Aladdin Sane Weather Vane in progress (Photo: Mike McCarthy)
Few things are more noteworthy than seeing a photo of your coworker in the crotch of a 10-foot, papier-mache sculpture of David Bowie in progress. That coworker is, of course, Michael Donahue, one of our writers here at the Flyer. In fact, Mike McCarthy, creator of the sculpture, has covered Bowie in Flyers. We’re honored to say the least, but this sculpture is not in honor of us, but rather of a mostly unknown Memphis music history moment.
In 1973, while on his Aladdin Sane tour stop in Memphis, David Bowie visited the now-closed Memphis Academy of Art at the invitation of Dolph Smith, an instructor at the school. Smith had a watercolor he wanted to give the musician, which he happily accepted. Of this story, McCarthy says, he only heard glimmers during his time at the school in the ’80s, but it’s stayed with him ever since.
These days, McCarthy is running a nonprofit Sculpt Memphis, with the goal of preserving Memphis music history through sculpture. His Johnny Cash stands on South Cooper now, and, for the last year, he’s made statuettes of Howlin’ Wolf, Aretha Franklin, Memphis Minnie, Rufus Thomas, Muddy Waters, and the like. “Everybody loves them,” he says, “but [the question becomes] how do these things get to become like eight-foot-tall block sculptures. I think Memphis is extremely under-sculptured, under-statued.
“Maybe this is a little counterintuitive on my part,” he continues, “but I thought, maybe if I do a 10-foot tall David Bowie, it will draw attention also to the fact that there’s lots of Memphis music history, obviously closer to home, that people should be thinking about. If you had Bowie in Overton Park, that would be one more reason to go to Overton Park. If you had all these other sculptures in locales throughout the city, it could drive tourism, create international interest.”
For the Bowie statue, McCarthy chose to portray him in the “Tokyo Pop” jumpsuit by Kansai Yamamoto. Also, instead of one head, the musician has four atop a weather vane, with the four faces representing Bowie’s affinity for taking on different identities — from Ziggy Stardust to Halloween Jack. Why a weather vane? “I don’t know,” McCarthy says, “but I thought, okay, I’ll do a weather vane. Oh, weather vane rhymes with Aladdin Sane. Aladdin Sane Weather Vane.”
So far, McCarthy has been working on sculpting the piece since December with help from friends, like Terance Brown, who made the resin 3D image of Bowie’s face; Colleen Couch, who made the paper for the Bowie faces for the weather vane;
Yvonne Bobo and Brendan Duffy (owners of Off The Walls Gallery)Alison Heaverly, Off The Walls assistant Terance Brown (3-D artist, maker of the resin 3-D image of Bowies face)Colleen Couch (paper maker, maker of the paper Bowie faces for the weather vane)Geordan Lugar of Lugar Foundry, created the A frame inside the Aladdin Sane Weather Vane.Frank Smith, patron.Jana Wilson of VINTAGIA (Arkmania) and curator of the vendors.Kasey Dees with The Prettiest Star face painting.Drew Whitmire, assistant.Eat At Eric’s Food truckBlack and Wyatt Records (sponsor)The Memphis Flyer (sponsor) Kansai Yamamoto – costumer designerMasayoshi Sukita – photographer
but this Sunday, he’ll invite the public to begin the process of covering Bowie with clay at what he’s calling the Glam Rock Picnic. “The ultimate goal is to climb the ladder and start from the heart and start spreading the clay,” he says. “I want people to be involved.”
The Glam Rock Picnic will also have DJ Kitschy Kat spinning entire Bowie albums, a Bowie bar, Eat at Eric’s food truck, face painting by Kasey Dees, and vendors curated by Jana Wilson of Vintagia.
Glam Rock Picnic, Off The Walls Arts, 360 Walnut, Sunday, June 30, noon-5 p.m., $10.
Mike McCarthy at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Mike McCarthy, a filmmaker, artist, and musician, currently is working on a 10-foot-tall statue of David Bowie. McCarthy’s life-size bronze statue of Johnny Cash now stands in Cooper-Young. “Next to the church (the old Galloway United Methodist Church — now “Galloway House”) where Cash performed in 1954,” McCarthy says.
So, it’s no surprise McCarthy would throw a birthday party for Bowie. And, though he hasn’t yet done a statue of Elvis, McCarthy combines the party with the King, who shares his January 8th birthday with Bowie.
About 50 people gathered for McCarthy’s semi-annual “The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party” January 6th at his Midtown home.
McCarthy, who began throwing the parties in 2017, hasn’t held one since 2019.
