Foster Dickson's Blog, page 18

January 22, 2023

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 171

“Everybody is entitled to their opinion about politics and culture, it’s true, but an opinion is different from a grounded understanding. The most direct path to catastrophe is to treat complex problems as if they’re obvious to everyone.”

– from“The College Essay is Dead”by Stephen Marche, in The Atlantic, December 6, 2022

January 17, 2023

The Great Watchlist Purge of 2023: Everything Must Go!

As 2022 came to an end, I closed out a second Great Watchlist Purge . . . which was just as unsuccessful as the first one in significantly reducing the number of films in my IMDb watchlist. In 2020, I took on the idea of emptying out my watchlist as a way to keep my mind occupied during the stagnation of the COVID-19 quarantine. It did keep my mind occupied, but I started with sixty-seven films, watched a whole bunch, added a whole bunch, and ended with seventy! Realizing the interminable nature of what I was doing, I decided to be more systematic about it in 2021. I began with seventy-two movies, and by September had watched fifty-three, cut twenty-one, and ended up with twenty remaining. (If you do a little math, you’ll see that movies were still added along the way.) By May 2022, I had reduced that twenty down to seventeen, but had added so many that my list was full once again— fifty-seven movies! So, another Great Watchlist Purge was in order. By the end of that one, I had watched twenty-three and cut five, but added a few and had thirty-four movies at year’s end. Of course, those thirty-four films quickly grew to thirty-nine, as I watched December news segments featuring critics lauding their favorites of the year.

Now, this year is going to my year! I want to get it down to zero . . . but the main goal for 2023 is to find and watch the eight films that have remained in the list since the beginning in January 2021. (Those are noted with asterisk.) Meanwhile I’m also going to keep an eye out for films that I cut during the first two purges because I couldn’t find them. What makes my watchlist particularly difficult is the fact that I like older and obscure movies, and they span a pretty broad cross-section of subjects, styles, and places. A few of them have been almost impossible to find, like 1969’s Valerie and 1976’s Tanya. But some of it is inaction or chagrin about paying a rental fee; a handful of films sit in my Netflix DVD queue for too long, while others are available to rent or buy on YouTube or at least one streaming service.

The good news is that I’ve already gotten started . . . The streaming service Tubi circulates movies in and out regularly, and scrolling through the Recommended list, there was already one I’d been looking for: Wrong Turn.

Wrong Turn (2003)
This horror movie made it onto the watchlist from a documentary called The 50 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen. Also featured were Burnt Offerings, which I watched, and Session 9, which I cut after not being able to find it. I’d seen more than half of fifty they featured, but these I had not. Though I’m generally not interested in movies where good-looking twenty-somethings go to the woods and get chased by psychos who live out there, I took the recommendation in stride and gave it a try. I will give this movie one thing: the scene when they find the house and are snooping around in it is genuinely anxiety-inducing. The rest of it is pretty predictable. The attractive young adults get picked off one by one, starting with the ones who have sex, and in the end, these Appalachian in-bred killers are like so many horror movie villains— they survive what would kill any normal person and keep coming. It’s a pretty solid contribution to the rural-people-are-scary subgenre.

So, these thirty-eight films are in the watchlist: thirty-four from the end of 2022, five added since the last purge ended, and now one watched. There are two from 1929 and 1930, respectively, then one from the 1960s, fifteen from the 1970s, seven from the 1980s, five from the 1990s, two from the 2000s, two from the 2010s, and five from the 2020s. (Once again, I’m 1970s-heavy.) So far, these have been harder to access, again for various reasons. All the Colors of the Dark and The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are probably not offered because of their content, but I can’t imagine that Eddie and the Cruisers is unavailable for those reasons. Deadlock and Personal Problems have been impossible to find, but I’m interested enough in them to leave them in the list. A few are available for rent-or-buy on streaming services, but many aren’t. A handful are foreign films are available, but not in a language that I speak.

*The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1929)
I had never heard of this animated movie before seeing a reference to it on Twitter from an account that was disputing Fantasia‘s designation as the first full-length animated feature film. The clip attached to the tweet was interesting, and I want to see the whole film.

*The River Rat (1984)
I found this film when I was trying to figure out what Martha Plimpton had been in. I tend to think of Plimpton as the nerdy friend she played in Goonies, but this one, which is set in Louisiana and has Tommy Lee Jones playing her dad, puts her in a different role.

*The Mephisto Waltz (1971)
I’ve read about this movie but never seen it. I must say, the title is great, and it doesn’t hurt that Jacqueline Bisset is beautiful.

*Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
This horror-thriller came up alongside Deep Red, which I watched in 2021, after I rated two recent horror films: the disturbing Hagazussa and the less-heavy but still creepy Make-Out with Violence. Deep Red was good, so I want to watch this one, too.

*Born in Flames (1983)
This movie looks cool but is obscure. It’s an early ’80s dystopian film about life after a massive revolution. But it is difficult to find. (Apple TV has it but I don’t have Apple TV.) I was surprised to see a story on NPR about it, then I thought maybe it would show up on other services. But nope.

*Personal Problems (1980)
This one is also pretty obscure – complicated African-American lives in the early ’80s – and came up as a suggestion since I liked Ganja and Hess. Though the script was written by Ishmael Reed – whose From Totems to Hip-Hop anthology I use in my classroom – the description says “partly improvised,” which means that the characters probably ramble a bit.

*Little Fauss and Big Halsey (1970)
Paul Newman movies from the late ’60s and early ’70s are among my all-time favorites. This one came out about the same time as Sometimes A Great Notion. Despite having seen Cool Hand Luke, Hud, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Long, Hot Summer numerous times each, I’d never heard of this movie until a few years ago.

*All the Colors of the Dark (1972)
I have memories of seeing this movie in the late 1980s when USA Network used to have a program called Saturday Nightmares, but every list that appears on the internet doesn’t include this movie as having been shown on that program. That weird old program turned me on 1960s and ’70s European horror movies, like Vampire Circus and The Devil’s Nightmare, and I could have sworn this one was on that show— but maybe not. No matter where I first saw it, I haven’t seen this movie in a long time and would like to re-watch it. However, the full movie was virtually impossible to find. One streaming service had it but said it was not available in my area, and one YouTuber has shared the original Italian-language movie . . . but I don’t speak Italian.

Deadlock (1970)
This western came up as a suggestion at the same time as Zachariah. It’s a German western, so we’ll see . . . Generally, it has been hard to find, with only the trailer appearing on most sites. At one point Mubi must have had it, because it comes up in their listings, but it isn’t available to watch anymore.

The Blood of a Poet (1930)
Jean Cocteau’s bohemian classic. I remember reading about this film in books that discussed Paris in the early twentieth century, but I never made any effort to watch it. I’m not as interested in European bohemians as I once was, but if the film is good, it won’t matter.

Landscape in the Mist (1988)
This Greek film about two orphans won high praise. I have tried to find a subtitled version. It may be out of reach.

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
I can’t tell what to make of this movie: Phantom of the Opera but with rock n roll in the mid-’70s? I’ve gathered from the previews that the star is Paul Williams, who later played Little Enos in Smokey and the Bandit.

Valérie (1969)
Not to be confused with Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, this film is a Quebecois hippie film about a naive girl who comes to the city to get involved in the modern goings-on. This one came up as related to Rabid, but only has 5.1 stars on IMDb— it may be a clunker, we’ll see . . .

The Slums of Beverly Hills (1998)
I remember seeing this movie when it came out but not much about it. I do remember it being funny in kind of an off-color way. In short, I’d like to watch it again.

Cat People (1982)
This is Natassja Kinski a few years before Paris, Texas. Early ’80s horror, but perhaps its redemption will come in its cast: Malcolm McDowell, Ed Begley, Jr., Ruby Dee, John Heard, John Larroquette— a whole host of ’80s regulars. It’s possible that this movie won’t be good, but I’ll bet two hours on it and find out.

