Hard liquor and hip-hop music go together like, well, gin and juice. The Beastie Boys’ “Brass Monkey” was named for their circa-1980s cocktail of choice, Olde English 800 malt liquor and orange juice. In 2001, when Busta Rhymes’ “Pass the Courvoisier” climbed the charts, sales of the cognac brand increased by 30 percent. Nine years later, Sean Combs boosted Ciroc’s sales by an astonishing 70 percent when he became a brand ambassador for the premium vodka.
Researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health and the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at John Hopkins examined the 2009-2011 Billboard charts and searched lyrics of top-sellers to determine just how frequently musicians talk about booze. As Time magazine reported in a 2013 follow-up on the Johns Hopkins study, nearly 38 percent of hip-hop songs reference alcohol — more than country and pop hits from the same years combined.
Now, Memphian Al Bailey — aka rapper Al Kapone, known for lyrics like “If I had some Crist’ or some Mo’ then I’d be poppin’ it” — is leveraging his success by crossing over to the liquor game.
Since 2010, Bailey has worked with Illinois-based liquor purveyor Bill Brooks to promote novelty spirits. Recently, the duo collaborated on a pair of brand-new brands, Hustle Vodka and Memphis Heat Cinnamon Whiskey, now available in stores around town and at clubs such as the Hard Rock Café, PurpleHaze Nightclub, and Club 152.
Last weekend, Bailey did a meet-and-greet at Gordin’s Liquor & Wine on Prescott Avenue. The team at West Tennessee Crown Distributing, says Bailey, is setting up more regional promotional dates for September and the fall.
Al Kapone
What was your first drink?
My first drink was the hardest drink, the rotgut stuff — Mad Dog 20/20. I got drunk as hell, and then I threw up everywhere. I wanted to feel what it feels like to get drunk, so I drank a lot. [Laughs] Mad Dog 20/20 has made an everlasting impression on my life.
When do you usually drink?
First, I’m a light social drinker. I might have a drink when I just want to relax at home. And then there are the times I just want to have fun, kick it, and get turnt up. For that, I usually go to the Hard Rock or DKDC.
“Get crunk, get buck?”
You already know.
Any rules about drinking when you’re going onstage?
I drink very moderately before a performance, just enough to knock the edge off. Then I take a little cup on stage with me and take a sip here and there.
Hustle Vodka — how do you like to drink it?
With cranberry juice. It’s a corn-based vodka, and it’s actually pretty smooth. A lot of premium brands give me a headache, but I don’t feel hungover from this the next day, which is a super-plus. Hustle Vodka is for that drink you make yourself after a hard day. You’ve got to hustle to eat and survive in this world, and this brand is meant to be the alcohol that you take to drink and relax.
And the Memphis Heat?
At first, I wasn’t sure about getting behind cinnamon whiskey. I wanted to work with Bill, but I have to like the product, too. My reputation is more important than making money. But the more I tried Memphis Heat, the more I loved it. It’s like Fireball, but I think it tastes better. I drink it on the rocks, or I mix it with Sassy Girl, a cream liqueur, to create a cocktail called the Bonnie & Clyde.
Any other go-to drinks?
If I’m not drinking a brand I’m associated with, Jack and ginger.
What can the public expect when they run into you at the liquor store?
Well, we can’t give away any free alcohol. I’ll be handing out CDs and signing autographs, making it a fun event. You know how I love to represent Memphis!
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.”
March 5th will forever be a historical day for Memphis.
On this date in 2006, the city’s very own Three 6 Mafia became the first rap group to win an Academy Award. Their track “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp” won in the Best Original Song category at the 2006 Oscars.
DJ Paul and Juicy J, along with then-labelmate Frayser Boy, penned the track. It appeared in Hustle & Flow, a film written and directed by fellow Memphian Craig Brewer.
Check out footage of DJ Paul, Juicy J and Frayser Boy winning and accepting the award below.
“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.
Although I’ve been writing for the Flyer since August 2000, I’ve been to Memphis twice, I’ve been to the Flyer offices once, and I’ve never had a face-to-face or over-the-phone conversation with any current staff member. It’s strange to write for a community and a readership that’s so far away; sometimes it feels like the only thing connecting Minneapolis (where I live and work and write) to Memphis (where my writing gets published) is the Mississippi River.
Such is the life of the carpetbagging freelancer, I guess. But oddly enough, I’ve never felt like an outsider. And I have a hunch that Flyer readers and Southern cinephiles can identify with me whenever I think about my own strong, mixed feelings when it comes to the way the movies depict my part of the country. I’m a lifelong Midwesterner, and for better or worse, there isn’t much mythology about flyover country. (That’s why it’s called “flyover country.”) Most people are satisfied by Don Rickles’ take of Midwestern living: “Honey, let’s shoot that cow and turn in early.”