“My Elvis obsession has aways been my pop culture interest in my films, comic books, and music,” McCarthy says. “It’s always fueled them.”
When his “Bowie obsession grew,” McCarthy discovered Bowie loved Memphis and Elvis. “There were many similarities, including they shared the same birthday. But then, when my Bowie obsession grew and I found out that Bowie had a love for Memphis and Elvis and there were many similarities, it sort of blossomed into a party.
“For me, the true start of the New Year or my New Year’s Day is January 8th. Their birthday. That’s when I begin my year.”
Part of the attraction of the party is getting to tour McCarthy’s home, including his “Bowie-Elvis living room,” which features “photographs, rarities, and images of Bowie and Elvis that adorn my living room throughout the year.”
The living room includes a velvet Elvis painting and “rare photos from the Bowie fan club circa 1973.”
McCarthy features live music at the party, but he doesn’t “try to be literal or obvious with the music.”
The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)
“You won’t hear an Elvis or Bowie cover band at this party. You’ll hear other types of local living room punk rock music.”
Yesterday’s Trash, featuring Frank Bruno on guitar, Aaron Brame on accordion, and Hans Faulhaber on drums, performed at this year’s party. “A Replacements cover band. Which has a Memphis connection because they recorded here with (Jim) Dickinson and Bob Mehr wrote a book (Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements) on them.”
Yesterday’s Trash at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)
As for who he invites to the party, McCarthy says, “Generally, it’s almost sort of like an ‘office of the mind’ party because I don’t have a physical work space. I am self-employed. I do various art gigs. I’ve done them through the last year. So, anybody I worked with or had collaborations with or somebody I’ve communicated with or old friends, of course, were those I invited to the party. All connections and friends I made in the course of 2023.”
Joe Smith and Lauren Wheeler at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)Nya Goble and Darcy Thomas at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)Courtney Fly and Ross Johnson at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)Tyler Lambert and Natalie Rhodes at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)Chris McCoy and some other Memphis Flyer writer at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Chris McCoy)John Beifuss and Mike McCarthy at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: MIchael Donahue)
One of those projects was McCarthy’s Teenage Tupelo coffee table book, which was released last October. “It weighs six pounds — 360 pages.”
The book is based on McCarthy’s 1995 film of the same name. “It’s essentially a portrait of the Memphis film and punk scene circa 1995.”
McCarthy also released a Teenage Tupelo Blu-ray disc.
Another high point of his year was the release of Super Thrift, a film made by his son, John Marvel McCarthy. Mike had a bit part in the movie.
“And my daughter is back home from Korea. Hanna McCarthy. And she is living with me.”
In addition to working on the Bowie statue, Mike’s plans for the future include continuing to grow his company, Sculpt Memphis. “I’ve created small sculptures to pitch to clients and non-profits so we can have larger than life seven-foot-tall bronze sculptures of Memphis music legends, including Bowie and others because of Memphis influence to the music scene in the 20th century.”
McCarthy is collaborating with Geordan Lugar on the Bowie statue.
“I’ve created a new Shopify page called ‘Super Tupelo,’ where the Blu-ray and my art can be purchased.”
And, Mike adds, “I’m about to start up a new Rod Stewart cover band.”
John Marvel McCarthy, who invited friends as well as cast members from his movie to the party, says he currently is working on his next film. “We’ve been pretty much working on concepts, as of now, and scheduling,” John says.
Asked for hints about his next movie, John says, “We definitely want to explore different stories in the future, but now we want to do a Super Thrift 2 just out of popular demand.”
Also, John says, “I’ve started collaborating with some musicians and some rappers around Memphis to do behind-the-scenes things for them and make music videos for them in the future.”
John Marvel McCarthy, Nya Goble, Caleb Isom, Max Martin, Chas Burbank at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)
As for what they served at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party, Mike says, “My girlfriend Anneliese Jones prepared all the food.”
Jones says her fare included “a meat-and-cheese platter with olives, spinach-artichoke dip, broccoli-cheese cornbread, spicy Chex snack mix, dark chocolate fondue with strawberries, and gluten-free animal crackers to dip.”
Mike McCarthy and Anneliese Jones at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Mike McCarthy)
And, Mike says, “We always have a drink that’s served at my bar. And this time we went real heavy on the concept. One of Bowie’s personas was the ‘Thin White Duke.’ We combined ‘Thin White Duke’ with a ‘White Russian’ and had ‘Thin White Russians’ — vodka, Kahlua, and half and half.”
“Shaken with edible glitter for that added touch of glam,” Jones says.
