Tag: Johnny Depp

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Time Warp Drive-In Feels The Best of the Burn

Dazed and Confused

Every year, the Time Warp Drive-In series dedicates one of its monthly programs to celebrate psychedelia in all its forms. Gotta hand it to ’em, they know their audience.

This Saturday night at the Malco Summer Drive-In is the Best of the Burn — audience favorites from the previous years’ burn nights. First up is the Richard Linklater classic that made master monologist (and possible Texas gubernatorial candidate) Matthew McConaughey a household name. Dazed and Confused is the ultimate hangout movie. Think American Graffiti, if everyone was stoned the whole time. Here’s a clip where you can hear one of McConaughey’s now-timeless line readings: “It’d be a lot cooler if you did.”

The second film of the evening is one of the great literary adaptations of all time. Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is about a journalist blowing an assignment to cover a motorcycle race. So relatable. Misunderstood cinematic genius Terry Gilliam was perhaps the only person capable of bringing this one to life. In this clip, Thompson’s literary doppleganger Raoul Duke, played by not-yet-superstar Johnny Depp, tries to check into a hotel with the help of his attorney, a not-yet-superstar Benicio del Toro. “Ignore this terrible drug.”

The third film of the evening has been called the genesis of the stoner movie genre. Who but OG counterculture comedians Cheech and Chong could have made Up In Smoke? Here’s how the movie was sold in 1978. They don’t make trailers like this any more.

And finally, the granddaddy of them all, Reefer Madness. Rarely has any film, or any work of art at all, had its meaning so thoroughly reversed as Tell Your Children, the film produced by a church group to keep kids off the devil’s cabbage. Instead, it was bought by an exploitation producer Dwain Esper, who changed the title to Reefer Madness. Check out this warning of what will happen if you touch “the weed with its roots in Hell!” The intended audience’s reaction was “Don’t threaten me with a good time!”

The Time Warp Drive-In starts at dusk on Saturday at the Malco Summer Drive-In.

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Let’s Do The Time Warp Drive-In With John Waters

Divine goes on a fabulous crime spree in Pink Flamingos

September’s Time Warp Drive-In honors the patron saint of bad taste, John Waters.

The first film of the evening is Water’s underrated 2000 romp Cecil B. Demented. Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith) is a movie star who is kidnapped by the Sprocketholes, a group of “kamakazie filmmakers” including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mike Shannon, Alicia Witt, and Stephen Dorff as the titular demented director.

Let’s Do The Time Warp Drive-In With John Waters

Next is an early Johnny Depp vehicle, Cry-Baby. It’s about as fifties rock and roll, juvenile delinquent, bobby sox-y as you can get, daddy-o!

Let’s Do The Time Warp Drive-In With John Waters (2)

Then, at midnight, the infamous Pink Flamingos. This is the movie that made Waters internationally infamous for leading lady Divine’s…shockingly inappropriate dietary choices. Here’s just a taste of the drag legend’s take-no-prisoners performance, where she calls in the press to watch as she gets her kill on. Don’t watch this is if you’re at work or around decent human beings.

Let’s Do The Time Warp Drive-In With John Waters (3)

I have never seen the final film of the evening, Waters and Divine’s followup to their breakthrough semi-hit, Female Trouble. But I have to say that this is one of the most kick ass trailers I have ever seen.

Let’s Do The Time Warp Drive-In With John Waters (4)

The show starts Saturday night at sundown at the Malco Summer Drive-In. 

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Film Features Film/TV

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

On July 22, 2003, a huge derecho tore through the Mid-South. Hundred mile per hour straight line winds devastated Memphis, leaving seven people dead and more than 300,000 MLGW customers without power. The storm would come to be known as Hurricane Elvis.

The No. 1 movie in the country that July was Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. It was something new for Disney: a film based on a theme park ride. Pirates of the Caribbean was the last Disneyland ride Walt Disney personally oversaw before his death in 1967 — which led to the rumor that his body was cryogenically frozen in a secret chamber underneath the ride. The company had made rides from films before, like the Star Tours ride in Disneyland, which was the first collaboration between Lucasfilm and the House of Mouse, but this movie seemed like a case of the tail wagging the dog.

