Foster Dickson's Blog, page 27

The Education of a Personage: The Fitzgerald Museum’s Annual Literary Contest

[image error]The first year, it was “What’s Old Is New” to coincide with Scott and Zelda meeting in Montgomery, and the second year, it was “Love + Marriage” to coincide with their courtship and wedding. This year, The Fitzgerald Museum’s annual Literary Contest for students opens its submissions period on September 1, 2020 with the theme “The Education of a Personage” to celebrate the centennial of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 debut novel This Side of Paradise. For more information, please see the guidelines below— and please feel free to share them with any parents, teachers, students, and organizations that may be interested, as well as with any media outlets that may be willing to spread the word. As contest coordinator, I’ll be glad to answer any questions that folks may have, or questions can be directed to the museum.

The Fitzgerald Museum’s third annual Literary Contest: 
The Education of a Personage

F. Scott and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald were daring and revolutionary in their lives and in their art and writing. More than one hundred years after they met in Montgomery, Alabama, the Fitzgeralds’ literary and artistic works from the 1920s and 1930s are still regarded as groundbreaking, and the Fitzgerald Museum is seeking to identify and honor the daring and revolutionary young writers and artists of this generation.

Genres accepted: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Multi-Genre
Categories: Grades 9–10, Grades 11–12, Undergraduate

General Guidelines for 2020 – 2021:

The Fitzgerald Museum’s annual Literary Contest is seeking submissions of short fiction, poetry, ten-minute plays, and multi-genre works that exhibit the theme “The Education of a Personage,” which is the title of the second section of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920 debut novel This Side of Paradise. Works with traditional forms and styles will be accepted for judging, yet writers are encouraged to send works that utilize innovative forms and techniques. Literary works may include artwork, illustrations, font variations, and other graphic elements, with the caveat that these elements should enhance the work, not simply decorate the page.

The submissions period is open from September 1 until December 31, 2019. Works will be judged in three separate age categories, not by genre, so please be clear about the age category. Submissions should not exceed ten pages (with font sizes no smaller than 11 point). Each student may only enter once. Awards will be announced by March 16, 2020. Each age category will have a single winner and possibly an honorable mention.

Submissions should be sent to fitzgeraldliterarycontest@gmail.com with “Literary Contest Submission” in the subject line and relevant information in the email. Due to issues of compatibility, works should be attached as PDFs to ensure that they appear as the author intends. Files should be named with the author’s first initial [dot] last name [underscore] title. For example, J.Smith_InnovativeStory.pdf.

This year’s judges are Ashley M. Jones for the undergraduate category and Alina Stefanescu for the high school categories. Jones is the author of the poetry collections Magic City Gospel and dark // thing. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and organizes the Magic City Poetry Festival. Stefanescu is a prolific poet, fiction writer, editor, and reviewer, whose most recent collection is Every Mask I Tried On. For more information, contact the Fitzgerald Museum or contest coordinator Foster Dickson.

 

Reading: “Snow Falling on Cedars”

[image error]Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The old paperback copy of Snow Falling on Cedars that I just finished reading had languished on both my own and my classroom bookshelves for years after appearing in a box of donated books. The novel had won a PEN/Faulkner Award in the mid-’90s, and the movie adaptation was released in ’99. I was in college when the novel was new, so of course I saw the movie back then. But COVID-19 has given me more time at home than I could have wanted, so I finally picked it up and read it. 

Snow Falling on Cedars is an exceptionally well-written novel and deserves the award it received. The story centers on a murder trial in 1954 in a small fishing village in the Northwest, where a local man Carl Heine, Jr. is found dead in his fishing nets after being knocked in the head. The prime suspect is Japanese, and his beef with the victim’s family is generational, based on a lease-to-own  land deal that went bad after Pearl Harbor and the internments during World War II. Although the main story is a murder mystery at its core, Guterson veers off into back stories that explore issues of race, identity, immigration, politics, war, conscience, family, and interracial romance. The writing is impressive, and the storytelling winds through times and places only to converge back in a small town courtroom where it is snowing outside. I’m sorry that I waited so long to read this novel, and now I need to rewatch the movie to compare the two. 

 

Southern Movie 49: “The Rainmaker” (1997)

Back in the 1990s, Mississippi lawyer-turned-novelist John Grisham was hot. After his novel The Firm was made into hit film starring Tom Cruise in 1993, a succession of films followed: The Pelican Brief also in ’93, The Client in ’94, A Time to Kill and The Chamber both in ’96, then 1997’s The Rainmaker, which was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Not to be confused with the 1956 Burt Lancaster classic – this film is not a remake of that one – The Rainmaker tells the story of Rudy Baylor, an up-and-coming good-guy lawyer in Memphis, Tennessee, whose sketchy cohorts, victimized clients, and powerful opponents keep him on his toes throughout the movie. 

The Rainmaker opens with a black screen leading to a calm introductory narrative from Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon) about why he became a lawyer. Quickly, the black screen shifts to a series of scenes with Baylor helping people with legal work, and we’ll soon find out that these are among our minor characters in the film. During the narrative, Rudy Baylor tells us that his abusive father hated lawyers, but that’s not why he became one; he became one to help people, like the Civil Rights lawyers in the 1950s and ’60s, who, he tells us, were doing the work that lawyers should be doing. We then watch Rudy studying all alone, and we also find out that he also tends bar and has to lower himself to serving pitchers of beer to his arrogant and snobbish law school classmates, whose family connections will land them in the sweet gigs. What Rudy really needs, he tells us, is a job.

