This week’s Music Video Monday falls on the 4th of July, and we’re here to instill you with pride.
Last week, The Memphis Grizzlies released a video they commissioned from director Craig Brewer called “Mike Conley – Our Conductor“. The video was a tribute to the baller, who was up for contract renegotiation, and a plea to stay. It must have worked, because Conley signed a $153 million dollar, 5-year contract to stay in Memphis.
To make “Mike Conley – Our Conductor”, Brewer enlisted a who’s who of Memphis film 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. The conductor is Dr. James Gholson.
Editor Edward Valibus says the first step in assembling the video was to lay down the music bed and edit together footage from a shoot at the FedEx Forum. Before any of the interviews with Conley’s friends and teammates were added, a cut was circulated to the Grizzles PR team, who went bonkers for it. “The first rough cut got such a tremendous response, we wanted people to see it it so the individual artists could get some recognition,” Valibus says.
So here it is, the “Artist Only Remix”, showcasing some of the best musical and filmmaking talent our city has to offer. Happy Independence Day!
Happy 4th of July from Music Video Monday
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
The Grizzlies have released a short film by Memphis-based director Craig Brewer that’s aimed at Mike Conley — with the specific goal of getting the point guard to re-sign with team. It’s called “Our Conductor,” and features an introduction by Justin Timberlake, and the voices and images of Marc Gasol, Tony Allen, and Zach Randolph, also known as the other three members of the Grizzlies’ “core four.” Watch it HERE.
It’s a rainy Saturday in late November. Jerry “The King” Lawler sits in his booth on the dealer floor of the Memphis Comic and Fantasy Convention (MCFC), surveying the scene. About a thousand people are crowded into the basement of the Memphis Hilton, browsing tables overflowing with comic books, memorabilia, T-shirts, and handcrafted fan art. The wrestling legend is also an accomplished comic artist, and he’s here to sign his work.
I’m here to talk about Star Wars.
“I’ve got this awesome Chewbacca mug that came out in 1977, when the first movie came out. There’s no telling what it’s worth now, but I wouldn’t sell it for anything,” Lawler says. “I was a huge Star Wars fan, and I am to this day.”
Laura Jean Hocking
Jerry Lawler is an old-school Star Wars fan
Tonight is the big costume contest, so the crowd is filled with sci-fi and fantasy characters come to life: Harry Potters, Star Trek crew, Spider-Men, Wonder Women, and Doctor Whos in all his incarnations. And, of course, Stormtroopers, Jedi, and Leias.
“It was probably the start of all of this stuff,” Lawler says. “It was the precursor to geekdom, if you will.”
Origin Story
The first glimpse the world got of Star Wars was in a room at the 1976 San Diego Comic-Con, where Charley Lippincott, the head of marketing for the newly created Lucasfilm Ltd., showed a sparse crowd black-and-white slides of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Three years earlier, George Lucas had directed American Graffiti, a low-budget, sleeper hit about a group of California teenagers coming of age in 1962. For his follow-up, Lucas wanted to do something inspired by the cheap, sci-fi serials he had loved as a kid. He tried to buy the rights to Flash Gordon, but Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis wouldn’t sell. So Lucas decided to create his own outer space adventure.
“George Lucas had one good idea,” says Memphis filmmaker Mike McCarthy, on hand at the con to premiere his new sci-fi serial, Waif. “Star Wars is American Graffiti in space.”
Laura Jean Hocking
Director Mike McCarthy says George Lucas had one good idea
American Graffiti cost $777,000 and grossed $140 million, making Lucas the toast of Hollywood. But by 1976, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation was $9 million in the hole on Lucas’ badly behind-schedule pet project, which no one but him seemed to understand. By the time it was finally ready, even the director himself thought it would flop.
Star Wars was scheduled to be released on Friday, May 27th, 1977, but when Fox executives found out the competition that Memorial Day weekend was going to be Smokey and the Bandit, they moved the premiere up to Wednesday, hoping they could lure a few people into theaters before everybody went to see Burt Reynolds. But, unbeknownst to anyone who wasn’t answering the phones at Lucasfilm, the word of mouth that started at Comic-Con had reached critical mass. Sci-fi fan magazine Starlog declared, “Star Wars is a legend ahead of itself.” By the end of 1977, Star Wars had grossed $307 million, more than twice as much as Smokey and the Bandit, and 20th Century Fox’s stock price had doubled.
The Summer of ’77
“Star Wars is my first memory of any science fiction stuff I was interested in,” MCFC founder Joe Thordarson says.
He was one of millions of kids who flocked to the theaters again and again in the summer of 1977. For him, the appeal of Star Wars does not necessarily lie in its fantastical elements. “At the end of the day, you’ve got a lot of ‘normal’ people who are flawed having to step up and do extraordinary things. I think [Lucas] did a great job originally, because it’s not just about the special effects, it’s about the characters. You actually care about them.”
Director Craig Brewer, visiting the convention with his family while on a break from working on a new TV series for Fox, agrees.”There is a very palpable feeling that every child can relate to: feeling like you’re alone, like Luke, the boy on the farm, looking at the double sunset. I think the thing people respond to with Star Wars is the Han, Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, [Cee-] Threepio, and R2-D2 squad. We didn’t know each other our whole lives, but we just came together at this one moment, and now we’re going to risk our lives for each other. There’s this whole dynamic of personalities amongst these six characters. As a child, you could easily play a type with really clear turf. You be C-3PO, I’ll be Chewbacca, you be Solo, you be Luke. Let’s go out and play. It’s about finding your friends.”
PoMo Myth
It’s a cliché to say that Star Wars and its sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) are a modern myth. It would be more accurate to call it postmodern myth. Lucas was a fan of Joseph Campbell, the scholar whose book The Hero With a Thousand Faces first outlined the “Hero’s Journey,” a collection of story elements shared by texts about Gilgamesh, King Arthur, and Rio Bravo. The entire Star Wars saga is a mash-up, self-consciously constructed out of bits and pieces of older stories and films. In 1977, Lippincott told Starlog, “The story has influences from all over the place. People have pointed out that they see suggestions from Lord of the Rings, Flash Gordon, and Dune. And there are a lot of things from outside science fiction — like the samurai tradition of Japan. … Most importantly, the story relates to legend and fairy tale. It’s what Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen were doing.”
Like fairy tales, the films have become something passed down through generations.”It was very important to me when I had a son that he know Star Wars,” Brewer says. “As I’m reading the opening scroll, I had this sense-memory sensation that I had not felt or heard — that almost sounds like a line out of Star Wars — since I was 6. It was my father, who has passed away, whispering in my ear in a dark theater, reading the scroll from Star Wars to me. It was one of the most spiritual moments I have had in a long time.”
The Sandbox
In the heady days of 1977, Lucas was widely quoted as saying he wanted to start a film series “like James Bond” — a sandbox in which different directors and writers could play, adding their own touches to the mythology. He promised a trilogy of trilogies, and for its 1978 rerelease, Star Wars gained a new subtitle: Episode IV: A New Hope. For Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas enlisted writer Leigh Brackett, a Hollywood veteran whose first screen credit, The Big Sleep, was shared with William Faulkner. Brackett died of breast cancer after turning in her first draft, and the job passed to Lawrence Kasdan, who had just written Lucas’ side project with Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Lucas tapped his USC film professor Irvin Kershner to direct the film, which is widely regarded as the best of the entire series.
“Watching Empire with my family recently, nothing beats Yoda,” Brewer says. “I was surprised that my daughter required no explanation when Luke went into the cave that was strong with the Dark Side of the Force, doing battle with phantom Darth Vader, lopping his head off, and seeing his own face in the helmet. She got it at age 7. It starts conversations. Who are you fighting? Who is your real worst enemy? Is it yourself?”