The Decameron (1971)
About ten years ago, I read The Decameron – the Penguin Classics translation into English – over the course of about a year, reading a story or segue each night. (Every year, I make a New Years resolution to read another one of the Western classics that I haven’t read, and this book was part of that annual tradition.) So, when I saw that Pasolini had done a film version, I was intrigued— how would anyone put 100 stories held within a frame narrative into a film? Well, he didn’t . . . He sampled from them. The Italian-language version is available on YouTube, but of course, I don’t know what they’re saying. I’d like to find this film with English subtitles.

The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (1976)
This film caught my eye because Hy Pyke is in it. Sometimes “erotic” means porno, and sometimes it means that there are just some gratuitously naked people. This movie was made in Spain, which is appropriate for Don Quixote. I seriously doubt if this one is up to par with Orson Welles’ version, but it should be good for a chuckle or two— if I can ever find it.

Tanya (1976)
Somebody, in the mid-1970s, made a sex comedy out of the basic plot line of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. This movie is probably terrible, but it’s also almost impossible to find. It appears that this was the only film for director Nate Rogers, who gave himself the pseudonym Duncan Fingersnarl, which is both creepy and gross. The young woman who stars in the movie was a topless dancer who also starred in one of Ed Wood’s movies. I serious doubt that Tanya is any good, but I have to admit that I’m curious . . .

The Dreamers (2003)
Another Bertolucci film, this one set in 1968 in Paris during the time of student riots. The star here, Michael Pitt, I recognized from supporting roles in Finding Forrester in the mid-1990s and The Village in the early 2000s.

Burning Moon (1992)
What fan of strange horror films could resist this description of a German film made in the 1990s: “A young drug addict reads his little sister two macabre bedtime stories, one about a serial killer on a blind date, the other about a psychotic priest terrorizing his village.” The information on it says that it is really gory, which doesn’t interest me as much as tension and suspense do, but I’d like to see this for the same reason that I wanted to see House before.

The Double Life of Veronique (1991)
This film is French and Polish, and follows two women leading parallel lives. Though the film may be nothing like it, the premise reminded me of Sliding Doors, but this film preceded Sliding Doors by seven years. It gets high marks in IMDb, so it should be good.

Lamb (2021)
This came up as a suggestion on Prime, then it went to Rent or Buy status, and I should’ve watched it when it was available. I’ll probably bite the bullet and rent it sometime.

Eddie and the Cruisers (1983)
I remember this being a really good movie. I like early-1980s Michael Paré generally – mainly from Street of Fire – and the Springsteen-esque main song from the soundtrack was really good: “On the Dark Side” by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band. But this movie is virtually absent from streaming services.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)
Based on the Tom Robbins novel, this film was one I remember watching when I was college-age. But I haven’t seen it in a long time, and now, it’s hard to find. Sadly, the movie gets low ratings on sites like IMDb, but I remember Uma Thurman being good in it. Right after this, she was in Pulp Fiction then Beautiful Girls, which were easily better movies, but I still don’t think this one was bad at all. I’d like to re-watch it.

Three Women (1977)
I actually ran across this one on one of the movie-themed Twitter accounts I used to follow. (I closed my Twitter account last December.) The description on IMDb says, “Two roommates/physical therapists, one a vain woman and the other an awkward teenager, share an increasingly bizarre relationship.” Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall star.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
Two of the most unique actors around, John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe, star in this story about the filming of 1922’s Nosferatu.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
This one was made by Peter Weir, who later made Gallipoli, Witness, and Dead Poets Society— all good movies. The description says, “During a rural summer picnic, a few students and a teacher from an Australian girls’ school vanish without a trace. Their absence frustrates and haunts the people left behind.” That’s just too tantalizing to turn down.

Badlands (1973)
I was with my family on a short trip in summer 2021, when this movie came on one of the cable channels on the hotel-room TV. At first, I thought it was Three Women, since Sissy Spacek was in it, but then I realized that it wasn’t. Pretty soon, my kids said the movie was boring, and asked if we could watch something else. So, here’s this movie that I’ve watched about fifteen minutes of, but now can’t find . . .

Billy Jack (1971)
If you grew up in the South and had cable TV, then you know that there were certain movies that TBS (out of Atlanta) showed regularly on weekend afternoons. Billy Jack was one of them. I remember wondering as a boy why this movie was so serious and dark. Back in the days of cable TV, if you tuned in late, you just missed part of the show, so I’ve seen parts of Billy Jack numerous times. I ran across it as an IMDb suggestion and thought, It’d be good to watch that one again.

Life and Times of the Red Dog Saloon (1996)
This documentary came up as a suggestion after I watched the documentary JR Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius. In the description, the list of bands included several that I like, and the sense I got was that this place was like Armadillo World Headquarters (maybe).

The Conformist (1970)
I like Bertolucci, but am not really into movies about Nazis, so I had ignored this movie previously. Then it came up in a show I was watching that referenced Nazi movies like The Damned, and the critics they interviewed kept saying that this is a great movie.

The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982)
The director of this film, Peter Greenaway, was one of my favorites in the 1990s. After seeing The Pillow Book at our local community theater, I found Prospero’s Books on VHS, then became aware of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. We’ll see what this one is like.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)
Once again, a director I had never heard of: Pano Cosmatos. The visuals in the still images from the film look incredible. And the description: “Despite being under heavy sedation, a young woman tries to make her way out of the Arboria Institute, a secluded, quasifuturistic commune.” Yes, it must go in the list.

The Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay (1971)
This one is French and could be classified in the exploitation genre. I find European film adaptations of classic literature from the 1960s and ’70s interesting because the directors inevitably put a hippie/artsy then-modern spin on the story. The fusion of those two particular cultural styles then forms its own style, which can be seen in a lot of these movies.

Tar (2022) and After Sun (2022)
These movies were two of a few films suggested in a PBS NewsHour segment that featured critics talking about their favorite movies of 2022. Some of them didn’t look interesting to me, but these two did. The former, Tar, has Cate Blanchett playing a female orchestra conductor, and the latter, After Sun, tells the story of a woman looking back at her father and trying to reconcile the man she knew with aspects of his life that didn’t know about. Both look dramatic, probably pretty heavy, but seem like they’d be good films. Tar is actually coming to our local independent theater soon.

After the Sun Fell (2016)
This movie came up when I was searching IMDb for the previous film After Sun. It looked interesting, so I added it. The synopsis says, “When Adam arrives at Brandon’s childhood home for the weekend, he uncovers a hole in the roof and a dark family secret: the death of a troubled brother nobody wants to talk about.” Who could pass that up?

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
I don’t usually watch action films and have little interest in fast-paced Asian action films, which seem be a genre in and of themselves, but this one came highly recommended in another end-of-year news segment about best films. It looks visually interesting, and the critic who discussed it said it is the main actress Michelle Yeoh’s best performance ever.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
After watching In Bruges, I would watch just about anything starring both Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell.

What I’m also going to be keeping an eye out for are these eighteen movies that I cut from the watchlist in 2021 and 2022. I’m not going to revive or reinstate the films I started or half-watched then quit. Because those were just bad. These are the ones I couldn’t find or could only find without subtitles.

The Panic in Needle Park (1971) and Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971)
These were are both from the early ’70s and are all about hardcore drug users. I’m not sure that I’ll ever watch them, but I have them in the list in case I decide to.

Mountain Cry (2015)
This movies came up when I searched the term ‘haiku.’ It appears to be a beautifully filmed Chinese drama about a family in a small village.

The Vampires of Poverty (1978) and La mansion du Araucaima (1986)
Two by director Carlos Mayolo. Films out of Colombia in the late ’70s are a bit out of my wheelhouse, but both look intriguing. Vampires of Poverty is fictional but made to look a documentary about the poor. The latter is about an actress who wanders off a film set and into a weird castle. In both cases, I’ll need subtitles.

Alabama (1985)
The title of this one lured me in. But it’s not about Alabama, the state where I live. The film is Polish and has no description on IMDb. One of the posters says “love story” on it, so I’m guessing that it’s a love story. I’m mainly curious why it’s titled Alabama.

A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud (2017)
I love Carson McCullers. That is all.

The Night They Robbed Big Bertha’s (1975)
This movies look awful, but along with Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws, it also look like a great example of that mid- to late 1970s Southern kitsch, that goofy comedy sub-genre that spawned Smokey and the Bandit and The Dukes of Hazzard.

