickelodeon with a large number of seats in front of a screen. It was a storefront, but it was the first storefront converted to show movies.”

Soon, theaters like the Optic and the Majestic dotted downtown. “Memphis has always been a big theater town,” says Astor. “There were a handful of [vaudeville] theaters in the 19th century. Several of them ended up being used for films when it was profitable to do that.”

Short subjects still ruled during the first decade of the 20th century, but films gradually became longer. The first to reach what we now consider feature length was the 1906 Australian crime epic The Story of the Kelly Gang. European cinema led the way until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, which coincided with a flowering of film production in a formerly sleepy California town called Hollywood.

M.A. Lightman Sr. holding Stephen Lightman with M.A. Jr.

In 1915, Nashville native and Vanderbilt University graduate M.A. Lightman rented a storefront in Sheffield, Alabama, and opened a movie theater called the Liberty Theater. By then, the modern movie theater business was taking shape. First, theater owners from the informal vaudeville circuits banded together into multi-state chains, then the movie studios themselves, like Warner Brothers and Paramount, got into the business in what’s called today a move toward vertical integration. But there was no shortage of independently owned movie theaters in America. “The theaters came and went. There were different circuits that owned different theaters, and they changed names a lot,” says Astor.

Entrepreneurs like Lightman leveraged their successes into opening more theaters. By 1919, his Sterling Amusement Company owned three theaters in Alabama. He soon sold those theaters and entered the Little Rock market. M.A. Lightman’s father, Joseph, was in construction, and in 1925, the two got together to build the Hillsboro Theatre in their native Nashville. That theater is still around today as the Bellcourt Theatre, an independent art house cinema. The family arrangement was not unusual. “There were a bunch of families, many of them Italian, who owned theaters everywhere,” says Astor.

Malco (M.A. Lightman Company) got its name in 1926. The Lightman family business spread across Arkansas, and then, in 1929, they crossed the river. “The Linden Circle was their first theater in Memphis,” says Astor.

At the same time, movies were undergoing the first of what would be many technological upheavals: the introduction of sound. “The Jazz Singer actually played at Ellis Auditorium,” says Astor. “One of the reasons for that was, at the end of the 1920s, when sound came in, it was just as profound a change as has been the change from film to digital. You had to do it. There were theaters like the Majestic where the owners closed the theater rather than spend the money to convert to sound. Several of the really early sound pictures were at the auditorium, because it was easier to truck in the equipment and put it on the big stage and show the film and then truck it out again, because it was designed for that, and the size didn’t matter. It was cheaper to do that instead of converting another theater.”

During the Depression, the movie theater business was one of the few industries that thrived. Tickets were cheap, and people needed escapist entertainment. In 1935, Malco opened the Memphian Theater on Cooper. It would become a Midtown neighborhood icon and a favorite of Elvis Presley, who famously rented the entire theater for late-night screenings with his friends in the ’60s. Later, it became the first Playhouse on the Square; today, it’s Circuit Playhouse, which still hosts films for the Indie Memphis film festival.

This was the age of the movie palaces, with ornate, 1,000-seat theaters like Lowe’s Palace, the Strand, and the Princess packing in people for first-run Hollywood fare. In 1940, Malco bought a former vaudeville theater at the corner of Main and Beale Street called the Orpheum and transformed it into the growing chain’s flagship property. Malco would have its corporate offices there for many years.

The Arrival of Television

But change was again brewing in the theater industry. The major Hollywood studios had been under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for years regarding their vertically integrated system of movie distribution. The market power that came from owning a huge number of the theaters that showed their films often forced the hands of independent owners like Malco. In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled in United States vs. Paramount Pictures that studio ownership of theaters constituted an unlawful monopoly. The ruling weakened the power of the Hollywood studios and consequently led to fewer movies being produced.

In 1951, Malco opened the Crosstown, a state-of-the-art, 1,400-seat theater next to the Sears Building. The neon sign atop its marquee was 90-feet tall and employed more than a mile of neon tubing. It was the crown jewel of the 63-theater Malco empire that stretched from Kentucky to New Orleans. But it would be the last of the movie palaces built in Memphis. Hollywood, still reeling from the antitrust ruling, faced a challenger for the eyes and minds of America: television.

“Television scared them to death,” Stephen Lightman, grandson of M.A. Lightman and current president of Malco told what is now Inside Memphis Business (formerly Memphis Business Quarterly) last December. “They thought it was the end — people weren’t going to go out of the house; they were going to sit at home and be entertained.”

Hollywood responded by trying to create a film experience in the theater that was not possible in the living room. TVs were square, so widescreen became the standard for film. Stereophonic sound completely blew away the tinny din of the TV speaker, and early experiments in stereo vision led to the short-lived 3D fad, which produced a few classics like The Creature from the Black Lagoon. “The movie business has always been in flux,” says Astor. “Since the end of the second World War, they have always had to try and one-up something technological.”

The movies continued to be popular, but the margins in the theater business were shrinking. With their high overhead costs, the movie palaces went into slow decline. The late 1950s were the golden age of the drive-in, an innovation that had begun in the late 1930s but exploded in popularity with the newly mobile teenagers of the baby boom. With the drive-ins came a new wave of movies designed for cheap thrills that featured rock-and-roll, motorcycles, shabby monsters, and scantily clad babes. “That’s why movies became more exploitive — they had to figure out a way to get people out of the house,” says director Mike McCarthy, whose Time Warp Drive-In series has become a popular staple at Malco’s Summer Drive-In. “If there wasn’t enough sex and violence in the house, there was some at the drive-in.”