Laura Jean Hocking
Director Craig Brewer with Yoda
Kasdan returned to write Return of the Jedi, the most financially successful of the original three movies. Lucas devoted himself to running Lucasfilm and its spin-off companies Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Skywalker Sound, which not only revolutionized special effects and sound design, but also produced innovations like nonlinear video editing and Photoshop.
But after seeing the computer-generated images ILM had created for Spielberg’s 1993 hit Jurassic Park, Lucas had a change of heart. He would write and direct a new trilogy of films in the Star Wars saga, Episodes 1-3, which would tell the story of Darth Vader’s transformation from heroic Jedi knight to scourge of the galaxy. When The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, it was initially greeted with enthusiasm. But then, a realization set in among fans. It just wasn’t as good. Lucas the filmmaker was now Lucas the toymaker. The thrill was gone.
Scarred For Life
“It was an impossible task to make 1, 2, and 3,” Memphis comedian Brandon Sams says. “With the majesty of the first three, and all of the comic books and lore, and Lucas hadn’t directed a movie in 20 years, it was just doomed. It was too important to people. But leave it to the fans. There was a whole lot of great fan-created content that came out around the prequels.”
Brandon is at MCFC with his wife, Alexandria, who skipped Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005), because they lacked the scrappy, handmade quality of A New Hope. “Being a loyalist, I didn’t like the CGI. I’m still not a fan of CGI. If there’s not any Jim Henson puppetry and old school art, I’m not as interested.”
She wasn’t the only one turned off by the prequels. “I got thrown off the track by the introduction of Jar Jar Binks,” Jerry Lawler says. “It scarred me for life, really.”
Even if they fell short artistically, the prequels still did huge business — The Phantom Menace alone has grossed more than $1 billion.
And they created a whole new generation of fans, like Lara Johnson, director of the 2014 documentary Geekland: Fan Culture in Memphis. “I was 10 years old when Revenge of the Sith came out,” she recalls. “My dad had tried to show me Star Wars, but it was just a lot of sand, and I wasn’t into it. My grandmother took me to see the Will Ferrell movie Kicking & Screaming. We bought the tickets, but the print was broken — back when prints were a thing. So my grandmother went back to the ticket counter, and said they needed to give us another ticket, because they sold us a broken movie … And I said, ‘The kids at school have been talking about this Star Wars movie.’ So we watch it, and my mouth was just hanging open the entire time. It was the most magical experience I had ever had. Before that point, I played softball. I was sporty. I was a jock. After that point, I was a geek.”
Memphis actor/director Drew Smith, star of the upcoming comedy Bad, Bad Men and creator of the viral video “Force for Good” starring Mayor-elect Jim Strickland, is at the con wrangling his two sons, Hank, 5, and Jonah, 11, who are dressed as a First Order Stormtrooper and Jango Fett. “Those of us who grew up with 4, 5, and 6 didn’t appreciate 1, 2, and 3 the way this generation did,” he says. “They get it, even if we don’t. They’re a little bit into it.”
At that, Hank turns and menaces me with his lightsaber. “ALL into it!”
The Force Awakens
The parade of costumes continues. There are obscure anime characters like Vash the Stampede, and a flock of Harley Quinns, a fan-favorite Batman villain. We’re living in the world Lucas made, but geekdom has mutated into a thousand different subspecies. Surely, I can find someone at the con who doesn’t like Star Wars.
I stop Megan Rook, who is dressed as 1990s alt comic book hero Tank Girl. “I’ve always been into geeky stuff,” she says. “My dad’s a big Star Wars fan.”
Exactly. Doesn’t Star Wars seem like a relic of an older generation? “There are those guys who are like, ‘OMG, I saw it in the theater,'” she says, rolling her eyes. “But I don’t hate it. I’m actually pretty excited about the new movie!”
Cue the Excitement
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opens Friday, is easily the most anticipated pop-culture event of 2015. It is the first Star Wars movie in a decade, and the first since Disney purchased Lucasfilm from Lucas for a reported $4 billion. Stung by criticism of the prequels, Lucas retired, leaving the franchise in the hands of producer Kathleen Kennedy, whose credits include everything from E.T. to Persepolis. The film, penned by Empire Strikes Back writer Kasdan, is set 30 years after Return of the Jedi and reunites the original cast of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, and, most importantly for many, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia.
Harrison Ford returns as Han Solo
“Leia Organa is my favorite female character — no, my favorite character, period — in all of pop culture,” Johnson says. “She’s amazing. She watches her entire planet die, and she keeps going. She can do anything and take it over.”
Johnson says Fisher’s sharp portrayal of the galactic freedom fighter broke open the sci-fi boys’ club and inspired a generation of female characters that included Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley from Alien and Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor from The Terminator. “They are strong women, but they are also flawed. They save the day in the end, but they have a lot of depth as characters. They’re not just there to be an object to catch.”
A 21-year-old woman named Katie, who, along with her friend Charlene, is dressed as a character from Mad Max: Fury Road, says “Princess Leia wasn’t like, a damsel in distress. She was like, ‘I’m going to take care of this, and if you can keep up, awesome.'”
Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in 1980
Charlene, whose road to geekdom started with Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man, says Leia is a big reason she’s a fan of the “Orig Trig.” “I feel like it’s something every generation likes. There are a lot of little 6-year-olds now who are in love with Star Wars, and my dad’s a huge Star Wars fan.”
One fan from Charlene’s dad’s generation is director J. J. Abrams. The creator of TV series Felicity and Lost was hired by Kennedy to direct the first film of the new Star Wars era after rebooting the Star Trek franchise for Paramount. Abrams’ work on The Force Awakens will be the the first test for Disney, whose stewardship of the franchise was initially met with skepticism by the faithful. But that skepticism melted away after a series of spectacular trailers that have been received by the geek community with something approaching religious awe.
Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn
“The new movie is going to be amazing,” says Memphis Star Wars fan page administrator Liza Andersen. “I hate that George Lucas doesn’t have anything to do with it, but I trust J. J. Abrams to do the right thing. I went to Star Wars week at Disney, and it was amazing. When the new park opens, I intend to fall off the face of the earth. I’ll be there in costume, working, and no one will know they even hired me.”
Andersen is not in costume at the con but says she’s dressed as Padmé, the mother of Luke and Leia who was played in the prequels by Natalie Portman. “But,” she says, “I plan on joining the 501st as soon as I can afford a costume.”
Blurred Lines
In the lore, the 501st Legion is Darth Vader’s personal Stormtrooper detachment, known as “Vader’s Fist.” In real life, it’s an 8,000-member organization of Star Wars enthusiasts who make their own obsessively detailed costumes. Garrison Commanding Officer Justin Bryant says the Legion is often called upon to make public appearances, such as at the recent Memphis Grizzlies Star Wars Night. “A large portion of what we do is charity. It allows us to get involved with our local community,” he says. “We’ve worked for Habitat for Humanity, Food for the Poor, Children’s Miracle Network and Le Bonheur. Our motto is ‘Bad guys doing good.'”
Bryant joined the 501st in 2005, after appearing in a borrowed costume and being amazed at the wide-eyed reactions he got. “When I’m in my Stormtrooper costume, I get the excited fans who are smiling and cheerful. Then you have those who fear you, who are intimidated by you, whether they know what a Stormtrooper is or not. We get that not only from children, but also from adults.”
This blurring of lines between fantasy and reality is no surprise to Johnson, whose next film project explores identity in international geek culture. “You see characters that you love, and you want to be them. So you dress up like them. It’s also a good shorthand that helps you meet other people who think like you.”
She says when the fans line up this weekend for The Force Awakens, their excitement will not just be about seeing a new movie, but about returning to a shared universe where they have found their friends. “You don’t have to have Harry Potter to make Harry Potter great. He’s got this whole magical world around him. And Star Wars is the same. Nobody’s favorite character is Luke. They love all of the tertiary characters.”
Johnson gestures to the crowded convention floor. “There are 2,000 people here. I’m sure if you asked anyone here if they could jump into their favorite universe, they would do it.”
