When I was fresh out of college and in search of gainful employment, I applied to a bunch of jobs that required me to know Adobe Photoshop without my actually having any idea how to use Photoshop. I figured that it couldn’t really be that hard, since various tween-age members of my family seemed adept at it. I figured I’d fake it until I made it.
But when I got my first assignment that required me to know how to lasso pixels (what is this, really?) I panicked. I had about 24 hours to figure out what I was doing or else look dumb. So I got a subscription to Lynda, a website that has tons of very useful tutorials that teach you how to use everything from architectural design software to Adobe products. It is an extremely useful tool for both beginning and veteran designers who want to keep up with fast-changing software (note: this is not being paid for by Lynda. It is a great website.) It isn’t design focused, either; there are tutorials on business and coding as well. The downside is that at $25 per month, the site is relatively expensive for people on a limited budget.
Which is why it rules that the Memphis Public Library announced recently that it will provide Lynda to library cardholders for free, thanks to support from the Memphis Library Foundation.
From the Library’s blog post about the new development:
“Customers can customize their own curricula with more than 122,000 individual tutorial videos, covering a range of topics from desktop and office software to photography, web development, graphic arts, recording and audio engineering, marketing, technical skills, business strategies, creative techniques, career development and more. Customers interested in computer programming, coding, computer-aided drafting, IT management, web design, music, 3-D animation, and other related areas of study will find courses to match their interests as well. Certificates of completion are available for customers who want to measure progress or build their resumes.
… ‘The Library’s mission has always been about providing customers access to the information they need and want, in whatever format works best – books, audio, video, or online,’ noted Collection Development Manager Alan Stewart. ‘We’re delighted to be able to extend and enhance our mission by offering these high-quality e-learning resources from Lynda.com.'”
Time to learn all the Adobe products on the cheap. Thanks, MPL!
Two summers ago, El Dorado Del Ray, Joey Killingsworth, and John Pickle asked me to play heavy metal with them in a band called Super Witch. I hadn’t had a band to play with in a while, and while I had played jangle pop, indie, punk, noise, and all kinds of guitar rock since I first took up the bass when I was 15 years old, I had never actually played heavy metal before. So I said yes, and I’ve been glad I did. I’ve learned a lot from these guys, made some new friends, and become a better bass player for it. We’ve been slowly recording an album with Dik LeDoux’s Au Poots studio and Rocket Science Audio’s Kyle Johnson, and now it’s finally ready for public consumption. Along the way, we also made some music videos.
John Pickle is not just a great drummer, but he’s also a Memphis filmmaking pioneer. For years in the 1990s, he created the legendary public access TV show Pickle TV, which brought gonzo insanity to unsuspecting cable subscribers all over the land. He’s made two Super Witch music videos. The latest is “The Need”, in which he used some footage of us recording the song in the studio to demonstrate what a great editor he is.
Music Video Monday: Super Witch (2)
The first Super Witch music video was “Army Of Werewolves”, where Pickle took the opportunity to create a video based on a simple concept he had been tossing around for a long time. All four members of the band shot our segments separately for this one, but one thing I can tell you is that if you detune your bass so the strings flop around enough to capture on camera, you’ll probably break your nut. Thanks to John Lobow for fixing it for me afterwards.
Music Video Monday: Super Witch
And finally, here’s a Super Witch video I directed. Last year, we played an awesome show at Black Lodge Video that was captured on film by Christopher Woodsy Smith. Around the same time, the Maiden protests in Kiev, Ukraine were going on, and I noticed that some videos I was seeing from the street riots had a very similar color pallette as the Black Lodge footage. So my wife and editor Laura Jean Hocking and I cut together scenes from the two sources into this video for “House Of Warlocks”. I’m very proud of it, and I hope you like it, too.
Thank you for indulging my conflict of interest. If you would like to see your music video in this space next week, please email me at cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Today’s Music Video Monday features gratuitous automotive destruction.
Back in 2012, hard-touring Memphians Lucero got a new van to replace their worn-out old one. They could have sold the old one for scrap, but instead they chose the rock and roll option: Trash the van, and make a music video out of it. Director Jonathan Pekar captured the celebratory destruction and created this raucous video for “Women & Work”.
Music Video Monday: Lucero
If you would like to see your video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
A film with deep Memphis connections has won a major prize at the 72nd Venice Film Festival in Italy, which concluded last weekend.
Free in Deed
Free In Deed, a joint US/New Zealand production helmed by Jake Mahaffy, won the prize for Best Film in the festival’s Orizzonti category, beating out 34 other films from all over the globe.