At least Rickles’ wisecrack was funny. Most of the movies I’ve seen set in the Midwest use a shot of rudeness like that. Far too often, though, they either go too far or not far enough. I may dislike and distrust Fargo, but one Coen Brothers misfire and a lifetime of answering stupid questions about it is nothing compared to all those times I’ve seen Southerners, or the South in general, trotted out as a cheap punch line in movies for the past quarter-century. At best, this is unfortunate. At worst, it’s divisive and harmful.
In today’s placeless, CGI-enhanced movie landscape, films with an eye for local color matter more than ever before. But what makes a movie “Southern,” anyway? Is it the way certain scenes seem to absorb and reflect those ineffable, geographically specific qualities of light, heat, and atmosphere? Is it the characters’ propensity for florid colloquialisms? Is it the accents themselves? Is it something as simple as the shots of the Holly Springs, Mississippi, water tower in Cookie’s Fortune? Or is the whole cinematic idea of the South a bunch of hogwash these days — an act of pure imagination invented by writers and actors and artists in the same way that Turner invented London fog.
I don’t know for sure. My notions of the South come from lived and vicarious experience: two visits to Memphis; a fine steak dinner at Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville, Mississippi; a peep through the window at William Faulkner’s Oxford home; a couple of stops in Austin, Texas; a raft of books (Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Barry Hannah, Sanford Levinson’s Written in Stone, and the film criticism of Alabama native Jonathan Rosenbaum); a whole lot of pop music; and a bunch of movies, the best of which respect their location and the people who might live in it.
So here, in order of their release date, are 25 movies that inform this Yankee’s sense of the South as a place and a state of mind. Just so you know, I limited myself to fiction films, and I included movies from Texas. Also, the exclusion of certain films does not necessarily entail a critical judgment. (I mean, sometimes it does, but you get the picture.)
1. Mystery Train (1989): The intersection of South Main and Calhoun/G.E. Patterson is one of the first images I see whenever I think about Jim Jarmusch or Memphis.
2. One False Move (1992): My most fervent hope is that the ghosts of now-closed video store clerks chant the name of this film while haunting the nightmares of anyone who’s ever used a Redbox.
3. Dazed and Confused (1993): “Okay, guys, one more thing. This summer, you’re being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth of July brouhaha, don’t forget what you’re celebrating, and that’s the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic white males didn’t want to pay their taxes. Have a good summer!”
4. Ruby in Paradise (1993): Look at the beautiful alternate-universe Ashley Judd in this movie in wonder.
5. The Neon Bible (1995): English filmmaker and memory maestro Terence Davies takes John Kennedy Toole’s perfectly average first novel and transforms it into an aching, factless visual autobiography of a place he’s never known.
6. Ghosts of Mississippi (1996): Unlike Mississippi Burning, this is legitimate filmmking as historical inquiry.
Nightjohn
7. Nightjohn (1996): For those who feel like 12 Years A Slave is missing something.
8. Lone Star (1996): For Elizabeth Peña and Chris Cooper in love.
9. Sling Blade (1996): For autumn leaves and John Ritter’s performance.
10. The Apostle (1997): Nobody moves that book. Nobody moves that book. Nobody moves that book. Nobody moves that book.
11. Cookie’s Fortune (1999): “Because I fished with him” — As Leon Rooke might say, “they’s truth there.”
12/13. George Washington (2000) and All The Real Girls (2003): from the mixed-up files Eastbound and Down co-creator David Gordon Green.
14. Hustle & Flow (2005): Craig Brewer knew that the perfect time to cue up “Jesus is Waiting” is when a kindly pimp and aspiring hip-hop star (Terrence Howard) is at the crossroads.
15. The Devil’s Rejects (2005): Released the same weekend as Hustle & Flow, Rob Zombie’s masterpiece also has the best use of “Free Bird” in the movies.
16. Junebug (2005): Church basements and a winning star turn by Amy Adams.
17. Elizabethtown (2005): It’s all over the place, but it’s very good at showing how going home is a form of time travel, and it features the second-best use of “Free Bird” in the movies.
18. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2006): T for Tommy Lee Jones.
19. Black Snake Moan (2006): Whoa.
20. Shotgun Stories (2007): My favorite Jeff Nichols movie.
21. Goodbye Solo (2008): Yes.
22. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009): In which Nicolas Cage tries to pour all of the Southern Gothic tradition into the body of a limping, crazy crackhead detective.
