Tag: Sundance

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Sundance in Memphis

Shery Bechara and Lilas Mayassi appear in Sirens by Rita Baghdadi, an official selection of the World CInema: Documentary Competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Rita Baghdadi. All photos are copyrighted and may be used by press only for the purpose of news or editorial coverage of Sundance Institute programs. Photos must be accompanied by a credit to the photographer and/or 'Courtesy of Sundance Institute.' Unauthorized use, alteration, reproduction or sale of logos and/or photos is strictly prohibited.

Sundance, the largest and most prestigious film festival in the United States, was not immune to the effects of the Covid pandemic. Last year, the festival went to a hybrid model, which included both screenings online and adopting a number of satellite screening locations all over the country. Indie Memphis was one of the regional festivals that partnered with Sundance to bring the independent films produced outside of the Hollywood system, which the festival specializes in, to local audiences. The satellite screening partnerships were so successful that Sundance decided to make it a permanent part of their program, even before the Omicron variant put a damper on the usual festivities in Park City, Utah.

In a time when the film business is in a state of flux, and the fates of Sundance’s up-and-coming filmmakers looks more uncertain than ever, these partnerships represent a great opportunity for both the festivals and the audience. Indie Memphis will be one of only seven places in the United States where you can watch Sundance 2022 films in person. “We are honored to keep the theatrical element alive at Sundance this year with these Indie Memphis screenings at Crosstown, especially the screenings with Memphians involved and present,” says Indie Memphis Artistic Director Miriam Bale.

The weekend of film at Crosstown Theater kicks off on Friday, January 28th, at 6 p.m. with Sirens. In this documentary, director Rita Baghdadi profiles Slave to Sirens, the Middle East’s only all-female thrash-metal band. It is both a portrait of a pioneering cultural and musical force, and a personal, street-level look at the impact decades of political dysfunction and war have had on the once-vibrant city of Beirut.

On Saturday, January 29th, a full day of programming starts at 11 a.m. with two shorts and a feature. Every Day in Kaimuki is a product of the increasingly vibrant indie film scene in Hawaii. Director Alika Tengan tells the story of Naz, a native Hawaiian who has spent his life longing to leave for places with more opportunity. But once it looks like he’ll get his wish and move to New York with his girlfriend, he starts to feel some doubts.

One of the two shorts screening at 11 is “What Travelers Are Saying About Jornada del Muerto” by director Hope Tucker. The experimental documentary travels to New Mexico, near where the first atomic bomb was tested, to get advice on making “the journey of the dead.” Tucker is a former Memphian who now teaches at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She will be on hand for a Q&A after the film. “It’s particularly exciting to be able to have a specific local connection to these films, which will make these experiences more singular,” says Indie Memphis programmer Kayla Myers.

At 2 p.m. is Free Chol Soo Lee. The documentary is about a 20-year-old Korean immigrant who, in 1973, was wrongly accused of murder in San Francisco, and the investigative reporter who fought to clear his name. At 6 p.m. is La Guerra Civil, a documentary by actor-turned-director Eva Longoria Bastón, about the 1996 boxing match between Oscar De La Hoya and Julio César Chávez, which divided the Mexican community on both sides of the border. Then, at 9 p.m., is Emergency. The dramedy by director Carey Williams and screenwriter K.D. Dávila follows a pair of uptight Black college friends whose let-your-hair-down night of partying is thrown into crisis by the addition of an overdosed white girl, and they race to get her help while trying to avoid a confrontation with the cops.

Honk for Jesus

On Sunday, Marte Um (Mars One) begins the program at 1 p.m. A film from Brazilian collective Filmes de Plástico, it dives deep into the lives of a Brazilian family on the eve of the election of right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro. At 5 p.m. is Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul, a mockumentary with some serious star power. Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown star as pastors from an Atlanta megachurch who fell from grace following a scandal and try to return to their former glory, despite having only a handful of congregants left. The final film of the evening is Alice, a film by Krystin Ver Linden, in which an enslaved person escapes in the antebellum South, only to find that, in the world beyond the plantation, it’s actually 1973. Memphian Kenneth Farmer, who acts in the film, will provide an introduction.

You can purchase tickets for Sundance in Memphis at the Indie Memphis website. Admission is $12 per film, $10 for members, and there are discounted ticket packages available.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Sundance in Memphis: The Potter-Lynch Generation

Mayday

On day 4 of Sundance, patterns are beginning to emerge. It’s probably perilous to declare any kind of new trend from a limited sample of moves. Maybe it’s just the films I decided to watch, which are similar. But nevertheless, there are common elements visible on the drive-in and virtual screens.

Take Karen Cinorre’s Mayday. Ana (Grace Van Patten) is a cater waiter working a wedding with her musician boyfriend. When the venue’s electrical systems start shorting out, she is sent downstairs to trip the circuit breaker. Her boss follows her, and assaults her in the freezer next to the ice sculpture. In a dissociative state, she goes to the industrial kitchen and feels called by the oven. She turns on the gas and sticks her head inside, but instead of dying, she falls into an alternate reality. She wakes up on an unfamiliar beach where she meets Marsha (the excellent Mia Goth) and a male pilot who has also washed up lost. Marsha rescues Ana, and as they’re driving away on her motorcycle, the pilot is killed by an unseen sniper.

Ana is adopted by Marsha’s group of women guerrillas, based in a mini submarine, who are embroiled in a vaguely defined war pitting women in against men. The guerrillas are like sirens from Greek myth, attracting men to their deaths on the rocks by sending out fake distress calls. At first, Ana is okay with the new arrangement, and discovers her own excellent eyesight makes her a deadly sniper. But eventually, she starts to question this weird limbo existence and plots ways to return to the real world with the help of a friendly female mechanic (Juliette Lewis).

Carlson Young in The Blazing World

A character escaping their trauma by going into a fantasy world, and who must then decide whether or not it’s worth it to return to the real world, is also the basic plot of writer/director/actor Carlson Young’s The Blazing World. In this case, the situation is more prosaic: Margaret (played by Young) has to return to her parent’s ostentatious mansion to help them move out. She is haunted by the memory of seeing her sister drown in the pool when they were kids, an event which was both caused by and exacerbated her parents’ toxic relationship. Margaret’s inner struggle manifests as increasingly florid, candy-color hallucinations.