But there are too many lawyers in Memphis, Baylor continues, as the imagery shifts a succession of ambulance-chaser billboards. So Rudy gets that job through his boss at the bar, a fat man with a pony tail and a purple suit named Prince. He will be working for J. Lyman “Bruiser” Stone (Mickey Rourke). Baylor admits in the overdubbed narration that it is embarrassing to work for a lawyer named Bruiser, but it’s the offer that’s there. Prince vouches for him, and we learn that the Prince and Bruiser are close confidantes and partners, who have not only a law firm but other businesses as well. The deal that Bruiser offers Rudy Baylor is a draw and one-third of the fees he generates, but Rudy will have to pay Bruiser back if his fees don’t meet his draw— a plan commonly known as pay-to-play. Rudy is tentative but yields, explaining that he already has two cases lined up from a free law workshop: a wealthy elderly woman redoing her will, and a case against insurance giant Great Benefit. Bruiser seals the deal with a handshake and calls in Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito) to  show Rudy the ropes. 

Deck will be Rudy’s righthand man from here on out. Rudy follows the busy little man around the busy office as he eats Chinese takeout, then they stop in a conference room that Deck calls “the law library.” Deck admits that he finished law school five years ago and has failed the bar exam six times, but his value to Bruiser lies in the fact that he used to work for a big insurance company, so he knows the ins-and-outs. Rudy is still a bit nervous and overwhelmed by both the sketchy scene he is entering and the fact that he will soon take the bar for the first time.

[image error]Out in the parking lot, Deck tells Rudy, “Bruiser owns all this,” as he points to a sleazy strip mall and an adjacent strip club, adding, “You can’t really call this a firm. It’s every man for himself.” They walk to Rudy’s compact car, which is piled high with his belongings, and Deck asks, “You moving?” to which Rudy replies, “Evicted.” Next, the two wannabe lawyers look over the insurance policy for one of Rudy’s two clients, and Deck calls it “the scratch-and-sniff armpit of the insurance industry” and tells Rudy, “The blacks call this ‘streetsurance.'” What should Rudy do then? Sign ’em up.

Dressed in a suit, Rudy is next seen trotting up the stairs of an older home as the neighbor’s dogs bark viciously at him. The woman, Dot Black, who answers the door barely remembers him, and she says, “I thought you’s a Jehovah’s Witness.” Rudy has come to have the family sign the paperwork to sue Great Benefit for refusing to pay for treatment for her adult son Donny Ray’s leukemia. In the dining room, they look over the paper, as Mrs. Black dangles a cigarette from her lip, while Mr. Black can be seen sitting in an abandoned car outside. She explains that he has war injuries and “ain’t right in the head” now, then she asks if Rudy wants to meet Donny Ray. Rudy says, “Not right now,” and proceeds with his papers, but Donny Ray comes in. He is smiling but gray and sickly-looking, and while Mrs. Black tries to get her drunk husband in the car to sign, Donny Ray’s nose begins to bleed profusely. As the scene ends, they are putting their signatures on the blood-spattered contract.

Next, we meet Mrs. Birdie, Rudy’s other client. She is a meek elderly woman, who lives in a large, older home. She wants Rudy to draft her will such that a televangelist will get all of her money so he can buy a new jet, but Rudy tries to dissuade these changes. On his way out, Rudy notices a garage apartment behind the house and inquires whether she might rent it to him in exchange for yard work. She agrees, and Rudy is no longer homeless.

After a little lesson on ambulance-chasing at the hospital with Deck, Rudy is set up to meet his third client. He has been taken along with Deck who demonstrates a smooth-talking sign-up of a man who has been in a car wreck, then Rudy goes back to the law offices to study. Bruiser comes in and tells him to study on his own time, then hands Rudy a paper on a woman he should try to sign up himself: Kelly Riker, a pretty, young spousal-abuse victim. While waiting on Kelly to come downstairs into the hospital cafeteria, Rudy runs across an article in the newspaper that the FBI is investigating Bruiser and Prince, but his reading is interrupted when a beat-up Kelly and her abusive husband Cliff appear. What begins as a calm interaction then explodes when Cliff stands up, screams at Kelly in front of everyone, and throws their drinks onto her.

Back at the law office, Deck gives him the skinny: Cliff has beaten Kelly with a baseball bat and tried to attack the cops who came to arrest him. In a side note, Deck also explains that Mrs. Birdie did once have millions of dollars, left to her by a second husband, but that money was squandered and taken until now there was only about $40,000 left. Sorry, Rudy . . . Back at the hospital though, Rudy manages to introduce himself to Kelly, who is alone this time, and we sense that the love-story side plot is being added on. Their talk is interrupted by a call from Bruiser to see if Rudy has signed her up yet, and an orderly comes to wheel Kelly away. 

Now, Rudy is in the thick of it. In the next scenes, he is coaxing Kelly into filing for divorce after her husband got irate with her at the hospital again; he finds Mrs. Birdie’s middle-aged son and daughter-in-law snooping around the will he is writing; and he goes to the Black’s house to pick up Donny Ray to get out and about. They drive by a softball game to check on Kelly, and Rudy brings Donny Ray to meet Mrs. Birdie. And while he’s cutting her grass, Rudy gets the letter— he passed the bar! 

