Tag: Mike McCarthy

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Ceremony To Celebrate Johnny Cash Statue By Mike McCarthy

CREDIT: Dan Ball

Dan Ball

Mike McCarthy with his clay sculpture of Johnny Cash, before casting.

Wednesday, June 12 at 5:00, Memphis will finally behold the culmination of years of planning and painstaking work, with the unveiling of a statue of a young Johnny Cash. The larger-than-life likeness at 999 South Cooper will stand only a few feet from where Cash played his first paid performance at Galloway Church with Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant in December, 1954.

I spoke with Mike McCarthy, better known for his underground comics and films, about the process of making his original vision a reality, and his experience with working in the new medium of sculpted clay.

Memphis Flyer: How did this all come about? Many people don’t even realize that Johnny Cash played at what was then called Galloway Church.

Mike McCarthy:  So seven years ago, I thought to myself, ‘Cooper-Young needs a Johnny Cash statue. And Galloway Church needs to be saved.’ Then I met this strange cast of characters that took me on this journey that, seven years later, amounts to a statue.  I’m extremely happy. And maybe I’m amazed, to quote Paul McCartney. Because I can’t believe that it actually happened. These things take time. At one point, we were in a moment of crisis where, if I didn’t do the sculpture myself, it wasn’t gonna happen. And frankly it was an honor and a privilege, and I would have done it for free. Many people don’t even know I did it. They think I’m affiliated with it, but they don’t understand that I actually sculpted it. At the end of the conversation, they’re like ‘Wait a second, you actually sculpted it?’

I have said that Memphis is under-statued. And it’s becoming more under-statued. So why don’t we replace these statues or create new statues that are rockabilly-oriented, blues-oriented, 70s rock-oriented. Create an entire milieu of Memphis music history with statues, so American Dream Safari, say, can drive by that. We need more statues of historical musical legends in Memphis. That’s why I helped start Legacy Memphis. Then, when I became the sculptor, I stepped down from that nonprofit. From the beginning, our motto was ‘Every neighborhood has a hero.’

You usually work in other media. How did you rise to the challenge of sculpting?

Thirty-five years ago, I had a sculpture class at the [then] Academy of Art with John McIntire, and you can read about him in Robert Gordon’s It Came From Memphis. After I read that book, it all made sense to me, the beauty of the man who is John McIntire. When you move here from Mississippi to do your thing, you’d be best off just being quiet and soaking it all in, and go ahead and do whatever someone like McIntire says.

So I had that experience, and I knew I was up to the task of this project. I sculpted it in oil-based clay in my living room for about ten months. It was here in my house over Christmas. We strung Christmas lights on it. For me, having a piece of public artwork that supersedes anything I thought I would ever be able to accomplish, after coming from film and comics and other underground things I’ve done, is very gratifying.

I tend to be very philosophical about these things. Having something that was spawned out of my living room, that my kids were around and watched take shape, and can still go see after I’m gone, is wonderful. They’ll always be able to drive by that statue, and that means a lot.

How did things proceed once you finished the clay sculpture?

Then it was cast into bronze at the Lugar Foundry. One of the nicest things to occur out of all this is my friendship with the Lugar family, with Andrea and Larry. I’m sure the Flyer readership is very familiar with their statues: Chief Seattle at the zoo, Bobby Blue Bland downtown by the Chisca Hotel, Elvis on Beale Street. When I went out to see the statue at the foundry in Eads the other day, I was extremely gratified. I’m very happy to have worked with all these people to have made this happen.

Johnny Cash Statue & Historic Marker Unveiling, Wednesday, June 12, 5:00-7:00 pm, 999 South Cooper; with refreshments and music by Roy Cash and Thomas Gabriel (Johnny Cash’s oldest grandson).

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Onscreen Women Dominate Indie Memphis

Eileen Townsend in ‘Two Whole Days of Nothing But Uppercase F*CK!’

Indie Memphis’ salute to the Bluff City in May continues this week with two programs featuring strong women.

On Tuesday, May 21st, Indie Memphis’ venerable Microcinema series presents a selection of shorts by women directors from Memphis.

The program doubles as a who’s who of Memphis female filmmakers, including Rachel Taylor’s fantasy “Avarice,” Sarah Fleming’s whimsical travelog “Carbike,” Munirah Safiyah Jones’ savage comedy “Fuckboy Defense 101,” Aisha Raison’s “Girls Like Me: A Self Love Story,” McGehee Montieth’s Memphis Film Prize winner “He Could Have Gone Pro,” Melissa Anderson Sweazy’s childcare parable “John’s Farm,” Sissy Denkova’s “Sabine,” Nubia Yasin’s Youth-Fest sensation “Sensitive,” Kathy O. Lofton’s “Tether,” Laura Jean Hocking’s surreal mood piece “Two Whole Days Of Nothing But Uppercase Fuck,” and Deaara Lewis’ “What If?”