Are we seeing the work of a generation of young filmmakers raised on Harry Potter-damaged YA fantasy who discovered David Lynch in film school? When I write that, it kind of sounds derogatory. But the influence of Lynch’s psychotropic epic Twin Peaks: The Return is everywhere at Sundance this year, and I for one am here for it. Indie social realism is all fine and good. The cheap price point of such productions means that we will never have a shortage of that aesthetic. But in the world of 2021, the desktop computer-based digital video technology that has enabled the digital indie revolution since the turn of the century has advanced considerably. Where it used to take up all the available computing power to just render the video and edit shots together, now apps such as Adobe After Effects are available in any homemade editing suite. Now we’re seeing an explosion of visual creativity as a result.

The problem with both Mayday and The Blazing World is in the writing. Both choose style over substance in a way that cannot be excused merely by the film’s budget limitations. But hey, if we’re going to continue to watch movies about the problems of privileged white people (some things never change in the film world), at least it looks cool.

In the Earth

The outlier among my day 4 Sundance viewing was In the Earth. English filmmaker Ben Wheatley is one of millions of people who spent the pandemic year of 2020 working on a new art project. The difference with Wheatley is that he managed to make an entire feature film and get it in Sundance. Wheatley, who previously directed both the chilly J.G. Ballard adaptation High-Rise and the gonzo gun-fu thriller Free Fire, seems liberated by both the speed with which he worked and the total lack of regard for creating marketable material that comes when you’re staring disaster in the face and thinking, “What have I even been doing with my life?”

There’s a world-destroying pandemic on, and two scientists (Joel Fry and Ellora Torchia) are summoned to a rural retreat to pursue their projects, which might save humanity. Instead, they find themselves the subjects of a pair of researchers (Hayley Squires and Reece Shearsmith) who have gone full Captain Kurtz in the woods. They think they have identified an alien intelligence here on Earth which is behind the pagan legends of demons who live in the English countryside, and they are using magic mushrooms, flashing lights, and sounds to try to communicate with it.

In the Earth combines folk horror elements with real-life anxiety, seasoned with a strong dash of John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness. The climax is the kind of intricate, psychedelic trip that can only come from being cooped up by yourself for months with only your editing bay to keep you company. I personally loved this minor miracle of a movie, but my recommendation comes with one big caveat. There’s a strobe light warning at the beginning of the film, and I said to my sensitive wife “Hey, how much can there be? A shot or two?” Well, there’s a lot more than a shot or two. If you’re epileptic, or just have a problem with strobe light effects and quick edits, you should sit this one out. Otherwise, when this one surfaces — as I’m sure it will — horror fans will be treated to one of the most innovative films of the past decade.

Ailey

Monday night at the Malco Summer Drive-In, two films not about the problems of rich White people. The first is Ailey, a documentary by Jamila Wignot about the life of modern dance pioneer Alvin Ailey, which just sold to a distributor hours ahead of its premiere.

Then at 9 p.m., Judas and Black Messiah, director Shaka King’s biopic of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party who was hounded, and perhaps ultimately killed, by the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation. The cast is stacked with first-rate talent, led by Black Panther’s Daniel Kaluuya and Sorry to Bother You’s Lakeith Stanfield.

Sundance in Memphis: The Potter-Lynch Generation

Tickets to Sundance films at the drive-in are available at the Indie Memphis website. 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Sundance in Memphis: A Soul Explosion and All Light, Everywhere

Sly Stone performs at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival in Summer of Soul.

For me, day 3 of Sundance was a more indoor affair.

The drive-in is great, except in the wind and rain. So when the weather decided not to cooperate, my wife and I decided to stick to streaming. It turned into a pretty epic binge day that resembled the analog festival experience’s rush from screening to screening.
We started off with the film that was, for many, the most anticipated of the festival. Summer of Soul (… or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), which opened the live-premiere streaming offerings on Thursday, is a music documentary directed by Amir “Questlove” Thompson, better known as the drummer for The Roots and bandleader on 

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Questlove and his producers found out 12 years ago about a forgotten stash of footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. In the months before Woodstock, the free music festival ran for several weekends in a New York park, attracting some of the greatest Black musicians of the time, including Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, The Fifth Dimension, and Gladys Knight and The Pips. The Memphis area was very well represented, with B.B. King, Mississippi’s Chambers Brothers, and The Staple Singers. Hundreds of thousands of people attended the concert series and the show was professionally recorded and taped by a four-camera crew with the intent to make a television special out of it. But the TV show never materialized, and the 45 hours of footage sat in a producer’s basement for 50 years. Thompson and his team transferred and restored the tapes, and secured interviews with many of the surviving musicians and audience members, for whom the forgotten show seemed like a distant dream.

Thompson was introduced by festival director Tabitha Jackson as a first time filmmaker, which is true enough. Breaking new talent is what the film festival is all about. But Thompson had an advantage over the normal first time director, in that he is a relentlessly omnivorous music scholar and author, which gave him the intellectual discipline to do the research and make Summer of Soul more than just a concert film. But most importantly, Questlove is a DJ who grew up obsessively making mix tapes. Those are the skills which served him best in the editing room, as he chose the best musical moments from the concert series and put them the right order.

The performances captured on the moldering tapes are spectacular. The film opens with Stevie Wonder abandoning his keyboards and taking to the drums. Did you know Stevie was a kickass drummer? Neither did I. B.B. King is captured at the top of his game. The Chambers Brothers reveal a deep, jammy groove beyond their hit “Time Has Come Today.” Thompson puts each performance in context, such as when Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. tell the story of how they came to record “Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In” from Hair, as their younger selves sing and dance up a storm onscreen.

The highlight of a film full of highlights is an emotional, impromptu duet between Mavis Staples and her idol Mahalia Jackson of “Take My Hand Precious Lord.” Jesse Jackson introduces the song, telling the story of how he was on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel when Martin Luther King, Jr. asked bandleader Ben Branch to play the song for him moments before the civil rights leader was assassinated. As the band swells, an emotional Mahalia Jackson pulled Mavis Staples from her seat and put the microphone in her hand. Stunned at the anointment by the gospel legend, Staples takes center stage and lifts off in what she called the most memorable performance of her life. Then, Jackson takes the second verse and turns it into a wail of mourning and declaration of Black power.

Summer of Soul is an instant classic that delivers both goosebump-filled musical moments and a clear and well-organized history of a pivotal cultural moment that was almost lost to time.