We’ve reached the final week of our Thowback August, where we look at movies that came out in 2005. From a Memphis perspective, the biggest film of that year was Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow. It was the culmination of an indie film scene that had been brewing in Memphis since the mid-90s, and it’s still the quintessential indie success story: A filmmaker from nowhere with little but raw talent and determination makes a movie about his town and gets the Hollywood machine to take notice by not only winning at Sundance but also getting his star an Academy Award nomination and his soundtrack an Oscar for Best Song.
In the decade since then, Brewer has been working steadily in Hollywood. He has directed two more films, 2007’s Black Snake Moan and 2011’s Footloose, but he has also been much in demand as a writer and producer. Next year, a new version of Tarzan will be released that began life with a script he wrote and was originally attached to direct. He is currently working for Paramount Pictures developing ideas for television series, including an adaptation of the studio’s 1980 film Urban Cowboy which has been fast tracked by Fox to premiere next year. He also just finished directing an episode of Empire, the most popular show on television, which not coincidentally stars Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson, the two leads from Hustle & Flow.
Brewer has been a tireless and generous mentor to many in the Memphis film community. He provided extremely helpful feedback and advice during the production of my documentary Antenna, and since then, I have had the privilege of working with him on several projects as a writer and researcher. He is currently in Los Angeles working on Urban Cowboy, so last Sunday, I gave him a call to talk about Hustle & Flow from the perspective of a decade later. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and relevance, but not for its epic length.
Al Kapone, Craig Brewer, and Terrence Howard on the set of Hustle & Flow
Does it feel like ten years?
There’s times when it feels like it’s really far away, that it happened a lifetime ago. Then there’s some times when it feels like just yesterday. You know when I was directing Empire, and on set with Terrance and Taraji, I felt like I was right back in the saddle doing Hustle & Flow. There’s a rhythm between me and Terrance that I had forgotten about. He’s such an intuitive actor. It’s not so much that you want to tell him what to do, as you want to provide him with options and see what kind of magic there is. I always felt that particular type of directing—I don’t even know if you want to call it directing, it’s more like wrangling—was very much a Jim Dickinson way of doing things. It’s more about getting a bunch of artists in a room together and watching the magic happen instead of specifically trying to hit something that was pre-determined. That’s what I feel when I direct someone like Terrance.
Everybody’s talking about how Empire was the sequel to Hustle & Flow, but maybe we should just do another Hustle & Flow. DJay didn’t become a millionaire, I can tell you that.
But I think for me, what the ten years means to me is, you’re constantly chasing that first high. That’s why I’m getting into doing television. It’s new, you’re racing constantly, struggling to stay ahead, and you’re constantly riddled with self-doubt and terror.
So that doesn’t go away?
No, it doesn’t.
I remember a few years back Hustle & Flow was playing at The Orpheum. I went to see it, because I hadn’t seen it in a long time. I remember sitting in the audience and allowing myself to enjoy the fact that I know Hustle & Flow has kind of made it. It didn’t just become a movie, or win an Academy Award, a lot of people have seen Hustle & Flow around the world, and they dig it. You can quote it, and people know what you’re talking about. There are still references to Hustle & Flow constantly.
I still see “Hard Out Here For A Pimp” references all the time.
Or “Hard Out Here For A _________”
You’ve been meme-ified. That’s the highest compliment an artist can be paid in 2015.
And everything that’s happened with the Grizzlies, with the audience chanting “Whoop That Trick”… I was sitting there as the movie was beginning, and I was watching it differently than I had ever watched it before. I wasn’t wondering, ‘Will this moment land?’ I’ve been in audiences where they didn’t clap after “Whoop That Trick”, and I’ve been in audiences where they do. But I didn’t do any of that. I was sitting there thinking, “OK, you know movies. Try to figure out why people like this film.” I think I kind of came up with two things, primarily. I don’t think there’s anything more addictive than watching people create something. Whether or not you’re into that particular thing, be it music or pulling off a plan or building something, you’re seeing their excitement and struggles. It’s very accessible. A lot of people on this planet, and some time in their lives, say “I think I want to try to pull of this particular thing. Then you struggle, and you doubt, and you have mini-successes, and you have collaborators who become friends. And you might get a victory, or you might not. But there’s something about watching the effort of art, the effort of creation, that is pleasing. And I think in Hustle & Flow, watching them make “Whoop That Trick” and “Hard Out Here For A Pimp”, and performing “It Ain’t Over For Me”, and watching them build their studio is exciting.
The ‘Whoop That Trick’ scene.
The second thing that I figured out about the movie—and this may sound obvious, but I wasn’t aware of this was happening while I was writing it—is this up-and-down nature of the character of DJay. You start off, and he’s saying this monolog that sounds kind of profound, and you kind of like him, then you realize he’s a pimp and he’s talking some naive prostitute into climbing into a car with a guy. You see him get together with Anthony Anderson and they start building a recording studio and there’s all this excitement, and they make a song, and you think, ‘Here we go!”. Then he comes home and throws Lexus and her baby out of the house. And you think, ‘Why’d he do that? I don’t know if I like him any more.” Then you see them try to make “Hard Out Here For A Pimp”, and they’re trying to get a sound our of Shug, and maybe he’s looking at her differently, with some respect, and love, and there’s a victory. But then they need a microphone, and he needs Nola to go in and service a guy at a pawn shop, and you’re like “Ugh. I hate him again.” It’s this up and down of “I like him, he’s disappointing me. I like him, now I hate him. I like him, now he’s doing something stupid.” Then you get to that point where he pimps Skinny Black into taking his demo, and you’re like, “Finally!” And to hear the groans in the audience as they’re pulling the tape out of the toilet is so pleasing! “I can’t believe I’m here again! I was so happy! Our guy did it! And now he’s about to mess up again and beat the hell out of this guy.”
It’s been extremely influential, much more than people realize. Have you seen Straight Outta Compton yet?
No, I’m going tonight.
Well, they copped one of your shots.
What did they get?
Skateland.
Really.
Yep. There’s a big track through the Skateland parking lot. You’ll recognize it immediately. But it’s not just that. There’s Empire. At some point, when they were getting the cast together, it had to come up in a meeting. “These are the Hustle & Flow people.”
One thing I’m still disappointed about—We were an MTV film. At the MTV movie awards, I always wonder why we didn’t get Best Kiss. I still think Terrance and Taraji’s kiss in Hustle & Flow is one of the best kisses ever. It’s soulful. They’re just devouring each other. That’s how people kiss, not this ‘movie kiss’ shit where they do a little light peck. You see tongues. Those mouths open up.
Shug and DJay’s kiss.
Have you had moments where you see it coming back at you from the culture in an unexpected direction?
I always like it when I see people make a play on the title. To my knowledge, I don’t think “hustle and flow” existed before I made it. I don’t know that anyone had ever put those two words together. Interestingly, it had a different title when I wrote it. It was originally called “Hook, Hustle, and Flow”. Then after a draft or two, I realized I was calling it Hustle & Flow, so I dropped the “hook.”
So Aldo’s pizza will do a poster with “hustle and dough”, the Memphis Roller Derby will have an event called “Hustle and Roll”. They all do the same poster design. I met Elijah Wood for coffee one day in Venice, and I walked right by a sign, “Hustle and Flow Fitness”. So I walk in there, and they’re like “Can we help you?” And said “No, I’m just the guy who made Hustle & Flow.” And they were like “Are you going to sue us?” And I was like, “No.” So they said “Here’s a free towel!” So I’ve got a towel with Hustle And Flow printed on it.
I was watching Run’s House, when Reverend Run had a reality show. And there was this one moment where he was talking to his son, and he said “You’ve got to get control over this. Remember when we were watching Hustle & Flow and he put his hands on the wheel and said ‘We in charge!’? Let me hear you say it.” I’ve heard that a couple of times.
Laura and I do it all the time.