Pilar and Seth Ruleman at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)Charlotte and Chris Davis at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)Max Martin, Caleb Isom, John Marvel McCarthy, Ben Schmiedicke at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)Elliot Bexley at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)Geoffrey Brent Shrewsbury at The Elvis-Bowie Birthday Party (Credit: Michael Donahue)We Saw You
Moonage Daydream is an unusual yet carefully considered fantasia.
Although it’s now considered one of David Bowie’s iconic works, “Heroes” was not a hit when it was first released in October 1977. But Bowie loved the song, which was recorded during the now-legendary sessions with producer Brian Eno at Hansa studio in West Berlin. He always gave it a prominent position in his live shows, even when it sounded out of place during the poppy “Let’s Dance” era. Then, on July 13, 1985, as 1.9 billion people worldwide watched the sun set over Wembley Stadium, Bowie looked out over the Live Aid crowd and dedicated his final song to “My son, and all the children of the world.” That was the moment “Heroes” stopped being a song about the longing of doomed lovers and became something bigger — an anthem of everyday valor, a call to help save an ailing world. “We can be heroes/Just for one day.”
This is not the performance of the song that director Brett Morgan chooses to include in his kaleidoscopic documentary Moonage Daydream. Instead, he goes with a previously unreleased version from the 1978 Isolar II tour, recorded in Bowie’s hometown of Brixton. The band is a little ragged, and Bowie’s normally stoic delivery is tinged with plastic soul. It turns out to be a perfect choice, taking the song off its pedestal and reminding us that it is a thing flawed humans made with their voices and hands.
Don’t go into Moonage Daydream expecting a Behind the Music-style tell-all, with talking-head interviews offering scandalous revelations. Morgan’s film is closer to a fantasia, an impressionistic work of pure montage whose first priority is marrying sound and vision. Bowie’s story is told mostly in his own words. Bowie obsessives (such as myself) will notice many omissions, such as his surgical evisceration of MTV’s Mark Goodman, performed live on air when the VJ tried to defend the network’s racist omission of music videos by Black artists.
Bowie made a sport of talking circles around ill-prepared sensation mongers who had no idea what they were dealing with, such as the contemptuous chat show host who snarls, “Are those bisexual shoes?”
“They’re shoe-shoes,” deadpans Bowie.
The director, who also edited, mines these freak shows for moments when Bowie would casually drop some real insight, such as when he admits that the Berlin sessions, now considered his artistic zenith, almost sank his career. (The exception is writer Mavis Nicholson, whose incisive interview of Bowie on her short-lived BBC show provides Morgan with many of his best quotes.)
Director Brett Morgan explores the many sides of David Bowie in Moonage Daydream.
Morgan’s decision to let the man speak for himself makes sense because usually the only person who understood what Bowie was doing was Bowie himself. At one point, he plainly states that he designed the Ziggy Stardust persona as an androgynous space god modeled on his study of classical mythology, and it succeeded beyond his wildest dreams because he allowed fans to read more into it than was really there. The director backs up Bowie’s words with images of screaming teenagers in the audience of the final Spiders from Mars show, captured by documentarian D.A. Pennebaker.
The performance footage is Moonage Daydream’s red meat, and Morgan’s choices are as unusual as they are carefully considered. The film’s first crescendo is a volcanic performance of “All the Young Dudes.” Here’s Bowie on harmonica, trading lines with Jeff Beck on a jam-out of “The Jean Genie.” There he is duetting with a young Trent Reznor on Nine Inch Nails’ first tour. He’s on Saturday Night Live, transforming himself into a puppet while Klaus Nomi wails in the background. Where the remixing in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis betrayed a lack of confidence in the material, longtime Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti’s mixes serve to illuminate the songs. The ’80s rave-up “Modern Love” is introduced via an isolated piano line over scenes of Bowie visiting a Buddhist temple, growing in urgency with each added layer of drum and guitar, before segueing into a show-stopping “Let’s Dance,” where Bowies of every era dance alongside the pompadoured crooner from the Serious Moonlight tour.
If you just want facts, watch the excellent David Bowie: Five Years. Morgan’s ambitions are deeper. He wants to show us what it felt like to be the Starman. Bowie’s collaborators often remarked on his ability to push them to the outer edges of their talent. He seems to have had the same effect on Morgan, who has broken the music documentary and created something new and vital from the pieces. David would approve.
Moonage Daydream Final IMAX preview Tuesday, September 20, Malco Paradiso Cinema
Ever since Ziggy Stardust left Earth in January, 2016, there’s been a David Bowie-shaped hole in the world. Let’s face it: Things have been going downhill ever since. You can get a recharge of that Thin White Duke energy at the Malco Summer Drive-In Saturday night as the monthly Time Warp Drive-In celebrates Bowie’s film career.