Show starts at 7:00 PM at Crosstown Arts.

TETHER OFFICIAL TRAILER from Kathy O Lofton, MBA, MPA on Vimeo.

Onscreen Women Dominate Indie Memphis

Then, on Wednesday at Studio on the Square, Memphis’ indie originator Mike McCarthy is celebrated with a screening of his 2000 magnum opus Superstarlet A.D. McCarthy’s career has been defined by taking high concept film, culture, and feminist theory and wrapping those ideas in the cinematic language of the low-budget, drive-in grindhouse. Nowhere is that more evident than in this post-apocalyptic romp.

Tickets are available at the Indie Memphis website, but don’t take the kids to this one.

Superstarlet A.D.

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Music Record Reviews

The Sore Losers: A Monstrous Mash-Up Rises From The Grave

One of the highlights of last year’s Gonerfest 15 was the screening of director Mike McCarthy’s The Sore Losers at Studio on the Square. Having received the full remastering treatment, it jumped off the screen as never before, combining the best of modern digital clarity with the richness of its original analog film stock. The film, first released in 1997, is an often hilarious Zippin’ Pippin ride through exploitation, low budget sci-fi, and B-movie tropes. But it also provided a portal into the (then) unheralded underground music scene of the era.

Last November, the soundtrack was released on vinyl via Goner Records and Portugal’s Chaputa! Records. It’s barely left the turntable since. For what this double LP offers is nothing less than a reanimated, full-strength Frankenstein’s monster of ’90s garage rock, retro rock, and lo-fi experimentalism.

If the movie itself is a brilliant hodge-podge of styles, so is the album. The tracks are not just lo-fi, they are different varieties of lo-fi, from the late Jack Taylor’s bashed-out title song, to the terrifying/thrilling onslaught of Guitar Wolf, to the quavering homespun charm of Poli Sci Clone. Satisfyingly snotty vocals and chugging/chopping guitars abound, as in contributions by the Makers, the Drags, Gasoline, and Los Diablos del Sol, but many artists you might think you have pegged defy formula altogether.

People were already nostalgic for the Gories by 1997, but Mick Collins avoids that familiar territory with a kind of minimalist crime jazz built on the prominent sax work of Jim Spake. Nick Diablo’s track is reminiscent of Can’s “Ethnographic Forgery” series, with Diablo channeling a lost field recording of some aged Delta harp player. Tracks from ’68 Comeback and Jack Oblivian are littered with wah-wah guitar, organ, and synth hiccups that are true to the flick’s sci-fi universe. Or, in the case of Jack Oblivian’s back-shed funk “Vice Party,” the flick’s soft porn universe. 

Dan Ball

The Clears

One gem, highlighted at the film’s Gonerfest 15 premiere in the form of a 1997 music video that was never released, is “We Are a Rock & Roll Band” by synth pop trio the Clears. Also known as “Rock & Roll Band” to fans of the Clears’ standalone album, the different title may be appropriate, as either a remix or a remastering has given the soundtrack version considerably more snap and crackle. Jack O and Chris Clarity also mine that back corner of the garage where grandpa stores his synthesizers.

Mingled in with all these sonic adventures, we also hear some first rate songwriting. The closer, of course is the 1953 chestnut, “Look Me Over Closely,” (later popularized by the White Stripes), but we also hear the neo-classic swamp pop of the Royal Pendletons, whose “I’m a Sore Loser” is perhaps even more a definitive track than Taylor’s. 

The Royal Pendletons

And finally, in stark contrast with so much clamor, side three closes with the simple, haunting “Bad Man” by Greg Oblivian/Greg Cartwright, all mellow guitar, toy piano, and disembodied, over-the-phone vocals. The recurrence of that track through the film anchors it in a seemingly incongruous mood of regret and heartache. Though it no doubt surprised many Oblivians fans at the time (for this was well before the Reigning Sound), it’s an especially fitting cornerstone for a film built on, and reveling in, incongruities.

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Music Music Features

Rock Docs: The Story of Memphis’ Black & Wyatt Records

Why would two doctors want to start a record label? Ask Dennis Black and Robert Wyatt of Black & Wyatt Records, and they’ll tell you it’s because they love Memphis music.