The Orizzonti category is for “films that represent the latest aesthetic and expressive trends in international cinema.” The lead judge for the category was legendary filmmaker Jonathan Demme.
Director Mahaffy opened his acceptance speech by thanking his Memphis crew: “This is a very collaborative kind of filmmaking. I can’t mention everything but I want to mention a couple of things – first of all the City of Memphis that had a profound soul and we did our best to capture some of that. I am grateful to the people who participated.”
Director Jake Mahaffy accepts the Orizzonti prize for Best Film at the 72nd Venice Film Festival in Italy.
Included in the large crew that shot the film here last year were Memphians Ryan Watt, Nicki Newberger and Adam Hohenberg, who served as associate producers. Acclaimed Memphis filmmakers Sarah Fleming and Morgan Jon Fox served as first assistant director and unit production manager, respectively, with Gloria Belz providing hair and makeup. Among the 51 Memphians with speaking parts in the film are RaJay Chandler, Prophetess Libra, and musician Preston Shannon. New York producer Mike Ryan, who has brought numerous films to the Bluff City over the past few years, served as one of three lead producers.
The film tells the story of a Pentecostal minister trying to save an ailing young boy through faith healing.
September sees two Time Warp Drive-Ins. The first, happening this Saturday at the Summer Drive-In, is the Cartoon-A-Palooza.
We are living in a golden age of animation. Once relegated to the kiddy pool, now animation is accepted as a fully adult medium Most of the great works of animation, such as Chuck Jones 1938-62 work for Warner Brothers, was aimed at both the juvenile and adult audiences, but it was taboo for a grown up to admit they liked cartoons. Nowadays, it’s cool for old and young alike to be Pixar fans, but if you had to point at the moment when the tide turned, it would be 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Time Warp Drive-In: Cartoon-A-Palooza
Between filming Back To The Future and its two sequels, director Robert Zemeckis loosely adapted a 1981 genre mashup novel called Who Censored Roger Rabbit? The amount of negotiation it took to put so many different company’s characters in one film is staggering to contemplate. Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, to cite just one example, had to have exactly the same amount of screen time. But it was worth the hassle, because Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Has held up incredibly well. Its seamless blending of animation and live action has proven to be a blueprint for how special effects movies are made in the CGI era. But most importantly, it’s just plain fun for everyone.
Time Warp Drive-In: Cartoon-A-Palooza (2)
On the internet, Space Jam is remembered for its website, which has been online and unchanged for 19 years. It’s a family friendly marraige of live action and animation in the Roger Rabbit vein. It’s notable for being Michael Jordon’s only big screen acting role, and the highest-grossing basketball movie of all time.
Time Warp Drive-In: Cartoon-A-Palooza (3)
Like Space Jam, Heavy Metal was also the brainchild of producer Ivan Reitman. But that’s where the similarities end. Although it came out in 1981, it can be seen as the last gasp of 70s psychedelia. And it’s definitely not made for kids. The anthology of stories adapted from the British comic magazine whose name it shares are a unique blend of sci fi, fantasy, raunch, and drug humor. It’s a little uneven, because each segment was produced by different animators, and the years have applied a layer of cheeseiness. Bit it has survived as a cult classic, and I have to admit I’ll watch it every chance I get.
The final film of the evening is Fritz The Cat. The legendary counterculture film launched the career of Ralph Bashki, and raised the public profile of cartoonist R. Crumb, on whose work the film is based. It’s raucous and funny, and definitely of its time. One can’t help but think that the biggest reason it was so controversial was because it was ahead of its time in trying to create animation that was aimed at adults, not kids
To the untrained ear, Memphis mayoral candidate Jim Strickland’s plan to reduce crime seems reasonable.
“We need to have zero tolerance for violent crime,” said the Memphis City Council member during a debate last month.
But when he elaborates, he stumbles and disappoints.
“And when I say that, I mean right now, if a juvenile commits a violent act on another human being, they are not automatically taken down to juvenile court,” he continued. “That’s not zero tolerance. That’s the exact opposite. They need to be taken down to juvenile court.”
With that statement, Strickland ignores the mountains of research about young minds and the yawning school-to-prison pipeline.
He brushes away this nation’s shameful history of policing black bodies and, worst of all, overlooks recent history at Shelby County Juvenile Court, which treats black children more harshly than white kids.
His rhetoric isn’t quite a dog whistle, but it’s pandering to our basest instincts.
In theory, a civilized society acknowledges that children and teens, their developing brains incapable of consistent impulse control, deserve more care and compassion than adults.