From the beginning, Bowie’s music and persona were tied up with acting. He trained as a mime, which heavily influenced his stage presentation; “Cracked Actor” is a standout track on his 1973 record Aladdin Sane. When Bowie got in front of a camera, the results were spectacular. He’s almost always the most interesting thing on the screen. Watch him effortlessly dominate Tony Award winner Hugh Jackman in this scene from The Prestige.
Christopher Nolan’s best film is not on the Time Warp marquee this week, but you won’t be disappointed with the selections. First up is a cult masterpiece from 1986, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. I recently revisited the dark fairy tale with actor and Black Nerd Power podcaster Markus Seaberry as part of my Never Seen It series, and it’s a highly entertaining read. The best part is our back and forth about the prominent Bowie package, which is actually thematically relevant in this story about pubescent ennui. Here’s Jennifer Connelly facing her greatest fear: David Bowie’s sexuality.
Speaking of David Bowie’s sexuality, the next film is a steamy goth horror classic from the late director Tony Scott. Released three years prior to Labyrinth, the same year as Bowie’s epochal Let’s Dance album, The Hunger stars Bowie and Catherine Deneuve as incredibly sexy vampires who take a shine to a doctor, played by Susan Sarandon. Here’s the classic opening sequence featuring Bauhaus performing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” that made a million black roses bloom.
The final movie in the Time Warp is another celebrated cult oddity. First gaining attention with the documentary about the rise of The Sex Pistols, The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle, Julien Temple was one of the hottest music video directors of the 1980s, creating classic clips for Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, The Rolling Stones, and, of course, Bowie. Absolute Beginners was his high ’80s musical about the birth of rock-and-roll in England. It’s a fascinating mixture of eye-popping visuals and extremely questionable decisions. It spawned one of Bowie’s biggest hits, the theme song “Absolute Beginners,” which he does not perform in the movie. Watch the money burn in this incredibly over-the-top musical number.
The Time Warp Drive-In starts at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 24, at the Malco Summer Drive-In.
This time in the Never Seen It hot seat is Markus Seaberry, prolific Memphis film and television actor and co-host of the Black Nerd Power podcast. He had never seen the 1986 Jim Henson fantasy Labyrinth, which was released 35 years ago this summer. We set out to fix that oversight.
Chris McCoy: What do you know about Labyrinth?
Markus Seaberry: I know David Bowie is in it, Jennifer Connelly is in it, and Jim Henson put some Muppets in it. I didn’t see it, because, for my African American churchgoing parents, the trailer has to have Black people prominent in it, or it’s no deal. That’s true to this day. I tried to show them Slumdog Millionaire, and they were like, “Where’s the Black folks?”
CM: We talked for a long time about what movie you wanted to do, and you ended up picking this one. Why, out of all the films we discussed, did you pick this one, specifically?
MS: Because I feel like my eighties kid cred is not official until I see Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. In the early days of my podcast, Black Nerd Power, my co-host Richard Douglas Jones, found out I had never seen them, and our friendship has never been the same.
CM: OK, time to save a friendship. Let’s go.
101 minutes later…
CM: You are now someone who has seen Labyrinth. What did you think?
MS: I’m freaking out. My mind is not used to so many practical effects! It’s been so long since I’ve seen a film like this, because everything now is just CGI’d to hell. And it’s great! I love the battle scene where you get live chickens, a puppet on a live dog, Muppets all around, puppeteers in the mix controlling the big monster Ludo, and then a live Jennifer Connolly. And it’s all mixing together like orderly chaos.
CM: It feels real, in a way that the Marvel movies don’t. It hit me during that scene that this film has a “Marvel third act,” where the heroes fight a faceless army that comes out of nowhere. I guess movies have been doing that for a long time. I may not have seen this movie since the ’80s. It came out while I was working in a movie theater, so I saw everything. I remember seeing it on VHS, too. It was a lot better than I remembered.
MS: I liked in the beginning, they show you a shot of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are. Then, in the closing credits, it said “Jim Henson acknowledges his debt to the works of Maurice Sendak.”
CM: Ludo looks like one of those big Wild Things.
Ludo
CM: Like you said while we were watching it, there is a very strong Wizard of Oz thing going on. Our heroine is not following the Yellow Brick Road, but she’s finding her way through the labyrinth. There are also a lot of beats from Alice in Wonderland. Terry Jones wrote the first draft. It’s obvious that a lot more thought went into the story than you see in a lot of movies today. It’s a dude from Monty Python self-consciously trying to construct a fairy tale-like narrative. All those guys were super well-educated. I think Terry Jones went to Oxford.