Black is a pediatric gastroenterologist, and Wyatt is a pediatric nephrologist. They met through their work at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and bonded over their love of music, particularly Memphis rock-and-roll.

Wyatt says even though he’s lived and practiced medicine in Memphis since the 1980s, for many years he was unaware of the city’s fertile underground music scene. “When I had a division to run, a research lab, and a family to raise, I missed out. My lab techs were going to the Antenna Club, but I never did.”

Dennis Black (left) and Robert Wyatt (right)

Black grew up in Covington and worked at the town’s radio station, WKBL, in high school, then for Memphis State’s WTGR “Music has kind of been my hobby all along,” he says. “Unfortunately, I can’t really play. But I like hearing live music, and I have a good record collection.”

“About the time $5 Cover came out, I started paying attention to Memphis bands and meeting Memphis musicians,” Wyatt says.

After he got to know several Memphis musicians through the cleaning company, Two Chicks and a Broom (“Valerie June cleaned our house for a fairly long period of time.”), he started hiring bands to play for yard parties at his home in 2012. The Harbert Avenue Porch Show has since attracted Jack Oblivian, the River City Tanlines, Snowglobe, and James and the Ultrasounds, to name a few.

“He’s his own little institution, with the porch shows,” says filmmaker Mike McCarthy, a Memphis punk pioneer whose daughter Hanna Star was also featured in a porch show.
“Mike approached me about wanting to put the Fingers Like Saturn album out,” says Wyatt. Fingers Like Saturn was a band McCarthy formed to feature Cori Dials (now Cori Mattice), a singer and actress he met while working at Sun Studios in 2006. He saw Mattice sing with her band the Splints. “They were good, but she looked like a Chrissie Hynde/Debbie Harry figure — lost in time, full of charisma.”

McCarthy wrote a bunch of songs and gathered keyboardist Shelby Bryant, sax player Suzi Hendrix, cellist Jonathan Kirkscey, and guitarist George Takeda. Then he put guitar wizard Steve Selvidge on drums, which, amazingly, works just fine.

Dan Ball

Fingers Like Saturn

“I introduced Cori to this group of talented eccentrics,” says McCarthy. “She jumped right into it.”

The band recorded at Sun Studios and at Selvidge’s home studio. “I’ve always played in punk bands, but I wanted this band to be a well-produced glam-rock band,” says McCarthy.

Filled with Memphis heavy hitters and held together with Mattice’s powerful alto, the glam influence is palpable, especially in songs like the Bowie-worshipping “Glam Lies.” But, since it’s Memphis, the sounds are more eccentric. “Satin (Pine Box Lullaby)” dabbles in Mexicalia by way of Johnny Cash. “Black Ray of Sunshine,” a ballad about the Black Dahlia, is an early example of the string-arranging skills that have made Kirkscey a sought-after soundtrack composer.

Before the eponymous record could find a label, Mattice’s career took her out of Memphis, and the band drifted apart. Ten years later, McCarthy played the recordings for Black and Wyatt. “We listened to the recordings, and they were really good!” says Black. “It was just a conspiracy of events that it didn’t get a wide release at the time. If we were going to do it, we decided to make it a really nice record.”

Fingers Like Saturn will reunite at DKDC on October 24th for Black &
Wyatt’s first record release party. But the label-mates are already looking forward to their next release: a single by the Heathens, a Memphis high school garage band that recorded at Sun Studios in 1956. Black and Wyatt plan to continue releasing a mixture of contemporary Memphis acts and lost gems from the 60-year history of Memphis rock.

“We’re not in it to become millionaires,” says Black. “We have our day jobs. We want to get the music out there.”

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Music Music Blog

Flyer Exclusive: First Look at New Johnny Cash Statue

CREDIT: Dan Ball

Dan Ball

Artist Mike McCarthy contemplates sharing his Cash with the world.

Mark Lovell, who has partnered with Darrin Hillis in running the Delta Fair since it began in 2007, has a soft spot for Johnny Cash. This year, the fair will host a Johnny Cash Family Reunion. But that’s not the half of it: Lovell is also the current owner of the former Galloway United Methodist Church on Cooper and Walker. The fact that the building witnessed Cash’s first ever performance with band mates Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins, in 1954, is not lost on him.

Indeed, since early 2017, preparations have been made for a larger-than-life statue of Cash to be erected on or near the church grounds. Local auteur Mike McCarthy, who is as adept with clay as he is with paper, pen, and celluloid, has recently completed the work, which occupied a place of honor in his living room as he worked on it for over a year.