Mondo Candido (1975)
I read the novel Candide in graduate school and liked it, and I taught it every once in a while in my twelfth-grade English class. It’s a pretty wild story, and this adaptation is Italian. However, I’ll need English subtitles.

Widespread Panic: Live from the Georgia Theatre (1991) and The Earth Will Swallow You (2002)
How has a guy who loves Widespread Panic never seen either of these early concert films? Ridiculous.

The Girl Behind the White Picket Fence (2013)
I found this movie in a search for Udo Kier, who I’ve liked since seeing Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Dracula when I was in high school. The cinematic style of this one looks pretty cool, as does the story.

Endless Poetry (2016)
Alejandro Jodorowsky is hit-or-miss for me. I liked The Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre but not El Topo. This movie about him is supposed to be done in his very strange style.

Beginner’s Luck (2001) and Tykho Moon (1996)
Both of these movies star Julia Delpy, who was one of my 1990s celebrity crushes after I saw Killing Zoe and Before Sunrise. (The other was Hope Sandoval, singer for Mazzy Star.) These movies look very different from each other, Delpy is the common element.

White Star (1983)
This biopic has Dennis Hopper playing Westbrook. As a fan of rock journalism, I wanted to see it but can’t seem to find it, at least not in English or with subtitles.

Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)
I like ’70s horror movies, but there have enough others to watch that I didn’t see any sense in continuing to chase this one. It is available to rent on YouTube, so I might fork over the dough . . .

Session 9 (2001)
This one, along with Burnt Offerings and Wrong Turn, made it onto the watchlist from a documentary called The 50 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen. I’d seen more than half of them, but this one I had not. It was numbers 39. I put it in my Netflix DVD queue but it went to Saved status. I guess that’s why the show was about the horror movies . . . You’ve Never Seen!

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Published on January 17, 2023 12:00

January 15, 2023

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 170

On the relationship between editor and writer

I can’t think of many cases of writers I’ve worked with whose work I really loved and whose person I didn’t like at all. There are people who are more difficult than other people, and more needy. It’s a very emotional relationship. There’s a transference that occurs as in psychoanalysis. The editor represents many things, and different things to every writer. It’s a financial relationship. It’s an approval relationship. It’s a technical relationship. It can be a close one or it can not. Some writers don’t want to be social with their editors. Others need to talk to them constantly. And if you would let them, would like to read to you what they’ve written that day over the telephone. Not for me. So your job, being a service job, is to supply the writer with whatever you intuit he or she requires and needs and can make the most of.

– from “He’s edited Caro, le Carré and ‘Catch-22,’ but doesn’t mind if you don’t know his name,” an interview with editor Robert Gottlieb by NPR’s Terry Gross, which appeared on “Fresh Air,” January 3, 2023

January 12, 2023

Welcome to Eclectic: The Editor’s Reading List on “Nobody’s Home”

Even before the project’s inception in summer 2020, I knew that an Editor’s Reading List would be a component of Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore. This project mixes the literary anthology format with aspects of the blog, news aggregator, curriculum resource, and listserv formats. Within that mission, books reviews and recommendations about longer works on those subjects seem necessary.

The differences between the factual history and the ensuing beliefs, myths, and narratives is particularly interesting to me. I will admit that reading a two- to four-hundred page book on one aspect of Southern history can be a slog – and even more so if the book is an academic work – but it’s always worth it. Especially if my reviews lead someone else to read into it as well. For each in its own way, the discussions include some version of: here’s what has actually happened, which may or may not be what people think has happened.

The books that have been reviewed (linked below) and those whose reviews are forthcoming (listed below them) involve a variety of subjects: film, the environment, race, politics, symbolism, the media, societal trends. To read more, click on the links below, or for even more that, visit the project’s website.

The Editor’s Reading List, a work-in-progress:

The South Never Plays Itself by Ben Beard (2020)

Cathedrals of Kudzu by Hal Crowther (2000)

Myth and Southern History, Volume 2: The New South, edited by Patrick Gerster and Nicholas Cords (1989)

A Movement of the People by Katie Lamar Jackson (2017)

South to a New Place, edited by Suzanne W. Jones and Sharon Monteith (2002)

The Countercultural South by Jack Temple Kirby (1995)

Media-Made Dixie by Jack Temple Kirby (1986)

The Two-Party South by Alexander P. Lamis (1984)

The Silent Majority by Matthew Lassiter (2007)

Heritage and Hate by Stephen M. Monroe (2021)

The Omni-Americans by Albert Murray (1970)

Outside the Southern Myth by Noel Polk (1997)

One South by John Shelton Reed (1982)

Myth, Media, and the Southern Mind by Stephen A. Smith (1986)

Judgment & Grace in Dixie by Charles Reagan Wilson (1995)

The Politics of White Rights by Joseph Bagley (2018)

Currently reading: Biracial Politics by Chandler Davidson (1972)

Navigating Souths, edited by Michele Grigsby Coffey and Jodi Skipper (2020)

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State by Andrew Gelman, et al. (2008)

Framing the South by Allison Graham (2001)

Southern Politics in the 1990s by Alexander P. Lamis (1999)

The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism by Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino (2010)

The South of the Mind by Zachary J. Lechner (2018)

Getting Right with God by Mark Newman (2001)

In Search of the Silent South by Morton Sosna (1977)

Deep South by Paul Theroux (2015)

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Published on January 12, 2023 12:03

January 8, 2023

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 169

“Every day an editor learns something new.”

– from the chapter “A Liberal Education” in Writing to Learn by William Zinsser

January 5, 2023

Watching “Sad Hill Unearthed” (2017)

The 2017 documentary Sad Hill Unearthed tells the story of efforts to preserve the fictional Sad Hill Cemetery featured in the final scenes of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The circular graveyard with an amphitheater-like central stage was created for the film in the mid-1960s, and its remnants were still there – about twenty miles south of Burgos, Spain – as the fiftieth anniversary approached in 2016. So, a group of guys organized themselves to restore it, then made the call for help, and volunteers came from far-flung places. They all chipped away at the massive task, first with hand tools and later with some heavier equipment. Ultimately, their efforts were urged forward by the common understanding of how films can shape our lives and how we often seek to visit (or revisit) the sites of meaningful experiences.

Though I’m about five years late in watching this one, I’m a longtime fan of Clint Eastwood, of spaghetti westerns, and of this movie in particular. I would put Sergio Leone’s three-film series in the “existential western” sub-genre. (The term is usually applied to Monte Hellman’s The Shooting and Ride the Whirlwind, but I see a similar spirit in Leone’s three, in Jodorowski’s El Topo, in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, and in other films as well.) Even if someone doesn’t usually like Westerns, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly offers something different by combining of the setting and plots of the western genre with a noir feel, a European sensibility, and a groundbreaking musical component. Only the most closed-minded viewer could watch this entire film and walk away unaffected.

Thinking about the documentary itself, the handful of guys who organized the effort tell their tale in the most sincere and heartfelt way. Yes, their chosen task was unorthodox, but in doing it, they found a community of equally true believers that they didn’t know existed. Despite the effect of modern streaming services, film is at its best when it is consumed in groups. This time, the group included Metallica singer James Hetfield, as well as others who traveled to Spain to dig dirt and move stones. This story is a testament to the communal nature of film as an art form, including how so many disparate people can appreciate the same things in the same ways.