‘LATA’

Short film programs are always my favorite part of any festival experience, and the 50 or so shorts strung across seven programs feature some real gems, proving that the pandemic couldn’t hold back the creativity. Andrew Norman Wilson’s “In The Air Tonight” uses altered stock footage and killer sound design to retell the urban legend behind Phil Collins’ 1980 hit song. He put it together in his apartment during quarantine. Alisha Tejpal’s excellent and moving “LATA” is a naturalistic examination of the life of a domestic worker in India that bears the meditative stamp of Chantal Akerman’s Hotel Monterey. Joe Campa’s animated short “Ghost Dogs,” in which the new family pet can see the apparitions of all the dogs who have lived in the house, veers between funny and unexpectedly poignant.

Looking for love in ‘Searchers’

The second feature documentary of the day was Pacha Velez’s Searchers, an intimate and often hilarious look at dating online. Velez films dozens of different people as they swipe through their choices on dating apps, and interviews them about their experiences. In a couple of cases, his subjects turn the tables on their interviewer, and Velez reveals his motivations stem from his own experiences as a single guy who just turned 40. Shades of Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March appear as Velez takes his own dating app test with his mother at his side. The innovative and insightful documentary starts off unassuming, then subtly worms its way into your brain. With subjects ranging from ages 19 to 88, Searchers reveals dating apps as the great equalizer of our age.

All Light, Everywhere

Tonight, the weather outlook at the Malco Summer Drive-In is much improved. The first show is Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere. Using quantum theory’s spooky observer effect as its jumping off point, this essay film travels the blurred line between what we call “objective reality” and the often flawed assumptions that undergird our understanding of it.
The second show is the sci-fi feature Mayday by Karen Cinorre. Grace Van Patten stars as Ana, a woman from our reality who is transported into another dimension where a group of women soldiers are fighting an endless war whose origins they barely understand. The fascinating-looking Mayday is billed as the first feminist war film.

Sundance in Memphis: A Soul Explosion and All Light, Everywhere

You can buy tickets for the Malco Summer Drive-in screenings of Sundance films at the Indie Memphis website. 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Sundance in Memphis: A Memorable Night Under the Stars

Niamh Algar as Enid in Censor.

I’ll have to admit, I didn’t expect to have my first Sundance screening at the Malco Summer Drive-In. But the pandemic makes for strange situations, and from my point of view, this is one of the better ones. As a filmmaker, none of my works have ever been accepted to Sundance, and as a journalist, no outlet has ever offered to pay my way to Park City, so I’ve never been to the mecca of American indie film in person.

When Indie Memphis adopted the hybrid online and in-person model last November, an unexpected thing happened: It turned into an opportunity to expand the reach of the festival. In the case of screenwriting award winner Executive Order, the Bluff City’s homegrown regional festival was suddenly attracting audiences from Brazil.
In the opening press conference on Thursday, Sundance Institute CEO Keri Putnam recognized the upside of Sundance’s move into the virtual world. “We think this will be the largest audience that we have ever had,” Putnam said.

Festival Director Tabitha Jackson was on the job less than a month when the novel coronavirus essentially shut down the film industry. She explained that the festival’s unofficial theme was the Japanese art of knitsugi, the practice of repairing broken pottery in a way that make the cracks visible and beautiful. “You see all those little fragments and shards, and that came from the sense that what the pandemic had done was to kind of explode our present reality, and we were left with the pieces. The festival actually is coming from a place of needing to completely reimagine and take the pieces that we know are part of our essence and build them into something different to meet the moment.”

While juggling other work assignments, I tried to get a full taste of the pandemic Sundance paradigm on the first day. I made a point of seeing Kentucker Audley’s new film Strawberry Mansion at the drive-in, then scooting home to watch Censor online. I’ve become quite the drive-in habituate during the pandemic, so I knew what to expect, but this experience was truly something special. Just as the opening credits were rolling on a hometown filmmaker’s Sundance opening night debut, a shooting star whizzed above Summer Drive-In screen 3. Crowding into a theater in Park City for the premiere would have been great, but it couldn’t beat being in Memphis in that moment.

Back at home, I nestled into a cozy robe for the world premiere of Censor. Welsh director Prano Bailey-Bond’s feature debut was an amazing revelation. Set in the dreary London of the Thatcher ’80s, it stars Niamh Algar as Enid, a censor who watches VHS-era violence all day long. Enid has a secret: Her sister disappeared under mysterious circumstances when they were young, but while Enid was the last person to see her, she has no memory of what happened. When she sees an actress in a particularly violent film who kind of maybe looks like a grown-up version of her sister, she becomes obsessed with making contact. Enid’s reality starts to implode around her, mixing up the gonzo images of slasher flicks with her lonely London existence.

Bailey-Bond is clearly a student of ’80s horror, and judging from the Videodrome influences, something of a Cronenberg cultist. In at least one way, she exceeded her influences. Where Videodrome’s characters are Ballardian blank slates, Censor is focused intently on Enid’s inner life. Algar gives the kind of remarkably subtle and finely observed performance rarely seen in the genre. Bailey-Bond’s arthouse meets meta-horror vision pushed all the right buttons for me.

Cryptozoo

Tonight, Sundance screenings continue at the Malco Summer Drive-In with I Was A Simple Man. Christopher Makoto Yogi’s August at Akkiko’s was a highlight of Indie Memphis 2018, and last year he had an experimental video installation at the festival. In his new film, he returns to his favorite subject, his native Hawaii, and the experience of the ignored people who have made the islands their home for thousands of years. The second screening couldn’t be more different. Cryptozoo is an animated feature by Virginia director Dash Shaw about a couple who stumble into a fantasy world where unicorns and yeti rule.

Sundance in Memphis: A Memorable Night Under the Stars

The Sundance Film Festival in Memphis begins at 6 p.m. at the Malco Summer Drive-In. You can buy tickets at the Indie Memphis website.  

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2021: Here’s Looking at You

If 2020 was the year of despair, 2021 appears to be the year of hope.

Wanna see what that could look like? Cast your gaze to Wuhan, China, birthplace of COVID-19.

News footage from Business Insider shows hundreds of carefree young people gathered in a massive swimming pool, dancing and splashing at a rock concert. They are effortlessly close together and there’s not a mask in sight. Bars and restaurants are packed with maskless revelers. Night markets are jammed. Business owners smile, remember the bleak times, and say the worst is behind them. How far behind? There’s already a COVID-19 museum in Wuhan.

That could be Memphis (once again) one day. But that day is still likely months off. Vaccines arrived here in mid-December. Early doses rightfully went to frontline healthcare workers. Doses for the masses won’t likely come until April or May, according to health experts.

