Foster Dickson's Blog, page 37

Southern Movie 41: “Ellie” (1984)

If 1980s comedies are a genre all their own, then 1984’s Ellie fits right in. This movie is about as deep as a mud puddle. It is silly and zany and inappropriate and chock-full of ridiculous stereotypes. People fall over each other and scramble around haylofts. It has no-name actors. It even has the obligatory 1980s gratuitous-nudity scenes.

Ellie begins with a quick background narrative told in a folksy, comedic tone, as still photos pass over the pattern of red bandana. We learn that there is a pretty widow (played by an older Shelley Winters) with three twenty-something sons and a seedy, mustached brother, and that she has married an old farmer who has a pretty daughter named Ellie. The photos and storytelling let us into the scenario quickly: the sons are salacious, and the brother is a jailbird, but that Ellie is sweet and pure.

The scene then shifts to a rickety Southern farmhouse where a pretty young blonde woman comes out carrying a lamb. A country theme song plays as she walks around the homeplace. After dropping the lamb in the barn, she goes to feed the pigs where a handsome young man in a leather jacket – one of her stepbrothers – plays a shiny resonator on the fence then falls into the pigshit because he’s trying to look down her dress. Next, she is in a garden plot while another stepbrother, this one a big dummy in overalls and a red baseball cap, takes pictures of her when she leans over. Of course, he falls face-down in the dirt, too. Finally, Ellie is in the yard with the chickens as the stepmother and the sleazy brother look on, and he gets kicked off the porch when he leans forward to look too hard.

In the next scene, we see the elderly farmer and his chubby wife in the bedroom, which is decked out with gaudy curtains and bedding. He is trying to get some nookie, but she tells him that he’ll get nothing until he writes and signs a will that leaves her everything. We find out during her pleading that they met when the wife, whose name is Cora, came to their house selling magazines door-to-door. Of course, in the interest of getting some affection, he does what she asks.

The next day, the oddball blended family is outdoors at a picnic. The old farmer sits in a wheelchair beside his wife, who chows down on a plate of food, while her useless brother drinks beer in an inner tube on the ground. The farmer is fussing at his wife about how her sons and her brother Art look at Ellie, and about how Art never does any work, and it is then that we find out that Art has a heart condition. The sons we saw during the opening credits amble up; one rides up on a dirt bike. When Ellie comes over, her father tries to talk to her about how she has grown up and how her body is drawing the attention of young men, but she swears that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. After she leaves, though, the farmer’s time has come. His wife secretly lets loose the brake on his wheelchair and gives him a push down the hill and into the pond. However, he doesn’t drown right away, and the sons argue over who has to finish him off: “Aw Mom, I had to kill the last one,” one says. Cora gives up and does it herself.

At his funeral, where the widow Cora is dressed in black and flanked by her sons, a simpleton preacher rambles out a wobbly sermon to a few people in attendance. The sheriff is there, too, and he compliments the widow on her good looks, but when Ellie declares that her father’s death was no accident, a melee ensues! It is quick though and ends with Cora and her sons tripping over the coffin and falling into the grave as Ellie looks over the side and smiles at them.

That night, in a particularly bizarre scene, Cora is lying on the bed eating sweets and surrounded by her sons. One of them paints her toes, while the other two lounge . . . almost like lovers beside and on top of her. But the action is going on outside. Ellie is in the barn, and Art makes a go at her, informing her that her father is no longer there to protect her. He offers her some chewing gum while she points a pitchfork at him. He makes his move but she throws him off and then dumps water on him. Back in the bedroom, Art comes walking into the scene where the mother and her three sons are in the bed, and we find out that Art is not Cora’s brother at all. One of the sons calls him Uncle Art and he replies to “cut the crap.” Cora then shoos the young men and shimmies onto Art, who she has thrown onto the bed. Art, however, is having none of it, pleading about his heart, and we figure out then that Art’s condition is not just a way to get out of work— it’s also a way to keep the overweight, older woman off of him.

Meanwhile, outside by campfire, Ellie gives a tearful monologue about her situation. Given the style of the film, it’s not terribly convincing, but given the context of the girl’s situation, it moves the plot forward. She is alone and outnumbered by a group of shysters, and she must take action to save herself.

[image error]In the daylight, Ellie’s first target is the photographer-stepbrother in the overalls. He is big and goofy, wearing his red baseball cap backwards, probably the easiest to pick-off of the three. A good ol’ 1980s montage follows as we listen to some country music and watch the smiling pair have their impromptu photo shoot in the woods. When we come out of the montage, the goofy boy wants to take some naked photos. She resists playfully but also backs him onto a rock ledge and coaxes a confession out of him about who killed her father. Ellie pleads seductively, claiming that her father abused her and that she’s glad he’s gone. The boy falls for it and lets out of a few of the facts, but as she removes her dress, he backs over the rock ledge to his death.