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Published on January 05, 2023 11:54

December 27, 2022

A Deep Southern, Diversified & Re-Imagined Recap of 2022

2022 was a year of changes for this middle-aged writer, editor, and teacher. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 – 2022 school year was hard one, as we all readjusted to relative normalcy. In the spring, a job offer from Huntingdon College came up, and I left BTW Magnet after leading the school’s Creative Writing program for nineteen years. The move also meant that I left the School Garden behind right after we rebuilt and revitalized it, and that I changed jobs just as we got the Mondays of Poetry program up and moving again. Those changes were major for me, but other things stayed constant. level:deepsouth and Nobody’s Home each had a second anniversary, in March and June, respectively. After announcing our year-four winners in March, we announced the theme for the Fitzgerald Museum’s fifth annual Literary Contest in August. Work also continued on the Montgomery Catholic history book, which I began in 2019. (It will be published for the school’s anniversary in fall 2023.) It has been a productive year and one with a new trajectory. Now, as 2022 comes to a close, here is a recap of what has been published here this year:

Posts

level:deepsouth turns two. (March)

Congratulations to the winners of the Fitzgerald Museum’s Literary Contest: “Radiant Hour” (March)

Local Events for National Poetry Month, April 2022 (March)

The Open Submissions Period for Nobody’s Home (April)

Short Essay: “Happy, Happy” (April)

Twelve Years of Unapologetically Eclectic Pack Mule-ing (April)

A Moveable Feast: A Revival, a Donation . . . and a New Start? (May)

The End of an Era: Leaving BTW Magnet (June)

Alabamiana: Professor Charles L. Floyd, 1858 – 1924 (July)

The Fitzgerald Museum’s annual Literary Contest and Zelda Award (August)

A Quick Tribute to “Mountain Man” Bill McKinney (August)

Unencumbered (September)

The Huntingdon Library’s Mini-Conference: “Good Trouble” (October)

The horror! The horror! (November)

The Environment in the News (November)

and published in level:deepsouth :

Lollapalooza ’92 (August)

Reading

Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen

Sky Above, Great Wind by Kazuaki Tanahashi

and published in “Groundwork,” the editor’s blog for Nobody’s Home:

Media-Made Dixie (1986) by Jack Temple Kirby

The Omni-Americans (1970) by Albert Murray

One South (1982) by John Shelton Reed

Cathedrals of Kudzu (2000) by Hal Crowther

The Politics of White Rights (2018) by Joseph Bagley

Watching

The Great Watchlist Purge of 2022

The Great Watchlist Purge of 2022: A Late Summer Progress Report

The Great Watchlist Purge of 2022: Fin

and published in “Groundwork,” the editor’s blog for Nobody’s Home:

“Migratuse” on Monograph on PBS

Hillbilly (2019)

“Sapelo” on America ReFramed on PBS

The Downing of a Flag on PBS

Southern Movies

Crossroads (1986)

Another Black History Month Sampler

The Chamber (1996)

Dead Man Walking (1995)

The Porky’s Trilogy (1980s)

Deliverance (1972)

Macabre (1980)

Bucktown (1975)

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Published on December 27, 2022 08:32

December 20, 2022

The Great Watchlist Purge of 2022: Fin

*You should read the first post in this year’s purge and the progress report.

As 2022 comes to an end, I’m wrapping up a second Great Watchlist Purge . . . which has been just as unsuccessful as the first one in significantly reducing the number of films in my IMDb watchlist. If my count is correct, I started with fifty-four films in mid-May. Then after watching almost two-dozen, then adding about a dozen more— these purges aren’t amounting to much. What began as a way to keep my mind occupied during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic has had me going for two years now. But the bright side: I’ve finally put forth effort to find and watch movies that I’ve wanted to see.

What makes my watchlist particularly difficult is the fact that I like older and obscure movies. A few of them have been almost impossible to find, like Landscape in the Mist and Tanya. But some of it is my inaction; five of them sat in my Netflix DVD queue for too long. Some of it is also my laziness; several are available to rent or buy on YouTube or at least one streaming service. This time, during the four months between between early September and late December, I watched ten more movies from the list: four from the 1970s, one from the 1980s, one from the 1990s, one from the 2000s, and four from the 2010s. They span a pretty broad cross-section of subjects, styles, and places.

Burnt Offerings (1976)
When this movie started, I was pretty skeptical, because it had the feel of those late 1970s and early 1980s TV movies. However, the cast was solid – Karen Black, Burgess Meredith – and it had been ranked in a documentary that saw called The 50 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen. (If I remember correctly, it came in at number thirty.) So, I gave it a chance. The tone and feel reminded me of the original Amityville movie: a haunted house affecting a family in vague ways that they can’t quite put their finger on. This time, the mom is the focus. I will say that, after about an hour, the slow burn started to get weary, but seeing the ending was worth the wait.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
I remember watching this movie as a boy. Jason Robards stars as an older father whose son is enthralled with a carnival that has come to town, but the carnival is a front for a sinister group of evildoers. I was surprised, when the opening credits rolled, that it was produced by Disney. I also didn’t remember that it was written by Ray Bradbury. I like Jason Robards because he could play a kindly dad, a sinister cowboy, a wily conman, or just about anything in between.

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
After almost giving up on this movie and cutting it from the list, I happened across it on Roku’s Watch TCM channel. An early ’70s Spanish drama set in 1940, the story follows a little seven-year-old girl with big brown eyes who wonders at everything she sees. The plot is built upon a series of coincidences: the traveling projectionist brings the 1931 Frankenstein to their tiny town, the girl asks her sister about why things happen in the movie, her sister tells a few childish lies because she doesn’t know the answers, and one thing leads to another. Ultimately, it all turns out OK, but I will admit that I was worried throughout the film that the little girl was going to end up hurt. I had never heard of the director Victor Erice, but I was impressed by this movie. It was both charming and sad, a bit slow but its tension was built on that slowness.

Cronos (1993)
This one was director Guillermo del Toro’s first full-length film. (He later made Pan’s Labyrinth then The Shape of Water, which won an Oscar.) I liked Pan’s Labyrinth but had not heard of this movie, then found it when I went down the rabbit hole of seeing what else del Toro had made. I guess Cronos would be classified as a horror movie, but it is more of a fantasy film . . . until the gory post-mortem parts come on. The special effects here are a little hokey, but for the time, they get a pass. Cronos is good movie, but not the director’s best.

The Order of Myths (2008)
This documentary about Mobile’s Mardi Gras was recommended by a friend who is a folklorist. I’ve written a good bit on the culture of Alabama, which is my home state, and I understand that this documentary caused some controversy when it was released. Watching it, I see why. At just over eighty minutes, the documentary centers on Mardi Gras and the groups that put it together, but it also interrogates the Meaher family (of Clotilde infamy) and the segregated associations. It also touches on Africatown and the Michael Donald lynching as part of Mobile’s history. I thought the filmmakers were quite thoughtful, avoiding sensationalism but being honest about how it is.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014)
I apparently did a worse-than-terrible job of looking at what this movie is. When I turned it on, I saw Bill Gunn’s name in the credits and thought, Interesting that Spike Lee worked with him here. Then the dagger came out, and I began to think that this looked familiar. Then came a scene with a guy in a tree, and I thought, This looks a lot like . . . Ganja & Hess! I paused it, got on IMDb, and looked at the characters’ names. This is Spike Lee’s Ganja & Hess. I haven’t seen that movie in a long time, but I remember it well enough to know that Da Sweet Blood of Jesus pales in comparison. I just don’t get why Hollywood folks want to remake great classic films, especially independent films. Think about what we’d watch if some twentysomething today tried to remake Do the Right Thing. That face you’re making right now— yeah.

The Little Hours (2017)
I don’t know how I missed The Little Hours when it came out, since I’m Catholic, a fan of Saturday Night Live, and someone who has read the Decameron. This movie is crass and vulgar and offbeat and hilarious. Fred Armisen makes the movie, to me, but there are moments of laugh-out-loud humor throughout.

The Lobster (2015)
After watching director Yorgos Lanthimos’s other two films Killing of a Sacred Deer, which was infuriatingly tense, and Dogtooth, which was disturbing, then watching Colin Farrell in In Bruges, I was excited about this dark comedy. It had the same coldness as Lanthimos’ other two films, but putting that style onto a dystopian story that contained magical realism made for a very bleak film. The characters were pathetic and stifled, and even their attempts to escape didn’t make me feel better about them.

All the Right Noises (1970)
I found this story about a married theater tech who has an affair with a teenage actress, when I looked up what movies Olivia Hussey had been in other than Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. It looked a little like Fatal Attraction, but it was very British and very dull.