While we still cannot predict exactly “what” Memphians will be (can be?) doing next year, we can tell you “where” they might be doing it. New places will open their doors next year, and Memphis is set for some pretty big upgrades.

But it doesn’t stop there. “Memphis has momentum” was Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s catchphrase as he won a second term for the office last October. It did. New building projects bloomed like the Agricenter’s sunflowers. And it still does. Believe it or not, not even COVID-19 could douse developers’ multi-million-dollar optimism on the city.

Here are few big projects slated to open in 2021:

Renasant Convention Center

Throughout 2020, crews have been hard at work inside and outside the building once called the Cook Convention Center.

City officials and Memphis Tourism broke ground on a $200-million renovation project for the building in January 2020. The project will bring natural light and color to the once dark and drab convention center built in 1974. The first events are planned for the Renasant Convention Center in the new year.

Memphis International Airport

Memphis International Airport

Expect the ribbon to be cut on Memphis International Airport’s $245-million concourse modernization project in 2021. The project was launched in 2014 in an effort to upgrade the airport’s concourse to modern standards and to right-size the space after Delta de-hubbed the airport.

Once finished, all gates, restaurants, shops, and more will be located in a single concourse. The space will have higher ceilings, more natural light, wider corridors, moving walkways, children’s play areas, a stage for live music, and more.

Collage Dance Collective

The beautiful new building on the corner of Tillman and Sam Cooper is set to open next year in an $11-million move for the Collage Dance Collective.

The 22,000-square-foot performing arts school will feature five studios, office space, a dressing room, a study lounge, 70 parking spaces, and a physical therapy area.

The Memphian Hotel

The Memphian Hotel

A Facebook post by The Memphian Hotel reads, “Who is ready for 2021?” The hotel is, apparently. Developers told the Daily Memphian recently that the 106-room, $24-million hotel is slated to open in April.

“Walking the line between offbeat and elevated, The Memphian will give guests a genuine taste of Midtown’s unconventional personality, truly capturing the free spirit of the storied art district in which the property sits,” reads a news release.

Watch for work to begin next year on big projects in Cooper-Young, the Snuff District, Liberty Park, Tom Lee Park, and The Walk. — Toby Sells

Book ‘Em

After the Spanish flu epidemic and World War I came a flood of convention-defying fiction as authors wrestled with the trauma they had lived through. E.M. Forster confronted colonialism and rigid gender norms in A Passage to India. Virginia Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway. James Joyce gave readers Ulysses. Langston Hughes’ first collection, The Weary Blues, was released.

It’s too early to tell what authors and poets will make of 2020, a year in which America failed to contain the coronavirus. This reader, though, is eager to see what comes.

Though I’ve been a bit too nervous to look very far into 2021 (I don’t want to jinx it, you know?), there are a few books already on my to-read list. First up, I’m excited for MLK50 founding managing editor Deborah Douglas’ U.S. Civil Rights Trail, due in January. Douglas lives in Chicago now, but there’s sure to be some Memphis in that tome.

Next, Ed Tarkington’s The Fortunate Ones, also due in January, examines privilege and corruption on Nashville’s Capitol Hill. Early reviews have compared Tarkington to a young Pat Conroy. For anyone disappointed in Tennessee’s response to any of this year’s crises, The Fortunate Ones is not to be missed.

Most exciting, perhaps, is the forthcoming Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda prose anthology, expected February 2nd. The anthology is edited by Memphis-born journalist Jesse J. Holland, and also features a story by him, as well as Memphians Sheree Renée Thomas, Troy L. Wiggins, and Danian Darrell Jerry.

“To be in pages with so many Memphis writers just feels wonderful,” Thomas told me when I called her to chat about the good news. “It’s a little surreal, but it’s fun,” Jerry adds, explaining that he’s been a Marvel comics fan since childhood. “I get to mix some of those childhood imaginings with some of the skills I’ve worked to acquire over the years.”

Though these books give just a glimpse at the literary landscape of the coming year, if they’re any indication of what’s to come, then, if nothing else, Memphians will have more great stories to look forward to. — Jesse Davis

Courtesy Memphis Redbirds

AutoZone Park

Take Me Out With the Crowd

Near the end of my father’s life, we attended a Redbirds game together at AutoZone Park. A few innings into the game, Dad turned to me and said, “I like seeing you at a ballpark. I can tell your worries ease.”

Then along came 2020, the first year in at least four decades that I didn’t either play in a baseball game or watch one live, at a ballpark, peanuts and Cracker Jack a soft toss away. The pandemic damaged most sports over the last 12 months, but it all but killed minor-league baseball, the small-business version of our national pastime, one that can’t lean on television and sponsorship revenue to offset the loss of ticket-buying fans on game day. AutoZone Park going a year without baseball is the saddest absence I’ve felt in Memphis culture since moving to this remarkable town in 1991. And I’m hoping today — still 2020, dammit — that 2021 marks a revival, even if it’s gradual. In baseball terms, we fans will take a base on balls to get things going before we again swing for the fences.

All indications are that vaccines will make 2021 a better year for gathering, be it at your favorite watering hole or your favorite ballpark. Indications also suggest that restrictions will remain in place well into the spring and summer (baseball season). How many fans can a ballpark host and remain safe? How many fans will enjoy the “extras” of an evening at AutoZone Park — that sunset over the Peabody, that last beer in the seventh inning — if a mask must be worn as part of the experience? And what kind of operation will we see when the gates again open? Remember, these are small businesses. Redbirds president Craig Unger can be seen helping roll out the tarp when a July thunderstorm interrupts the Redbirds and Iowa Cubs. What will “business as usual” mean for Triple-A baseball as we emerge from the pandemic?

I wrote down three words and taped them up on my home-office wall last March: patience, determination, and empathy. With a few more doses of each — and yes, millions of doses of one vaccine or another — the sports world will regain crowd-thrilling normalcy. For me, it will start when I take a seat again in my happy place. It’s been a long, long time, Dad, since my worries properly eased.— Frank Murtaugh

Film in 2021: Don’t Give up Hope

“Nobody knows anything.” Never has William Goldman’s immortal statement about Hollywood been more true. Simply put, 2020 was a disaster for the industry. The pandemic closed theaters and called Hollywood’s entire business model into question. Warner Brothers’ announcement that it would stream all of its 2021 offerings on HBO Max sent shock waves through the industry. Some said it was the death knell for theaters.