MS: I dug it. Yo, we gotta talk about Bowie, man! I mean, wow! Normally in stuff like this, I prefer people to play it straight, because I feel like if you ham it up, it makes it a cartoon. But I think this needed to be kind of cartoony and over the top. Bowie hamming it up worked, and it was cool to hear him singing the songs in the middle. It gave a kind of a musical aspect.
CM: He’s so good. And you know, whenever he acts, he’s always great. Like in The Prestige, he’s Tesla, playing opposite Christian Bale, and it’s just perfect. But yeah, you’re right about playing villains low-key. I mean, I love seeing people go over the top if they do it right. It’s such a tightrope walk.
MS: He was just perfect the whole time.
CM: Another great actor who goes over-the-top in an eighties fantasy movie is Max Von Sydow in Flash Gordon.
MS: Ming the Merciless!
CM: He might be my favorite on-screen villain. But then, from around the same time, you’ve also got James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom in Conan The Barbarian. He plays it straight, like you were saying, and it’s chilling.
CM: Those sets! There’s that one shot, where Ludo comes out of the top of the tower, and you see the whole city behind him. That was real!
MS: Hammers and nails created that, not ones and zeroes.
Ludo don’t need no CGI.
CM: And that scene when that room blows up, and Sarah flies out—they really did that!
MS: Well, she had a stunt double. The first thing I saw Jennifer Connelly in was The Rocketeer. She was young in that, but she was really young in this.
CM: She was 16. This is a super hard part. Can you imagine how long they were on set?
MS: It just seems like a lot of moving pieces.
CM: They were throwing everything at it, too. There was rear projection, there was green screen. There were all kinds of practical sets. There were puppets everywhere. The MC Escher sequence, that was insane. To me, it was better than the Escher sequence in Doctor Strange.
MS: Hey now, you know I’m a Marvel zombie, man.
David Bowie as Jareth, the Goblin King. The sequence was inspired by M.C. Escher’s lithograph “Relativity”.
CM: We need to talk about David Bowie’s penis.
MS: Oh, God….
CM: It was very prominent.
MS: It was inescapable.
CM: There was one shot, we both said something. The bulge had its own fill light.
MS: Do you think he used a sock, or not?
CM: No, I think the Thin White Duke was packing heat.
MS: More like the Thick White Duke.
Ladies…
CM: This is a fairy tale with a female protagonist. I know the Hero’s Journey — everybody knows the Hero’s Journey — but there is a corresponding Heroine’s Journey that I don’t really know as well.
MS: It also is cool that she didn’t feel like your typical damsel in distress to me. I mean, she had help. I’m a dude and I feel like that’s condescending, so I can only imagine what women feel like. It’s like, yo, let the woman save herself sometimes.
CM: And she solves problems not by fighting, but by persuading friends to help her. She figures things out herself. She solves the riddle where one guard always lies, and the other one always tells the truth. She solves problems by making friends. That’s part of it. Like I said, I don’t know the Heroine’s Journey, but women protagonists in this kind of stuff, they don’t refuse the call to adventure, where in the Hero’s Journey, he always refuses the call to adventure, and is then forced to go anyway. Even Jesus refuses the call, you know? But Sarah never does. Look at Rey in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, in The Force Awakens. She never refuses the call, either.
MS: That’s true. I gotta say, it’s cheesy, but I liked it. I think fantasy can be too self-absorbed, too self-important sometimes. Sometimes you just want scrambled eggs for breakfast.
CM: It’s fun and cheesy, but it’s also psychologically grounded. It’s that eighties high fantasy, but this is the moment that the eighties aesthetic became decadent. This is considered the low point of Bowie’s entire career, musically. And, um, it’s not great. The synthesizer stuff that seemed so sophisticated and Euro a few years earlier now just seems chintzy.
MS: I still dream of owning a keytar.
CM: Well, yeah. Of course.
MS: I was willing to accept the asethetics because there’s heart to it. Listen, I was a little let down by the final confrontation, because it wasn’t as physical as I probably would have liked, but that’s not what Jennifer Connelly’s character was doing. She’s not carrying a big stick and breaking stuff. She’s been using her wits to elude the villain and rescue her baby brother.
CM: And if you think about it, the ending is her telling a toxic boyfriend to fuck off.
MS: I see that. I see that.
CM: Getting back to David Bowie’s package, there’s a very strong element of her sexual awakening. She eats the fruit, like Persephone, and then she’s transported to like this Eyes Wide Shut sex ball, and Bowie sings the best song in the movie, “As The World Falls Down.”
MS: I thought it looked like a Calvin Klein commercial.