The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (2013)
This French thriller, which came up as a suggestion with All the Colors of the Dark, caught my eye with the wonderful artwork on its cover image. The title is also compelling, and those two factors led me to see what it was. It didn’t hurt that the description contained the phrase “surreal kaleidoscope.” The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears was visually interesting and the soundtrack was great – so it looked and sounded excellent – but the director sacrificed storytelling to do all that. By the middle of the film, when several versions of the main character’s self were running around, jumping out of windows, and cutting the other selves . . . I was like, what am I watching? The movie had a David Lynch feel, coupled with an aesthetic vaguely similar to Amelie, while utilizing elements of European thrillers from the 1970s, like zooming in on the eyes and color gels on the lights. I kind of wish this movie had been a short, not feature-length. I liked a lot about it, but got tired of having my attention yanked around by the editor and cinematographer.

Brother on the Run (1973)
I love blaxploitation films. There are literally hundreds of them, some look pretty cheesy, and most are low-budget. This one looked like it could be good. The poster art caught my eye, to be honest, and the main character is a teacher or a professor, which is very different than most of the movies in this genre. But it was bad . . . The plot resembled Sweet Sweetback in a way – lots of running from the cops – but the storytelling was atrocious. I found myself going, “Wait—why did that just happen?” a lot.

Those are the ones I watched in recent months. Though, as with last year, some of the movies in the lists have been cut for various reasons. Each of them was either something I was never very excited about to begin with or something that I’ve accepted probably can’t be located. I started watching both Salt of the Earth and The People Next Door, and neither kept my attention. Watching them felt like a chore. I gave up on White Star, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, and Session 9, because there is barely a trace of any of them when I search.

White Star (1983)
This biopic has Dennis Hopper playing Westbrook. As a fan of rock journalism, I wanted to see it but can’t seem to find it, at least not in English or with subtitles.

Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)
I like ’70s horror movies, but there are enough others to watch that I don’t see any sense in continuing to chase this one. It might appear somewhere, you never know.

Session 9 (2001)
This one, along with Burnt Offerings and Wrong Turn, made it onto the watchlist from a documentary called The 50 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen. I’d seen more than half of them, but this one I had not. It was numbers 39. I even tried to put it in my Netflix DVD queue but it went to Saved status. I guess that’s why the show was about the horror movies . . . You’ve Never Seen!

The People Next Door (1970)
I’ve been a fan of this movie’s star Eli Wallach since seeing The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but this film is nothing like that one. Here, a middle-class suburban couple have a son and a daughter who are hippies on drugs. I watched about thirty minutes, and it was so bad that I turned it off. Imagine if the ultra-depressing Ordinary People tried to be cool. Some of the reviews I saw in advance said it was one of those TV movies that were meant to scare kids into not doing drugs. That’s probably right.

So, these thirty-four films are still in the list: twenty-eight from before and six added recently. So far, these have been harder to access, again for various reasons. All the Colors of the Dark and The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are probably not offered because of their content, but I can’t imagine that Eddie and the Cruisers is unavailable for those reasons. Deadlock and Valerie have been impossible to find, but I’m interested enough in them to leave them in the list. A few are available for rent-or-buy on streaming services, but most aren’t. A handful are foreign films are available, but not in a language that I speak.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1929)
I had never heard of this animated movie before seeing a reference to it on Twitter from an account that was disputing Fantasia‘s designation as the first full-length animated feature film. The clip attached to the tweet was interesting, and I want to see the whole film.

The River Rat (1984)
I found this film when I was trying to figure out what Martha Plimpton had been in. I tend to think of Plimpton as the nerdy friend she played in Goonies, but this one, which is set in Louisiana and has Tommy Lee Jones playing her dad, puts her in a different role.

The Mephisto Waltz (1971)
I’ve read about this movie but never seen it. I must say, the title is great, and it doesn’t hurt that Jacqueline Bisset is beautiful.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
This horror-thriller came up alongside Deep Red, which I watched in 2021, after I rated two recent horror films: the disturbing Hagazussa and the less-heavy but still creepy Make-Out with Violence. Deep Red was good, so I want to watch this one, too.

Born in Flames (1983)
This movie looks cool but is obscure. It’s an early ’80s dystopian film about life after a massive revolution. But it is difficult to find. (Apple TV has it but I don’t have Apple TV.) I was surprised to see a story on NPR about it, then I thought maybe it would show up on other services. But nope.

Personal Problems (1980)
This one is also pretty obscure – complicated African-American lives in the early ’80s – and came up as a suggestion since I liked Ganja and Hess. Though the script was written by Ishmael Reed – whose From Totems to Hip-Hop anthology I use in my classroom – the description says “partly improvised,” which means that the characters probably ramble a bit.

Little Fauss and Big Halsey (1970)
Paul Newman movies from the late ’60s and early ’70s are among my all-time favorites. This one came out about the same time as Sometimes A Great Notion. Despite having seen Cool Hand Luke, Hud, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Long, Hot Summer numerous times each, I’d never heard of this movie until a few years ago.

All the Colors of the Dark (1972)
I have memories of seeing this movie in the late 1980s when USA Network used to have a program called Saturday Nightmares, but every list that appears on the internet doesn’t include this movie as having been shown on that program. That weird old program turned me on 1960s and ’70s European horror movies, like Vampire Circus and The Devil’s Nightmare, and I could have sworn this one was on that show— but maybe not. No matter where I first saw it, I haven’t seen this movie in a long time and would like to re-watch it. However, the full movie was virtually impossible to find. One streaming service had it but said it was not available in my area, and one YouTuber has shared the original Italian-language movie . . . but I don’t speak Italian.

Landscape in the Mist (1988)
This Greek film about two orphans won high praise. I haven’t tried to find a subtitled version yet, it may be out of reach.

Cat People (1982)
This is Natassja Kinski a few years before Paris, Texas. Early ’80s horror, but perhaps its redemption will come in its cast: Malcolm McDowell, Ed Begley, Jr., Ruby Dee, et al— a whole host of ’80s regulars. (Also John Heard, the jerky antagonist in Big, and John Larroquette from TV’s Night Court.) It’s possible that this movie won’t be good, but I’ll bet two hours on it and find out.

Wrong Turn (2003)
These two, along with Burnt Offerings and Session 9, made it onto the watchlist from a documentary called The 50 Best Horror Movies You’ve Never Seen. I’d seen more than half of them, but this one I had not. This one will come eventually, since I had to put it in my Netflix DVD queue.

Lamb (2021)
This came up as a suggestion on Prime, then it went to Rent or Buy status, and I should’ve watched it when it was available. I’ll probably bite the bullet and rent it sometime.

Eddie and the Cruisers (1983)
I remember this being a really good movie. I like early 1980s Michael Paré generally – mainly from Street of Fire – and the Springsteen-esque main song from the soundtrack was really good: “On the Dark Side” by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band. But this movie is virtually absent from streaming services.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)
Based on the Tom Robbins novel, this film was one I remember watching when I was college-age. But I haven’t seen it in a long time, and now, it’s rather hard to find. Sadly, the movie gets low ratings on sites like IMDb, but I remember Uma Thurman being good in it. Right after this, she was in Pulp Fiction then Beautiful Girls, which were easily better movies, but I still don’t think this one was bad at all. I’d like to re-watch it.

Three Women (1977)
I actually ran across this one on one of the movie-themed Twitter accounts I used to follow. (I closed my Twitter account earlier this month.) The description on IMDb says, “Two roommates/physical therapists, one a vain woman and the other an awkward teenager, share an increasingly bizarre relationship.” Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall star.

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
Two of the most unique actors around, John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe, star in this story about the filming of 1922’s Nosferatu.

And, of course, I have added a couple more movies to the list since the progress report in September . . . and here they are:

Badlands (1973)
I was with my family on a short trip this summer, when this movie came on one of the cable channels on the hotel-room TV. At first, I thought it was Three Women, since Sissy Spacek was in it, but then I realized that it wasn’t. Pretty soon, my kids said the movie was boring, and asked if we could watch something else. Now, here’s this movie that I’ve watched about fifteen minutes of, but now can’t find . . .