It’s a sweet story, but I hope my mother will forgive me for telling it. It’s nothing bad against her. I had just proposed to Jodi to marry me. We were living together in my parent’s house in Northern California at the time. I had written a directed a play that was premiering, and Jodi didn’t show up. I wondered where she was. I saw my parents after the show, and they told me she was in a car accident that night. “She’s fine, a little shaken up, but we all decided it would be best to tell you after the premiere.”
So I go home and see Jodi, and she’s emotional. Her car is totaled. It was a head-on collision with this old guy who hit her. So I said, “Maybe you should have just told me.”
And she started to cry. “I didn’t know what to do. It was a big night for you. Your parents were saying we should wait to tell you until after the show. I just didn’t know what to do.”
So I took her hand, and said “Look, you’re gonna be my wife. You’re going to be making decisions for me when I’m not around, or if I can’t make the decisions. So if you’re uncomfortable with something, you need to speak up. You’re in charge.”
And she said, “I know, but…”
And I was like, “I need to hear you say it. Say I’m in charge.” And she said it. So it was like a thing between us. We’re going to be making decisions in our life. We’re in charge of each other.
‘We in charge.’
Are you the “Hustle & Flow Guy” in Hollywood?
Yes. And you know, it’s funny, because I feel like I’m part of a special club of directors. I don’t mind addressing this, because it’s a double-edged sword. John Singleton’s known for directing Boys In The Hood. There’s a lot of directors out there who, no matter what you do now, you’re still known for that first movie where everyone went “Wow!”
I was talking to someone the other day about Black Snake Moan. It’s the most confusing movie in my career. When it came out, nobody went to go see it. The reviews were polarizing. You either loved it or you hated it. I didn’t know what people were thinking. But now I’m older, and I realize that’s actually a good thing. You don’t want some humdrum movie.
But what’s confusing about it for me right now, is that a lot of people know it and love it. They don’t know how hard it was for me to deal with it after Hustle & Flow. That second movie, that sophomore effort, is something that is a formidable foe. It happens with every director who has a breakout success. That second movie, or that second season of a TV show, is being judged against magic that was lightning in a bottle. But I have to say, I’m still immensely proud of that movie.
Did I ever tell you the Piggly Wiggly story?
Tell it again.
It’s funny, because I just filmed the Marc Gasol video on this very spot. It’s Cash Saver now, but it used to be Piggly Wiggly. That’s where you when to go pay your late phone bill.
I think you can still do that there.
You had to wait in line right next to the doors. I was working at Barnes and Noble, and I got a phone call from a producer who was trying to get Hustle & Flow going. He said that Fox Searchlight really wanted to meet with me. They wanted to fly me out. I felt so excited. It was my favorite studio! I went running out onto the Barnes and Noble sales floor and cheered. “I’m going to Hollywood!” I worked in receiving, with the hardbacks and the calendars. I was back there all day with a boxcutter in a windowless, cement box unloading various tomes. I was so excited. Here I go! I wrote something, the studio responded to it, they said it was the most authentic thing they had ever read. I’m going to go meet with them about making it. Then three days later the meeting was cancelled. I was devastated. The producer told me they found out I was white, and they couldn’t bend their mind around that particular detail.
I’m older now, and I can kind of understand it better. Movies that are done at a certain budget, you need a hook to sell it on. You won’t have a movie star, so you sell the director. They couldn’t see why I would write a movie like this. And it was just because they found out I was white. They didn’t know me at all.
I was so depressed. The producer told me there was an African-American director out of USC that the studio was interested in, so maybe I should sell Hustle & Flow and they would have this director from USC direct it. So I agreed to do it.
Then, I was late on my phone bill, and I was standing in line at Piggly Wiggly. Below a certain economic line in Piggly Wiggly, we’re all equal. Black, Mexican, white, we’re all in line at Piggly Wiggly trying to pay our late bills. And there was this guy who looked at this long line, and looked at me, and said, “Man, this is some bullshit.” And there was something about that that just clicked with me, and I went off on this mental rant. Who are these people to tell me I can’t tell a story about my own city? I decided right then and there that I wasn’t going to sell the script. That was giving up more money than I had ever known at that time, and an additional two years of misery trying to get the movie made. I really felt whenever I was challenged on that particular thing—and I still get challenged on it, and I don’t think people are wrong to challenge me on it. I’ve been called a culture bandit, and racist, and misogynist. The one thing I do feel I was right about, and that other filmmakers like Spike Lee came to my defense about, is that I really wanted to be a regional filmmaker. I wanted to make a movie about Memphis, like I had done with The Poor And Hungry. And that’s what I held to. I live in Memphis, Tennessee, and we’re a very complicated city. Sometimes the things that people wish could be changed in our city, the bad things, actually produce really good art. That’s a story that’s been going on for decades.
Since W.C. Handy got banned by Boss Crump.
You’re getting all my Hustle & Flow stories. I’ll tell you the best compliment I ever got. I was at a screening in New York City with Chris Rock. He came out, and he was just so great to me. I’m a huge fan of his.
He said, “Man, when DJay goes into the strip club, and he’s arguing with Lexus, and she says ‘Man, I haven’t even made payout yet!’ I knew you knew your shit. I have heard so many strippers say ‘I have not made payout yet’. You just made a ghetto classic. Ten years from now, you will not be able to grow up in the projects without seeing Penitentiary, Shaft, and Hustle & Flow.”
Taraji P. Henson and DJ Qualls.
My 1995 movie was Friday, and I see a lot of influence from Friday to Hustle. I had never really thought about it in context of the 90s indie film revolution. But it’s absolutely Clerks.
Oh yeah. Seeing them go “Daaaaam!” That’s right out of Clerks. When I saw Top Five, that movie Chris Rock did just last year, I felt like I was watching 90s indie cinema. It had been a long time since I saw that. We’re gonna get all our friends together and make something fun, something out of the box. The lo-fi elements are some of the things you really dig about it.
Ice Cube was able to get more money together, because he’s been successful in music at that point. But what he was doing was not significantly different than what we were doing five years later. So here we are, fifteen years into the digital revolution, and you came out of that scene. What do you think about now, looking back? What do you think about the whole “indie film project”?
I am sad, because the further I get away from it, the more I realize that it was a unique time in culture. I don’t see the same energy or interest in the younger generation, meaning 15 year olds. They’re not running out to see Slacker because they read about it in a magazine. Or Down By Law, or Woman Under The Influence. The flip side to it, is that they can watch it on Netflix now, but they can also get a phone call in the middle of that Netflix viewing. They’re not getting the same experience. There’s that bitter part of me that’s thinking. I’m turning into that greying, cantankerous older man who’s saying “Oh, it was so different back in the day.” I do look with a great deal of optimism towards independent expression in this generation that we didn’t have. It’s just going to morph into something else.
But a good movie still works with a young mind. I walked into my daughter’s room, and she and my son were watching Mad Max: Fury Road. Now, she’s seven years old, and a lot of people think that movie is not appropriate for a seven year old girl. But she was hitting me with all these questions: “Why is it all desert? Why is there no water? Why is there no gasoline? Why are they fighting over it?” I explained what a post-apocalyptic movie was, and compared it to Hunger Games. Then she turned to me, and her expression was just priceless. She said “This is the greatest movie I’ve ever seen!”
I remember that feeling, of seeing something different, of being inspired. My son and my daughter, after watching that movie, were saying “We’ve got to make movies.” They were just so solid on it. People like Mike McCarthy, Morgan Jon Fox, Kentucker Audley, Chris McCoy, and Laura Jean…we were all of this time. We were inspired by independent cinema, and we wanted to be a part of the movement. It didn’t require success. You didn’t have to sell your movie at Sundance. You wanted to be an independent filmmaker, and you struggled and went into debt to become one. Nowadays, a whole movie can be made, cut, and uploaded on your iPhone. The way that things can get out there, it’s so easy. I still wonder, though, is the craft of cinema being exalted, or is its growth being stunted by technology?