Leigh Wiener

Johnny Cash

“While I am no longer involved in the daily goings-on of Legacy Memphis (the non-profit I co-founded),” says McCarthy, “I believe there is an effort to unveil the statue, perhaps as early as November, in front of the new apartment building between Stone Soup and Galloway United Methodist Church.”

Most of Midtown has been abuzz about the work since McCarthy was contracted to create the work last June. Here, at long last, the Memphis Flyer presents an exclusive preview of McCarthy’s work: the clay form from which a bronze statue has already been cast by the local Lugar Foundry. The work is based on a period-appropriate photo of Cash, from early in his career. Of course, the bronze version won’t sport those red buttons, which McCarthy lovingly lifted from one of his late mother’s dresses.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: Behind The Scenes With Kubrick and The Sandlot

Tonight at Malco Ridgeway, Indie Memphis presents Filmworker, the story of Leon Vitali. An actor who landed the part of Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon, Vitali gave up a promising acting career to become Stanley Kubrick’s right hand man through the 1970s, 80s, and 1990s. The documentary is a story of creativity’s highs and lows, and a warts-and-all account of the making of some of the greatest films ever. Tickets are going fast for this one. They are available over on the Indie Memphis website.

This Week At The Cinema: Behind The Scenes With Kubrick and The Sandlot

Meanwhile, over at the Paradiso, there’s a 25th anniversary screening of The Sandlot, a cult coming-of-age film about a young boy who moves to Los Angeles and wants to learn to play baseball.

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On Thursday at the Paradiso, there’s a filmed version of a Broadway musical version of a film: Newsies.

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This week, the Orpheum Theatre’s Summer Movie Series hits a trio of high notes. First on Friday is the all-time classic The Wizard of Oz. If your kids have never seen it, they need to. If you haven’t seen it in a while, it richly rewards repeated viewings. If you don’t know anything about it, educate yourself with this trailer:

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Once you’ve gotten your fix of Judy Garland fighting witches, head on over to the Midnight at the Studio, where Mike McCarthy is presenting one of the most unlikely onscreen love stories ever made, Harold and Maude. The film about a May-December romance between a young pessimist and an old optimist plays at the witching hour on both Friday and Saturday.

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Saturday night, The Orpheum returns with a sorely needed double feature for our superhero-obsessed times. At 5 PM, it’s Superman. Richard Donner’s 1978 film is a tour de force of pre-CGI special effects. Even 40 years and literally hundred of superhero movies later, no actors have come close to either Christopher Reeve’s performance as Superman or the recently departed Margo Kidder’s turn as Lois Lane.

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Then, after you freshen your soda and popcorn, The Orpheum presents Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. Often considered the first modern superhero movie, its success in 1989 was by no means a sure thing. That’s why Warner Brothers attached their biggest musical star to do the soundtrack. It doesn’t get much attention now, but “Batdance” was Prince’s fourth song to hit #1 on the Billboard pop charts, the R&B charts, and the dance charts all at the same time. Check out this batshit crazy video, directed by Purple Rain helmer Albert Magnoli.

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See you at the cinema! 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: Gentrification and Good Grief

Good Grief

Tuesday night at Studio on the Square, Indie Memphis presents Little Pink House, a dramatization of a true story of a community in Connecticut who resisted destructive gentrification all the way to the Supreme Court. Catherine Keener plays Suzette Kelo, the plaintiff in Kelo vs New London, a case which resonates today. Showtime is 7 p.m. Here’s the trailer:

This Week At The Cinema: Gentrification and Good Grief

On Wednesday, the film which swept the Hometowner awards at last year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival, Good Grief, will play at Malco Studio On The Square. The screening is a fund-raiser for the Kemmons Wilson Center for Good Grief, the Memphis facility that is the subject of the film. Directors Melissa Anderson Sweazy and Laura Jean Hocking will be on hand, along with the grief center’s Executive Director Angela Hamblen Kelly, with Q&A hosted by Joann Self Selvidge.

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Over at Crosstown Arts on Wednesday night is this year’s Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Short, “Heaven Is A Traffic Jam  On The 405,” presented by Indie Memphis.

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Then on Friday, Mike McCarthy’s Midnight at the Studio returns with one of the most infamous, but misunderstood, films of all times, Todd Browning’s 1932 Freaks. Browning had previously directed Bela Lugosi in Dracula, and for his follow up, he drew on experiences he had running away with the circus as a teenager. The results are like nothing before or since.