Billy Jack (1971)
If you grew up in the South and had cable TV, then you know that there were certain movies that the TBS (out of Atlanta) showed constantly on weekend afternoons. Billy Jack was one of them. I remember wondering as a boy why this movie was so serious and dark. Back in the days of cable TV, if you tuned in late, you just missed part of the show, so I’ve seen parts of Billy Jack numerous times. I ran across it as an IMDb suggestion and thought, It’d be good to watch that one again.

The Conformist (1970)
I like Bertolucci, but am not really into movies about Nazis, so I had ignored this movie previously. Then it came up something I was watching that referenced Nazi movies like The Damned, and the critics they interviewed kept saying that this is a great movie.

Watched during the 2022 Purge:1900 (1976)Haiku Tunnel (2001)Images (1972)Forty Years on the Farm (2012)Fascination (1979)Zabriskie Point (1970)Ravagers (1979)The Beautiful Troublemaker (1991)Simple Men (1992)Rabid (1977)What the Peeper Saw (1971)Chronopolis (1982)Booksmart (2019)The Psychedelic Priest (1971)The Downing of a Flag (2021)Spirit of the Beehive (1973)Cronos (1993)Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014)The Little Hours (2017)The Lobster (2015)All the Right Noises (1970)The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (2013)Brother on the Run (1973)CutSalt of the Earth (1954)White Star (1983)Session 9 (2001)Blood on the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)The People Next Door (1970)In the ListThe Adventures of Prince Achmed (1929)The River Rat (1984)The Mephisto Waltz (1971)Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)Born in Flames (1983)Personal Problems (1980)Little Fauss and Big Halsey (1970)All the Colors of the Dark (1972)Deadlock (1970)The Blood of a Poet (1930)Landscape in the Mist (1988)Phantom of the Paradise (1974)Valérie (1969)The Slums of Beverly Hills (1998)Cat People (1982)The Decameron (1971)The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (1976)Tanya (1976)Wrong Turn (2003)The Dreamers (2003)Burning Moon (1992)The Double Life of Veronique (1991)Lamb (2021)Eddie and the Cruisers (1983)Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)Three Women (1977)Shadow of the Vampire (2000)Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)Badlands (1973)Billy Jack (1971)Life and Times of the Red Dog Saloon (1996)The Conformist (1970)The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982)Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

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Published on December 20, 2022 11:00

December 8, 2022

Southern Movie 62: “Bucktown” (1975)

The blaxploitation film Bucktown from 1975 has all the things: a strong hero with sideburns and a moral compass, evil and unnecessarily cruel white people, big afros, colorful clothes, groovy music . . . But this time, the story is not set in an urban ghetto or in the California hills. Instead, we’re in the Deep South, where Duke Johnson (Fred Williamson) takes on the corrupt small-town lawmen who killed his brother. Though Duke arrives alone for his brother’s funeral, he quickly gets help from Aretha (Pam Grier), a hapless drunkard (Bernie Hamilton), and a little boy who is a street hustler— that is, until he calls his friends to come down from up North and then has to deal with them, too! Directed by Arthur Marks, who would go on to make Friday Foster, JD’s Revenge, and episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard, this movie carries the 1970s cult genre out of big cities and brings it down home.

As Bucktown begins, we immediately see what’s going in. It is night, and along neon-lit city street – that does not even remotely resemble a Southern small town – we see a couple of swarthy white cops sitting in the car, ogling a prostitute who blows them kisses in return. Suddenly, a young black man comes running out of an alley, stops when he sees the police car, and runs the other way. The cops take off after him in the car, screeching through traffic, and catch up with him back by the railroad tracks. They beat him up, making no pretense at an arrest, as a stylish and handsome black man gets off the train. The new arrival witnesses their assault of the man, followed by them robbing him of his few dollars, and shakes his head at what he sees. The cops inquire toward him, but his answer is coy and he keeps moving without helping this hapless victim of police brutality. The cold-hearted officers pocket the money and go about their business.

The newcomer then walks over to cab where an old black driver lets him in the car. Now smoking a long cigar, he asks to be taken to Club Alabam. The driver makes a face and wants to know, “Son, do you believe in God?” He replies carelessly, “Sure, why not?” But the retort is quick and discomfiting, “Then you’re in the wrong place.” The elder man closes the car door, and they head off as the credits finish up.

We soon see that the club he has requested as his destination is dilapidated and has a Closed sign on it. So, this man we have yet to meet walks coolly down to the Dixie Hotel. As he approaches, two white men walk with a prostitute who promises them both a good time. Then a little boy hustles up and offers information on anything the stranger might be looking for. After finding out that drugs and prostitutes are not his thing, the boy lets the stranger know that his name is Stevie, if he needs anything later. Meanwhile, the two shady cops drive up just as the boy rides off on a motorcycle.

In the lobby, we see that the Dixie is probably a house of prostitution. The room costs $15, and our man Duke Johnson – who we now know – pays in cash. The woman behind the counter offers him some “fun,” but he is not interested. He is only in town to bury his brother. Once Duke walks away, the counter clerk calls the white police chief and tells him: a man named Duke Johnson has come for Ben’s funeral, she thought he ought to know about it. The surly-looking white chief (Art Lund) thanks her, and she reminds him that she was told to always check in and that’s what she’s doing. After hanging up, he sits down to a nice dinner, served by a black maid, and begins to pray.

The scene then shifts to a sparsely attended graveside funeral. Duke is now dressed in black leather and stands back near the hearse. Three people are near the casket: the boy Stevie from the previous night, an attractive young woman, and an older man in suit and a fedora. The preacher shares some stock phrases, then they wrap it up. As the older man hugs the young woman, he takes a pull from a pint bottle of whiskey, then calls after Duke, wondering how he might know the deceased. Duke tells him his name, and the older man Harley recognizes it, telling the others that Ben had bragged on his brother. Harley then introduces Duke to Aretha, who is not impressed. She chastises Duke for not being there to help. Duke asks what was going on that Ben needed help, but Aretha tells him that it doesn’t matter now. She and Stevie retreat to a nearby car, while Duke shrugs it off and leaves too.

After the funeral, Duke heads to the courthouse to find out about his brother’s estate. The clerk is a young black dude with a big afro who tells him that Ben left a house, its lot, and a wallet with $39 in it. Duke wants to take these assets immediately, but the clerk tells him that it will be sixty days . . . unless he wants to sign for an empty wallet. Duke remarks on the clerk’s backhanded way of doing business, but agrees. Out in the lobby, Harley and Stevie stop Duke to tell him that he should re-open Club Alabam. Then the good times will roll again! But Duke says no, all he wants is a buyer so he can get out of town. Harley and Stevie don’t like the answer but Duke doesn’t stick around for them to argue. Out on the lawn, they catch up with him and convince him to give it a try. Harley says that he could fetch a higher price if the place was open, and in the meantime, he could make money on the locals and on the soldiers at the nearby army base.

Over at the police station, Duke has to renew the club’s “city sticker.” First, he has to deal with the two police goons from the movie’s opening scene. They tell him that the sticker is $400— make that $450. About the time Duke has had it with them, the chief opens his office door, and Duke invites himself in to talk with the “main man.” Duke sits right down and puts his cigar in his teeth, and the chief remarks that he doesn’t have any manners. “I give what I get,” Duke replies. During the conversation, the chief explains that the club’s city sticker is overdue and that it will remain padlocked until the fee is paid. Duke stands up and rolls off the cash.

In the next scene, a white police officer and another loudmouth white guy are walking down a city street at night. They pass a neon-lit porn theatre and shake down a black doorman at another club, with the one guy cussing the whole time. After that, it’s over to the hotel to pick up the cash from one of the prostitutes, and the loudmouth sticks around to get some. Down at the bar, Harley comes in dancing and jive talking about the Club Alabam being open. Aretha is in there, drinking by herself. She is gruff with old Harley, who is a happy drunkard and an obvious screw-up, but he believes in Duke. Aretha tries to talk him out of his optimism, but it doesn’t work. Out in the street, the white officers all meet up, and we find out that they’re across the street from the Club Alabam, which is open. They decide it’s time for Duke to “join the club” and start paying.