After his funeral, which is in the same spot as the old farmer’s, Cora is at the sheriff’s office. She proclaims angrily that she wants him to pursue Ellie as a murderer, but the sheriff alludes slyly to the mysterious death of Cora’s husband not too far in the past. Instead of doing his duty, he does what any no-count, half-brained Southern sheriff would do in that situation: he attempts to have sex with the widow who is accusing her stepdaughter of murdering her son. But Cora is having none of it.

Later, Ellie is seen hanging out of the hayloft of the barn while another of her stepbrothers is practicing his riflery nearby. She asks him to come up there to help her with a rat, but he replies that he’s been told by his mother to stay away from her. Of course, he can’t resist ultimately, and he climbs up there and finds her in her stripped down to her bra and panties. As this goes on, Cora returns in her convertible, but in the dark barn, her son has stripped too – having dropped his rifle to do so – then another bizarre tidbit follows. For some reason, they begin playing a kinky game of toreador with Ellie’s skirt, which has the young man in his tighty-whiteys putting bull horns on his head with his fingers. But that was part of the ruse. Ellie maneuvers him around with the game, and Cora gets to see from ground level her near-naked son catapults himself out of the hayloft and to his death. At the funeral, the skinny old sheriff attempts once again to gain Cora’s affection, but fails . . . Over by the cars, Cora proclaims that she has a “craving for a certain young lady’s blood,” but Art just stands by, chewing his gum.

Now, only one stepbrother remains – the guitar player – and Ellie has a plan for him, too. We see her down by the pond, sawing off the depth marker by the small pier. Now that Ellie has disposed of one stepbrother in the woods and another in the hayloft, the only stereotypical place left for the last one is the honky-tonk. Ellie dolls herself up in her ramshackle bedroom and goes the red-tinted barroom where she knows he will be. (While this is going on, we see Cora and Art stumbling through the woods with a box and discussing how Ellie is to be disposed of.) As she did with the other stepbrothers, she cozies up to this one, too, and before long, they are riding his motorcycle to the pond where we’ve just seen Ellie. The two make out a bit and shed a few clothing items, then – right after we see Cora and Art dump what he know to be snake under Ellie’s bedsheets – Ellie says, “Dive for me” to her stepbrother.

The problem is: he doesn’t fall for it. They tussle, and she runs, her clothes first half-stripped then completely. He gets on his motorcycle and chases her back to her little bedroom. Meanwhile, Art and Cora are in the honky-tonk, finding out that the two young people were there and left together. And of course, as the young man tries to force himself on Ellie in her bed, the snake gets him. And we have funeral number three.

That night, as Cora soaks in the bath and sips whiskey, Art suggests that they sell the farm and leave, but Cora wants revenge. Art reminds her that the sheriff warned them that, if there were any more “accidents,” he’d have to investigate. Which wouldn’t seem like much a threat coming from a skinny, ineffective lawman like this, but a plot twist comes next.

We see the sheriff striding across a town street and into a store. After warning the effeminate little storekeeper that it’d better be good to wake him from his nap, the storekeeper shows him photos that photographer-stepson took of Cora drowning her husband! The sheriff still isn’t convinced, and the little man purses his lips out of chagrin. The sheriff leaves, and Ellie meets him on the sidewalk. The sheriff starts to show her to the pictures, but then doesn’t, and Art pulls up in the car, with a big grin on her face. Ellie says, “What do you want?”

The pair drive back out to the farm, where Cora is waiting on the porch. They have brought Ellie back to the house to look through some of her father’s things before the place is sold. She is sent to the attic, and after she goes in the house, Art and Cora discuss their plan to kill her. Art is hesitant, but Cora reminds him of his past crimes (which she could call the law about) and of his need for heart medicine (which the money will pay for). Art agrees. Up in the attic, he attempts to overtake Ellie to stab her with a switchblade knife, but Ellie asks to say her prayers before she dies.

As Ellie is half-praying, half-influencing Art, a Mercedes Benz pulls up the dirt driveway and a citified woman gets out, blathering about how the house is exactly what she wants! As Art tries to decide whether to go through with the murder, the woman and her husband in a three-piece suit come up to the house, wanting to look it over for purchase. Cora tries to keep them out of the house, knowing that Art may be committing murder upstairs, but the pushy woman just keeps on. Upstairs, Ellie is stripping down, supposedly giving in to Art’s suggestion that he deflower her before she dies, but the city couple is worming their way up there. What follows is an another very strange scene, where Art and Ellie are wrapped up in some kind of kinky naked wrestling match, while the city woman gets turned on by their primal noises. But, as we knew would happen, the ultimate result is Art’s death . . . by heart attack. He declares, “What a way to go!” as he falls naked down the stairs at Cora’s feet.

