Tag: Craig Brewer

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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.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 1: Machine Gun Babes, The P&H, and Digital Rebels

Thank you to everyone who voted in our Best of Indie Memphis poll! We had many different, varied responses going way back into Indie Memphis’ twenty year history. I had originally wanted to do a top ten list, but there were so many ties that I would have had 18 films in the Hometowner top ten, and five films tied for first place in the general category. So instead, I’ll be doing a chronological countdown of the poll’s top vote-getters, staring from the beginning of the festival and moving to the present day, in a series of blog posts called Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits. Let’s get this party started!

Superstarlet A.D. (1999)

In the beginning, before there was an Indie Memphis or a digital revolution, there was John Michael McCarthy. The renegade punk from Tupelo, Mississippi moved heaven and earth to bring his psychotronic vision to life on film—actual film, not digital video! Superstarlet A.D., which won the festival feature competition in 1999, its second year, is the apotheosis of McCarthy’s 90s filmography. It’s a heady brew of  garage rock (Memphis punk goddess Alicja Trout is one of the stars), grindhouse exploitation, and The Feminine Mystique. McCarthy transformed late 90s urban blight into a post-apocalyptic hellscape populated by tribes of feral women dead set on taking revenge on the men who broke the world.

Today, McCarthy continues to make films and comics, and is a leading force for historical preservation in the Bluff City. His documentary Destroy Memphis depicts the years-long struggle to save the Zippin Pippin from destruction, and he is currently working on a full sized bronze statue of Johnny Cash.

Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 1: Machine Gun Babes, The P&H, and Digital Rebels

The Poor And Hungry (2000)

Eric Tate, Seth Hagee, and Craig Brewer on the set of The Poor and Hungry.

In 2000, a Barnes & Noble bookstore clerk named Craig Brewer fired a shot heard round the world. Made with money left to him when his father unexpectedly passed away, Brewer’s The Poor and Hungry was named for the P&H Cafe, the midtown beer joint where Brewer wrote. It was not the first time he had tried to make a film, but thanks to the then cutting-edge digital video technology that allowed him to record DVD-quality video and edit on a desktop computer, it was the first time he succeeded. In the 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola had said that film would not be a truly democratic medium until a poor girl in Iowa could make one as easily as she could write a book. Brewer was the fulfillment of that prophecy, and his film went on to win awards at not only the Indie Memphis and Nashville Film Festivals, but also the Hollywood Film Festival. Five years later, Brewer brought home Oscar gold to Memphis with Hustle & Flow. Today, he is a writer and director for Empire, one of the most successful shows on television. You Look Like, the comedy game show he is producing, will premiere at Indie Memphis 2017. It was filmed on location at the P&H.

“I think what I’m most proud of, is that there were a lot of filmmakers in town who had their own identity, and their own desire to make films, and they would have probably done it anyway,” says Brewer. “But I do think that they watched The Poor and Hungry, and the swell of excitement around it, and realized that it was more doable than they thought. ‘I know actors just like that in town! I know those locations! I have a better camera than this movie had! I spent more money on lights than this movie had!’ But this movie did a lot with very few tools. At the time, filmmaking was very daunting because of the cost and how hard technically it was to pull off on film. There were a lot of local would-be filmmakers who saw it and thought, ‘It’s time.’”

Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 1: Machine Gun Babes, The P&H, and Digital Rebels (2)

Blue Citrus Hearts (2002)

In the Memphis of the early twenty first century, the epicenter of the revolution was the Digital Media Co-Op. Located in the basement of the First Congregational Church on Cooper, the Co-Op was founded by Brandon Hutchinson and Morgan Jon Fox. Fox, a Memphis native and White Station High School grad, had done a stint at a film school in New Hampshire before dropping out and returning to Memphis to find his own way. Members of the Co-Op pooled their resources and shared their knowledge. They learned together, and their experimental short films dominated the Indie Memphis Hometowner category for years. Blue Citrus Hearts was Fox and the Co-Op’s first attempt at a feature film, and it paid off spectacularly. The largely improvised story of young gay and misfit kids trying to cope in a closeted and repressive South combined the unflinching neorealism of Antonioni with the austerity of the Dogma ’95 movement—call it Memphis, Open City. It’s an emotionally wrenching ride. But the big payoff came at the end, where Fox’s camera accidentally captured an actual shooting star above the heads of his characters sharing their first kiss on the roof of the Tennessee Brewery.

Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 1: Machine Gun Babes, The P&H, and Digital Rebels (4)

Automusik Can Do No Wrong (2004)

Automusik at Sun Studios

One of the people inspired by Craig Brewer and the Media Co-Op was me. I had written my first feature film in 1994, but our attempts to produce it in the pre-digital era had failed. My friend and co-conspirator Steve Stanley, along with Chris Triko, Talbot Fields, and many others, discovered digital video tech and made two films around the turn of the century: Slick Lilly vs. The Grand Canyon and Six Days in the Life of Mims, both of which screened successfully at Indie Memphis. I had acted and crewed on both pictures, and caught the filmmaking bug bad. While Mims was in post production, I was eager to do my own thing. I was a fan of the synth pop parody band Automusik, which was baffling crowds all over Memphis. After one particularly crazed performance, I bought Automusik mastermind Scott Moss a drink at the bar and proposed doing a Spinal Tap-style mockumentary together. We enlisted Pritchard Smith, whose documentary short “$200 On eBay” had won at Indie Memphis the year before, and nine months later we won Best Hometowner Feature at Indie Memphis. Today, we’re still at it. Smith is a director/producer who helped found Vice’s video operation. His documentary The Invaders sold out opening night at Indie Memphis last year. I still believe what I told then-Memphis Flyer Film Editor Chris Herrington in a November, 2004 interview: “Half of the director’s job is to choose the people you want to work with and let them do their job.”

Here’s the most famous sequence from Automusik Can Do No Wrong, in which we recreated the climax of Purple Rain—in German.

AUTOMUSIK CAN DO NO WRONG clip – "The Machine" & "The Hammer Song" from oddly buoyant productions on Vimeo.

Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 1: Machine Gun Babes, The P&H, and Digital Rebels (5)

Cocaine Cowboys (2006)

As you can read in my Memphis Magazine article on the history of the festival, Indie Memphis was founded as a place for local filmmakers to show their work. In the early days, there was not much content from outside the Memphis metro area. But as the festival matured and expanded, that changed. By the middle of the 00’s, it was the place to go to see cutting-edge films that would never otherwise get a theatrical run in the Bluff City. One of the first films to screen at Indie Memphis that broke out and attracted a wider audience was Billy Corben’s Cocaine Cowboys. Corben’s film was ideal for Indie Memphis. It took a controversial subject matter and dove into it from a regional perspective. Corben is from Miami, and his intricate history of Florida drug smuggling puts heavy emphasis on both the price the city paid and the unexpected ways the era built contemporary Florida. Months after it screened at Indie Memphis, Cocaine Cowboys got a wide distribution and spawned two sequels. Today, it’s a staple on cable TV, and Corben has had a career making ESPN’s documentary series 30 for 30.

Indie Memphis’ Greatest Hits 1: Machine Gun Babes, The P&H, and Digital Rebels (3)

Tune in tomorrow for part 2. You can also check out the entire history of Indie Memphis as told through the collected programs in this slideshow set over at Memphis Magazine.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Epps

This Music Video Monday, we have a winner!

Last weekend, the second annual Indie Memphis Youth Film Festival took over the Orpheum Theatre’s Halloran Centre. 7th to 12th grade students from all over the Memphis area came together for workshops on everything from writing to acting to audio recording to editing. Director Tom Shadyac, who recently announced his new film Brian Banks will be shot in Memphis, gave the keynote address and Craig Brewer, who is currently writing and directing for the smash Fox TV series Empire, hosted the awards ceremony.

Among the award winners from the student film competition was MVM alumnae Galen Hicks, Sam King, and Michael Price for trillcloud’s “No Diamonds”. The Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award went to director Vivian Gray’s music video for “Steps” by Epps. The video features compelling black and white cinematography and a love of creepy layering effects. It’s got a big cast and crew, so be sure to stay to the end for the full credits, where you will see the names of the next generation of Memphis filmmakers.

Music Video Monday: Epps

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

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Cover Feature News

You Look Like a Cover Story

So a gaggle of comedians from Memphis walk into a bar in Western Arkansas …

No, this isn’t the beginning of a joke. It’s an origin story for Memphis’ most popular monthly, game-based comedy event. You Look Like — so named because the competition’s mean-spirited jokes all begin with the words, “You look like” — recently tickled film and television director Craig Brewer’s funny bone, so now it’s being developed as a streaming digital series.

You Look Like is beginning to look like a comedy institution in the making, but back in the summer of 2015, the embryonic thing that rapidly evolved into You Look Like (YLL), just looked like local funsters Katrina Coleman and Benny Elbows swapping off-the-cuff insults to pass time over a long, boring haul to Fayetteville. Once the other comedians on the evening’s bill were introduced to the concept, they jumped right in and started playing along, too, saying terrible things to each other, such as: “You look like you really believe you’re going to get custody this time,” or “You look like the youth minister who needed a talking to.”

