Craig Brewer on Black Snake

Craig Brewer plans on staying in Memphis. An Army brat, Brewer was born on a base in Virginia, and lived everywhere: Chicago, northern California, southern California. But Brewer calls Memphis home and after making three films there he’s set up a base of operations similar to the kind of community that filmmakers like Richard Linklater have established in Austin.
With films to his credit like Hustle & Flo and now Black Snake Moan Brewer plays Hollywood’s game but on his own terms.
“If I were leading the tour of Memphis,” Brewer mused in a phoner with Free Press Houston, “I would take people to Wild Bill’s.” A classic juke joint that features homegrown blues in the style heard throughout Black Snake Moan, Wild Bill’s is located at 1580 Vollintine Ave. “Then over to Cozy Corner for some bar-b-q,” replies Brewer who proceeds to rattle off a few great eateries, adding “There’s one place that has mustard slaw, you ever had mustard slaw?”
Like all filmmakers Brewer’s influences are many. On one hand he was a kid “watching Benji movies and tearing up. Then my father took me to see Midnight Cowboy.” It’s not hard to see a link between the street characteristics of Ratso Rizzo and the denizens of Brewer’s films: A pimp trying to better his life through music in Hustle & Flo and in Black Snake Moan a blues musician with marital issues Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) trying to cure a white trash nympho drug addict, Rae (Christina Ricci), by chaining her to his radiator.
Whether it’s a Watkins sign in a small town pharmacy, a Denon record player on Lazarus’ front porch, or a can of Murray’s hair pomade Lazarus uses to slick his hair down before a very important gig, or the Peavy amp he jams on, Brewer captures the essence of small town Middle America. But the sexual undertone that scores the film reminds one more of Almodovar than Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.
Black Snake Moan empowers male and female viewers by showing what goes on in both Lazarus and Rae’s head. “It’s so great to watch an audience react to basically sex,” says Brewer. One difficult to choreograph scene involves a swooping camera on a crane, and a young boy opening a door. As soon as he opens the door the chained Rae grabs him with her free leg and proceeds to have her way with him.
“I wanted it to be like a pit bull running out the door and grabbing some kid,” remarks Brewer. “There’s one moment where Sam is trying to wake her up, and Christina lunges up and lays a big wet kiss on Sam. I like to turn at that moment and watch the reaction of the audience. They flinch like they’re watching a horror movie,” notes Brewer with satisfaction.
Using a team of collaborators that includes cinematographer Amy Vincent and composer Scott Bomar, Brewer has created an instant cult classic with Black Snake Moan. But get Brewer back on the subject of Memphis and modesty takes over. “Memphis is the biggest small town in the country,” wryly adds Brewer. Discussing some of the other films made in Memphis leads Brewer to mention Tupelo Teen (Bomar also wrote the music) and Starlet A.D., two films from John Michael McCarthy. A quick check on the Internet shows that neither film exists through the usual DVD or video outlets.
“Tupelo is a crazy film, but it’s a Southern staple.” Maybe the only way to see these films is just to move to Memphis.

Bob Dylan & Johnny Carson (DVD)

It’s not like Bob Dylan has ever left the scene, and certainly since dominating his field in the 60s he’s continued to record music and tour. But this month sees Dylan reinvented in a multitude of guises, including a couple that aren’t even him.
Firstly, although his character name isn’t Dylan, Hayden Christensen plays the lanky Village poet Billy Quinn in Factory Girl. Covering the rise and fall of Warhol created Superstar Edie Sedgwick, Factory Girl evokes hip early 60s coolness with both its content and form. I felt let down in the one scene that should’ve had a bigger payoff. A scene where Dylan, er, Quinn comes to the Factory in order for Warhol to film him. The iconic duo stand-off, share a reefer, make snide remarks about each other in a pivotal scene to the film that should have produced more in the way of cinematic fireworks. Likewise the character played by Adam Sandler in Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me (March 23) is a virtual clone of the way Dylan looked on the cover of Blonde on Blonde.
Filmmaker D.A. Pennebacker recorded Dylan’s 1965 tour of the UK. It was solo acoustic Dylan and the last time he performed non-electric. The subsequent film, Don’t Look Back is considered a landmark music documentary not just for its concert footage but also for its fly on the wall observation of a rock star at the dawn of the age of rock idolatry.
Don’t Look Back, the 65 Tour Deluxe Edition DVD packages Pennebacker’s film along with an additional feature length companion, 65 Revisited. Basically there were so many outtakes and unused concert scenes that assembling the footage into a separate film works smoothly. Pennebacker and tour manager Bob Neuwirth provide commentary on both Don’t Look Back and 65 Revisited.
The added wealth here comes from Dylan concert footage; it’s pure, it’s simple and undiluted. In DLB we see fleeting glimpses of whole songs but in 65 Revisited the power of the poet is never so apparent as when Dylan is busting a move with his complete rendition of “It’s Allright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding,” live in Leicester. In addition to the Albert Hall concert footage there are also long takes of Dylan performing in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Newcastle among others. The 2-DVD set includes three different versions of the Subterranean Homesick Blues flip-card sequence, a stand-alone piece opening DLB that’s rightly cited as the grandfather of music videos.
Black and white television never really left, it just got colored in as the years progressed. Thankfully a stash of 1950 kinescopes (films made of shows shot directly from a television screen) were found by Johnny Carson’s second wife Joanne. The Johnny Carson Show was broadcast in prime time in 1955 and the absurd humor present in this variety show format is a link between comics like Ernie Kovacs (whose first show ran in 1952-53) and the more effervescent Carson of the 1960s Tonight Show. Incidentally Joanne’s liner notes mention that NBC trashed most of the first ten years of footage from the Tonight Show, which shows how typically corporations treat their own institutional memory.
The Johnny Carson Show, a 2-DVD set from Shout! Factory, combines 10 episodes from Carson’s network debut show, and includes extras like an ep from the ABC quiz show he hosted, Who Do You Trust? Would you believe one contestant gets locked in the sound proof booth?
Carson excels in imitation and on his first show does a take off of Edward Murrow, whom some viewers may only be familiar with from the recent film Good Night, and Good Luck. Carson also mimics a mental wizard with a character that what will evolve into Karnac. Another ep sports robotic living in the 1980s (then 30 years in the future) and a skit where Carson’s matador wife makes him put on horns and spar reeks of sexual innuendo. It was a cocktail hour, bamboo bar decade and this set captures that delicate state of mind.