By now, Cora is ready to just do it herself. She begins to chase Ellie with a shotgun, blasting away. Yet, success will evade her . . . sort of. Eventually, the sheriff drives up and puts a stop to it. And resolves the situation in his own way: he takes Cora away in handcuffs then marries her, with Ellie as the maid of honor. With the trio standing outside the little church, the country music plays, and the credits roll.

Filmed on location in Maypearl, Texas, which is south of Dallas/Fort Worth, Ellie shares quite a few similarities with other low-budget Southern comedies from the 1970s and ’80s. Stirring together a blend of shameless lawbreaking, sexual chicanery, and outright stupidity, we get these “Southern-fried” films that seems to be either knock-offs of or half-rate attempts at what The Dukes of Hazzard or Smokey and the Bandit did reasonably well. One commenter on IMDb tried to peg this movie as a recasting of the Electra-Clytemnestra story from Greek tragedy, but I wouldn’t give it that much credit, even if the storylines are similar. What Ellie is is simple enough: a silly sex comedy, set in the South, that bases its characters and story on the lowest Erskine Caldwell-style stereotypes. 

To read Southern Movie posts, see the full list.

Dirty Boots: “The Shift Away from Eliot (and Toward Tartuffe)”

In his landmark 1919 essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” – published one hundred years ago this year – poet TS Eliot ended with this as one of his key points:

To divert interest from the poet to the poetry is a laudable aim: for it would conduce to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and bad.

He was discussing poetry in the essay, but his point could be taken more broadly. What matters more than the artist – his or her life, biography, or credentials – is the quality of the work. Is the work, as Eliot put it, “an expression of significant emotion”? That was the criteria that the great Modernist proffered as what should be the prime force in evaluation and assessment. Then, in the last sentence, Eliot closed by stating that poets (or more broadly, creative artists) must live “in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.”

[image error]Having received my formative literary (and artistic) education, both institutional and practical, in the late twentieth century, Eliot’s idea was the gold standard. The work must stand on its own. An artist is not good because of who he or she is, but because of what he or she produces. And, as they say on Project Runway: “One day, you’re in; the next, you’re out.” Put out a weak album or a bad movie or a clunker of a novel, you might be done.

Yet, our current involvement with fast-paced news and social media seems to be changing that. Today, we have people who are “famous for being famous”— minimally talented socialites and hucksters who have managed to turn into image into brand using the democratic modes offered by YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. It is Eliot’s paradigm turned on its head: To divert interest from the art to the artist. Their fans – now called “followers” in a peculiarly cultish bit of linguistic evolution – aren’t looking at them because they’ve produced anything of value or because they seem able to do that at all, but simply because they’ve offered themselves to be looked at.

In my estimation, someone who isn’t doing anything worth watching . . . shouldn’t be watched. As an example, I’d point out much of the content on YouTube: bluster, yelling and woo-ing at unimpressive acts, wide-eyed efforts to draw attention to mundane things, all of which only prove that an Average Joe with a GoPro, a selfie stick, and a grasp of the formula can participate in what was once show business, and what should not be mistaken for the arts.

TS Eliot suggested a century ago that a poet (or artist) should live in the “present moment of the past,” meaning that creative people should understand both the zeitgeist and the history and traditions that led to it. However, convinced that these are unprecedented times we live in, many current performers and “influencers” instead express an open indifference to tradition, even to recent history. Again, Eliot’s idea has been turned upside down by people who want to live only in “merely the present.”

Perhaps this is a regular old, run-of-the-mill historical shift, like the ’60s generation had long hair and flower power that made their Depression-survivor parents say, How could could you believe such things? But man, I hope not. I can’t imagine the results if we do shift to a no-substance, anti-tradition ideal that values spectacle over message, if we do move intellectually away from Eliot’s stance that artistic merit yields credibility, if we do abandon seeing ourselves as part of a historical continuity. We will be in deep, deep trouble culturally if the idle chatter of the inane Tartuffe is elevated while no one has read Tartuffe to know what that even means.

“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige,” a weekly column published every Tuesday afternoon, offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on life in the 21st century. To find and read previous posts, click here for a full list.

Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “That Golden Deliciousness”

[image error]There are people who say, “I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like.” That’s kind of how I am about beer. I’ve got a working-man’s understanding of this nectar of the gods, and much of that understanding is rooted in my taste buds. I’ve had, or at least tried, lots of beers. While my intellect comprehends what ABV means and my wallet comprehends what the price tag means, my mouth figures out what matters when I pour that golden deliciousness in. I get around people sometimes who want to talk history – this foodie thing about knowing the story – or who want to critique brewing methods or to pontificate on regional practices— I just want to drink good beer, preferably with other people who like to drink good beer.

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A Moveable Feast: Daring to Plant in Mid-August!