Immediately afterward, at a celebratory lunch, Bruiser tells Deck and Rudy that he is giving them each $5,500 from a settlement that came in from that car-wreck victim in the beginning of the movie. He is proud of both of them and is glad that Rudy is now a full-fledged lawyer. After a moment, though, Bruiser has to leave, and a nervous Deck pulls out a newspaper article about Bruiser and a grand jury. Deck suggests forcefully that they quit and go out on their own, a suggestions that Rudy balks at initially. But they do it, and next we see, they’re setting up an office in a dusty wreck of an abandoned building.

Passing by the law offices of J. Lyman Stone to get his files, Rudy finds the FBI there, chaining the doors. This is not good, so he keeps driving. But the next hurdle is already there. It is the morning to argue against Great Benefit’s motion to dismiss the Black’s case. Of course, Bruiser doesn’t show up, so Rudy and Deck are there alone— and Rudy without a license. Unfortunately for our heroes, the judge is a grouchy old codger named Hale who coughs incessantly as he rejects the inexperienced and unlicensed lad who has dared to walk into the courtroom. But the defense lawyer Leo F. Drummond (Jon Voight) offers to stand for the young man to get the proceedings moving. We have now met our main villain, the high-priced Southern lawyer with his cadre of backup lawyers, among them the asshole law-school classmate who belittled Rudy when he was a bartender. So, Rudy is in business, and he has managed to dive into the proverbial deep end. In a shifty “tag team,” Drummond and the judge attempt to coerce Rudy into a $75,000 settlement so the judge can save face and not dismiss the case outright. But Rudy takes it home to the Blacks, and they all agree on refusing it.

Then Rudy gets a break. Judge Hale, the coughing antagonist of the earlier hearing, has died, and his replacement is Tyrone Kipler, a black Civil Rights lawyer who sues insurance companies and hates Drummond’s law firm. In a morning meeting that follows the refusal of the settlement, we see how the tide has shifted. The new judge has Drummond on his heels, but also recognizes that Rudy is in way over his head. Nearing the one-hour point, in this two-hour-and-fifteen minute film, we’re beginning to feel like Rudy has a chance. 

Once again, the plot gets busy. Rudy, Judge Kipler, and Drummond’s team have a deposition with Donny Ray at the Black home, because it is acknowledged that the boy may die soon. The gathering is an uncomfortable affair that has to be moved outside due to the number of people who would be cramped in the house. Curious neighbors gather in the street and at the fence to see what is going on. Meantime, Rudy visits the jewelry store where Kelly works after receiving a mailout advertisement from her, then she meets him down the street at a movie theater. She tells him about her marital problems, then kisses him before leaving abruptly. Before we know it, Rudy is on a bus to Ohio, to depose Great Benefit executives.

This scene in a corporate boardroom ratchets up our sympathy for poor Rudy Baylor. He is totally outgunned and has had to travel via Greyhound from Memphis to Cleveland. And once he gets there, Drummond sucker-punches him – probably in response to Judge Kipler’s treatment in the initial meeting – by making the trip virtually worthless. Half of the people who Rudy has come to interview are not available, two are even gone from the company. But Rudy gets in his dig, asking a cocksure Leo, in front of everyone, if he even remembers when it was that he sold out. Rudy Baylor doesn’t have much but he’s got cajones.

Back home, Donny Ray is dying, and Kelly is in trouble. She makes a late-night call to Rudy from the jewelry store, where she is hiding after being beaten again. A tearful Rudy agrees to help her and takes her home to live with Mrs. Birdie while it gets worked out. The tone of the story has taken a dark turn by this point, as Donny Ray’s funeral is held at the Blacks’ home. Deck advises Rudy, somewhat inappropriately, “Now, it’s a wrongful death suit. Gazillions!”

But the mood shifts, and the scenes that follow expose the likelihood that the defense lawyers have bugged Rudy’s phone. The underdog, two-man law firm concocts a scheme to expose the secret listening, which leads then to a semi-comical episode in the courtroom where Leo Drummond tries to expose jury tampering. The juror in question is played by country singer Randy Travis, who jumps out of the jury box and attacks the defense’s lead lawyer when he is accused to lying. Once again, Deck is the wild card that even experienced litigators can’t handle. 

After a brief scene where Kelly signs the papers to proceed with a divorce, Rudy and Deck are back in the courtroom to start the trial. First up is Dot Black, who does well with Rudy in creating sympathy, but she is chewed up and spit out by Leo Drummond. This is a woman whose son has just died after being denied medical treatment, and Leo, though he wins the battle, may be losing the war. 

After that lousy day in court, Rudy’s problems get worse in the evening. He takes Kelly to her apartment to get her things while her husband is out, but he comes home. A violent fight ensues, with both Kelly and Rudy trying to stop him, but eventually it takes abuser’s own aluminum baseball bat to do the trick. When it looks like Rudy will have to finish off the man, Kelly orders him out of the apartment and finishes the job herself. The police come, and Rudy watches from his car as Kelly is taken away in handcuffs for killing her husband. Rudy then meets her at the police station, but fails to get her released right away. Kelly is facing charges of manslaughter.

Back in court, Rudy has a man named Edward Luftkin on the stand. He is the Vice President of Claims and is made to answer for an ugly letter he sent to Dot Black, asking if she is “stupid, stupid, stupid.” The man is embarrassed by his own behavior, but the witness doesn’t accomplish much for Rudy. Except that Deck is also on the case, breaking into cars and digging through dumpsters, and what does he find? Jackie Lemancyzk, the claims handler who left Great Benefit two days before Rudy was supposed to depose her. Deck has brought her to Memphis, and in a shady motel room, she explains Great Benefit’s great evil: policies are sold in poor neighborhoods, they deny all claims, and they have their own departments so mixed up that no one knows what anyone else is doing. “Most people give up,” she says, “and this . . . is intended.”