Amanda Walker and Craig Brewer in the bar that inspired Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry

“One time somebody told me I look like Malcolm X-Man,” says Black Nerd Power host Richard Douglas Jones, an early YLL player and convert.

The seminal Arkansas, gig at Nomads Music Lounge (regrettably titled “Memphis in Fay”) started late, in part because the Bluff City comics couldn’t stop playing their fun, new game. When the comedic bloodsport finally broke up, comic and YLL co-founder Tommy Oler grabbed Coleman by the elbow and told her the silly, mean, hilarious thing she’d started needed to grow into something bigger.

“I wasn’t sure. I just thought it was a thing I like to do,” says Coleman. For her, You Look Like was a warm-up exercise — the funny person’s equivalent of a gymnast stretching before a tumbling routine.

Oler took the idea to the P&H Cafe, where he was already hosting a popular Thursday night open mic. The idea was instantly green lit, and it wasn’t long before the eclectic Midtown bar famously associated with poor and hungry artists had to reconfigure its seating to accommodate bigger and bigger crowds turning out for comedy.

“I remember when I’d have 10 or 15 people at one of my shows, and I’d think it was the greatest thing,” Coleman says. “I’d get all excited and call my mom. Now, if there are only 50 or 75 at a show, I wonder if there’s some big concert at Minglewood Hall or something.”

Now, when episodes of the accompanying YLL podcast post late, out-of-town subscribers send grumpy messages. “It’s this really weird show that audiences seem to like and that the comics love to do,” Coleman says, floating a theory: “If you really love somebody, you’ll cut their heart out for a giggle.”

For all the terrible things being said on stage, the love inside the P& H is thick and sticky when, over the course of a week, Brewer and his local production team shoots the entire pilot season for a digital You Look Like series.

“You got robbed,” the winner of one round calls out, chasing down his opponent. “I know. I totally beat you,” the loser shouts back. Nobody’s angry. They’re all in this together.

“I’m not drunk enough to cry,” Coleman announces from the stage as the camera crew prepares to shoot the last five episodes of the 10-episode trial season. “But set your watches.”

Coleman, who certainly looks like the person most responsible for assembling the current big tent of modern Memphis comedy, then gestures to a ridiculous, clearly homemade crown spinning on a turntable just offstage: the winner’s prize.

“It’s still the You Look Like show,” she assures the “studio audience,” acknowledging that, in spite of the many physical upgrades to her show’s homemade aesthetic, “I made that motherfucker in my living room.”

A machine pumps fog into the room, standing in for the P&H’s famously thick cloud of cigarette smoke. Local writer/director Morgan Fox orders the cameras to roll, and the games begin in earnest.

The rules for You Look Like couldn’t be simpler. Two comics stand face to face, trading appearance-based insults: “You look like heroin might improve your life.” Or “You look like the Sorting Hat put you in House of 1,000 Corpses.” Like that. The meaner it gets, the more respect you can feel radiating from the combatants. When a round ends, the audience chooses a winner, and the loser has to gaze into a mirror of shame and play the game over again, solo, hurling insults at him/herself.

Brewer encountered the You Look Like Show while attending the 2016 Memphis Comedy Festival. The Hustle & Flow filmmaker had no idea that such a mature comedy scene had grown up in the artsy little beer joint at the center of his own filmmaker origin story.

For that festival, the show was moved to the Hi-Tone, and Brewer had initially assumed it was put on by a visiting troupe of comics from Chicago.

“I was like, ‘Wow, it’s so great that this touring group came in and did this,'” Brewer says in a phone interview from Los Angeles (where he recently added a new credit to his resume: co-executive producer of the hit show, Empire). Brewer was immediately corrected by fans who told him it was, in fact, a Memphis-based show that had been running for about a year at the P&H.

“Do you know where the P&H is?” someone asked. “Yeah,” Brewer answered. “I think I might know where that is.”

Seeing Brewer at work again inside the P&H causes epic déjà vu. The Madison Avenue bar, with its rotating cast of oddball regulars inspired his first movie, The Poor & Hungry. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he was still an aspiring filmmaker and part-time bookstore employee, Brewer would go to the bar to write his screenplays, shoot scenes, or screen daily “rushes” on the P&H’s ancient TV.