Inside Club Alabam, they find Duke behind the bar. The insults and the shakedown begin immediately. The meanest of the officers, the one who was beating up the guy in the opening scene, tosses out racial slurs like crazy. But Duke is calm about it all. He tells them that he already paid, but they say no, they expect $100 every Saturday night. Duke’s answer is still no. He tells calls them “crackers” and tells them to leave. Over by the door, Harley and Aretha have come in and are watching the scene, as Duke takes on both cops. One goes after the cash register, and the other throws Stevie against the wall for calling them “faggots.” Duke takes his lumps, and the place gets broken up pretty good – Harley even tries to jump in – but ultimately Duke whips both their butts. The two corrupt cops end up knocked out and laying on the sidewalk. After the fight, Duke gives Aretha and Harley a piece of his mind for not warning him about the corruption and the payoffs that would be associated with opening the club.

By now, Bucktown is about a third of the way in— thirty minutes into an hour-and-a-half of action. We get the sense that this story is based loosely on Phenix City, but with a twist. We see the opportunities for sinful behavior out in the open, and Stevie mentions the soldiers from the nearby base, which would point to that scenario. However, we never actually see any of these soldiers. All in all, Bucktown doesn’t look Southern. A typical small town in the South would not have a porn theatre with clear signage and bright lights, mainstream bars wouldn’t have white and black patrons sitting around together, and there are far too many hepcats in this little town— even the courthouse clerk is styling! Moreover, Ben has lived in the town and operated the best club, and no one comes to his funeral. I don’t think so . . . But what is Southern works. There are no black cops and, after Duke wins the fight in the club, we hear the differing perspectives within the black community. Duke tells Aretha that they can eat the crap they’re handed by the whites, but he won’t, and she replies, “But we have to live here!”

After the fight, Duke heads into the police station and barges past the front desk to face off with the chief. Duke points his finger and proclaims that he won’t pay anybody any more than he already has. The chief takes it – which is also distinctly un-Southern – and calmly levels with Duke. He compliments Duke and assures himself of the black out-of-towner’s intelligence. However, his department can’t operate on the money from parking tickets. They need more revenue . . . to do things like investigate Ben’s death. Duke is puzzled, and the chief clears it up. Ben was beaten to death, but the chief says they don’t know who did it.

Later that night, Duke is chilling at Ben’s house when Aretha arrives. She is dolled up in white and carrying a six-pack of beer. At first, they’re peaceful as Aretha apologizes, but they quickly begin to argue. No one told Duke what he was facing in the little town. Aretha retorts that she has to play it safe, then she saw Duke stand up for himself. Just as it gets heated, Duke grabs her and lays a kiss on her . . . which leads the movie’s gratuitous sex scene.

The couple is awakened, however, by the three cops and their loudmouth friend. The four men are out in the yard with guns, and they blast the house up, while Duke and Aretha lay on the floor to avoid being sprayed. The onslaught is halted by the chief, who pulls up within a moment. He reminds them that too much violence will attract the attention of outsiders, who could come to investigate. Duke hears this whole conversation. After the police leave, Duke and Aretha get up off the floor, and Aretha urges him to leave town. He assures her coldly that he has never run from anything, then he picks up the phone.

On the end of the line is Duke’s friend Roy (Thalmus Rasulala), who is hosting a party, a mix of stylish black men and both black and white women. Roy comes to the phone and is jovial. He asks Duke when he’s coming back home. But Duke remains serious while asking for help without asking for help. Roy picks up on the signals, tells the pretty white woman who is doting on him to excuse him, and agrees to come down South. In the next scene, a train arrives at the station and four sharp-dressed black men get off at the station. One of the local cops is slouching on a bench, drinking a beer in uniform in broad daylight, and Roy asks him for directions. He isn’t helpful, and on their way, one of the men steps on the cop’s hat.

In town, the cool cats strut down the sidewalk as the locals gawk and stare. Stevie accosts them on the sidewalk, offering his services just like he did for Duke, but the man pass him by. At the Club Alabam, the old friends are reunited. Roy meets Harley and Aretha, then introduces his friends: Josh, TJ, and Hambone (Carl Weathers). It is immediately clear that Josh has his eye on Aretha, who is not interested.

Later in their hotel room, the crew begins to plan their next move. Aretha and Duke explain that there are a chief and four officers in the town. (This fact flies in the face of Duke’s earlier explanation to Roy on the phone that they would be outnumbered more than four or five to one.) Aretha explains that the mayor won’t be a problem, since he brought in the chief to clean up the town but can’t control him. (This trope sounds like In the Heat of the Night.) The men make another vague allusion to a previous “job” they’ve handled, and their plan seems to be in place. But before the scene is over, Josh makes a pass at Aretha who yells at him and slaps him. Roy asks what her problem, and Duke and Josh give each other the stink-eye.

Down in the street, the police are talking about the situation. They’re posted around the hotel, but the crew of black men have not come out for hours. The chief reminds them to be patient, that black people aren’t hard to handle. He also remarks that they’re the law so God is on their side.

Next we see Duke and Roy, they’re making arrangements to get started. Sitting in the strip club, Duke explains that one cop waits here on his girlfriend to get off work. The next cop spends his evenings hovering over an ongoing poker game. A third hangs around the whorehouse, because he is part owner of it. The final man stays in the police station to hear the radio. Duke and Roy agree that it’ll be easy pickings.

To get started, we see Hambone in the hallway of the hotel beating the loudmouth one who collects the money. He takes a baseball bat to the courier, who begs for mercy but gets none. Then Hambone takes the purse and leaves. Next, Roy and Duke flush one of the cops out of his apartment, causing him to go down the fire escape, where Hambone is waiting with a shotgun. He destroys the cop’s car, which goes up in flames, then unloads on the fleeing white man. The third is in the police station yelling at a black woman about wanting mustard on his hamburger when TJ sneaks in with a shotgun and does him in. The next victim is accosted at the poker game. The chase leads them out into the street, but ends with the cop being shot to death by Josh, who was hiding in the police car. The final guy is caught with one of his prostitutes, who is straddling him in the bed. She is pulled off of him and he is killed.

The last man to deal with is the chief. They find him sleeping peacefully and all alone. (Unlike his officers, he is behaving himself.) They roust him out of bed in his PJs and spend a little time musing on what to do with him. Still defiant, the chief replies that they won’t hurt him because they need him alive. In fact, the black mayor – The mayor is black! What!? – will want his chief there to recover from this situation.

In the next scene, the black mayor is overseeing his all-black staff counting the money that the officers had been taking. It comes to thousands of dollars. The squirrelly, nerdy mayor then wonders out loud how to repay the vigilantes, and Roy says slyly that they’ll figure out a way. The mayor suggests a parade in their honor, but no, that isn’t what they have in mind . . . They want badges. They want to become the police force.

Meanwhile, Duke has been on the outside of his own deal. Aretha finds him sleeping and tells him that Roy, TJ, Josh, and Hambone didn’t get on the train and leave, but are becoming police officers. Duke thinks it’s funny at first, but Aretha sees something sinister. And she’s right. Over at the jail, Hambone is sharpening a straight razor to help the chief talk about where his money is stashed. He doesn’t want to tell and calls them “street scum.” Unable to move the chief’s mind, Roy instructs Hambone to cut out his tongue.

Duke knows he has to see about what’s happening. He goes to see Roy, who is making out with a woman. Duke wants to hear it from the horse’s mouth, and Roy confirms what they are doing. He even offers Duke a badge, too. Duke says no, this is not a good idea— the thing was to stop the corrupt white cops and move on. Roy disagrees, saying that the town is his “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” He will be acting as the town’s enforcer, and Duke should run his club, and when Duke decides to come to his senses, there will be a place for him. Duke is skeptical.

Out on the street, it has gotten bad again. Hambone is strong-arming people just like his white predecessors. Later he meets up with Josh, who begins a conversation about his problems with Duke. Josh has been trouble since the start, and now he convinces Hambone that, if Duke and Roy weren’t friends anymore, then it would be easy to cut Duke out. That plan begins with tricking Harley into getting stone drunk, then beating him up and cutting him. He is carried out of the bar covered in blood, and Aretha and Duke show up as he is being carted off. Duke then goes to confront Roy who doesn’t appreciate being questioned, but Duke does plant the seed of doubt. Roy then questions Josh about Harley, and Josh lies, telling him that Harley was drunk and disorderly and fought them. We can see that Roy doesn’t believe it, but the rift between he and Duke is in place.