It turned out to be a huge success, thanks to a bravado performance by Johnny Depp as the pirate Jack Sparrow and fleet-footed direction from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, native Gore Verbinski. Verbinski was a music video director (he did the clip for Monster Magnet’s “Negasonic Teenage Warhead”) who had made a killing in commercials (he did the one where the frogs croak “Bud-wise-er”), and the low-stakes world of pirate fantasy was a perfect fit for him. For Depp, it marked the moment where he crossed the line from successful actor to household name.

Now, in 2017, Memphis has once again been torn to pieces by an unexpected summer storm, and a Pirates of the Caribbean movie is once again topping the box office. Coincidence?

Consider this: The two Verbinski-directed sequels, Dead Man’s Chest (2006), and At World’s End (2007) earned a collective $2 billion at the box office without inciting a major Memphis weather incident, but then came 2011’s On Stranger Tides. Verbinski stepped aside to count his money and make the excellent animated film Rango, and director Rob Marshall took the helm of the Disney pirate ship. Marshall holds the distinction of making the most expensive film ever produced. Depending on who you believe, On Stranger Tides cost either $378 or $410 million. While it was setting records at the box office, the Mississippi River was topping a 77-year-old record for the highest floodwaters ever recorded at Memphis.

And now, here we are. Pirates once again has new direction: the Norwegian commercial team of Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg. Befitting the third-largest power outage in MLGW history, Dead Men Tell No Tales was budgeted at a relatively modest $230 million. To put that in perspective, that’s also the total gross of the yearlong Guns N’ Roses reunion tour. For $230 million, you could go to the actual Caribbean, build a new international airport in the capital of Dominica, and still have $10 million left over. The total value of tips given to Lyft drivers since the service started in 2012 is $200 million, so the producers would have enough money left over to fund the $30 million Twitter paid for the Vine video service, which it subsequently shut down.

$230 million is a lot of money. And yet, somehow, it’s not enough to produce an entertaining film. People thought it was delightful in At World’s End when Depp successfully lobbied for a cameo from Keith Richards, on whom he based his surly, slurring portrayal of pirate captain Jack Sparrow. This time around, they inexplicably got the famously chipper and articulate Paul McCartney for a pirate cameo, and I’m not sure Depp’s drunken pirate act was an act. The whole affair seems lazy, stupid, and tossed off. At least Verbinski knew how to have fun while wasting Disney’s money.

So, the bad news is, every time a new director is hired for a Pirates of the Caribbean film, Memphis gets clobbered with a natural disaster. The good news is, Dead Men Tell No Tales is currently showing in air conditioned movie theaters. While you’re waiting for the power to be restored in the wake of Hurricane Depp, you can nap in comfort for 129 minutes or even longer if you get there before the trailers start. At least then Disney’s $230 million investment will have done some good.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
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Film Review: Black Mass

I’m on record as saying the gangster movie is a played-out genre, except I think I phrased it more like “If I have to watch another movie about well-dressed gangsters in the Northeast, I’m gonna puke.”

I know gangster movies have been a staple since at least 1931, when Jimmy Cagney strutted around in The Public Enemy, and I know that, at their best, they’re a commentary on the American dream, capitalism, the immigrant experience, etc. But lately, it seems like they’re a shortcut to gravitas for a bunch of writers and directors who are obsessed with a vision of masculinity that, in 2015, seems increasingly toxic. I’ve gone beyond the point where I think it’s fun to watch jowly men scowl at each other across well-appointed tables. We get it. You liked The Godfather. Let’s move on.

It would be too much to say that Black Mass dispelled me of that notion, but director Scott Cooper’s film is good enough to suggest that maybe there’s life left in the old gangster movie carcass yet. To be fair, James “Whitey” Bulger (Johnny Depp) and his totally legitimate business associates in the Winter Hill Gang were not, by any stretch of the imagination, well dressed.