On the stand, Jackie Lemancyzk is to be the bombshell. Her presence upsets the wealthy defense lawyers and corporate executives, and her testimony reveals a culture of corporate greed. However, Drummond will not simply lie down. He reveals that she had an affair with Luftkin and that her testimony is retaliation for her displeasure at being “a woman scorned.” Ultimately, she is a half-start, because the claims manual to which she will refer is deemed “stolen work papers.” Inadmissible. 

And this is where Bruiser comes back in. Deck makes a call, asking to get in touch with “Big Rhino,” and next we see Bruiser answers the phone at a sunny beach resort. Prince is behind him, passing drinks to two girls. They’re obviously having a ball hiding from the feds. Deck’s question is one that only a shady back-alley lawyer could answer: how do you get stolen work papers admitted into evidence? And Bruiser has the answer.

Now the sun is shining on Rudy! Down at the jail, he gets Kelly out to tell her that the DA has decided not to prosecute. But he can’t hang around and has to get to court. The CEO of Great Benefit (Roy Schneider) is on the stand, and Deck has to get started when Rudy is late. And what a surprise: Rudy will use the stolen work papers to ask the CEO all of the questions he would never want to answer. Leo objects but Rudy now has the precedents so back up his use of the papers. The whole scheme is broken wide open! Drummond is wincing, the jurors are glaring, and the young lawyer is glowing. It is revealed that all claims were denied and that Great Benefit is a horrible, greedy, terrible corporation full of uncaring monsters who value money more than people’s lives.

In the end, Leo Drummond gives the stereotypical conservative argument to the jury that a huge punitive judgment will cause premiums to spiral out of control, while Rudy lets a video of Donny Ray do the talking. When the jury comes back, they award the Black family $175,000 in damages— plus $50,000,000 in punitive damages, a staggering sum. But that money will never materialize. The CEO tries to escape to Europe, and the company declares bankruptcy. Rudy has slain the monster, but the gold has disappeared into thin air. Leo calls to rub Rudy’s nose in what he will never get, and Rudy takes it well, then fades away himself with Kelly. As for Deck, we know he won’t change, so it doesn’t really matter.

The Rainmaker is a combination legal-thriller and David-and-Goliath story, which builds interest through a Mark Twain-like conflict between connivance driven by morality (in the form of Rudy) versus connivance driven by immorality (in the form of Leo). In this movie, almost everyone is shifty and backbiting, but for some reason, some of them are good guys and some are bad guys. There’s nothing surprising about the film’s story – we recognize this ragtag assembly of underdogs, we know Rudy will win the case, we know Rudy and Kelly will get together – but part of its charm is in that predictability. We like to see the feisty young lawyer with his working-class sense of right and wrong – Robert Ebert called this “Grisham’s ground-level realism” – as he gets the best of mean, old, jaded men who steal money from poor people, all while taking care of “the least of these.” Rudy Baylor is good people.

What makes The Rainmaker Southern harkens back to Johnson Jones Hooper and the Southwest Humorists, whose stories in the early 1800s had the lowest and least-educated people consistently outwit that better class of people, all of whom were trying to outwit them. The Rainmaker is swimming in the perspective that everyone in the legal profession is full of shit – lawyers, judges, all of them – and also in the notion that the common man’s best tool to defend himself is street smarts. You’ve got to be able to bullshit the bullshitter. There’s that twinge of Twain, with tricksters everywhere, and Memphis does rest beside the Mississippi River, after all.  As we watch this film, we have to chuckle at all of the bad behavior, since we kind of expect it from this crowd, but it still isn’t hard to pick whose side we’re on. The good, hard-working Southern boy, the defender of the downtrodden . . . of course.

 

Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore

[image error]I’m proud to unveil the second of my two new editorial projects. Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore is an online anthology of creative nonfiction works about the prevailing beliefs, myths, and narratives that have driven Southern culture over the last fifty years, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The publication will collect personal essays, memoirs, short articles, opinion pieces, and contemplative works about the ideas, experiences, and assumptions that have shaped life below the old Mason-Dixon Line since 1970.

Submissions are now being accepted, and there are guidelines posted on the site. If you’re more of an interested reader than a potential contributor, you can start with my introductory essay, “Myths are the truths we live by,” then you can Like Nobody’s Home on Facebook or follow on Twitter.

Access to Nobody’s Home is free, and while the project is intended for a general readership, teachers will also be encouraged to share the anthology with their students and use the works in their classrooms.

Some Good Things Happened, Too: On Generation X and “level:deepsouth”

A few weeks ago, I put out a widespread call for submissions to my new project level:deepsouth— for Generation X. The response was healthy, people were sharing the posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other online media, and the site’s submissions page got hundreds of hits. (I know that the standard of excellence on social media is thousands of hits, but I’m satisfied with this inauspicious start.) Several encouraging comments also came back, remarks about the project being a cool idea or about how it’s time for such a thing. 

Then it went mostly quiet, though some submissions did trickle in. My wife reminded me that I need to give people time to write, and she’s got a point, but I also know about something else that’s stalling or delaying some submissions: the emotional gut-punch that comes when a writer mulls over the idea, perhaps even has a first draft, and says to himself or herself, “I can’t publish this.” Other related sentiments are: “My parents/friends/etc. would be hurt by it,” and “This would hurt my career,” and “I don’t want to admit to having done things that were illegal.” (To that last one, fair enough.)