TEN FOR 07

Another year, another couple hundred color, black and white and paisley movies. We’re steering away from the trendy non sequiturs like Alien vs. Predator 2, Fantastic Four 2, Ocean’s Thirteen, Rush Hour 3, Shrek the Third, Pirates of the Caribbean At World’s End, and Spider-Man 3, the last three alone opening in May. Dates tend to change so we didn’t use them, and there is no pecking or alphabetical order by which the following ten films are listed.


3:10 To Yuma – James Mangold’s follow-up to Walk the Line is a remake of a 50s western with Van Heflin and Glenn Ford. Huh? If you’ve never seen it, check it out for a definitive psychological thriller dressed in cowboy duds. Tom Cruise was originally cast, dropped out, but you can’t beat the pairing of Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel.

I Am Legend – This novel from Richard Matheson has already been made before as The Last Man on Earth (Vincent Price, 1964) and The Omega Man (Chuck Heston, 1971). There was an attempt to do I Am Legend over a decade ago with Ridley Scott at the helm and Arnold Schwarzenegger that fell apart do to budget concerns (the script is on the Internet). The 2007 version stars Will Smith. A disease has turned people into zombies and the last human searchers for a cure.

Grindhouse – A pastiche of B-Movie presented in the style of a retro drive-in double bill, complete with mock trailers. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez at the helm, with Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Rose McGowan.

300 – Frank Miller (Sin City) inspired tale of the battle of Thermopylae, with the titular Spartans holding off the Persian army. The premise hints at far out graphics with a gripping historical plot.

The Simpsons Movie – Yes, Matt Groening got the name for the paterfamilias of the popular television cartoon series, now turned feature film, from a Nathanael West novel about decadent 1920s Hollywood, The Day of the Locust.

No Country For Old Men – A new Coen Brothers film always deserves a look see, and the story here is mired in smuggled heroin, abandoned money, and border politics. Just like Tom Joad, I’ll be there.

Underdog – Speed of lightning anyone? It’s a live-action/CGI re-deux of the cartoon with a beagle Underdog (voice of Jason Lee). Would you pass up a flick with a femme fatale named Polly Purebread (Amy Adams)?

Sicko – Michael Moore takes on the American health care system. We all know there are millions of citizens without health benefits, still it’s intriguing to see what bumbling bureaucrat’s mug Moore sticks his camera into.

American Gangster – This script has been floating around Hollywood for a long, long time. Finally made it stars Denzel Washington as a crime lord in 1970s Harlem. Russell Crowe co-stars, with Ridley Scott directing. At one point years back, the film was set to go into production with Denzel attached in a pay or play deal. The plug got pulled, but when it was revived Denzel was back on top getting paid twice for the same single acting gig.

There Will Be Blood – Paul Thomas Anderson has finally directed another film. (Thompson was the insurance contracted director on stand-by for Robert Altman on Prairie Home Companion.) Anderson helms a turn of the century Texas oil family tale, based on an Upton Sinclair novel.

Jackie Earle Haley on Little Children

The Free Press Houston spoke with Jackie Earle Haley by phone last month in anticipation of the larger rollout of Little Children. Although Haley was in Dallas at the time, he lives in San Antonio where he runs JEH Productions, a corporate communications firm. To hear Haley tell it he couldn¹t get arrested much less a film role and his resume has a gap from 1993 until 2006 when he re-entered the scene with striking performances in All the King¹s Men (Haley was Sugar Boy, the governor¹s enforcer) and Little Children. Haley may not be a household name but as a child actor you would immediately recognize him. He was an original slugger for the Bad News Bears and was one of the kids in Breaking Away. There was a bunch of TV guest roles, one that sticks out was his 3-lines on The Partridge Family. Haley¹s chilling portrait of a child molester on parole in Little Children brings his career to a mobius strip of a full circle. In his first feature The Day of the Locust (1975) he was the precocious child. (In Day of the Locust Donald Sutherland plays molester Homer Simpson. Yes Matt Groening got the name for the paterfamilias of the popular cartoon from a Nathanael West novel about decadent 1920s Hollywood.) Haley recalls getting the Little Children script from his agent. ³I made a tape and sent it to Todd Fields even before he began auditioning,² Haley said. Haley was flown to New York to read and his All the King¹s Men co-star Kate Winslet was there to read with him for Fields. ³Todd can be an actor¹s director because of all the roles he¹s had in front of the camera,² states Haley, ³But he¹s also a visionary. There¹s not an aspect of the production that he doesn¹t know about or oversee.² As for the creepy interpretation that Haley gives his sex offender character of Ronnie that was a process that ³evolved from day to day as I would focus on different aspects of his character.² Little Children may be the best of the least seen films of 2006 and if you haven¹t seen Little Children it returns to theaters this weekend along with nominated films like Last King of Scotland or The Departed.