CM: The thing that she’s most threatened by is being attracted to David Bowie. But Jareth is a total toxic boyfriend who’s gaslighting her the whole time. At the end, he was like, “Oh, what are you doing to me? I did everything for you, and you’re throwing me away!” Classic toxic boyfriend move. Then she says, “You have no more power over me!” That’s how she wins: She breaks up with the chump.
MS: There’s a little love morality tale, there. And we need to start a punk band called David Bowie’s Package.
Jennifer Connelly as Sarah, and Hoggle, played by puppeteers Shari Wiser and Brian Henson, son of Jim Henson.
MS: Hoggle man. I thought he was so ugly, I thought he was going to be villanous. He was an unwilling servant, but as time went on, he became more sympathetic and grew on me.
CM: She’s the one who says “You are my friend.” And he’s like, “Nobody accepts me as a friend.” Once again, she solves problems by using empathy and making friends.
MS: And also Ludo is the best!
CM: He’s the Chewbacca figure who can command smelly rocks, somehow.
MS: Yeah. I was trying to figure out. I thought it was telekinesis, but it’s more of a voice command. It’s more like a summoning.
CM: If it was D&D, his special power would be Summon Fart Rocks.
The goblins.
CM: So, bottom line, would you recommend Labyrinth to people?
MS: Yes, but with parameters. Know that it’s cheesy, and embrace it. It’s not trying to be cool. And the heart balances out the cheese.
Women Is Losers won Best Narrative Feature at the 2021 Oxford Film Festival.
For 17 years, the Oxford Film Festival awarded the Hoka, which was named for the cotton warehouse turned art house cinema run by “Oxford’s cultural ambassador,” Ron “Ronzo” Shapiro. This year, the name of the award was changed to the Ronzo, in honor of the longtime OFF supporter who passed away in April, 2019.
Oxford Film Festival 2021 announced its slate of winners on Sunday night, after a long weekend of outdoor film screenings, interrupted occasionally by the severe weather that blew through the Mid South. The first ever Best Narrative Feature Ronzo went to Women Is Losers, the feminist coming-of-age story by first-time writer-director Lissette Feliciano. Best Documentary Feature went to In A Different Key, directors Caren Zucker and John Donovan’s adaptation of the bestselling book on autism. Best Mississippi Feature went to Bastard’s Crossing, director Travis Mills’ Western produced during COVID lockdown.
Bastard’s Crossing won the Best Mississippi Feature Ronzo.
The winner in the LBGTIA category was Dramarama, a ’90s teen coming-out comedy by director Jonathan Wysocki. The Best Music Documentary Ronzo went to Bleeding Audio by director Chelsea Christer.
Bleeding Audio won Best Music Documentary at Oxford Film Fest 2021.
In the shorts, “The Recess,” directed by Navid Nikkhah Azad, a story of a young girl in a conservative Muslim society who dresses as a boy to attend a soccer game, won Best Narrative. “Snowy,” co-directors Alex Wolf Lewis and Kaitlyn Schwalje’s quest to bring happiness to a neglected pet turtle, brought home the Best Documentary Short Ronzo. Manual Marmier’s “Kiko’s Saints” was named Best LBGTIA short. In the music videos, Lemon Demon’s “Touch Tone Telephone” won Best overall, and the Mississippi award went to The Vacant’s “American Automatic.”
Lemon Demon’s Best Music Video Ronzo winner
The Oxford Film Festival continues virtually through the month of April, with all of the winners, along with more than 100 other films, streaming online. The virtual portion of the fest will kick off on Friday, April 2nd, with the 35th anniversary screening of Labyrinth, the epic fairy tale by Mississippi native and Muppet creator Jim Henson, starring David Bowie. You can find tickets to the screening and information about online passes at the Oxford Film Festival website, ox-film.com.
The Oxford Film Festival has announced a lineup of 158 films for its 2021 edition. This year’s festival will be an online/in-person hybrid running March 24-28 and April 1-30. Last year, OFF, led by Melanie Addington, was forced to pioneer the pandemic film festival format while the rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic made gathering in person too dangerous. This year, screenings will happen in person for one weekend, March 24-28, at a special outdoor theater created by Malco at the Oxford Commons and a drive-in at Oxford High School. Then, the films will be available virtually on the Eventive platform, which was created by a Memphis-based company.
“As we continue to prepare for next month’s film festival, we want to be very clear about the aggressive steps we are taking in order to make our film festival safe so our patrons can begin to get back to enjoying the movie going experience in the company of other people again,” says executive director Melanie Addington. “Therefore, we are being very careful with a measured approach utilizing the open-air theater we have designed specifically for this purpose—with safety always first, so we all can enjoy one of the best group of films we have ever had this year. We have spent the past year safely providing films via drive-in and will include that experience in this year’s festival. We will monitor COVID and weather concerns and will make changes as needed closer to the event.”