I think it’s being pushed in different directions. Back then, all of us, at the same time, gained access to technology that allowed us to do what we’d been trying to do since we were teenagers. So what we did was, we took that technology and applied to towards creating inside this paradigm—feature films—that we were familiar with. But that’s a paradigm that evolved from a very different technological situation. It was hard to make moving images, so you had to gather all these resources together, and once you made it, then you got a whole bunch of people into a room to watch this big presentation.
But now, these kids…and I see it all the time with the Black Lodge tribe, for example. They’re very inspired by the movie image, and they want to make it, and they understand it, but they’re not constrained by two hours sitting in a movie theater. They don’t have to do that to get an audience to watch their movies.
But now, I spend a lot more time in theaters than I used to, because of this job. I like being in a movie theater with people. Even if they’re annoying.
Me too.
I wouldn’t want to sit here for ten hours and watch Game Of Thrones with them. I just had a good audience experience watching American Ultra. It was like we were seeing something cool that everyone else was overlooking. I had a great audience experience watching Straight Outta Compton. When Easy-E died, I thought people were laughing. But I looked behind me, and there were these two big black guys who were sobbing because they were so moved by that moment.
Now you’ve got me waxing philosophical.
That’s what I do.
Taryn Manning as Nola
Do you know where the first screening of Hustle & Flow was, ever?
Muvico Downtown?
No. The First Congo theater!
You showed it at the [Digital Media] Co-Op?
I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I would have gotten into so much trouble if something went wrong. It was around November, 2004. We had just locked the edit. We were going to show it around Hollywood to people before Sundance. There was no music edit, no color timing, nothing. I was going home from California to Memphis for a week. So I told my editor that I wanted to take a copy home with me. And he was like, look. Soul Plane with Snoop had just been bootlegged. It was everywhere on the street. And it completely killed that movie at the box office. Everybody that was going to see that movie had a DVD already. Piracy was a huge problem.
So my editor, and I hope I don’t get him in trouble, he gave me the movie in two parts on two DVDs. So I took those two DVDs to my little editing suite back in Memphis and stitched them together in Adobe Premiere, and dumped it off to tape. I called up Morgan [Jon Fox], and said I want to have an underground screening. Literally underground. You’d go down the stairs at the First Congo church, and the theater was in the basement. I showed Hustle & Flow to about 70 people to the first time. It was special. There were some people who were going, “I don’t think this is going to work…”, and people who loved it. I remember Morgan being a big supporter of it. But there was a moment where I was talking to everybody, and went over to my digital deck to get the tape, and it wasn’t there! I freaked out. But it turned out that Morgan had taken the tape out, because he knew I was so freaked out about the piracy. But boy did I fucking freak out. That would have been a tragedy.
Holy shit. Well, it all worked out for you. I’m glad you’re working on Urban Cowboy and Empire.
I just watched the cut of the episode I did for Empire. It’s so good. I’m so pleased with it. You gotta remember, I’m a big fan of the show, regardless of Terrance and Taraji. I’m just into it. And I got to make one! It’s fun.
With that and Urban Cowboy, it’s a lot more material on your plate than a feature film, right?
I’ve got other feature films and TV shows I’m working on, but right now I’m just trying to stay focused on Urban Cowboy.
That’s what I’ve learned, working with you. You gotta keep a whole bunch of balls in the air at once in the hope that one of them goes somewhere.
Oh yeah. When I was working on Empire, Attica Locke, who wrote the episode, was hearing about all the projects I had going. She said, “How do you have all those jobs? You’ve got like eight projects!”
And I said, “I don’t have eight jobs. I have eight hustles.”
Memphis director Craig Brewer has been tapped by Fox TV to create a series based on Urban Cowboy.
Craig Brewer on the set of Footloose
Brewer, who has had a TV development contract with Paramount since last year, will write and direct a pilot based on the studio’s hit 1980 film, which starred John Travolta and Debra Winger. Legendary producer Robert Evans, who produced the original film, along with such classics as Chinatown and The Godfather, will be executive producing the project, according to Variety.
Debra Winger and John Travolta in Urban Cowboy
Fox has had the biggest TV hit in recent memory with Empire, which stars Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard, both of whom headlined Brewer’s Academy Award-winning 2005 film Hustle & Flow. Many have pointed out Brewer’s film’s heavy influence on Empire, and Fox is developing the Urban Cowboy series as a possible tie-in with the network’s mega-hit.
LIke the movie, Urban Cowboy will be set in Texas and follow the tumultuous relationship between Bud and Sissy. Travolta and Winger are not expected to reprise their roles.
Craig Brewer is trying to figure out the best way to honor the life and legacy of Wanda Wilson, the Midtown muse, and former P&H Cafe proprietress, who was interred in her hometown of Parsons, Tennessee. The Poor & Hungry filmmaker, who went on to success in Hollywood with movies like Hustle & Flow and Footloose, doesn’t know if it’s something that can be accomplished in a single event.
“I feel like the arts community needs to check in with each other again,” he says, wondering if there’s anything in Memphis quite like the P&H was when Wanda held court at a little round table at the end of the bar.
Brandon Dill
Wanda Wilson
“You know, if Wanda didn’t exist, if I had just created her for a movie, somebody would say, ‘Craig, you can’t just will somebody like this into existence because you think it would be cool,'” he says, remembering how the earthy, feather-draped beertender had given him such good advice when he was just starting out as a filmmaker.
“She was so instrumental in my career and in my life,” Brewer says. “What I’m left with is this feeling that there isn’t anybody else like her. There’s nobody who’s this fulcrum of all these different people and artists.”
The local arts community and all other denizens of the P&H Cafe can “check in” to pay their respects at “Wanda: A Celebration of the Life of Wanda Wilson” at Playhouse on the Square on Saturday, February 14th.
The first person I met at the P&H Cafe wasn’t the beer joint’s famous proprietress, Wanda Wilson. It was Martha Sue Campbell from Florence, Alabama, a longtime beer-and-hash slinger who passed away last April. Sue frowned at me and squinted, which I later discovered was her way of smiling, and gave me the once-over twice. I was new in town, only 18 years old, and sure she was going to ask for an I.D. that I didn’t have. Instead, she took my order and asked if I’d like to hear a joke.
“Do you know which two toes a woman’s most ticklish between?” Sue asked, frowning even harder, which meant she was about to bust a gut. Before I could reply she blurted out, “The big ‘uns,” and we both frowned and frowned and laughed and laughed. I was a country kid, on my own for the first time in a city I didn’t know. But watching my funny new acquaintance waddle through a swirling curtain of cigarette smoke to fetch my cheeseburger and gazing for the first time at all those strange, nicotine-browned murals of famous (and infamous) locals like banker, politician, and mega-fraud Jake Butcher, and Dana Kirk, Memphis State’s ticket-scalping basketball coach, I knew I had somehow landed in safe harbor, right where I belonged.
Like so many other “poor and hungry” artists, musicians, actors, authors, journalists, roustabouts, and straight-up weirdos, I was immediately intrigued by Wanda Wilson. She always wore a big, curly, blonde wig, a feather boa, and a hat that she might have won from Mae West in a poker game. She chain-smoked cigarettes from a long, jeweled cigarette holder and called everybody “darlin'” in a husky Parsons, Tennessee, drawl that reminded me of home.
Wanda reminded many people of home, no matter where they came from.
Last Friday, Wanda Wilson shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving Memphis a poorer and hungrier place. She was Midtown’s muse, and many artists painted her portrait, though few captured her timelessness like Paul Penczner, whose impressionist works once hung in the bar. She was the patron saint of the local theater community, and a real life honky-tonk angel, famous for her generosity and a love of lost souls. Chances are, if you were ever a regular at her beer joint and found yourself down on your luck, she’d offer to start a tab before you asked, buy your first round, offer a job if she could, and a place to stay until you were back on your feet.