David Tashie, Stephen Lightman, Jimmy Tashie, Bob Levy

Integration and the Birth of the “Multiplex”

M.A. Lightman passed away in 1958, leaving the business to his two sons, M.A. Lightman Jr. and Richard Lightman. With the civil rights movement spreading across the South, the brothers would oversee the racial integration of their theaters. African-America patrons had historically been confined to separate balconies, but one day in 1962, without fanfare, and after consulting with the Memphis Bi-Racial Committee, the Malco on Beale sold orchestra-level seats to a single African-American couple. The next week, two couples were admitted, and within a month, the colored balcony had become a thing of the past.

Since before the antitrust ruling, films would be released first in prestigious movie palaces, where they’d play until returns started to diminish, then be shunted off to smaller, neighborhood theaters. But as the 1960s waned, the squeeze was on. “Theater attendance had been going down for years, and the neighborhood theaters were among the first to go,” says Astor. “They had become esoteric. They were not playing to a general audience. They were playing to a neighborhood, which was mostly staying home and watching television.”

The AMC theater chain pioneered the “multiplex” concept, opening a four-screen theater in Kansas City in 1966. Staggering movie start times across the screens allowed the same-sized crew to sell tickets and serve refreshments to four times as many patrons. The Highland Quartet, which opened in 1971, was the first Malco multiplex. It was the final nail in the coffin of the movie palaces. “It got to the point where the smaller theaters just weren’t making money,” says Astor. “In order to fill the big theaters, the Malco and Lowe’s Palace became black exploitation and kung fu theaters.”

The 1962 marquee for the Summer Twin Drive-In in Memphis

The early 1970s also saw the evolution of the contemporary blockbuster mentality. Studios were cutting more prints of their biggest movies and sending them out everywhere at once. With multiplex screens proliferating around the country, that meant that everyone who wanted to see a movie could see it pretty much immediately. Instead of being spread out over the course of months, the financial returns for films was more front-loaded, and opening weekend became more important.

In June 1977, one month after Star Wars hit theaters, the Malco Ridgeway Quartet opened in East Memphis. Downtown was hollowing out, and Malco sold its namesake theater and moved its offices to the multiplex. Astor, who had gotten a job at the Malco after falling in love with its crumbling granduer during a screening of True Grit, recalls, “When it was sold to the Memphis Development Foundation, I was retained, the only Malco employee to stay, because I knew where the fuses and the skeletons were. I had done a lot of research on the history of the theater, so they kept me.” The newly rechristened Orpheum returned to its live theater roots and remains a downtown landmark.

“Selling the Experience”

Over the years, Malco Theatres has survived multiple takeover attempts, but today, 100 years after M.A. Lightman’s Liberty Theater, it remains family owned, and is thriving. Every night, Malco opens the doors to 349 screens in 33 locations. “We’re sure happy we didn’t sell, because any investment we had made with the money would probably not have done as well as the movie business,” Stephen Lightman told Inside Memphis Business.

The movie business today is, as always, in a state of flux. “There aren’t too many businesses that have the responsibility to recapitalize themselves twice over the course of a business lifetime,” says Kaufman, Malco’s film and marketing SVP. “Theatrical exhibition went from slanted floors to stadium seating, so we had to recapitalize the insides of the auditoriums. Then it went from 35mm to digital, so we had to recapitalize the [projection] booth. It was a lot of money and a lot of effort.”

“Malco, as far as digital was concerned, went for it whole hog,” says Astor. “The most complicated digital installation you can do is at a drive-in, and Malco did it on four screens.”

But there’s another side to the digital revolution: High definition big screens and surround sound are not just found in theaters any more but in living rooms. And beginning with VCRs in the 1980s, DVDs in the 1990s, Blu-Ray in the 2000s, and now Netflix and digital streaming in the 2010s, audiences have access to an unprecedented variety of motion-picture content. These trends have some pundits preparing obituaries for the theater industry.

But Malco has heard that rhetoric before. Despite the doomsayers, total domestic box office in 2014 topped $10 billion. Industry-wide, the number of theatrical tickets sold has remained pretty constant over the past 25 years. The average American sees four movies in the theater per year. “The MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America] says that about 10 percent of the people buy about half of the tickets,” says Kaufman.

To keep those folks coming back and attract new patrons, the industry has deployed all of the tricks it has learned over its history. 3D technology made a quantum leap forward. New audio technologies, such as Dolby’s Atmos system, offer unprecedented sound quality. And the design of Malco’s multiplexes now echoes the movie palaces of old.

The Malco Paradiso theater in East Memphis

“Marcus Lowe, in the beginnings of his great success, said ‘We sell tickets to theaters, not movies.’ That’s really the case with Malco,” says Astor. “They’re selling the experience. All of their theaters might not be as beautiful as the Paradiso, but it’s still the whole experience. It’s the movies, the special effects, the food, everything. And the presentation has always been their strongest point.”

Kaufman says it’s Malco’s commitment to quality that has sustained them: “It’s not brain surgery, but it is attention to detail on a lot of different levels. Theaters these days are more akin to the kinds of theaters we grew up going to. They’re visually arresting, they’ve fun to go to. It’s not just a box with four screens like you saw in the 1960s and 1970s.”

Inside those theaters, the fare has become more varied. Digital projection has enabled live, high-definition streaming of events. Malco offers its theaters for use by film festivals such as Indie Memphis and has helped give Memphis’ independent film scene a home. And as an increasingly educated filmgoing public wants to experience the classics with a big audience, Malco has partnered with McCarthy and Black Lodge Video for the popular Time Warp Drive-In series.

Larry Etter, Malco’s senior vice president of food services, says, “I’ve lived in Memphis since 1970, and I think Memphians are spoiled. Until you get outside of Memphis and watch movies in other facilities, you don’t realize the quality of the product that the Malco family, the Lightmans, the Tashies, the Levys have put together for their communities. They really think the quality of presentation is paramount. If you’re paying for it, you deserve the very best.”