I don’t buy it. Warner Brothers, owned by AT&T and locked in a streaming war with Netflix and Disney, are chasing the favor of Wall Street investors, who love the rent-seeking streaming model. But there’s just too much money on the table to abandon theaters. 2019 was a record year at the box office, with $42 billion in worldwide take, $11.4 billion of which was from North America. Theatrical distribution is a proven business model that has worked for 120 years. Netflix, on the other hand, is $12 billion in debt.

Will audiences return to theaters once we’ve vaccinated our way out of the coronavirus-shaped hole we’re in? Prediction at this point is a mug’s game, but signs point to yes. Tenet, which will be the year’s biggest film, grossed $303 million in overseas markets where the virus was reasonably under control. In China, where the pandemic started, a film called My People, My Homeland has brought in $422 million since October 1st. I don’t know about y’all, but once I get my jab, they’re going to have to drag me out of the movie theater.

There will be quite a bit to watch. With the exception of Wonder Woman 1984, the 2020 blockbusters were pushed to 2021, including Dune, Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, the latest James Bond installment No Time to Die, Marvel’s much-anticipated Black Widow, Top Gun: Maverick, and Godzilla vs. Kong. Memphis director Craig Brewer’s second film with Eddie Murphy, the long-awaited Coming 2 America, will bow on Amazon March 5th, with the possibility of a theatrical run still in the cards.

There’s no shortage of smaller, excellent films on tap. Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami, about a meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, premieres January 15th. Minari, the stunning story of Korean immigrants in rural Arkansas, which was Indie Memphis 2020’s centerpiece film, lands February 12th. The Bob’s Burgers movie starts cooking April 9th. And coolest of all, next month Indie Memphis will partner with Sundance to bring the latest in cutting-edge cinema to the Malco Summer Drive-In. There’s plenty to be hopeful for in the new year. — Chris McCoy

Looking Ahead: Music

We usually highlight the upcoming hot concerts in this space, but those are still on the back burner. Instead, get a load of these stacks of hot wax (and streams) dropping next year. Remember, the artists get a better share when you purchase rather than stream, especially physical product like vinyl.

Alysse Gafkjen

Julien Baker

One of the biggest-profile releases will be Julien Baker’s Little Oblivians, due out on Matador in February. Her single “Faith Healer” gives us a taste of what to expect. Watch the Flyer for more on that soon. As for other drops from larger indie labels, Merge will offer up A Little More Time with Reigning Sound in May (full disclosure: this all-Memphis version of the band includes yours truly).

Closer to home, John Paul Keith’s The Rhythm of the City also drops in February, co-released by hometown label Madjack and Italian imprint Wild Honey. Madjack will also offer up albums by Mark Edgar Stuart and Jed Zimmerman, the latter having been produced by Stuart. Matt Ross-Spang is mixing Zimmerman’s record, and there’s much buzz surrounding it (but don’t worry, it’s properly grounded).

Jeremy Stanfill mines similar Americana territory, and he’ll release new work on the Blue Barrel imprint. Meanwhile, look for more off-kilter sounds from Los Psychosis and Alicja Trout’s Alicja-Pop project, both on Black & Wyatt. That label will also be honored with a compilation of their best releases so far, by Head Perfume out of Dresden. On the quieter side of off-kilter, look for Aquarian Blood’s Sending the Golden Hour on Goner in May.

Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio has been busy, and affiliated label Bible & Tire Recording Co. will release a big haul of old-school gospel, some new, some archival, including artists Elizabeth King and Pastor Jack Ward, and compilations from the old J.C.R. and D-Vine Spiritual labels. Meanwhile, Big Legal Mess will drop new work from singer/songwriter Alexa Rose and, in March, Luna 68 — the first new album from the City Champs in 10 years. Expect more groovy organ and guitar boogaloo jazz from the trio, with a heaping spoonful of science-fiction exotica to boot.

Many more artists will surely be releasing Bandcamp singles, EPs, and more, but for web-based content that’s thinking outside of the stream, look for the January premiere of Unapologetic’s UNDRGRNDAF RADIO, to be unveiled on weareunapologetic.com and their dedicated app. — Alex Greene

Chewing Over a Tough Year

Beware the biohazard.

Samuel X. Cicci

The Beauty Shop

Perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but the image that pops into my head when thinking about restaurants in 2020 are the contagion-esque geo-domes that Karen Carrier set up on the back patio of the Beauty Shop. A clever conceit, but also a necessary one — a move designed to keep diners safe and separated when going out to eat. If it all seems a little bizarre, well, that’s what 2020 was thanks to COVID-19.

We saw openings, closings, restrictions, restrictions lifted, restrictions then put back in place; the Memphis Restaurant Association and Shelby County Health Department arguing back and forth over COVID guidelines, with both safety and survival at stake; and establishments scrambling to find creative ways to drum up business. The Beauty Shop domes were one such example. The Reilly’s Downtown Majestic Grille, on the other hand, transformed into Cocozza, an Italian ghost concept restaurant put into place until it was safe to reopen Majestic in its entirety. Other places, like Global Café, put efforts in place to help provide meals to healthcare professionals or those who had fallen into financial hardship during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, not every restaurant was able to survive the pandemic. The popular Lucky Cat Ramen on Broad Ave. closed its doors, as did places like Puck Food Hall, 3rd & Court, Avenue Coffee, Midtown Crossing Grill, and many others.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Working in the hospitality business requires a certain kind of resilience, and that showed up in spades. Many restaurants adapted to new regulations quickly, and with aplomb, doing their best to create a safe environment for hungry Memphians all while churning out takeout and delivery orders.

And even amid a pandemic backdrop, many aspiring restaurateurs tried their hand at opening their own places. Chip and Amanda Dunham branched out from the now-closed Grove Grill to open Magnolia & May, a country brasserie in East Memphis. Just a few blocks away, a new breakfast joint popped up in Southall Café. Downtown, the Memphis Chess Club opened its doors, complete with a full-service café and restaurant. Down in Whitehaven, Ken and Mary Olds created Muggin Coffeehouse, the first locally owned coffee shop in the neighborhood. And entrepreneurial-minded folks started up their own delivery-only ventures, like Brittney Adu’s Furloaved Breads + Bakery.

So what will next year bring? With everything thrown out of whack, I’m loath to make predictions, but with a vaccine on the horizon, I’m hoping (fingers crossed) that it becomes safer to eat out soon, and the restaurant industry can begin a long-overdue recovery. And to leave you with what will hopefully be a metaphor for restaurants in 2021: By next summer, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s Hog & Hominy will complete its Phoenician rebirth from the ashes of a disastrous fire and open its doors once again.