One particularly busy night, Wanda told me to “jump behind the bar” and get my own beer. “Act like you belong here,” she scolded, unconcerned with any potential ABC violations.
“Act like you belong here” was something I’d hear her say to many other customers. It wasn’t just permission to self-serve; it was the golden rule, and the one thing you really had to do to become a part of the P&H family. Like she once told an old friend whom she’d thrown out for bad behavior (and invited back with open arms): “This isn’t a bar sweetie. It’s an orphanage for the misunderstood.”
Wanda was mugged one summer night in 1999 while leaving the bar with the evening’s bank deposit. The girls of Memphis Confidential Burlesque — more P&H orphans — concocted a plan to stage a pudding-wrestling event to recover the losses, and Jerry Lawler agreed to referee. Somehow I found myself in the middle of it all, in a kiddie pool filled with chocolate pudding, wearing a grass skirt and coconut boobs, wrestling three women, and feeling like I’d stumbled into some lost chapter of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Hundreds of people paid cash money and lined up 20-deep to take in the gender-bending, fire-breathing, bodice-ripping show.
“I love you for thinking of this, but I don’t need the money,” Wanda told the event organizers. “Let’s give it to Hands on Memphis.”
That’s who she was.
Wanda traveled to Hollywood when Craig Brewer’s P&H-inspired film, The Poor & Hungry, had its big moment at the Hollywood Film Festival. I will never forget the moment when she arrived on the Paramount lot, wearing a stunning black gown covered with tiny gold coins. When someone asked about her outfit, she proudly announced, “A drag queen gimme this dress, darlin’.” Even in a city accustomed to seeing stars, this Memphis glamor girl could turn heads.
Losing Sue last year was hard, but I’m still having trouble imagining a world without Wanda Wilson. When I had no family in Memphis, Wanda and the P&H regulars stepped up. Now we’re orphans all over again.
It’s January 30, 2005, in Park City, Utah, the last day of the Sundance Film Festival, and the greatest single day in Memphis film history. Craig Brewer, having just accepted the Audience Award for Hustle & Flow, has retuned to his seat just in time to hear the winner of the Jury Award announced: 40 Shades of Blue, directed by Ira Sachs.
“When they announced Ira, I embarrassed myself. I let out this scream, and I leapt off of my seat,” Brewer recalls. “I couldn’t believe it. Two Memphis filmmakers, with two Memphis films, just took the two top prizes at Sundance.”
It wasn’t Sachs’ first Sundance. In 1997, The Delta, his coming-of-age story of a gay teen in Memphis, had screened at the festival to great acclaim. But the indie film business being what it is, it took him eight years to get back to Sundance, coincidentally the same year as Brewer, his friend and fellow Memphian.
“Out of all of the filmmakers I know, he’s my hero,” Brewer says. “He’s held to his style through a challenging time in independent cinema. The individual auteur is not rewarded in this global marketplace.”
* * *
It’s 10 a.m. on August 22, 2014. Ira Sachs sits in his Greenwich Village apartment as the first commercial screening of his new film Love Is Strange is happening in New York City. “It feels great,” he says. “It’s been a long road to get here, but now it’s in other people’s hands. It’s with the audience.”
Sachs’ new film has been gathering buzz on the festival circuit ever since its debut at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where Memphis filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox was in the audience “I saw about 10 to 12 movies that were incredible, but only one of them got a standing ovation, and that was Love Is Strange,” he says. “As a director trying to make movies about queer culture, Love Is Strange is one of the most important and affecting films I have ever seen.”
Sachs has been gently deflecting this kind of hyperbolic praise for his film for the past nine months. “Real personal reactions to this movie are what I was hoping for, and what I am seeing,” he says. “I think people go into it expecting one thing, but then they find that it’s a portrait of a family, and in that way it is a portrait of all of our lives. It’s very much about the different stages of life we go through and how love looks differently in each one. I feel very differently about the possibilities of love as a middle-aged person than I did when I was 20.”
* * *
Like Brewer, Sachs’ Sundance win resulted in the opportunity to work with a much bigger budget. Sach’s 2007 film, Married Life, was a finely crafted, 1940s period piece starring Chris Cooper, Rachel McAdams, and Pierce Brosnan. It cost $12 million to make, but earned less than $3 million at the box office.
“I had to reinvent myself,” Sachs says. “You have to keep assessing what is possible and recalibrating your strategy about how to keep going.”
Sachs’ 2012 film, Keep the Lights On, couldn’t have been more different. It was an abandonment of the Hitchcockian style Sachs toyed with in Married Life and a return to his indie roots. The raw, unflinching story of a doomed love between a filmmaker and a drug addict spiraling out of control was as harrowing a bit of autobiography as has ever hit a screen.
“Each film is really an expression of where I am at that moment in my life,” Sachs says. “The movie is somehow a way to translate that into a story. I began working on Love Is Strange in January 2012, with my co-writer Mauricio Zacharias. That was a point when I went from living alone in my New York apartment to living with my husband, our two babies, their mom, and occasionally visiting in-laws. So the idea of a multi-generational family story told inside a cramped New York apartment seemed like a good idea.”
* * *
Alfred Molina first heard of Love Is Strange when his agent gave him the script. The 61-year-old actor, whose big break came playing Indiana Jones’ ill-fated guide in the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, has been in comedies and dramas, films large and small. But he knew this little $1.5 million film was going to be something special.
“It’s a story about how love survives,” he says. “Anyone who is in love, or anyone who has fallen in love, regardless of who or how, can relate to that.”
The story opens with George (Molina) and Ben (John Lithgow), a couple whose easy rapport speaks of a long and fulfilling relationship, getting ready in the morning. After decades together, it’s a day neither thought they would ever see: Their wedding day.
“The refreshing thing from an audience’s point of view is that whenever you see love stories, it’s almost always at the younger end of the age spectrum,” Molina says. “It’s couples struggling to find themselves, to find each other, to find their place in the world. But these characters are in the autumn of their years, and after many, many years of a committed relationship, they suddenly find themselves in crisis.”
George is a music teacher at a Manhattan Catholic high school. His homosexuality has been an “open secret” for years, but now that he and Ben, a 71 year old who has retired to his painting, have made it official, his boss can no longer shield him from the diocese, and he is unceremoniously fired.
In the hands of another writer/director, that would be the story: a gay couple, finally granted their right to wed, continues their fight against the forces of intolerance and discrimination. There would be protests and perhaps a climactic court scene with George and Ben giving stirring speeches about tolerance and acceptance, ending with a favorable verdict and applause. But that’s not Love Is Strange.
“In real life, people don’t have those big scenes,” says Molina. “You never have those cathartic moments where you let everything out and you make a great speech that encompasses your life. That’s why Ira’s so brilliant, because he’s not afraid to be truthful about it.”
Sachs says he takes inspiration from Italian Neo-Realist filmmakers such as Michelangelo Antonioni. Working in postwar Italy with very few resources, Antonioni’s films concentrated on the mundane details that would be cut from a Hollywood production in favor of sweeping but artificially heightened drama. “We have very dramatic lives without necessitating melodrama,” Sachs says. “The things that happen to us in the course of our lives are major, even if they’re described in a minor key.”
Without George’s income to support them, the couple is forced to sell their apartment and separate. Ben moves in with his nephew Eliot (Darren E. Burrows) and his wife Kate (Marisa Tomei), sleeping on the bottom bunk bed in his great nephew Joey’s (Charlie Tahan) room. George crashes with some friends, a pair of gay policemen who love to play Dungeons and Dragons and throw parties.
“He uses the injustice as a device to explore the human condition in other areas,” Brewer says. “Love Is Strange is probably Ira’s most subversive film because it’s so accessible. It moves you on a human level, and doesn’t hit you over the head with politics. That’s what makes it so compelling. In a way, it quickly stops being a movie that explores gay issues and becomes a movie about old love and commitment, and especially about what some people are having to face in this current economy.”