Although The Poor & Hungry never received wide theatrical distribution, the award-winning digital feature, shot on an impossibly low budget of $20,000 with a two-man crew, became Brewer’s Hollywood calling card. When other wannabes were slinging pitches, he was mailing out VHS tapes of a little movie about life at the P&H Cafe that arguably helped step up Hollywood’s digital shift.  

“I felt like grandpa,” Brewer says, shocked but not all that surprised by the revelation that he and YLL shared a creative womb.

The following June, two-months after the comedy festival, Coleman received an unexpected voicemail: “Hi, this is Craig Brewer. I make movies. I saw your show and was wondering if you’d maybe like to get together and talk about it.”

Like any any mother faced with sudden, unknown change, Coleman’s initial response was caution. “Please, please, Hollywood, don’t take my ugly baby away,” she pleads emphatically, recounting her initial worry. “But Craig was great. He walked me through the whole contract and explained everything.” All Coleman really needed was assurance that the live show would be always be hers to do with as she sees fit, which had been the plan all along.

“See, the whole live show fits in this little, pink duffle bag,” Coleman says, giggling. As long as she could continue running it out of the P&H and taking it on the road, Coleman says she was up for just about anything else that might happen.

Brewer has always scouted opportunities for exporting Memphis talent and weirdness. In the 1990s, he shot footage of the city’s burlesque scene, resulting in his early short, Clean Up in Booth B. His team-up with MTV on $5 Cover resulted in Midtown’s rock scene playing a semi-fictionalized version of itself.

Unlike earlier projects, where Brewer was starting from scratch, You Look Like was complete and alive. Adapting it as a digital series was additionally enhanced by an all-local crew he’s been collaborating with for a decade and an uncommonly united comedy scene that’s spent the last five years learning to work together.

It’s like what comic Josh McLane says, making his way from the stage to the writers room: “I get paid the same if I win or lose. All that matters is if it’s funny.” That was the dominant attitude backstage during the YLL shoot, giving the whole event an old-school Memphis wrasslin’ vibe. Unlike wrasslin’, outcomes to the matches weren’t predetermined, but the beefs aren’t real, and everybody’s working together to bring serious pain from the top-rope.

“I’m addicted to this feeling now,” Brewer says, remembering the electricity in the room when the comedians hired to write jokes between rounds gathered around the P&H’s pool tables and built their insult database.

Richard Douglas Jones described the writing process as “completely organic.” When one vein of material ran dry, somebody would open another. “I will reinvent the wheel and run you over with it again and again,” he said. Brewer had one big concern. “There needed to be something positive coming out of You Look Like,” he says. “If you were looking at comedians tearing each other apart, you need to feel that they are friends. So, in a weird way, it could be inspiring.”

The backstage cooperation insured that that would be the case. “I left the experience asking, ‘How can I create that again,'” Brewer asks. “Can I go narrative with it? If we did a TV show, what would it be? And what are the jokes?”

That wasn’t the only feeling Brewer left with. He’d drifted away from the P&H after the passing of its colorful proprietress Wanda Wilson, the big-wigged protector of artists, misfits, and backgammon gamblers. “For a while that place lost its energy,” Brewer laments. Working on YLL assured him that the bar’s original spirit is alive and well under the current management.

So what’s next for YLL? The live show continues as usual but now with a new guest host every month. What happens with the pilot series is anybody’s guess, but there are some interesting possibilities: Maybe it gets snapped up right away by a streaming content provider. Or maybe the original series, like The Poor & Hungry, simply becomes a calling card — something Brewer can screen on his phone when he’s pitching ideas. Maybe a producer likes the web series but wants to know if the show can be adapted as a reality show or narrative comedy. “So many times you walk in with a pitch document, and you just don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” Brewer explains. “The network might say, ‘Oh, that’s great, but we want it with Snapchat stars.'”

YLL was a perfect catch for Brewer, who’d been actively looking for right-sized projects for his Memphis-based company BR2 and longtime collaborators like David Harris at Gunpowder & Sky, a production company co-founded by Van Toffler, a former MTV executive instrumental in purchasing Brewer’s Hustle & Flow at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. He sums up YLL‘s appeal — particularly for companies looking for unscripted material — in one exclamatory sentence: “Oh my God, you can highlight 20 comedians per season, and it’s already a living thing!”

Brewer thinks a few scenarios seem more likely than others. “These days, there are celebrities who want their Facebook page — or whatever — to be a channel. So there are comedians and celebrities who might buy it just to put on their channel,” he explained.