In the meantime, keep supporting your local restaurants! — Samuel X. Cicci

“Your Tickets Will be at Will Call”

Oh, to hear those words again, and plenty of arts organizations are eager to say them. The pandemic wrecked the seasons for performing arts groups and did plenty of damage to museums and galleries.

Not that they haven’t made valiant and innovative efforts to entertain from afar with virtual programming.

But they’re all hoping to mount physical, not virtual, seasons in the coming year.

Playhouse on the Square suspended scheduled in-person stage productions until June 2021. This includes the 52nd season lineup of performances that were to be on the stages of Playhouse on the Square, The Circuit Playhouse, and TheatreWorks at the Square. It continues to offer the Playhouse at Home Series, digital content via its website and social media.

Theatre Memphis celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021 and is eager to show off its new facility, a major renovation that was going to shut it down most of 2020 anyway while it expanded common spaces and added restrooms and production space while updating dressing rooms and administrative offices. But the hoped-for August opening was pushed back, and it plans to reschedule the programming for this season to next.

Hattiloo Theatre will continue to offer free online programming in youth acting and technical theater, and it has brought a five-week playwright’s workshop and free Zoom panel discussions with national figures in Black theater. Like the other institutions, it is eager to get back to the performing stage when conditions allow.

Ballet Memphis has relied on media and platforms that don’t require contact, either among audience members or dancers. But if there are fewer partnerings among dancers, there are more solos, and group movement is well-distanced. The organization has put several short pieces on video, releasing some and holding the rest for early next year. It typically doesn’t start a season until late summer or early fall, so the hope is to get back into it without missing a step.

Opera Memphis is active with its live Sing2Me program of mobile opera concerts and programming on social media. Its typical season starts with 30 Days of Opera in August that usually leads to its first big production of the season, so, COVID willing, that may emerge.

Courtesy Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Dana Claxton, Headdress at the Brooks earlier this year.

Museums and galleries, such as the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, National Civil Rights Museum, and the Metal Museum are functioning at limited capacity, but people can go and enjoy the offerings. The scope of the shows is limited, as coronavirus has put the kibosh on blockbuster shows for now. Look for easing of protocols as the situation allows in the coming year. — Jon W. Sparks

Politics

Oyez. Oyez. Oh yes, there is one year out of every four in which regularly scheduled elections are not held in Shelby County, and 2021 is such a year. But decisions will be made during the year by the Republican super-majority of the state legislature in Nashville that will have a significant bearing on the elections that will occur in the three-year cycle of 2022-2024 and, in fact, on those occurring through 2030.

This would be in the course of the constitutionally required ritual during which district lines are redefined every 10 years for the decade to come, in the case of legislative seats and Congressional districts. The U.S. Congress, on the basis of population figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, will have allocated to each state its appropriate share of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. And the state legislature will determine how that number is apportioned statewide. The current number of Tennessee’s Congressional seats is nine. The state’s legislative ratio is fixed at 99 state House members and 33 members of the state Senate.

Tennessee is one of 37 states in which, as indicated, the state legislature calls the shots for both Congressional and state redistricting. The resultant redistricting undergoes an approval process like any other measure, requiring a positive vote in both the state Senate and the state House, with the Governor empowered to consent or veto.

No one anticipates any disagreements between any branches of government. Any friction in the redistricting process will likely involve arguments over turf between neighboring GOP legislators. Disputes emanating from the minority Democrats will no doubt be at the mercy of the courts.

The forthcoming legislative session is expected to be lively, including holdover issues relating to constitutional carry (the scrapping of permits for firearms), private school vouchers (currently awaiting a verdict by the state Supreme Court), and, as always, abortion. Measures relating to the ongoing COVID crisis and vaccine distribution are expected, as is a proposal to give elected county executives primacy over health departments in counties where the latter exist.

There is no discernible disharmony between those two entities in Shelby County, whose government has devoted considerable attention over the last year to efforts to control the pandemic and offset its effects. Those will continue, as well as efforts to broaden the general inclusiveness of county government vis-à-vis ethnic and gender groups.

It is still a bit premature to speculate on future shifts of political ambition, except to say that numerous personalities, in both city and county government, are eyeing the prospects of succeeding Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland in 2023. And several Democrats are looking at a potential race against District Attorney General Amy Weirich in 2022.

There are strong rumors that, after a false start or two, Memphis will follow the lead of several East Tennessee co-ops and finally depart from TVA.

And meanwhile, in March, the aforesaid Tennessee Democrats will select a new chair from numerous applicants. — Jackson Baker

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Robert Gordon Strikes Gold At Sundance

Memphis writer/director/producer Robert Gordon’s new project Best Of Enemies was sold to Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media today for a “high six-figure sum”. The documentary film, which was co-directed with Morgan Neville, whose last film 20 Feet From Stardom, won last year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary, premiered last Friday at the Sundance Film Festival. 

William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal square off in this still image from Best Of Enemies.

Best Of Enemies chronicles the series of debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley staged by ABC during the 1968 Republican and Democratic conventions, which the film credits as kicking off the contemporary cable news shoutfest style of political programming. 

Reviews for the film by the cadre of industry professionals who descend on Park City, Utah every January have been nothing short of rapturous. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy wrote “For American viewers of an intellectual/historical persuasion, there could scarcely be any documentary more enticing, scintillating and downright fascinating than Best of Enemies.” Writing for Variety, Joe Leydon says “Best of Enemies never gets heavy-handed while attempting to illustrate the true historical importance of what might still be viewed by many as nothing more than an obscure and eccentric bit of prime-time misadventure.” The Guardian‘s four-star review, written by Jordan Hoffman, says  “Directors Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom) and Robert Gordon (Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story) have unearthed outstanding footage and interviewed many of today’s best thinkers for a juicy and thrilling documentary about two intellectual titans who truly loathed one another.” 

In addition to Gordon, who directed and produced, the film’s strong Memphis roots include editor Eileen Meyer, composer Jonathan Kirkscey, director of photography David Leonard, consulting producer Tom Graves, and production assistant Andrew Paisley. 

Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media will reportedly give Best Of Enemies a theatrical release sometime this year, with home video, television, and streaming deals to follow. You can watch a short interview with directors Gordon and Neville at CraveOnline. 

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Strange Road to “Love Is Strange”

It’s January 30, 2005, in Park City, Utah, the last day of the Sundance Film Festival, and the greatest single day in Memphis film history. Craig Brewer, having just accepted the Audience Award for Hustle & Flow, has retuned to his seat just in time to hear the winner of the Jury Award announced: 40 Shades of Blue, directed by Ira Sachs.