23. Winter’s Bone (2010): That Jennifer Lawrence might grow up to be something.
24. Bernie (2011): Mainly for Sonny’s explanation of the five states of Texas (minus the panhandle, of course).
In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Memphis Flyer (our first quarter quell, as it were), I have chosen my personal favorite film from each year since the Flyer began publication. Then, for each of those films, I unearthed and have excerpted some quotes from the review we ran at the time. — Greg Akers
1989: #1 Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch (#2 Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee)
“While all the scenes in Mystery Train are identifiable by anyone living west of Goodlett, their geographical relationship gets altered to a point where we start to trust Jarmusch more than our own memories.” — Jim Newcomb, March 8, 1990
“Filmed primarily at the downtown corner of South Main and Calhoun, Jarmusch does not use the Peabody Hotel, the Mississippi River, Graceland, or most of the other locations that the Chamber of Commerce would thrust before any visiting filmmaker. His domain concerns exactly that territory which is not regularly tread by the masses, and his treatment of Memphis is likely to open a few eyes.”
— Robert Gordon, March 8, 1990
1990: #1 Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese (#2 Reversal of Fortune, Barbet Schroeder)
“This may not be De Niro’s best-ever performance, but he’s got that gangster thang down pat. His accent is flawless, his stature is perfect, and, boy, does he give Sansabelt slacks new meaning.”
— The Cinema Sisters, September 27, 1990
1991: #1 Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron (#2 The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme)
“Terminator 2 is an Alfa Romeo of a movie: pricey, sleek, fast, and loaded with horsepower. By comparison, the first Terminator was a Volkswagen. On the whole, I’d rather have a Volkswagen — they’re cheap and reliable. But, hey, Alfas can be fun too.” — Ed Weathers, July 11, 1993
1992: #1 Glengarry Glen Ross, James Foley (#2 The Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann)
“Mamet’s brilliantly stylized look at the American Dream’s brutality as practiced by low-rent real estate salesmen who would put the screws to their mothers to keep their own tawdry jobs doesn’t relax its hard muscle for a moment. In the hands of this extraordinary cast, it is like a male chorus on amphetamines singing a desparate, feverish ode to capitalism and testosterone run amuck.”
— Hadley Hury, October 15, 1992
1993: #1 Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater (#2 Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg)
“Dazed and Confused is a brief trip down memory lane. The characters are not just protagonists and antagonists. They are clear representations of the folks we once knew, and their feelings are those we had years and years ago. Linklater doesn’t, however, urge us to get mushy. He is just asking us to remember.”
— Susan Ellis, November 4, 1993
1994: #1 Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino (#2 Ed Wood, Tim Burton)
“Even though Tarantino is known for his bratty insistence on being shocking by way of gratuitous violence and ethnic slurs, it’s the little things that mean so much in a Tarantino film — camera play, dialogue, performances, and music.”
— Susan Ellis, October 20, 1994
1995: #1 Heat, Michael Mann
(#2 Toy Story, John Lasseter)
“I’m sick of lowlifes and I’m sick of being told to find them fascinating by writers and directors who get a perverse testosterone rush in exalting these lives to a larger-than-life heroism with slow-motion, lovingly lingered-over mayhem and death, expertly photographed and disturbingly dehumanizing.”
— Hadley Hury, December 21, 1995
1996: #1 Lone Star, John Sayles
(#2 Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen)
“Although Lone Star takes place in a dusty Texas border town, it comes into view like a welcome oasis on the landscape of dog-day action films … Chris Cooper and Sayles’ sensitive framing of the performance produce an arresting character who inhabits a world somewhere between Dostoevsky and Larry McMurtry.”
— Hadley Hury, August 8, 1996
1997: #1 L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson (#2 The Apostle, Robert Duvall)
L.A. Confidential
“L.A. Confidential takes us with it on a descent, and not one frame of this remarkable film tips its hand as to whether we’ll go to hell or, if we do, whether we’ll come back. We end up on the edge of our seat, yearning for two protagonists, both anti-heroes … to gun their way to a compromised moral victory, to make us believe again in at least the possibility of trust.”
— Hadley Hury, October 2, 1997
1998: #1 Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg (#2 The Big Lebowski, Joel and Ethan Coen)
“Spielberg is finishing the job he began with Schindler’s List. He’s already shown us why World War II was fought; now he shows us how. … Spielberg’s message is that war is horrifying yet sometimes necessary. And that may be true. But I still prefer the message gleaned from Peter Weir’s 1981 masterpiece, Gallipoli: War is stupid.” — Debbie Gilbert, July 30, 1998
1999: #1 Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson (#2 The End of the Affair, Neil Jordan)
“Magnolia is a film in motion; there’s a cyclical nature where paths are set that will be taken. It’s about fate, not will, where the bad will hurt and good will be redeemed.”
— Susan Ellis, January 13, 2000
2000: #1 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee (#2 You Can Count On Me, Kenneth Lonergan)
“Thrilling as art and entertainment, as simple movie pleasure, and as Oscar-baiting ‘prestige’ cinema. Early hype has the film being compared to Star Wars. … An even more apt comparison might be Singin’ in the Rain, a genre celebration that Crouching Tiger at least approaches in its lightness, joy, and the sheer kinetic wonder of its fight/dance set pieces.”