After Aretha visits Harley in the hospital, she is back in the bar with Roy. As we see Roy get out of a police car and go into the bar, Duke is across the street in the barber shop, talking to the mayor. The mayor laments this new situation, and he warns Duke that Roy is gathering forces against him. Over at the bar, Roy sweet-talks Aretha. He tries to convince her in his smooth way that she has two good choices: leave town with Duke and a roll of cash, or stay in town and run the bar without Duke. She asks about the option of her and Due both staying in town, and Roy replies, “That wouldn’t be too classy.” At first, Roy wasn’t openly against Duke. Now, he is.

And it gets worse. At night, when Josh and TJ see Aretha through the window at the house, Josh goes into get her. She stumbles on him and screams, and he punches her. But Duke is there, and he kicks that fool’s butt, gives him the beat down. When Duke throws him out in the yard, his pal gets out of the police car to help, but it’s too late. Duke brought his gun, and the antagonisms are exposed.

With about twenty minutes left in Bucktown, Duke goes to Roy’s place, and they have the showdown. Roy tells Duke that he has everyone in the town “by the balls” and proclaims that he’s not leaving. A wide-eyed Duke hears this, and it’s on. Roy calls TJ and tells him that there are new rules: everybody pays, even Duke. Back at the bar, Hambone, TJ, and Josh come in with gasoline and a shotgun to tear up the Club Alabam. Aretha and Harley try to stand up to them but can’t. An already beat-up Harley gets arrested for assaulting a police officer.

In the action-packed conclusion, Duke and Aretha are ready to take out the bad guys. Aretha comes to Roy, trying to talk him out of what he’s doing in the town, but he gives her a speech about the mean old world where people have to take what they can. She then ends up a semi-hostage of the group and tries to coax Josh into trading sexual favors for Harley’s release. But she has a trick up her sleeve, though it fails, and Josh ends up shooting the old police chief dead in his nearby cell. Soon, Duke arrives with a military-style armored truck to mount his assault on the would-be police force. After driving through a wall, Duke kills his enemies one by one. Of course, Roy is the most elusive. The two old friends agree to put down their guns and fight it out hand-to-hand. The winner gets it all, and the loser leaves town. By the end of an unnecessarily long fight scene, Duke kicks Roy’s ass and walks away with Aretha.

There isn’t much Southern about Bucktown expect the tropes it employs to execute the blaxploitation paradigm. First, while dens of sin like Phenix City did exist, the blatant exercise of gambling, strip clubs, and prostitution is not consistent with small town life. The town’s streets and the architecture don’t even look Southern at all. In fact, one building they pass several times advertises nineteen big screens for watching porn films— no small Southern town has a building large enough to have nineteen screens! In reality, these kinds of illegal and immoral behavior did (and do) exist in the South, but they are practiced in subtler ways. A second problem is that there are regular scenes of blacks and whites commingling in public: sitting in bars together, walking down the street together, even a few interracial couples. This would not have been happening in 1975, not even in larger Southern cities. A third problem: in several scenes, white lawmen are openly disrespected by Duke, Roy, and their friends, and in response, the white lawmen kowtow and take it, showing dismay and fear. The police chief even gives Duke his props after Duke barges in and drops an ultimatum. Though the reality of racist Southern mores is an unfortunate fact, this portrayal of four strong black men taking over a small town so easily and by themselves is pure fantasy. Part of the reason that it is fantasy lays in the fact that town has a black mayor. That could only happen if a small town had a vast black majority who were all brave enough to vote despite threats. In that case, such an electorate – in the post-Civil Rights South – would never have tolerated this four-man white police force. If there really was a small Southern town with a powerless black mayor and a brutally corrupt white police force, Duke and his friends would have been snuffed out quickly and immediately as a threat to white supremacy, because that tiny white minority would have been insufferably stringent. But in blaxploitation movies . . . the hero is above all that, so that’s the way it has to be. The white crooks are inept and easily bowled over.

Other minor problems exist, too. Ben’s funeral does not look like a black funeral in the South, with only three attendees. Moreover, the guys standing by who will inter the casket are white. In the South, white gravediggers didn’t bury the black deceased— black ones did. No white Southerner would have worked at a black graveyard. Another problem is Harley. If he really was an old football hero, he would have attended the local all-black high school and been very popular. But Harley is always alone, and no one talks to him except Aretha and Stevie. Finally, it is never explained how or why Ben came to this small town and ended up owning a club. In the rural South, black people had to stick close to friends and family – to places they were known and had people to depend on – and to amble unknown into a small town, operate a business and own a house, and still be so inconsequential that no one comes to his funeral . . . Man, come on. If that was true, if people were so afraid that they wouldn’t attend Ben’s funeral, then when Duke reopened the club, not a soul would have stepped foot in it.

Bucktown is not a bad movie if you watch it for what it is: a blaxploitation film. It does rely on Southern tropes but it gets too many of the nuances wrong. There really were corrupt, racist Southern police who leaned on the black community for bribes and payoffs. There really were white men who had affairs with black women. There really were places where whites and blacks commingled. But none of it happened out in the open. I guess that this town was modeled on something like Phenix City, which was cleaned up in 1954, but what it boils down to is: they got it right on the surface and wrong for real.

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Published on December 08, 2022 08:15

November 22, 2022

Welcome to Eclectic: The Environment in the News

It is heartbreaking to me to imagine what future generations will have to do without or struggle against, so that we can indulge in convenience now. My understanding is that the countdown to the year 2050 is, effectively, the Doomsday Clock of climate change, when the negative effects will become severe and irreversible. If I’m still alive in 2050, I will be 76 years old and on my out, while those who come after me will continue living in the world we leave behind. When people ask me why I recycle, compost, or avoid plastics, I answer, “Because I love my grandchildren.” I don’t have any grandchildren yet – my children are still school-age – but I am conscientious enough to assume that these yet-unborn progeny of my progeny will probably want things like air, water, and food.

I know very few people who make any efforts to curb pollution and waste. That may be due to a sentiment expressed in a disappointing story from PBS NewsHour last August: “Many in US doubt their individual impact on fighting climate change.” By contrast, I do believe that ordinary people can make a difference, but as a person who is willing to sacrifice, I feel like I’m swimming upstream, dodging and weaving among a recalcitrant majority. To be frank, almost every person I talk to about it chuckles cynically when I say that I care and suggest that they should, too. A few go even further to remark that it’s typical of a liberal like me. (I’m not all that liberal.)

The fact is that actual climate scientists – not the amateur, self-educated experts – are providing a grim assessment of our future. Near the end of October, NPR shared two stories of this ilk. In one from a few weeks ago, I heard that, essentially, plastics are not able to be recycled in the quantities we need them to be. (I still carry mine to the collection center anyway.) In another story that ran shortly thereafter, listeners learned that the UN is now calling for “urgent change,” as the current carbon-reduction goals appear to be unattainable. That latter story also shared this:

Within individual nations, the report acknowledges, are more inequities in consumption and emissions. The top 1% of consumption households pollute substantially more than the bottom 50% of households.This is an issue of environmental justice and steep, entrenched economic disparity. Andersen calls for a global economic about-face.

All of us have a role in meeting the goals. Notice that the passage above says “households.” Not corporations, not factories, not governments— households.

We can call each other names, laugh at people we disagree with, and buttress ourselves against change, but the facts remain. One day, we will all – everyone of every political leaning, in every nation on Earth – look at the distressing effects of pollution and waste, knowing that we could have done something to stop it. And when it happens, name-calling, laughing, and denial won’t do any good.

In 2050, my children will be about the age that I am now. They’ll probably be trying to do what my wife and I are doing: maintain a home, raise children, and lead a life of some quality. I hope they’ll be able to, but I fear that they won’t have what they need to do it.

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Published on November 22, 2022 11:35

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