But in practice, the adult instinct to protect children crumbles under the weight of racial stereotypes. In fact, a 2014 study published by the American Psychological Association found that police officers surveyed saw black boys as 4.5 years older than they were and less innocent.
The most recent context for Strickland’s tough-on–crime stance is a handful of videotaped brawls of black “teen mobs,” as branded by local media. One cell phone video captured an attack at an East Memphis Kroger grocery store (read: supposed to be safe). Another video showed a fight at the once-highly regarded White Station High (read: where fights aren’t supposed to happen).
Through this lens, Strickland’s pleas to enforce the curfew laws sound like smart public policy.
But the relevant context takes a wider view of history, stretching back to Reconstruction and the birth of the nation’s Jim Crow curfew laws, designed to restrict the movement of formerly enslaved men and women.
Follow Strickland’s plan to its logical conclusion in a predominantly black city, and juvenile court will overflow with children whose chief mistake was knuckling up at school or in their neighborhoods.
Private schools, which house the overwhelming majority of the city’s white school-age children, can shield their students’ bad behavior from the public eye.
But for public school students, most of whom in Memphis are black, the hammer of indiscriminate zero tolerance policies falls hard.
According to a recently released report on school suspensions and expulsions in Southern states, researchers found that “[B]lacks were 23 percent of students in school districts across the state [of Tennessee], but comprised 58 percent of suspensions and 71 percent of expulsions.”
Factor in the local evidence, and Strickland’s crime-fighting strategy goes from ill-advised to indefensible.
In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) determined that Shelby County Juvenile Court treats black children more harshly than white children.
“Black children are more likely to be detained pre-adjudication, less likely to receive warnings and lesser sanctions, and more likely to be transferred to criminal court,” wrote DOJ civil rights investigators in a scathing report.
Just this July, the federal monitor reported that the court has shown a “serious lack of progress” in reducing disproportionate minority contact. “Although the overall number of youth held in secure detention has decreased, a racial gap remains and, in fact, has increased, and race still matters once all other factors are considered,” the monitor wrote.
It gets worse: The Memphis metro area has the nation’s highest rate of “disconnected youth,” defined as people between the ages of 16 and 24 who aren’t in school or employed.
The burden of a criminal record makes residents virtually unemployable and ineligible for many college loans, decimating their chances to build wealth and, in doing so, gain true freedom.
Flawed criminal justice policies have disastrous results for communities of color. Strickland, the only white mayoral candidate with a chance to win, should know this.
He has time to amend his platform before the October election, although a more nuanced approach may alienate his Poplar-corridor base (read: mostly white and more affluent than the rest of the city).
But an informed, evidence-based crime-fighting plan is the responsible thing to do — for Memphis’ children and the city’s future.
This weekend, September 3-6, marks the ninth installment of the music festival, which benefits the Church Health Center. 29 fine examples of Memphis music will play at Crosstown and Overton Square, including Jack Oblivian, Nots, Mancontrol Stephen Chopek, Mark Edgar Stuart, Hope Clayburn, and the North Mississippi Allstars. You can see the full lineup here.
Folk rockers Deering and Down will play Saturday night at Lafayette’s. The dreamy video for “You’re The One” was directed by Matteo Servente. It makes extensive use of projection mapping, a relatively new technique for manipulating video to conform to—or often distort—the surfaces onto which it is projected. The projection mapping used here, which doubles as lighting for Lanna Deering’s ethereal performance, was created by Christopher Reyes.
Music Video Monday: Deering and Down
If you would like to see your video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. We’ll see you at Rock For Love!
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.”
Today’s Music Video Monday is the latest from a Memphis original.
He’s a founding member of Three 6 Mafia, an Academy Award winner, and the guy who taught Miley Cyrus how to twerk. Juicy J. is one of, if not THE, most successful Memphis musicians of the twenty first century. His latest music video “For Everybody” is a basic studio shoot featuring the man himself and guest rappers Whiz Khalifa and R. City. It’s racked up more than 3 million YouTube views since June, and it probably goes without saying that it’s NSFW.
Music Video Monday: Juicy J
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Since you’re hard at work this Monday, your weekly music video is from the hardest working man in the Memphis music video business.
“Rock On” is Muck Sticky’s 45th music video. Yeah, you read that right: Bartlett’s cannabis-infused rapper has made more music videos than Duran Duran. His eye for trippy imagery, relentlessly upbeat attitude, and taste for a good time has earned him fans worldwide. If “Rock On”‘s catchy, 90s guitar hook and positive vibe lyrics are any indication, he has no intention of slowing down anytime soon.
Music Video Monday: Muck Sticky
If you would like to see your opus featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