“And there are networks who might say, ‘Okay, this works on the digital level; what does this look like on the network level?’ But what I really wish is that we can take what we’ve made and just keep making more of that. We just made 10 episodes this first time, but if we do it again, we can make 50. Just plan for three or four solid weeks of work, where we just go in and bang it out.”

Oler, who no longer hosts the live show but remains affiliated with the digital project, says it’s exciting to imagine what YLL might be like as a movie or a sitcom. But he can’t shake the joy of knowing, wherever it goes, it started with a bunch of knuckleheads insulting each other on the patio at Nomads Music Lounge in Fayetteville.

“I’m just really thankful to have had a chance to work on this,” he says. Oler and Coleman are funny co-founders; they don’t agree about much. But they do agree that, given an opportunity to show its stuff, the Memphis comedy scene stood up.  

The You Look Like Show is the third Saturday of every month at the P&H Cafe. Doors at 8 p.m. show at 9 p.m.

You Look Like a List

What comprises a perfect you look like insult? It has to walk a fine line between credibility and the absurd. Some require context, some are just funny no matter who they’re aimed at. Here’s a completely subjective list of great You Look Like lines.

You look like:

You support displaying the Confederate flag, but only because you don’t have any other good towels.

You masturbate with ranch dressing.

People who look like their dogs.

The most well adjusted person here, surgically.

One more sandwich and that shirt’s over.

You ask to speak to managers.

You regularly delete your search history.

Your head mole makes all your decisions.

You think the Dakota Access Pipeline is a porn trilogy.

The target audience for Buzzfeed articles.

You pronounce the L in Salmon.

You grew up outside a trailer.

Your spirit animal is a chain wallet.

You fucked up the proposal because you left the ring in your other cargo shorts.

You don’t mind talking to people while they’re using the bathroom.

You broke someone else’s ankle auditioning for Grease.

You were designed by scientists for the purpose of disappointing women.

Birdwatching makes you horny.

Group photos are always your idea.

Your husband hides your yoga pants.

The side bitch of Frankenstein.

God swiped left.

The guy other guys are totally okay letting their girlfriends hang out with.

You’re still waiting to hear back about that job.

Your dad is more proud of his other family.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2)

Dr. James Gholson leads Craig Brewer’s ‘Our Conductor – Artists Only Remix’

 Let’s do this.

10. Kphonix “When It’s Tasty”
Director: Mitch Martin
What goes with disco better than lasers? Nothing.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2)

9. Hormonal Imbalance “That Chick’s Boyfriend”
Director: Jamie Hall
Rising Fyre Productions gives Susan Mayfield and Ivy Miller’s gross-out punk the no-holds-barred video they deserve. Not safe for work. Or life.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (2)

8. “Our Conductor – Artists’ Only Remix”
Director: Craig Brewer
When the Memphis Grizzlies hired Craig Brewer to make a promotional video to help persuade Mike Connelly to stay, he gathered an A team of Memphis talent, including producers Morgan Jon Fox and Erin Freeman, cinematographer Ryan Earl Parker, assistant director Sarah Fleming, Brandon Bell, and Firefly Grip and Electric. Prolific composer Jonathan Kirkscey was tapped to write an inspiring score, which would be performed by musicians from the Stax Music Academy and members of local orchestras, and the Grizzline drummers. Dancers from Collage Dance Collective, joined jookers from the Grit N’ Grind Squad.

After a shoot at the FedEx Forum, Editor Edward Valibus cut together a b-roll bed to lay the interviews on. His rough cut turned out to be one of the best music videos of the year.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (3)


7. Brennan Villines “Crazy Train”
Director: Andrew Trent Fleming
This unexpectedly poignant Ozzy cover was the second music video Villines and Fleming collaborated on this year, after the stark “Free”. Where that one was simple, this one goes big.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (4)


6. Lisa Mac “Mr. Mystery”
Director: Melissa Anderson Sweazy
There’s no secret to making a great music video. Just take a great song, a great dancer, a great location, and some crackerjack editing. All the elements came together brilliantly for Sweazy’s second entry in the countdown.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (5)

5. Marco Pavé “Cake”
Director GB Shannon
Shannon used the WREC building as the main setting in his short film “Broke Dick Dog”, and he returns with a cadre of dancers and a stone cold banger from Pavé. Go get that cake.