“When they announced Ira, I embarrassed myself. I let out this scream, and I leapt off of my seat,” Brewer recalls. “I couldn’t believe it. Two Memphis filmmakers, with two Memphis films, just took the two top prizes at Sundance.”

It wasn’t Sachs’ first Sundance. In 1997, The Delta, his coming-of-age story of a gay teen in Memphis, had screened at the festival to great acclaim. But the indie film business being what it is, it took him eight years to get back to Sundance, coincidentally the same year as Brewer, his friend and fellow Memphian.

“Out of all of the filmmakers I know, he’s my hero,” Brewer says. “He’s held to his style through a challenging time in independent cinema. The individual auteur is not rewarded in this global marketplace.”

* * *

It’s 10 a.m. on August 22, 2014. Ira Sachs sits in his Greenwich Village apartment as the first commercial screening of his new film Love Is Strange is happening in New York City. “It feels great,” he says. “It’s been a long road to get here, but now it’s in other people’s hands. It’s with the audience.”

Sachs’ new film has been gathering buzz on the festival circuit ever since its debut at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where Memphis filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox was in the audience “I saw about 10 to 12 movies that were incredible, but only one of them got a standing ovation, and that was Love Is Strange,” he says. “As a director trying to make movies about queer culture, Love Is Strange is one of the most important and affecting films I have ever seen.”

Sachs has been gently deflecting this kind of hyperbolic praise for his film for the past nine months. “Real personal reactions to this movie are what I was hoping for, and what I am seeing,” he says. “I think people go into it expecting one thing, but then they find that it’s a portrait of a family, and in that way it is a portrait of all of our lives. It’s very much about the different stages of life we go through and how love looks differently in each one. I feel very differently about the possibilities of love as a middle-aged person than I did when I was 20.”

* * *

Like Brewer, Sachs’ Sundance win resulted in the opportunity to work with a much bigger budget. Sach’s 2007 film, Married Life, was a finely crafted, 1940s period piece starring Chris Cooper, Rachel McAdams, and Pierce Brosnan. It cost $12 million to make, but earned less than $3 million at the box office.

“I had to reinvent myself,” Sachs says. “You have to keep assessing what is possible and recalibrating your strategy about how to keep going.”

Sachs’ 2012 film, Keep the Lights On, couldn’t have been more different. It was an abandonment of the Hitchcockian style Sachs toyed with in Married Life and a return to his indie roots. The raw, unflinching story of a doomed love between a filmmaker and a drug addict spiraling out of control was as harrowing a bit of autobiography as has ever hit a screen.

“Each film is really an expression of where I am at that moment in my life,” Sachs says. “The movie is somehow a way to translate that into a story. I began working on Love Is Strange in January 2012, with my co-writer Mauricio Zacharias. That was a point when I went from living alone in my New York apartment to living with my husband, our two babies, their mom, and occasionally visiting in-laws. So the idea of a multi-generational family story told inside a cramped New York apartment seemed like a good idea.”

* * *

Alfred Molina first heard of Love Is Strange when his agent gave him the script. The 61-year-old actor, whose big break came playing Indiana Jones’ ill-fated guide in the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, has been in comedies and dramas, films large and small. But he knew this little $1.5 million film was going to be something special.

“It’s a story about how love survives,” he says. “Anyone who is in love, or anyone who has fallen in love, regardless of who or how, can relate to that.”

The story opens with George (Molina) and Ben (John Lithgow), a couple whose easy rapport speaks of a long and fulfilling relationship, getting ready in the morning. After decades together, it’s a day neither thought they would ever see: Their wedding day.

“The refreshing thing from an audience’s point of view is that whenever you see love stories, it’s almost always at the younger end of the age spectrum,” Molina says. “It’s couples struggling to find themselves, to find each other, to find their place in the world. But these characters are in the autumn of their years, and after many, many years of a committed relationship, they suddenly find themselves in crisis.”

George is a music teacher at a Manhattan Catholic high school. His homosexuality has been an “open secret” for years, but now that he and Ben, a 71 year old who has retired to his painting, have made it official, his boss can no longer shield him from the diocese, and he is unceremoniously fired.

In the hands of another writer/director, that would be the story: a gay couple, finally granted their right to wed, continues their fight against the forces of intolerance and discrimination. There would be protests and perhaps a climactic court scene with George and Ben giving stirring speeches about tolerance and acceptance, ending with a favorable verdict and applause. But that’s not Love Is Strange.

“In real life, people don’t have those big scenes,” says Molina. “You never have those cathartic moments where you let everything out and you make a great speech that encompasses your life. That’s why Ira’s so brilliant, because he’s not afraid to be truthful about it.”

Sachs says he takes inspiration from Italian Neo-Realist filmmakers such as Michelangelo Antonioni. Working in postwar Italy with very few resources, Antonioni’s films concentrated on the mundane details that would be cut from a Hollywood production in favor of sweeping but artificially heightened drama. “We have very dramatic lives without necessitating melodrama,” Sachs says. “The things that happen to us in the course of our lives are major, even if they’re described in a minor key.”

Without George’s income to support them, the couple is forced to sell their apartment and separate. Ben moves in with his nephew Eliot (Darren E. Burrows) and his wife Kate (Marisa Tomei), sleeping on the bottom bunk bed in his great nephew Joey’s (Charlie Tahan) room. George crashes with some friends, a pair of gay policemen who love to play Dungeons and Dragons and throw parties.

“He uses the injustice as a device to explore the human condition in other areas,” Brewer says. “Love Is Strange is probably Ira’s most subversive film because it’s so accessible. It moves you on a human level, and doesn’t hit you over the head with politics. That’s what makes it so compelling. In a way, it quickly stops being a movie that explores gay issues and becomes a movie about old love and commitment, and especially about what some people are having to face in this current economy.”

After reading the script, Molina was the first actor to sign on to the project. “It went through all of the usual vicissitudes and stumbles along the way that independent film is subject to,” he says. “But I stayed with it because I liked the script so much.”

* * *

Sachs says the character Ben was inspired by Memphis artist Ted Rust. “Ted was my great uncle Ben Goodman’s partner for about 45 years. I had the opportunity to really get to know him well. He’s a guy who, at 98, began his last sculpture, which was of a young teenager with a backpack on. At 99, he died, and the piece remained unfinished. But to me, the idea of a man pursuing his passion and creativity until the last minute seemed extraordinary.”