It’s a common thing for a writer to be driven into the arms of a difficult subject. Writing is an excellent way to explore a troublesome situation or event, to lay it on paper or the screen, to step back, and to look at it from a distance. In fact, some therapists even suggest journaling as part of the regimen. But that doesn’t mean that that’s all writing can be used for. Writing can also be used to record or share what we’re proud of, pleased with, or glad to remember.  

I’ve already had a few emails, even one that contained a submission, saying, “Here’s an idea that would work, but I’ll never write/publish it.” Okay, then just like the old Chaka Khan and Rufus song, I say, “Tell me something good.” Generation X has this stigma attached to it that we’re the ones who got the shit end of the stick. We’re angry and surly because our hearts were broken, we were unloved and unsupervised, and nobody cared what we felt. That may be the stereotype, but one point of creating level:deepsouth was to show that that’s not the whole story. In addition to divorced parents, hard-ass teachers, unassailed bullying, and rampant cynicism, we also had some great music (from Thriller to Nevermind), some of the best movies ever made (not just Spielberg and Lucas), some icons that were full of wonder, and above all, the tremendous freedom to roam and discover and invent. Not all of our experiences were harsh, lonely, mean-spirited, or painful. A lot of them were fun, exhilarating, educational, creative, or downright weird. I hope that many, many people will write about those.

For those writers who may be considering a submission to level:deepsouth but who are finding themselves nervous about possible reactions to an essay about a painful episode, write about something else! Consider writing about a favorite album for watch & listen or about a book that a teacher assigned for in print. Consider writing a short, anecdotal piece about a good memory for golden days. I’ll tell anyone what I tell my high-school writing students: don’t assume that, to seem smart or deep, you have to write a gloomy text on a dark subject. If you’re not a Holden Caulfield type, please don’t try to be. If you don’t want to write and publish an essay that would make you unwelcome at Thanksgiving or that would get you fired from your job, then don’t— but don’t let that stop you from writing at all. Write about something else that your friends (or even your parents) would be glad to see published. Because, let’s be honest, some good things happened, too.

 

A Southern Movie Bonus: The “Welcome to Eclectic” Southern Documentary Sampler

Though many Americans encounter images and stories from modern Southern life through mainstream national news outlets, documentaries offer fuller and nuanced portraits and discussions of specific issues and people in Southern culture, offering viewers are more complex and thorough perspective on art, LGBTQ life, humor, food and farming, HIV, or rural schools. Below is a selected listing of documentaries from the last fifteen years, each of which explores an aspect of the modern South that some people might not have considered.

Fertile Ground (2020)

https://player.pbs.org/viralplayer/3043392600/

This new half-hour documentary, which aired on PBS on June 10, “takes a look at the extensive impact that industrial food systems currently have on Americans. The film follows advocates in Jackson, Mississippi who are using localized efforts to address food insecurity in under-served communities, shining a light on the potential for a healthier future through efforts to convert to communal, localized food systems.”

Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018)

Released to great acclaim a few years ago, the series of vignettes from everyday life is “composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community in Alabama’s Black Belt, [the film] offers an emotive impression of the Historic South.” 

Beauty is Embarrassing (2012)

“Part biography, part live performance, [the film] tells the story of this one-of-a-kind visual artist and raconteur” Wayne White, who is from Chattanooga, Tennessee and north Alabama]. White worked on the show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” and on music videos for Smashing Pumpkins and Peter Gabriel.

deepsouth (2012)

“Beneath layers of history, poverty and now soaring HIV infections, four Americans redefine traditional Southern values to create their own solutions to survive.”

Eating Alabama (2012)

“In search of a simpler life, a young couple [filmmaker and now podcaster Andrew Beck Grace and his wife] returns home to Alabama where they set out to eat the way their grandparents did— locally and seasonally.”

Mississippi: I Am (2012)

[The film] “examines the relatively new battle on the part of primarily young LGBT people to bring gay civil rights and visibility out in the open and beyond division.“

Prom Night in Mississippi (2009)

“In 1997, Academy Award winning actor, Morgan Freeman, who lives in the Charleston, Mississippi community, offered to fund the first-ever integrated Senior Prom in the history of Charleston’s one high school. His offer was ignored. In 2008, Morgan offered again . . . the East Tallahatchie County School Board accepted.”

Mississippi Chicken (2007)

The film is “a visually compelling exposé of the hardships and tragedies of undocumented Latin American immigrants in a rural Mississippi poultry town.” 

What Remains (2006)

The film “returns to follow the creation of Mann’s new seminal work: a photo series revolving around various aspects of death and decay. [ . . . ] Shown at home on her family farm in Virginia, she is surrounded by her husband and now-grown children, and her willingness to reveal her artistic process as it unfolds allows the viewer to gain exclusive entrance to her world.”

Biographical Sketches of Woman Suffragists

[image error]I’m pleased to share that, since 2018, I’ve been writing sketches for the recently published Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States, and my sketch of Alabama suffragist Pearl Still (Nowlin) has been made available on the site. In addition to the sketch on Still, I’ve also turned in  another for suffragist Mrs. W. N. Wood, who lived in Ensley and whose name maiden name was Mary Elvira Jones. That one should be added this summer. Right now, I am writing a third for Mary Amelia John from Selma, whose married name was Mrs. Frederic Watson. All three of these courageous women worked to expand the vote during the early twentieth century. 