Marco Pavé "Cake" Music Video from VIA on Vimeo.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (6)

4. Chackerine “Memphis Beach”
Director: Ben Siler

This three minute epic keeps switching gears as it accelerates to a Jurassic punchline. Its sense of chaotic fun took the prize at the revived Indie Memphis music video category.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (7)


3. Yo Gotti “Down In The DM”
Director: Yo Gotti
It was Yo Gotti’s year. The Memphis MC racked up a staggering 101 million views with this video, which features cameos from Cee-Lo Green, Machine Gun Kelley, YG, and DJ Khalid. The video must have worked, because the song peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (8)

2. John Kilzer & Kirk Whalum “Until We’re All Free”
Dir: Laura Jean Hocking
Two things brought “Until We’re All Free” to the list’s penultimate slot. First, it’s a perfect example of synergy between music and image, where both elements elevate each other. Second is the subtle narrative arc; Amurica photobooth owner Jamie Harmon selling false freedom seems suddenly prophetic. The social justice anthem struck a chord with viewers when it ran with the trailers at some Malco theaters this spring. The parade of cute kids helped, too.

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (9)

1. Don Lifted “Harbor Hall”
Director Lawrence Matthews
Matthews is a multi-tasker, combining visual art with hip hop in his live performances and controlling his videos. His two videos from his album Alero feature his beaten up domestic sedan as a character. Its the total artistic unity that puts “Harbor Hall” at the pinnacle of 2016 videos. Because my rules limited each musical artist to one video, Matthews’ 11-minute collaboration with filmmaker Kevin Brooks “It’s Your World” doesn’t appear on the list. I chose “Harbor Hall” because of its concision, but “It’s Your World” would have probably topped the list, too.
Here it is, Memphis, your Best Music Video of 2016:

Music Video Monday: Top 20 Memphis Music Videos of 2016 (Part 2) (10)

Keep those videos coming, artists and filmmakers! Tip me off about your upcoming music video with an email to cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Celebration Slated Saturday At Cossitt Library

Saturday evening at the Downtown Cossitt Library, the final Pandemonium Cinema Showcase event of the year will honor the 45th anniversary of a beloved children’s classic.

Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka

When Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was released in June 1971, it made money but was not a huge hit for Paramount and director Mel Stuart. But over the years of Sunday night TV reruns and home video rentals by parents of young kids, it would become a beloved cult film, eventually landing on the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.

The 45th anniversary of the visually colorful but surprisingly darkly themed film comes at a poignant time, with the recent passing of Gene Wilder, the genius comic actor whose turn as Wonka would prove to be a warm up for his double shot of Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles.



The Pandamonium series, masterminded by Black Lodge Video’s Matt Martin and director Craig Brewer, was started to not only strengthen the cinema community in Memphis, but also increase the visibility of the long neglected Cossitt Library. The shows have been elaborate, interactive affairs, and this screening promises Oompa Loompas handing out candy in real time and much more. Best of all, it’s totally free!

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory will begin at 5:30 PM at the Cossitt Library. The movie is free, but seating will be limited to 100 people. Then at 7:00, a second film based on a Roald Dahl story, James and the Giant Peach, followed by an encore of Wonka at 8:45.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Celebration Slated Saturday At Cossitt Library

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis Youth Film Festival Cultivates Next Crop Of Memphis Filmmakers

While the main festival doesn’t start until November 1, Indie Memphis is busy helping the next generation of Bluff City filmmakers get off the ground.

12-year-old Chris Stromopolos (left) starring in Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation

The Indie Memphis Youth Film Festival takes place this Saturday at the Orpheum Theatre’s Halloran Centre. Indie Memphis Executive Director Ryan Watt says the festival has had a youth block for some time, but it was time to spin it off into its own event. “This is the first step towards what we hope will be a bigger and more active youth program.”

The response to the new program has been overwhelming. “I was blown away by how many submissions we got. This thing is going to be really cool. We’re going to be showing 27 short films at the Halloran Centre all day long. And it’s 100% free for K-12.”

The program will begin at noon on Saturday with a free lunch for attendees. In addition to the youth film competition, there will be a series of classes by Memphis area filmmakers. “You’ll hear from Craig Brewer on storytelling, Morgan Jon Fox on acting, and Jordan Danelz on cinematography,” among others, says Watt.
The festival will provide additional inspiration with the story of real-life kids who lived their filmmaking dreams. Tonight, the documentary Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made will screen at Studio on the Square. It tells the story of Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, two kids from Ocean Springs, Mississippi who decided to remake Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas’ classic Raiders of the Lost Ark, shot for shot, using only a VHS camera and whatever other materials they could get their hands on. Remarkably, after six years of work, they succeeded—almost. (How did they pull of the scenes in the submarine? They used an ACTUAL submarine!) The documentary’s frame is the tale of how the childhood friends came back together as adults to film the only scene they couldn’t get right the first time, the epic “Flying Wing” fight.

A screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark: An Adaptation will be the climax of the Indie Memphis Youth Film Festival

Then, on Saturday night, the Youth Film Festival attendees will be treated to the actual product of Stromopolios, Zala, and their friends’ labors. Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation first premiered over a decade ago at the Oxford Film Festival, and it is a must-see for anyone who has ever wanted to make their own movies. It highlights both the determination and resourcefulness of the young cast and crew, and the enduring perfection of Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay, which continues to work just fine even when the visuals don’t measure up to Spielberg’s vision. Before the screening, the winners of the festival competition will be announced. The grand prize is a full day’s production services from Via Productions worth $4,000, plus $500 cash and an automatic entry into the main Indie Memphis competition for the winning film. There will also be an audience award worth $500, and a $250 award for the movie that best represents Memphis.

For more information, and to buy tickets to the events, go to Indiememphis.com

Indie Memphis Youth Film Festival Cultivates Next Crop Of Memphis Filmmakers

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis Announces First Crop of Movies for 2016 Festival

A documentary about a controversial chapter of Memphis history, a coming-of-age drama by one of Memphis’ favorite sons and a look back at a seminal Bluff City work by Hollywood’s hottest writer will be the centerpieces of the 2016 Indie Memphis Film Festival. 

Indie Memphis released this video today to reveal the first crop of the160 films that will screen at the weeklong festival in November. 

Indie Memphis Announces First Crop of Movies for 2016 Festival

The Invaders

The opening night film will be The Invaders, a documentary by director Prichard Smith, writer J. B. Horrell (who is better known as the Memphis musician behind Ex-Cult and Aquarian Blood), and executive producer Craig Brewer. The film traces the history of Memphis’ indigenous black power group of the 1960s, The Invaders. Contemporaries of the Black Panthers, The Invaders became infamous during the aftermath of the 1968 Sanitation Workers Strike. The film tells the story from their perspective, shedding new light on the events leading up to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Full disclosure: This columnist consulted on the film) 

Little Men

Director Ira Sachs, a Memphis native who lives in New York City, has been garnering acclaim for his new film Little Men, which will premiere at Indie Memphis before beginning its run at the Malco Ridgeway. Sachs, who recently had a retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art, will be on hand to introduce the film and answer questions from the audience. 

Free In Deed

Director Jake Mahaffy’s Free In Deed, shot in Memphis in 2014, is based on a true life story of faith healing gone wrong. It premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival and has garnered international acclaim from Europe to Australia. 

The People vs. Larry Flynt

20 years ago this summer, The People vs. Larry Flynt shot here in Memphis. Directed by Milos Foreman, the film was the brainchild of screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who scored this year’s biggest television hit with The People vs. OJ Simpson. Karaszewski will return to Memphis for the twentieth anniversary screening of his epic tale of the Hustler publisher’s visit to the Supreme Court. 

Kallen Esperian: Vissi d’arté

The closing night of the festival will be director Steve Ross’ locally produced documentary profile of the Memphis opera singer Kallen Esperian: Vissi d’arte’. The film premiered with a pair of sold-out shows earlier this year, and the closing night gala will give more Memphians an opportunity to see this remarkable work. 

This year’s festival, sponsored by Duncan Williams runs from November 1-7. Tickets are now on sale at the Indie Memphis web site. 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Movies and Video Games Meet at the Cossitt Library

Downtown’s Cossitt Library is one of the city’s most overlooked and underused assets. This Saturday, Aug. 27, the film tag team of Craig Brewer and Black Lodge Video will try to start changing that. 

A new interactive film series called Pandemonium Cinema Showcase will debut with the Video Game Movie Meltdown. The all-night, mini film festival will include films inspired by video games, including the 2012 smash hit Wreck It Ralph, the smash hit Walt Disney animated film that stars John C. Riley as a video game big boss who’s tired of battling players and just wants to be loved. The second film is a 1989 curiosity called The Wizard, a Fred Savage vehicle that extolls the virtues of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

Wreck-It Ralph

Then, a Disney classic that could fairly be called the birth of the video game movie genre, Tron. In 2016, the plot of the 1982 film, which involves super hacker Flynn (Jeff Bridges) being sucked into a computer and forced to fight in a life-or-death video game arena, is now eye rolling, but the images remain as fresh as ever. Released just three weeks after Blade Runner, the two sci fi films couldn’t be more different in tone or subject matter, but together they defined a new cyberpunk aesthetic that now permeates popular culture. 