After reading the script, Molina was the first actor to sign on to the project. “It went through all of the usual vicissitudes and stumbles along the way that independent film is subject to,” he says. “But I stayed with it because I liked the script so much.”
* * *
Sachs says the character Ben was inspired by Memphis artist Ted Rust. “Ted was my great uncle Ben Goodman’s partner for about 45 years. I had the opportunity to really get to know him well. He’s a guy who, at 98, began his last sculpture, which was of a young teenager with a backpack on. At 99, he died, and the piece remained unfinished. But to me, the idea of a man pursuing his passion and creativity until the last minute seemed extraordinary.”
In Love Is Strange, Ben finds solace in his painting, even as the life he has built with George crumbles around him. “It’s about the uncompleted sense of possibilities that an artist, or any of us, can have. It’s something we can strive for,” Sachs says.
As Sachs struggled to raise money for his film, he managed to land a great cast. Tomei signed on for the important role of Kate, a writer whose long-suffering kindness is tested when Ben moves in. For Ben, Sachs landed the legendary Lithgow. “I brought Lithgow in, with the approval and encouragement of Molina,” the director says. “They had been friends for 20 years in the same social circle in Los Angeles. Once we started working, they were like kids who met at summer camp who had been reunited. They had so much history to talk about, and so much common life between them.”
Once on set, the chemistry between the two lead actors was effortlessly real. “I think the fact that we’ve been friends for so long certainly helped,” Molina says. “We didn’t have to spend any time creating a shorthand. We made each other laugh a lot.”
Sach’s on-set technique is unusual. The actors come to the set with their lines memorized, the scene is blocked out, and the cameras roll. “Everything is emotionally improvised,” Sachs says. “The text is there, and they stick to it, but we’ve never rehearsed before we start shooting, and they’ve never heard another actor say a line. It’s a strategy I’ve worked with ever since the days of 40 Shades of Blue. Film is really about the filming of what’s happening in a moment, and it doesn’t need to be repeated. I find that you get the most spontaneous performances when you don’t talk too much before hand.”
From the beginning of his career, actors have responded enthusiastically to Sachs’ direction. “He creates a very pleasant, very respectful atmosphere on a set,” says Molina. “He’s not a shouter. He’s not standing behind a video screen screaming ‘Do it again!’ He’s very quiet and unobtrusive.”
If, like most people, your image of Molina is of Doctor Octopus in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and your image of Lithgow is the manic alien invader from Third Rock from the Sun, you’re in for a shock. Molina’s George is the breadwinner, quietly struggling through repeated indignity to find a place where they can recreate their lives, until one wrenching scene where he shows up on Eliot’s and Kate’s door to cry into Ben’s arms. Lithgow’s Ben is kind, centered, and empathetic, but his immersion in his art makes him myopic. Together, they’re beautiful, inspiring, and heartbreakingly real.
“I have yet to see a performance this year that bests either Molina or Lithgow,” says Brewer.
* * *
Sachs’ first movie was a short called Vaudeville, about a group of traveling performers. “All of my films have been about friendships, but in the context of community,” he says. “To me, you can’t separate the two.”
Love Is Strange
Love Is Strange‘s New York setting provided many natural details. George’s hard-partying cop friends are inspired by a couple who were living upstairs from Boris Torres, Sachs’ husband, when they first met. “This kind of Tales of the City communal living is very wonderful and how we get by in our lives,” Sachs says. “The most important thing to me in New York is the relationship and the family I create for myself — both the biological family and otherwise.”
Sachs says Memphis’ contribution was more subtle, and more profound. “Memphis is a real inspiration. You think about the great music and art that’s come out of that town. What’s more entertaining than the Staple Singers or Isaac Hayes? But they have emotional depth. Jim Dickinson is a perfect example. He’s like Falstaff. He’s a perfect mix of drama and comedy.”
Love Is Strange is a dramatic film structured like a comedy, starring three actors with impressive comedic chops. Sachs compares it to 1930s comedies of remarriage, such as It Happened One Night, where a separated couple struggles to reunite. “It’s the structure of the Shakespearian comedy. I felt really fortunate to work with these extraordinary comic actors in the movie. It is a dramatic film, but there is a lot of lightness, because of the genius timing and effortlessness of actors like Marisa Tomei and John Lithgow. They brought a little levity to serious situations.”
Lithgow and Tomei are two actors who, like the late Robin Williams, can swing easily between comedy and drama. “I think it’s their timing, and I think it’s very lifelike to bring humor into a situation. It’s one of the shades of experience. It’s also pleasurable. This is maybe the most entertaining movie that I’ve made. That doesn’t mean it’s less deep, it just means people have an easier relationship with it. They’re happy to be there.”
* * *
Where Sachs’ Keep the Lights On was a sexually explicit film of passionate love gone bad, Love Is Strange is a meditation on long-term love, with nothing more sexual than a cuddle in a bunk bed between two fully clothed old men. And yet, somehow, both films have the same rating from the MPAA: R. Why? Is the mere fact that the lead characters are gay enough to earn an R rating in 2014?
“It’s totally unjustified,” says Morgan Jon Fox. “It’s a sham. It’s absurd that there are films that are far more violent or that have content that is far more detrimental that do not have an R rating.”
Brewer first saw the film before it was rated at the Los Angeles Film Festival. “I didn’t know it was going to be an R. What is the cause for the R rating? There’s nothing in that movie that is vulgar.”
Still of Charlie Tahan, Darren E. Burrows, and John Lithgow in Love Is Strange
Sachs is puzzled by the inappropriate rating, but remains, as always, unflappable.”It doesn’t upset me, except for the fact that this is a film about family, and it seems like it’s shutting off people who would get a lot from it. For better or worse, it’s a family film.”
Fox is more blunt in his assessment of the politics surrounding the rating. “To see two adults who are happy, who have been in a relationship forever, these are the kinds of role models that young queer kids need. But it’s so clear what they’re warning parents about, and that’s love. Warning: Your child may be influenced by love.”
* * *
“We’ve had terrific feedback,” Molina says. “The response from critics has been very positive, and audiences have loved it. I think it proves very clearly that there’s an audience out there for movies that are a bit more sensitive, a bit more challenging. It’s been very gratifying to see how people have responded to it.”
When Love Is Strange comes to Memphis for a premiere with the director on Friday, September 26th, it does so with the wind at its back. It’s currently sitting at 98 percent positive reviews on the film critic aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes; its $1.5 million budget was paid back with foreign rights sales at the Berlin Film Festival before it had even opened in America; and it has been very successful in limited release.
But it is the film’s message of love that Sachs says he wants his own two toddlers, Viva and Felix (“‘Life’ and ‘Happiness’, which they are.”), to take with them in life. “I was in Memphis a few weeks ago, and on Saturday I said, ‘Let’s have a potluck’, and on Sunday I had 10 pies and four batches of fried chicken. That’s love.”
And not at all strange.
Love Is Strange premieres Friday, September 26th at Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill. Ira Sachs will be in attendance for a Q&A.
“Hollywood is like a stick of chewing gum. The flavor is refreshing — for a minute — but once all the sweet has been sucked away, what remains is a gooey, spitslick blob even the most befouled degenerate would be loath to touch. Nevertheless, if you are a dreamer who wants to make movies, you might as well plan on getting Hollywood stuck to your shoe for a while. There is just no avoiding it.”
That’s how Chris Davis began his September 7, 2000, cover story about Craig Brewer’s trip to Hollywood to premiere his first feature film, The Poor & Hungry, at the Hollywood Film Festival. Then 28, Brewer was hoping his little $20,000 movie, shot in black-and-white and in a then-revolutionary digital format, might create some buzz and get him a movie deal.
The film was named for the P&H Cafe, then as now, a venerable Midtown beer joint. It told the story of a reluctant car thief who falls in love with one of his victims, a sensitive soul who happens to be a cellist. It was a blue-collar Romeo and Juliet tale that starred Eric Tate and Lindsey Roberts and a host of other Memphians, many of whom had never acted before. Wanda Wilson, who at that time was the flamboyant owner of the P&H, also had a meaty role.