The online project is hosted by Alexander Street, a subsidiary of ProQuest, and is edited by Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar of SUNY-Binghamton. In addition to the entries on mainstream suffragists, there are also sections devoted to Black Women Suffragists and to Militant Women Suffragists from the National Women’s Party.

 

Southern Movie 48: “Good Intentions” (2010)

2010’s Good Intentions is a cute and predictable little comedy, but not much more. Set in Georgia, the movie stars Luke Perry (Of Beverly Hills 90210 fame) as Chester, a ne’er-do-well liquor store owner and wannabe inventor. Elaine Hendrix plays Etta, his tolerant but shifty wife, who has to pinch pennies because he blows all of their money. The story centers on a redneck husband’s penchant for pursuing foolish ideas and on his wife’s criminal efforts to restock the family coffers. Good Intentions also co-stars country singer LeeAnn Rimes.

The movie opens with the credits rolling over a black screen while the old-time gospel song “Sinner, You Better Get Ready” plays, then we see a rainy funeral scene. People are leaving the graveside, where we see a little girl of about four or five. She is pretty and blonde and is the last one sitting in the rows of chairs in front of a tombstone that reads Earl J Lee, with the death year as 1984. The girl sits bewildered, until two smiling relatives come by and explain with over-friendliness that she will be coming to live with them.

The scene then changes to modern day, and the girl has become a woman (Elaine Hendrix). Etta is slim and attractive, wearing a cutoff mini-skirt and a small top, and is shopping in a discount store. She accosts a nerdy-looking man shopping nearby to let her try a shirt on him, then proceeds to her wood-paneled station wagon where her two unruly sons are behaving badly. She gets in, and with a good-natured smile, asks what is going to happen when she cranks the car. The sheepish boys act like they don’t know what’s going on, so she pulls a box of tampons out of the bag and says to them that “the circus in town” and that she isn’t playing. The older boy upfront then turns off the wipers, turn signals, and everything else. The younger boy plays back a recording of her statement on a toy tape recorder, so looking in the mirror, the woman says, “Watergate,” and buys the tape from him for a dollar. We see here that Etta is good-natured but feisty.

The mother and sons then drive the countryside as modern country music plays and the rest of the credits roll. We learn that we’re in Myra, Georgia – population 2,214 – and see a small town, which includes quaint storefronts and also a strip joint called Shangri-La, which the boys ask their mother about. Then, they arrive at their father’s liquor store/invention shop whose sign reads “Beer Today Gone Tomorrow.”

Inside the little store, Etta pops open a cold drink as Chester watches. Chester (Luke Perry) has the full country-boy look: goatee and sideburns and shaggy hair coming out from his ragged baseball bap. She asks him in a playfully sultry way to change a dollar so their son can ride the pink mechanical elephant outside, and he gives it. However, Etta sees boxes of fireworks behind the counter and gets aggravated with her husband, fussing at him about how he wastes all their money on his schemes. He retorts that one will eventually work, and she gives him the shirt she has just bought for him, saying she will return the one he has on to get their money back. Outside, their younger son screams for help on the malfunctioning elephant, and Etta fusses at Chester, saying that their son will throw up in the car again. Chester just smiles.

[image error]Back home, which is complete with a dirt driveway, a screened front porch, and a tire swing, Etta and Chester are hosting another young couple. Chester and the other man Kyle are working on a muddy race car, revving the engine while putting on an air filter, and the women grill dinner and talk on the small deck nearby. Etta’s sister Pam (Lee Ann Rimes) is complaining that her guy – Kyle, the one in the race car – doesn’t talk to her anymore. Etta advises her to “shut down the funhouse for a while to show him that admission ain’t free.” Meanwhile, the boys tussle in the yard. When she tells them not to hurt each other, they go over to the car, but Etta isn’t happy with that either.

That night, in bed in the dark, Etta wakes Chester up to ask him not to talk to their sons about being on the pit crew on the race car. Chester asks what’s wrong with being a mechanic, and that starts a conversation about how Etta wants her boys to go to college. A frustrated Chester retorts that one of his inventions will hit, but the brief argument goes downhill quickly, and he leaves the bedroom with his pillow.

The next morning, as Etta looks over bills and cooks breakfast, the boys are trying to get hold of a pack of cigarettes on top of the entertainment center. They succeed, and as they head outside, Etta discovers the bill for Chester’s fireworks supplies. She calls him to complain of the $336 bill, but Chester claims that they’ll triple their money. Meanwhile, the boys have discovered the fireworks in the shed. They accidentally shoot a bottle rocket into the shed and blow the whole thing sky high. Chester’s investment is gone, and Etta is mad with him again.

As the town watches the impromptu fireworks show, which is put out by the volunteer fire department, we meet another minor character, the local lawman Sheriff Ernie. He reminds Chester that making fireworks is illegal in Georgia, but that he won’t arrest him as a personal favor.

The plot then speeds up a bit. As music plays over a montage, we see Chester trying to plead his way out of trouble with his wife, who is watching Antiques Roadshow on the TV while he talks. She sees that a mahogany table is fetching $7,000, and the wheels start turning. In the next scene, a masked robber points a gun at Chester in his store and takes the money in the register, and in a voiceover, we hear a dispatcher taking the robbery call. It is Etta who is the robber, and she hangs up the pay phone. Sheriff Ernie answers the call, finds Chester tied up, and the plot is set in motion.