Tron

The only documentary on the program is The King of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters. It’s one of the must-see documentaries of the last decade, tracing the epic battle of two ordinary men obsessed with owning the high score of the most difficult classic arcade game, Donkey Kong. And finally, the evening will close with the infamous 1989 trainwreck Super Mario Bros. Starring Bob Hoskins as Mario and Dennis Hopper as King Koopa, it’s the leading cautionary tale of why plots that work to motivate action in video games usually don’t translate to the big screen. 

But there will be plenty of action on the little screen at the Library, too. The film screenings will accompany a play-a-thon of vintage and contemporary video games, ranging from Atari 2600s to Xboxes, with literally hundreds of games to choose from. There will also be a cosplay contest with prizes for the best video game themed costumes.

Games and movies begin at 4:30 PM on Saturday, August 27 at the Cossitt Library Downtown. 

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Film Features Film/TV

The Legend of Tarzan

Has any fictional character been portrayed on film more than Tarzan? John Clayton, the Viscount of Greystoke, was created in 1912 by pulp writer Edgar Rice Burroughs. Six years later, Tarzan was the subject in the first of eight silent films. In 1932, Olympic swimmer Johnny Weismuller brought Tarzan into the talkie age, kicking off more than 30 films produced over the next 50 years. So when someone (like me, for example) bemoans Hollywood’s current mania for franchises, remember that it has always been thus.

Tarzan is a prototype superhero, so naturally, in this silver age of superhero movies, he’s ripe for a reboot. But there’s a problem with importing the character into the 21st century. Burroughs was an Englishman of his time, so his Lord of the Jungle is a white, English aristocrat constantly demonstrating his superiority over black, African tribesmen. To resurrect the franchise, a new angle was needed, and the person who cracked the problem was Memphis filmmaker Craig Brewer. The solution he offered in his 2011 script for the film that would eventually become The Legend of Tarzan was to make colonialism itself the enemy. Brewer’s story was influenced not only by the extensive Tarzan lore Burroughs left behind, but also by King Leopold’s Ghost, a history of the African genocide the Belgian monarch perpetrated between 1885 and 1902, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The strength of Brewer’s script briefly landed him in the director’s chair, but he fell victim to studio machinations at Warner Bros. that took the project to the brink of collapse.

When Tarzan was resurrected, it was with David Yates, the director of the last four Harry Potter films, at the helm. Although several different writers were called in to try new drafts, the final script still retained enough elements of Brewer’s original that he retains a credit, alongside Adam Cozad.

Would The Legend of Tarzan have been better with Brewer in the big chair? That’s an academic question now, but one thing’s for sure: Yates was the wrong choice. The Legend of Tarzan is a wildly uneven film. Yates adopts the same languid pace he did for The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and Part 2, when narrative propulsion would better suit the pulpy material. We first meet Belgian bad guy Leon Rom in a scene that echoes the immortal beginning of Raiders of The Lost Ark. Brewer’s version of the character was a Colonel Kurtz figure, a Westerner gone savage trying to colonize darkest Africa. Christoph Waltz, however, plays him like Indiana Jones’ dandy nemesis Belloq. Alexander Skarsgård turns out to be a good choice for Tarzan. He’s the strong, silent type, introduced in London as an English aristocrat grown beyond grunting “Me Tarzan. You Jane.” Watching Tarzan code switch between English drawing rooms, daub huts of tribal Africa, and the apes of the jungle is one of the film’s pleasures. Unfortunately, Yates pairs Skarsgård with one of the greatest living American actors, Samuel L. Jackson, as George Washington Williams, an adventurer on a covert mission for Uncle Sam. Although Jackson is clearly toning it down, he can’t help but steal all of his scenes with the emo Skarsgård. Worst of all is Margot Robbie, whose phoned-in Jane fills me with dread for her turn as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad.

Yates tries to create tense buildups to explosive action scenes, but his gratuitous slow-motion fetish inevitably mucks it up. True to superhero movie form, Tarzan’s origin story must be shoehorned in. It’s handled much better than in Batman v Superman, but when the flashbacks stretch into the third act, things get confusing.

It’s not all bad. Like Yates’ Potter films, the supporting cast, such as Djimon Hounsou as Tarzan’s enemy, Chief Mbonga, are consistently compelling, and chunks of Brewer’s dialog still float through the butchered screenplay. I had more fun in The Legend of Tarzan than I did in The Jungle Book reboot, or X-Men: Apocalypse, but fun product from the Hollywood sausage factory has been in short supply this year.

The Legend of Tarzan
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