The Poor & Hungry had been nominated for Best Feature and Best Digital Feature at the fest, and Brewer was taking most of his cast and crew to Hollywood for the award ceremonies. Davis went along to chronicle the trip, and Flyer readers got to witness Brewer, a Memphian who has since become a bonafide Hollywood filmmaker with such films as Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan, and Footloose, making his first tentative foray into the shark-infested waters of Los Angeles’ movie-making machinery. Davis accompanied Brewer to a big-time producer’s office, followed by a golfcart tour of Paramount Studios; he hung out at the hotel as the Memphis cast and crew readied themselves for the big night.
“The hotel room seems to shrink amid the hair brushing, tooth brushing, lint brushing, shirt buttoning, drink pouring, and occasional raucous laughter. Various cast members wander in and out. John Still, the rough-talking actor who plays a roughertalking car thief in the film, enters with a bang, eyes bugged out and talking a mile a minute.
“‘Guess who I saw today while I was driving? Heather Locklear! Boy, I thought really hard about just running into her car just so she would have to stop and exchange information with me.'”
In the end, The Poor & Hungry lost in the Best Feature category to a $35 million biopic about Marlene Dietrich, but Brewer’s film won Best Digital Feature. Brewer gave a touching speech about his father, who’d first suggested that he shoot in video and who’d passed away before the film had gotten made.
After the trip, Brewer, his cast and crew, and Davis returned to Memphis. But Brewer would never be Poor & Hungry again. His world had irrevocably changed.
In January 1989, Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape won the Audience Award for best feature at the Sundance Film Festival, kicking off the modern Indie film movement.
To audiences, “Indie” usually means quirky, low-budget, character-driven fare that is more like the auteurist films of the 1970s than contemporary Hollywood’s designed-by-committee product. But “Indie” originally referred to films financed outside the major studios by outfits like New Line Cinema, which produced Sam Raimi’s TheEvil Dead (1981) and the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (1984). By 1990, The Coen Brothers had crossed over into the mainstream with Miller’s Crossing, a film that brought together the meticulous plotting, brainy dialog, and stunning visual compositions that would garner them acclaim for the next 25 years.
As the 1990s dawned, a whole crop of directors stood up with a mission to make good movies on their own terms — and that meant raising money by any means necessary. Robert Rodriguez financed his $7,000 debut feature El Mariachi by selling his body for medical testing. It went on to win the 1993 Audience Award at Sundance, and his book Rebel Without A Crew inspired a generation of filmmakers.
Richard Linklater’s 1991 Slacker threw out the screenwriting rulebook that had dominated American film since George Lucas name-checked Joseph Campbell, focusing instead on dozens of strange characters floating around Austin. The structure has echoed through Indie film ever since, not only in Linklater’s Dazed And Confused (1993) but also the “hyperlink” movies of the early 2000s such as Soderbergh’s Traffic and even more conventionally scripted films such as Kevin Smith’s 1994 debut, Clerks.
Quentin Tarantino is arguably the most influential director of the last 25 years. His breakthrough hit, 1994’s Pulp Fiction, was the first film completely financed by producer Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax. But even then, the definitions of what was an “Indie” movie were fluid, as the formerly independent Miramax had become a subsidiary of Disney.
Indie fervor was spreading as local film scenes sprang up around the country. In Memphis, Mike McCarthy’s pioneering run of drive-in exploitation-inspired weirdness started in 1994 with Damselvis, Daughter of Helvis, followed the next year by the semi-autobiographical Teenage Tupelo. With 1997’s The Sore Losers, McCarthy integrated Memphis’ burgeoning underground music scene with his even-more-underground film aesthetic.
In 1995, the European Dogme 95 Collective, led by Lars von Trier, issued its “Vows of Chastity” and defined a new naturalist cinema: no props, no post-production sound, and no lighting. Scripts were minimal, demanding improvisation by the actors. Dogme #1 was Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1998.
Meanwhile, in America, weirdness was reaching its peak with Soderbergh’s surrealist romp Schizopolis. Today, the film enjoys a cult audience, but in 1997, it almost ended Soderbergh’s career and led to a turning point in Indie film. The same year, Tarantino directed Jackie Brown and then withdrew from filmmaking for six years. Soderbergh’s next feature veered away from experiment: 1998’s Out Of Sight was, like Jackie Brown, a tightly plotted adaptation of an Elmore Leonard crime novel. Before Tarantino returned to the director’s chair, Soderbergh would hit with Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich and make George Clooney and Brad Pitt the biggest stars in the world with a very un-Indie remake of the Rat Pack vehicle Ocean’s 11.
Technology rescued Indie film. In the late ’90s, personal computers were on their way to being ubiquitous, and digital video cameras had improved in picture quality as they simplified operation. The 1999 experimental horror The Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, showed what was possible with digital, simultaneously inventing the found footage genre and becoming the most profitable Indie movie in history, grossing $248 million worldwide on a shooting budget of $25,000.
The festival circuit continued to grow. The Indie Memphis Film Festival was founded in 1998, showcasing works such as the gonzo comedies of Memphis cable access TV legend John Pickle. In 2000, it found its biggest hit: Craig Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry, a gritty, digital story of the Memphis streets, won awards both here and at the Hollywood Film Festival.
In 2005, Memphis directors dominated the Sundance Film Festival, with Ira Sach’s impressionistic character piece Forty Shades Of Blue winning the Grand Jury Prize, and Brewer’s Hustle & Flow winning the Audience Award, which would ultimately lead to the unforgettable spectacle of Three Six Mafia beating out Dolly Parton for the Best Original Song Oscar.
Brewer rode the crest of a digital wave that breathed new life into Indie film. In Memphis, Morgan Jon Fox and Brandon Hutchinson co-founded the MeDiA Co-Op, gathering dozens of actors and would-be filmmakers together under the newly democratized Indie film banner. Originally a devotee of Dogme 95, Fox quickly grew beyond its limitations, and by the time of 2008’s OMG/HaHaHa, his stories of down-and-out kids in Memphis owed more to Italian neorealism like Rome, Open City than to von Trier.
Elsewhere, the digital revolution was producing American auteurs like Andrew Bujalski, whose 2002 Funny Ha Ha would be retroactively dubbed the first “mumblecore” movie. The awkward label was coined to describe the wave of realist, DIY digital films such as Joe Swanberg’s Kissing on the Mouth that hit SXSW in 2005. Memphis MeDiA Co-Op alum Kentucker Audley produced three features, beginning with 2007’s mumblecore Team Picture.
Not everyone was on board the digital train. Two of the best Indie films of the 21st century were shot on film: Shane Carruth’s $7,000 Sundance winner Primer (2004) and Rian Johnson’s high school noir Brick (2005). But as digital video evolved into HD, Indie films shot on actual film have become increasingly rare.
DVDs — the way most Indies made money — started to give way to digital distribution via the Internet. Web series, such as Memphis indie collective Corduroy Wednesday’s sci fi comedy The Conversion, began to spring up on YouTube.
With actress and director Greta Gerwig’s star-making turn in 2013’s Francis Ha, it seemed that the only aspect of the American DIY movement that would survive the transition from mumblecore to mainstream was a naturalistic acting style. Founding father Soderbergh announced his retirement in 2013 with a blistering condemnation of the Hollywood machine. Lena Dunham’s 2010 festival hit Tiny Furniture caught the eye of producer Judd Apatow, and the pair hatched HBO’s Girls, which wears its indie roots on its sleeve and has become a national phenomenon.
The Indie spirit is alive and well, even if it may bypass theaters in the future.
Laura Jean Hocking 
Laura Jean Hocking 
Laura Jean Hocking 
Craig Brewer on the set of Footloose 
Debra Winger and John Travolta in Urban Cowboy 
Brandon Dill 