In the wake of the robbery, Chester is trying to buy a gun, and Etta is buying an antique table from antique dealer Zachary. When Chester gets home, he is confused by the presence of a new table near his front door, and Etta lies about getting it from a dead uncle. Chester isn’t clear on this dead uncle, and he is further confused by Etta’s remark about the $800 he lost in the robbery. He had told her it was $200. She blows him off, though, and insists that he said eight. There is a knock at the door, and it is Sheriff Ernie, who we met earlier. He pretends as though he has come to arrest her, which holds Etta in her place, but Ernie laughs that off and comes in, asking for brownies. We can see that Etta is making mistakes and isn’t exactly an experienced criminal.

In the cafe at lunch, Ernie is drawing new inventions while Kyle eats. Pam, who is a waitress there, comes over to sit in Kyle’s lap and smooch on him. Chester makes a wisecrack about how much money she must make in tips, and she’s gone again to get them dessert. Shortly after that, Chester is behind his store, drawing again, and Etta brings him a sandwich for his lunch, remarking on how she is saving them money. They talk some more about their problems, and Chester shows her an Atlanta Braves pecan cracker that doesn’t quite work. Etta gets bugged with him when she hears that he’ll need to spend $1,100 to have one hundred of them made— once he gets it right.

Over to the grocery store, Etta is shopping with her boys when she runs into the antique furniture man Zachary, who recognizes her and encourages her to coming shopping again. She explains that she is out of money, but he continues anyway, and she has to give her young son more money to keep his trap shut. It’s clear from their interaction that the furniture man wants to more from Etta than to make a sale, and that trend is continued when she reaches the checkout lane. The elderly man who owns the store clearly wants some love, too, and is so obvious about it that Etta’s older son asks, “Why is he looking at you like that?”

Now, about one-third of the way through the movie, Good Intentions has lots of pieces to fit into place.  We’ve got Chester’s good-natured buffoonery, Etta’s family-oriented connivances, Pam’s mild desperation, Kyle’s aw-shucks meandering, along with a cast of minors characters, half of whom seem to want to have sex with Etta.

Now tempted by the lure of more antique furniture, Etta goes to Chester’s store to rob him again. Same ski mask, same rifle, and Chester recognizes the futility of resisting, so he hands over the cash— which goes straight to buying a Queen Anne chair. Meanwhile, when Sheriff Ernie gets the call about the robbery, he is getting it on with the blond cutie in the ice cream shop bathroom, and has to pull up his pants to go to work. The girl, who comes out pulling down her skirt, calls after him to ask if she still gets the beer he promised her. However, Ernie isn’t very helpful or effective. He unbinds Chester, who is taped to a chair, and attempts to take a report but gets outed by Chester for where he has just been. After they talk, he leaves with some beer (for the girl).

Back at home, Pam is folding laundry at Etta’s house and wants to know about the chair. She was frustrated to find out from Kyle (through Chester) that Etta has been inheriting furniture from a dead relative – which would also be her relative – and demands to know what’s going on. Etta tries to blow her off, but Pam isn’t having it. Their conversation is interrupted when Chester and Kyle arrive in the station wagon with a raging German shepherd that Chester has purchased as a guard dog. The only problem is that they left the manual for its commands in the car and don’t know how to call it off.

Later, coming out of the grocery store, with her old-man crush pushing the cart, Etta sees Kyle going into the titty bar. The old-timer tries to tell her, “There’s nothing wrong with a little harmless fun,” but Etta is having none of it. She crosses the street and takes Kyle’s own drill to his heavy-duty tires. The town’s two other deputies catch her in the act, but quickly let her go on about her business, since it’s a family matter. Next we see the characters, we have a little league ball game and small-town barbecue where Chester and Etta see Kyle and Pam fighting.

After the tire incident, while Chester is half-trying to keep his new dog from eating his customers, Etta is confronted by Kyle at the gas station about what she has done. He remarks to her while she pumps gas that he doesn’t make much money, and now, he has had to pay for tires with the money he would have spent on Pam. “And strippers,” Etta retorts. But Kyle doesn’t give up, letting her know that maybe she ought to get out of other people’s business. Though Etta rebuffs him with her back turned to him, she is later chewed out by Pam, who says that he had to spend the money for her engagement ring on the tires.

That evening, in town, Etta walks past the furniture shop, and Zachary jumps up to invite her in. There is the pretense that his interest is in a furniture sale, but they both know that it isn’t. Zachary then forces the situation and tries to kiss her, but Etta rebukes him. The problem, though, is that Sheriff Ernie sees part of what happens, and now thinks that Chester’s wife is cheating on him.

As we reach the one-hour point, Etta’s schemes are unraveling. Ernie goes to Chester to tell him about what he has seen. Chester goes to the furniture store first to confront Zachary, who is not there, but his wacky friend with the handlebar mustache is. The friend allows Chester to go into the file cabinet where the records are kept, so when Chester comes home, he confronts Etta with the evidence: sales slips for her purchases. She tries to excuse her behavior as making investments for their future, but in talking it out, Chester also figures out that it is her who has been robbing him. Before he leaves the house, though, he lets her in on the secret he found out earlier in the movie: the furniture is all fake.

Etta will now make another poor decision in one last attempt at getting it right. This time, she will rob her sweet old admirer in the grocery store. She leaves her wild children in the car again, enters yet another empty store – all of the stores in Myrna seem to be empty – and points the rifle at the old man. But while she is robbing him, waiting on the scared old man to open the safe, she sees a Polaroid he took of the two of them at the barbecue. Heartbroken by her own behavior, she drops the gun and leaves.