Black Mass marks a return to serious acting for Johnny Depp.

Black Mass is told in a series of flashbacks, as members of Bulger’s gang, beginning with Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemons) are deposed by the FBI. In their memories, Bulger was just as contradictory a figure as Cagney in The Public Enemy. He was a ruthless, violent thug, but he also was kind to children, let his mother win at gin rummy, and was beloved in the South Boston neighborhood where he grew up. By the time we first meet him in 1975, he has already served nine years years in San Quentin and Alcatraz, and was a respected boss in Boston’s Irish mob.

Instead of getting mobbed up, Bulger’s childhood friend John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) joined the FBI. He reaches out to Bulger’s brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch), a state senator and one of the most powerful men in Boston, to make contact with Bulger and persuade him to become an informant. Amazingly, Bulger agrees, but as the story progresses through the 1980s, it soon becomes apparent that Bulger is just manipulating Connolly to his own ends and using the FBI as his personal intelligence agency as he consolidates power.

After spending most of the last decade playing over-the-top characters like Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and whatever nutso man-child character Tim Burton was peddling that year, the buzz was that Black Mass represented Depp’s return to serious acting. He is easily the best thing about the movie. His Bulger is introduced as a demonic presence in silhouette, and he seems to remain partially in shadow the entire film, even in scenes set in Miami’s tropical sunlight. Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi never misses a shot to make Depp’s partially shaved noggin look like a death’s head skull perched atop his ubiquitous black leather jacket. Edgerton, who is excellent at playing men blind to their own flaws, follows Depp around like a puppy as he is drawn deeper into the world of criminals he’s supposed to be fighting. Also excellent are Kevin Bacon as a Connolly’s FBI boss, and Cumberbatch, whose Southie accent is so perfect you’d think he grew up there.

Unfortunately, the screenplay is not up to the level of the performances and cinematography. Part of the problem is that the real story itself is kind of flat, with no peaks and valleys, just a slow slide into degradation for everyone involved. No matter how well-rendered Bulger is, he’s still a singularly loathsome individual who may or may not have been pushed into full blown psychosis during more than 50 LSD experiments he volunteered for while in Alcatraz. Watching him run roughshod over the corrupt city government and weak-willed FBI agents is like reading about World War II’s Eastern front—you don’t want to root for either Hitler or Stalin. It makes for a bleak view of humanity dressed up in tacky 70s clothes and some of the worst hairstyles ever committed to film. But if you’re a fan of gangster movies and/or Depp, Black Mass is the best dose you’re going to get this year.

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Cibo Pizza’s Mystery Sign

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In the March issue of Memphis magazine, I gathered the children around me and told them the beautiful, inspiring, and ultimately heartrending tale of Cibo’s Pizza. The story was so compelling that now Hollywood has come a’calling, and I’m presently reviewing several scripts for a movie to be called Searching for Cibo, with Johnny Depp slated to play the lovelorn chef, and … well, I won’t give it away. But let’s just say that Julia Roberts was such a hit in Mystic Pizza that it seems (to me, anyway) a natural career move for her to star in another pizza movie. It can only help her.

For those of you who have yet to to read the March column, Cibo was a short-lived pizza chain in Memphis, and in my typically thorough telling-you-more-than-you-asked manner, I even tracked down the addresses of all the branches in town. According to old telephone directories, one of them was located at 4495 Summer, close to Perkins. But they all closed years ago.

So what am I to make of this photograph, submitted by my pal Pat Rohrbacher, showing a genuine old Cibo’s sign mounted on a pole behind Grahamwood Cleaners, close to the intersection of Summer and Graham, which is quite a long way from Perkins? As far as I know, no Cibo’s was ever located here. Furthermore, the sign isn’t even visible from either Summer or Graham.

Now, just as soon as I can borrow a quarter for the pay phone, I’ll call the folks at Grahamwood Cleaners to see what they know about it. I’m pretty sure I dropped some change in the sofa here . . .