Among the festival’s spotlight screenings is the documentary Horton Foote: The Road To Home. The filmmakers filmed the award-winning screenwriter and playwright at age 90 to piece together the highlights of his seven decade career, which included creating the screenplays for To Kill A Mockingbird, Tender Mercies, and The Trip to Bountiful.
Oxford Film Festival Announces 2021 Lineup
On the narrative side, artist-turned-director Olivia Peace’s debut comedy Tahara deals with the confusion and exhilaration of two best friends who can’t quite decide if they’re in love or not.
Oxford Film Festival Announces 2021 Lineup (2)
OFF’s headlining throwback screening is from one of Mississippi’s greatest artists. In 1986, Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets, teamed up with Lucasfilm for a mind-bender. Labyrinth stars David Bowie as the Goblin King Jareth, who kidnaps the baby bother of ordinary girl Jennifer Connelly. The revered fantasy classic is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year.
Oxford Film Festival Announces 2021 Lineup (3)
The competition films include Jake Mahaffy’s arthouse horror Reunion, produced by Memphian Adam Hohenberg.
Oxford Film Festival Announces 2021 Lineup (4)
You can find out more about the lineup and information on passes, both in-person and virtual, at the Oxford Film Festival website.
The Lost Boys leads off the Shocktober Time Warp Drive-In
For the last five years, the October edition of the Time Warp Drive-In has been the most popular. It’s horror movie season after all, and the Warp crew knows what you want.
This year’s ghoulish festivities kick off with a choice slice of ’80s cheese. The Lost Boys made stars of Kiefer Sutherland (who delivers the immortal line “Maggots, Michael. You’re eating maggots. How do they taste?”); Corey Haim and Corey Feldman (collectively known from that moment on as “They Coreys”); and Jason Patric. Joel Shumacher’s best film also features a cameo by Tim Copello, aka Saxophone Guy from Tina Turner videos, whose oiled physique and powerful mullet make him the most pure avatar of the Reagan Era.
Shocktober V Gets Scary At The Time Warp Drive-In
The next film continues the theme of secret suburban vampires. The directorial debut of writer/director/actor triple threat Tom Holland, Fright Night is set in the then-present-day of 1985, but it has a charming classic Hammer horror quality to it. It features Chris Sarandon as Jerry Dandridge, mild-mannered mom-dater by day, bloodsucking freak by night. Or something like that. Fright Night is one of those cult horror films that actually deserves its cult.
Shocktober V Gets Scary At The Time Warp Drive-In (2)
Then the vamp action moves from the ‘burbs to the city. Tony Scott’s illustrious directing career began in 1983 with a bang. The Hunger stars the super-sexy pairing of Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie as vampire lovers on the prowl in New York City, and Susan Sarandon as their next snack. Check out this trailer, which uses “perverse” as a selling point.
Shocktober V Gets Scary At The Time Warp Drive-In (3)
The final Shocktober film takes its vampires to a rural setting. Near Dark was the second film from director Katherine Bigelow, who would later go on to become the first woman to win a Best Director Academy Award. It was a flop upon release, but has been elevated to cult status by horror cinephiles for its sheer inventiveness. Is this the first appearance of the “vampires move around in the day time in blacked out automobiles” trope that Buffy The Vampire Slayer loved so much?
Shocktober V Gets Scary At The Time Warp Drive-In (4)
The Time Warp Drive-In starts at sundown on Saturday, October 20 at the Malco Summer Drive-In.
Cinephiles looking for entertainment on hump night are in luck this Wednesday.
You’ll be loving Bowie as the alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth
At the Brooks Museum, Memphis underground filmmaker and Bowie scholar Mike McCarthy is presenting a night of art and film devoted to Ziggy Stardust. The main attraction is Nicholas Roeg’s 1976 sci fi classic, The Man Who Fell To Earth. It’s David Bowie’s greatest film role, an inadvertent portrait of a man at the end of his rope. I’ve always thought the movie looked a little washed out, but as you can see from this trailer, the brand new 4K digital remastering has really brought out the subtleties in Roeg’s color sense. An art making reception begins at 6 PM at the Brooks, with the film program, featuring McCarthy and U of M professor Virginia Soloman, staring at 7 PM.