— Chris Herrington, February 1, 2001
“What happens when Eyes Wide Shut meets E.T.? What does the audience do? And who is the audience?”
— Chris Herrington, June 28, 2001
2002: #1 City of God, Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund
(#2 Adaptation., Spike Jonze)
“The mise-en-scène of the film is neorealist, but the cinematography, editing, and effects are hyper-stylized, as if The Bicycle Thief had been reimagined through the post-CGI lens of Fight Club or The Matrix.”
— Chris Herrington, April 3, 2003
Lost in Translation
2003: #1 Lost in Translation, Sofia
Coppola (#2 Mystic River, Clint Eastwood)
“Lost in Translation is a film short on plot but rich with incident; nothing much happens, yet every frame is crammed with life and nuance and emotion. … What Coppola seems to be going for here is an ode to human connection that is bigger than (or perhaps just apart from) sex and romance.”
— Chris Herrington, October 2, 2003
2004: #1 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry
(#2 Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino)
“This is the best film I’ve seen this year and one of the best in recent memory. Funny, witty, charming, and wise, it runs the gamut from comedy to tragedy without falling into either farce or melodrama. Its insights into human loss and redemption are complicated and difficult, well thought out but with the illusion and feel of absolute spontaneity and authentic in its construction — and then deconstruction — of human feelings and memory.”
— Bo List, March 25, 2004
2005: #1 Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee (#2 Hustle & Flow, Craig Brewer)
“The film is a triumph because it creates characters of humanity and anguish, in a setup that could easily become a target for homophobic ridicule. Jack and Ennis are a brave challenge to the stereotyped image of homosexuals in mainstream films, their relations to their families and to each other are truthful and beautifully captured.” — Ben Popper, January 12, 2006
2006: #1 Children of Men,
Alfonso Cuarón (#2 The Proposition, John Hillcoat)
“As aggressively bleak as Children of Men is, it’s ultimately a movie about hope. It’s a nativity story of sort, complete with a manger. And from city to forest to war zone to a lone boat in the sea, it’s a journey you won’t want to miss.”
— Chris Herrington, January 11, 2007
2007 #1 Zodiac, David Fincher
(#2 There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson)
“[Zodiac is] termite art, too busy burrowing into its story and characters to bother with what you think.”
— Chris Herrington, March 8, 2007
2008: #1 Frozen River, Courtney Hunt (#2 The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan)
“Frozen River is full of observations of those who are living less than paycheck to paycheck: digging through the couch for lunch money for the kids; buying exactly as much gas as you have change in your pocket; popcorn and Tang for dinner. The American Dream is sought after by the dispossessed, the repossessed, and the pissed off.”
— Greg Akers, August 28, 2008
2009: #1 Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze (#2 Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron)
“I know how ridiculous it is to say something like, ‘Where the Wild Things Are is one of the best kids’ movies in the 70 years since The Wizard of Oz.’ So I won’t. But I’m thinking it.”
— Greg Akers, October 15, 2009
2010: #1 Inception, Christopher Nolan (#2 The Social Network,
David Fincher)
“Nolan has created a complex, challenging cinematic world but one that is thought through and whose rules are well-communicated. But the ingenuity of the film’s concept never supersedes an emotional underpinning that pays off mightily.”
— Chris Herrington, July 15, 2010
2011: #1 The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick (#2 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tomas Alfredson)
“The Tree of Life encompasses a level of artistic ambition increasingly rare in modern American movies — Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood might be the closest recent comparison, and I’m not sure it’s all that close. This is a massive achievement. An imperfect film, perhaps, but an utterly essential one.”
— Chris Herrington, June 23, 2011
2012: #1 Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow (#2 Lincoln, Steven Spielberg)
“Zero Dark Thirty is essentially an investigative procedural about an obsessive search for knowledge, not unlike such touchstones as Zodiac or All the President’s Men. And it has an impressive, immersive experiential heft, making much better use of its nearly three-hour running time than any competing award-season behemoth.”
— Chris Herrington, January 10, 2013
2013: #1 12 Years a Slave, Steve
McQueen (#2 Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón)
“Slavery bent human beings into grotesque shapes, on both sides of the whip. But 12 Years a Slave is more concerned with the end of it. McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley are black. It’s one of those things that shouldn’t be notable but is. If you consider 12 Years a Slave with The Butler and Fruitvale Station, you can see a by-God trend of black filmmakers making mainstream movies about the black experience, something else that shouldn’t be worth mentioning but is.”
— Greg Akers, October 31, 2013
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