But her problems are only beginning. Outside, her sons have put the car in neutral, and it is rolling into oncoming traffic. Thankfully, Chester and Kyle are getting thrown out of the strip club across the street, and they amble out just in time to see the wood-paneled station wagon careening in front of a truck. The car rolls along, and eventually comes to stop when it hits the strip club sign across the street, knocking it over, and Etta comes running after it. Chester is now fully exasperated with Etta, but the kicker is when the old man calls after Etta and holds up the gun in askance. He can’t believe it was her that has just done that to him.

Everyone abandons Etta at that point. The old grocer walks back into his store, and Chester takes the kids. Etta is left – completely without consequences – to get into her old car, drive around, and feel sorry for herself.

As Good Intentions comes to a close, it is Pam who comes to the rescue, at once berating her for her selfishness and also reminding her that she is loved. Sheriff Ernie, urged forward by Etta’s tape recording of him doing the deed with the ice-cream girl, doesn’t arrest Etta for armed robbery or destruction of property, but launches into a scheme with her to get Zachary for selling fake furniture. All’s well that ends well, right? The bait is set, and armed with the newfound knowledge that Zachary is wanted in four states for a variety of crimes, our characters sell everything in his shop at 90% off and see that he is arrested. The cherry on top is knowing that he is put into a cell with a very large, very naked man.

The only thing left to do is make up with Chester. Back home, the boys are missing their mom, and she has learned her lesson. All of the loose ends have been tied up: Ernie will stop cheating on his wife with the ice-cream girl, Zachary is under arrest, and Pam and Kyle are on good terms. All except one. Etta takes the money from the sale of Zachary’s work and invests in not one but two orders of Chester’s now fully function Atlanta Braves pecan crackers. The best news is: she has already sold a few on eBay.

All in all, Good Intentions is a weak and forgettable attempt to use Southern quirkiness as a comedic foundation. The site Rotten Tomatoes has no reviews listed for the movie, and IMDb has its rating at 5.2 stars, both of which are telling. (One IMDb reviewer did give it 10 out of 10 stars and titled the review “Defines Southern,” but that misguided soul also left the content empty.) Good Intentions is not a bad movie . . . it’s just not a good movie. It’s a comedy, and that lightheartedness allows a film to get away with some things, like caricatures. For example, the movie follows the leader in painting small-town Southern law enforcement officers as a bunch of dummies who regularly exercise bias and who rarely do anything productive. And the storytelling also has its own flaws. First, the opening funeral scene has almost nothing to do with the story. Second, the filmmakers didn’t think out the whole liquor-store robbery thing. Throughout the movie, Chester’s store has almost no customers in it, but he gets robbed twice for hundreds of dollars. He would have to be busy all day for that much money to be in the register— yet, if the store were busy all day, the robbery wouldn’t be possible.

We don’t expect much from movies like Good Intentions . . . and that’s a good thing. However, they do work on the side of perpetuating negative stereotypes about the South. Myrna, Georgia seems to be populated by sex-crazed halfwits, like Sheriff Ernie’s ice-cream shop girl and the flirtatious septuagenarian at the grocery store, and the film’s characters seem to want something for nothing, like Chester’s search for the big-hit invention and the furniture man’s fake antiques. Among the all of the chicanery, we don’t really see an honest, forthright person (except maybe Pam or the very minor character of the black sheriff’s deputy). They’re basically a bunch of bullshitters, even the children, which makes Good Intentions little more than a newfangled version of Tobacco Road.

Watching: “Disfarmer” (2010)

I don’t always love Amazon Prime’s suggestions for what I should watch next, but this documentary appeared inauspiciously in the list andcaught my attention when I saw the title, Disfarmer. I squinted and looked closer to be sure I was reading it right: Disfarmer, what does that mean? 

Mike Meyers Disfarmer was a portrait photographer in Heber Springs, Arkansas, which is in Cleburne County, about seventy miles north of Little Rock. Born Mike Meyers, he was an odd and even frightening man, who created a personal mythology about a tornado taking him from his real family and dropped him with the Meyerses. Meyers dubbed himself Disfarmer in an effort to disavow his family’s farming roots, and even went so far as to change his name legally.

As you can see in the trailer, Disfarmer had a signature style, which was discovered happenstance after his death in 1959, then later appreciated and collected. During his life, the photographer was known only locally, mostly for his quirky and often difficult ways, though it seems that most people in the area frequently used his services despite that. Though locals didn’t think of his work as art, most did come around when the money to buy their photographs started flowing. Today, his work in documentary photography is being celebrated in The Disfarmer Project.

I’ve become skeptical of documentaries on streaming services, because so many that I’ve watched have been dull beyond description or because the filmmakers attempted to build a story on people with only loose connections to the subject. But Disfarmer was a good one and included closely connected locals. At only 52 minutes runtime, it’s well worth a watch.

 

Literary Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts!

[image error]It is was a surprise and honor to hear late last week that I would receive one of the Alabama State Council on the Arts’ Literary Arts Fellowships! The announcement was made on June 5 about the arts and literature fellowships for the council’s upcoming 2020 – 2021 fiscal year. I’m also pleased and humbled to be in such good company, with Glenny Brock from Birmingham, Nabila Lovelace from Tuscaloosa, and Charlotte Pence from Mobile receiving the other three fellowships for writers. 

For my fellowship, I proposed – and now will be working on – a project called Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore, which will collect works of creative nonfiction about the prevailing ideas and beliefs that have shaped the modern South. The fellowship won’t begin until October, so there’s work to be done between now and then. The project’s website will soon be ready to launch, and submission guidelines will be available there.