Big Movie Night In Memphis With Bowie At The Brooks and Sundance Winner The Russian Woodpecker at Ridgeway
Across town at the Malco Ridgeway Grill, Indie Memphis’ Wednesday film series presents this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner The Russian Woodpecker. It’s an experimental documentary by Russian artist Fedor Alexandrovich, in which the filmmaker and crew explore mysteries of the former Soviet Union deep inside the Chernoybl Exclusion Zone. If that doesn’t sound spooky enough for you, try this trailer on for size.
Big Movie Night In Memphis With Bowie At The Brooks and Sundance Winner The Russian Woodpecker at Ridgeway (2)
No, I’m not just saying “Dear, God” to be saying it. I’m writing an open letter. So here goes.
Dear, God, at this point I’m just pissed off. If you are indeed real, are you the one running this universe? Are you the one aligning or misaligning the planets? Are you the one who let Merle Haggard and David Bowie both die earlier this year — on their birthdays, no less? And now Prince? PRINCE? At age 57?
Mark Milstein | Dreamstime.com
Prince
What in God’s name (Oops! Sorry!) were you thinking? Have you lost your mind? I know you have that giveth and taketh away thing going, but really? Prince at 57? I think you can do better. My best friend cried for two solid days about Prince. Are you happy you made her do that? This is one of those losses — like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and John John Kennedy — that will make us all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news. I, for one, was having my brain examined in a workshop with my coworkers. You don’t want to know the results. And learning that Prince had just died didn’t help matters at all.
Why don’t you take out someone whom we’d be better off without, like Ted Cruz? Take that idiot now, and give us back Prince. Hell, (Oops! Sorry again!), take Tom Cruise. Take him and all the rest of the Scientologists. We don’t need them.
Mark Milstein | Dreamstime.com
Prince
Oh, dear. I can hear my phone ringing and email pinging now. The last time I mentioned the Scientologists, just in passing, their public relations person at the celebrity center in Nashville contacted me. Apparently, someone in Collierville (Collierville!) turned me in. Who would have thought there were Scientologists in Collierville?
She was all unnerved because I made a crack about them and told me I should call her if I wanted to find out what Scientology was really all about. So I told her, “Look, I had to deal with you people for years when Isaac Hayes was still alive, and you people are freaks. Don’t try giving me the runaround, because I know you, and not one of you is able to explain this without lying through your teeth.”
I don’t think she was too thrilled. I wonder if that’s why I found a dead rat in my bedroom the other morning. No, that was a gift from my tomcat, who also knocked over my flat-screen television (I finally got one!) the other day and caused me to crack a rib trying to catch it before it hit the floor. So now I have a torn intercostal muscle in one side of my ribs and a cracked rib on the other side. AND I have a spider bite on my arm. I’m falling apart. I have high blood pressure, low blood sugar, tendinitis, sinusitis, carpal and ulnar tunnel in my wrists, arthritis, vertigo while driving, degenerative disc disease, horrible allergies, dry eye syndrome, acid reflux, anxiety disorder, and a cyst the size of a fig on my elbow. But at least I have a tomcat!
I also have a handwritten letter on my office wall from former United States ambassador to Germany, Philip D. Murphy, which opens with the salutation, “Dear TimCat.” I kid you not. It ends with the line, “You make me so proud to be an American!” Yes, he underlined it. Can you believe that? He wrote me the letter (by hand!) a few years ago after I took some Stax Music Academy students to Berlin to perform for him and a lot of other people, AND he cried after they performed. So there.
But back to my open letter to God about Prince. Why would you take such a sweet, handsome, fashionable, shy musical genius from us and let all of these terrorists and Republicans stick around to drive us nuts? Is this some kind of a bizarre test? Why not take Donald Trump? Good Lord (Oops! Sorry again!). You’re going to let someone with that hair stay alive and take Prince away from us? Have you even heard “When Doves Cry”? Well, the doves are sobbing their guts out now, so thanks for nothing.
Why not take Marie Osmond, the most frightening person ever to walk this insane planet? Oh, wait. You may have created this planet. Sorry. But if you did, you could still do better. Look at Houston. All flooded. Oh, sorry. There’s no flooding anymore; it’s “ponding.” When did flooding become “ponding”?
ARE YOU UP THERE? If you are, what are you doing? Deciding which genius musician to take out next? We not only want Prince back, but we also want Alex Chilton as well. We’ll give you Ted Cruz, Tom Cruise, Donald Trump, Marie Osmond, AND Taylor Swift if you’ll give us back Prince, Alex Chilton, Isaac Hayes, Maurice White, Bobby Blue Bland, David Bowie, and Merle Haggard. Sound like a deal?
Mark Milstein | Dreamstime.com 
Mark Milstein | Dreamstime.com