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 See you at the movies! 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: Soccer and Sundance

With the World Cup and the Thai soccer team rescue in the headlines, it’s a good time for a soccer doc.

The Workers Cup

Migrant African workers in Qatar are currently building facilities for the 2022 World Cup. It’s a hellish existence that borders on slavery. The worker’s only outlet is a soccer tournament, held on the very fields they’re constructing. The Workers Cup is by director Adam Sobel and producers Ramsey Haddad and Rosie Garthwaithe, and it’s screening at Malco Ridgeway tonight at 7 PM. You can get tickets on the Indie Memphis website.

This Week At The Cinema: Soccer and Sundance

Tonight is also the 50th Anniversary screening of The Beatles’ only excursion into animation, Yellow Submarine at the Paradiso.

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On Wednesday, Indie Memphis Microcinema presents an encore of the 2018 Sundance short films at Crosstown Arts.

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Friday night will be busy, with two very different possibilities to fulfill your entertainment needs. At the Orpheum Theatre, the summer goes into small gear with Joe Johnston’s debut special-effects romp, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.

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Then Mike McCarthy’s Midnight at the Studio continues with Alejandro Jodorowski’s groundbreaking psychedelic western El Topo.

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On Sunday at the Paradiso, Turner Classic Movies hosts the 30th anniversary of the film that made Tom Hanks a superstar, Big. Directed by Penny Marshall, it was the first film directed by a woman to gross more than $100 million.

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See you at the movies! 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Get Psychotronic With Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls Midnight at the Studio

“I illustrated VHS covers for Something Weird Video, and Mike Vraney paid me in movies, with eccentric gems like Mom & Dad and Sex Kittens Go To College,” says Memphis filmmaker Mike McCarthy “This led to me curating a [VHS] series of exploitation films called Cinema Augraten at a little hole-in-the-wall pub called Barristers, where I showed Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls in 1994 or ’95 to a drunken and cheering crowd. Now you can buy a beer at Studio on the Square and actually sit down in a comfy seat and watch it. Who says there’s no such thing as progress?”

This weekend at Studio on the Square, McCarthy’s Midnight at the Studio series continues with Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. The film, produced and directed by legendary schlockmeister Russ Myer, has the distinction of being Roger Ebert’s sole screenwriting credit. Ebert was a much better critic than he was screenwriter, but this in-depth exploration of what the straight world thought was shocking in 1971 must be seen to be believed. They just don’t make trailers like this one any more:

Get Psychotronic With Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls Midnight at the Studio

Beyond The Valley of the Dolls screens at midnight on Friday and Saturday (or Saturday and Sunday, if you’re being technical) at Studio on the Square. 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: Sordid Lives and Reefer Madness!

It’s gonna be stupid hot outside this week, so cool off with one of the many special film events hitting big screens in the 901.

Sordid Lives

Tonight, Tuesday, June 26th at Studio on the Square, Indie Memphis presents The King, a documentary by two-time Sundance winner Eugene Jarecki. The filmmaker takes Elvis’ Rolls Royce on an epic road trip through America, seeing sites and interviewing guests from Presley biographer Peter Guralnick to Chuck D. This one’s a don’t-miss. Tickets are available on the Indie Memphis website.

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On Wednesday, June 27th, the Malco Kids Summer Film Fest presents the 1998 Dreamworks animated musical The Prince of Egypt at the Paradiso and various other theaters all over their network.

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That night (Wednesday), the final film of the Outflix Summer Series screens at Studio on the Square. Sordid Lives is a cult-classic, LBGTQ comedy of the culture clash that comes when the matriarch of a small-town Texas family unexpectedly dies in the midst of a tryst with a much younger man. This 2000 film by playwright turned filmmaker Del Shores stars Olivia Newton John and Delta Burke, and later spawned a TV series.

This Week At The Cinema: Sordid Lives and Reefer Madness!

Across town at Railgarten, Indie Memphis presents an encore performance of the 2017 Memphis music video bloc, featuring 28 works pairing Memphis filmmakers and musicians.

Here’s just one example from hip hop mogul and Memphis Flyer‘s current cover model IMAKEMADBEATS. This animated extravaganza was #2 on our list of Best Memphis Music Videos of 2017.

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Then, on Friday and Saturday, June 29th and 30th, a new screening series debuts. Curated by Memphis’ own master of psycho-tronic madness, Mike McCarthy, Midnight At The Studio sets the tone for late-night, cinematic mischief with the accidental 1936 classic Reefer Madness. As the laugh-a-minute trailer so seriously intones, “see this important film now, before it’s too late.”

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See you at the cinema!