In Love Is Strange, Ben finds solace in his painting, even as the life he has built with George crumbles around him. “It’s about the uncompleted sense of possibilities that an artist, or any of us, can have. It’s something we can strive for,” Sachs says.

As Sachs struggled to raise money for his film, he managed to land a great cast. Tomei signed on for the important role of Kate, a writer whose long-suffering kindness is tested when Ben moves in. For Ben, Sachs landed the legendary Lithgow. “I brought Lithgow in, with the approval and encouragement of Molina,” the director says. “They had been friends for 20 years in the same social circle in Los Angeles. Once we started working, they were like kids who met at summer camp who had been reunited. They had so much history to talk about, and so much common life between them.”

Once on set, the chemistry between the two lead actors was effortlessly real. “I think the fact that we’ve been friends for so long certainly helped,” Molina says. “We didn’t have to spend any time creating a shorthand. We made each other laugh a lot.”

Sach’s on-set technique is unusual. The actors come to the set with their lines memorized, the scene is blocked out, and the cameras roll. “Everything is emotionally improvised,” Sachs says. “The text is there, and they stick to it, but we’ve never rehearsed before we start shooting, and they’ve never heard another actor say a line. It’s a strategy I’ve worked with ever since the days of 40 Shades of Blue. Film is really about the filming of what’s happening in a moment, and it doesn’t need to be repeated. I find that you get the most spontaneous performances when you don’t talk too much before hand.”

From the beginning of his career, actors have responded enthusiastically to Sachs’ direction. “He creates a very pleasant, very respectful atmosphere on a set,” says Molina. “He’s not a shouter. He’s not standing behind a video screen screaming ‘Do it again!’ He’s very quiet and unobtrusive.”

If, like most people, your image of Molina is of Doctor Octopus in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and your image of Lithgow is the manic alien invader from Third Rock from the Sun, you’re in for a shock. Molina’s George is the breadwinner, quietly struggling through repeated indignity to find a place where they can recreate their lives, until one wrenching scene where he shows up on Eliot’s and Kate’s door to cry into Ben’s arms. Lithgow’s Ben is kind, centered, and empathetic, but his immersion in his art makes him myopic. Together, they’re beautiful, inspiring, and heartbreakingly real.

“I have yet to see a performance this year that bests either Molina or Lithgow,” says Brewer.

* * *

Sachs’ first movie was a short called Vaudeville, about a group of traveling performers. “All of my films have been about friendships, but in the context of community,” he says. “To me, you can’t separate the two.”

Love Is Strange

Love Is Strange‘s New York setting provided many natural details. George’s hard-partying cop friends are inspired by a couple who were living upstairs from Boris Torres, Sachs’ husband, when they first met. “This kind of Tales of the City communal living is very wonderful and how we get by in our lives,” Sachs says. “The most important thing to me in New York is the relationship and the family I create for myself — both the biological family and otherwise.”

Sachs says Memphis’ contribution was more subtle, and more profound. “Memphis is a real inspiration. You think about the great music and art that’s come out of that town. What’s more entertaining than the Staple Singers or Isaac Hayes? But they have emotional depth. Jim Dickinson is a perfect example. He’s like Falstaff. He’s a perfect mix of drama and comedy.”

Love Is Strange is a dramatic film structured like a comedy, starring three actors with impressive comedic chops. Sachs compares it to 1930s comedies of remarriage, such as It Happened One Night, where a separated couple struggles to reunite. “It’s the structure of the Shakespearian comedy. I felt really fortunate to work with these extraordinary comic actors in the movie. It is a dramatic film, but there is a lot of lightness, because of the genius timing and effortlessness of actors like Marisa Tomei and John Lithgow. They brought a little levity to serious situations.”

Lithgow and Tomei are two actors who, like the late Robin Williams, can swing easily between comedy and drama. “I think it’s their timing, and I think it’s very lifelike to bring humor into a situation. It’s one of the shades of experience. It’s also pleasurable. This is maybe the most entertaining movie that I’ve made. That doesn’t mean it’s less deep, it just means people have an easier relationship with it. They’re happy to be there.”

* * *

Where Sachs’ Keep the Lights On was a sexually explicit film of passionate love gone bad, Love Is Strange is a meditation on long-term love, with nothing more sexual than a cuddle in a bunk bed between two fully clothed old men. And yet, somehow, both films have the same rating from the MPAA: R. Why? Is the mere fact that the lead characters are gay enough to earn an R rating in 2014?

“It’s totally unjustified,” says Morgan Jon Fox. “It’s a sham. It’s absurd that there are films that are far more violent or that have content that is far more detrimental that do not have an R rating.”

Brewer first saw the film before it was rated at the Los Angeles Film Festival. “I didn’t know it was going to be an R. What is the cause for the R rating? There’s nothing in that movie that is vulgar.”

Still of Charlie Tahan, Darren E. Burrows, and John Lithgow in Love Is Strange

Sachs is puzzled by the inappropriate rating, but remains, as always, unflappable.”It doesn’t upset me, except for the fact that this is a film about family, and it seems like it’s shutting off people who would get a lot from it. For better or worse, it’s a family film.”

Fox is more blunt in his assessment of the politics surrounding the rating. “To see two adults who are happy, who have been in a relationship forever, these are the kinds of role models that young queer kids need. But it’s so clear what they’re warning parents about, and that’s love. Warning: Your child may be influenced by love.”

* * *

“We’ve had terrific feedback,” Molina says. “The response from critics has been very positive, and audiences have loved it. I think it proves very clearly that there’s an audience out there for movies that are a bit more sensitive, a bit more challenging. It’s been very gratifying to see how people have responded to it.”

When Love Is Strange comes to Memphis for a premiere with the director on Friday, September 26th, it does so with the wind at its back. It’s currently sitting at 98 percent positive reviews on the film critic aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes; its $1.5 million budget was paid back with foreign rights sales at the Berlin Film Festival before it had even opened in America; and it has been very successful in limited release.

But it is the film’s message of love that Sachs says he wants his own two toddlers, Viva and Felix (“‘Life’ and ‘Happiness’, which they are.”), to take with them in life. “I was in Memphis a few weeks ago, and on Saturday I said, ‘Let’s have a potluck’, and on Sunday I had 10 pies and four batches of fried chicken. That’s love.”

And not at all strange.

Love Is Strange premieres Friday, September 26th at Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill. Ira Sachs will be in attendance for a Q&A.