My trustiest gardening book, Month-by-Month Gardening in the South, said under every heading for every type of plant for the month of August: do not plant at this time!  But when you’re trying to build a school garden program and develop interest among the students, you can’t lie fallow. (Though students may come and go to and from the garden, grass and weeds always seem to be willing to take over.) So, rather than plant pumpkins too late or cabbage too early, I decided in mid-August to gather the students who’d said they were up for it, and we planted a few rows of herbs. School had been in for less than two weeks, and it was time to get started.

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Normally, mid-summer in Alabama is neither the time nor the place to plant. But I took it as a good sign that the folks at the nursery didn’t look at me and say, What’re you stupid or something? The lady who helped me put the four small plastic containers with my fifty little starters just said with a smile, “Be sure and water them . . . a lot.”

This has been a particularly dry summer, too. If I’m being honest, I’ll share that I wasn’t terribly fond of watering them three times, even on Saturdays and Sundays when I had to make special trips out to the school, but it was worth it. Almost all of them survived! Pictured here, on planting day, are two types of basil, catnip, mint, sage, catnip, tarragon, fennel, and parsley, as well as the rosemary plants that survived last summer and the remnants of the sunflowers, which are now sacrificing their stalks and leave to our pest control needs.

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Here we are three weeks later in early September. We’ve lost all of the tarragon, and a smattering of the other plants, but the basil, the mint, and the catnip are loving life. The fennel has begun to flower as has the African blue basil. I think the rosemary also benefited from the constant watering, they’re greener than ever.

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Dirty Boots: “From Legalizing Marijuana to Fishing for Red Snapper”

Two weeks ago, on a Friday morning, I went downtown to the state capitol for a series of brief presentations called Solutions Alabama, which were given by the near-graduates of Auburn University at Montgomery’s Certified Public Manager (CPM) program. I had received a few emails from AUM’s Continuing Education office inviting me to come, and though I wasn’t sure why – I’m not a public official and have no position of power or influence – I decided as a conscientious citizen of this state to respond with a yes and go hear what would be said. The six topics were interesting enough, from legalizing marijuana to fishing for red snapper, so I looked forward to the opportunity to learn something new.

[image error]During the brief introductory remarks, I learned first that the groups giving the presentations were close to completing a two-year certificate program while working in various areas of state government. I noticed immediately after arriving that almost everyone there was in a business suit – me in jeans and a plaid short-sleeve shirt – but I already had a feeling this would be more than a chat among friends. The folks who would talk to us had studied an array of problems we face in Alabama, were not from special interest groups with predetermined agendas, and were there to offer recommendations for solutions to six of our state’s problems.

The first person to speak, on the topic of marijuana legalization, shared the related facts that marijuana’s most common medical use is for chronic pain (about two-thirds of users) and that Alabama has the highest opioid prescription rate in the country, which is twice the national average. An open-minded listener could quickly discern that, given the terrible effects of what is called “the opioid crisis,” our state is deep in it but has an alternative to these highly addictive pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, we were told, Alabama also has some of the harshest penalties in the nation for marijuana possession, which is a contributing factor to both an unconstitutional level of over-incarceration and severe backlogs in our state’s forensics labs.

The second presentation explored the issue of housing for recently released prison inmates. The speaker began by sharing that 15,000 inmates are released from state prisons every year, and about one-third of them will return to prison. What folks are given upon release, he said, are: one set of street clothes, $10, and a bus ticket back to the site of their arrest, regardless of whether they were from that area or not. The crowd that filled the capitol’s auditorium let out a mixture of scoffs, gasps, and cynical chuckles, all of us knowing and the speaker acknowledging that $10 won’t get anyone far. However, that’s not the main problem. What stands between the released inmate and getting steady housing are the lack of ID, employment, and adequate clothing (for job interviews). Without an ID, a person can’t even cash a check, much less prove who he or she is to a potential employer. As an incentive to move on the issue, the speaker also relayed that one inmate costs about $22,000 per year to house, so if we could spend a comparatively small amount on re-entry programs, we could reduce recidivism, improve the former inmates’ lives, and save the state money.

The revelations kept coming as another presentation got under way, this one about real-world education. This time, the speaker, who worked for the Department of Corrections, talked about the need for our schools to address a serious lack of “soft skills” in our young people. He cited a study where employers were asked what skills were lacking in new, young employees, and the overwhelming number-one was attendance. The next two most common answers were: following instructions and time management. Since I teach in a high school, it sounded eerily familiar: a large part of getting along in life is showing up, doing what you’re asked, and not goofing off. Sadly, too many young people can’t or won’t or don’t know how to do these basic things.

The final one of the six that related directly to my interest in attending was about the lottery. Alabama is now one of five states without one, and the presenter asked rhetorically why so many state have created them. They make money. The crowd giggled, and after a pause, the presenter returned us to seriousness by saying, “Lotteries are indeed productive for their communities.” Countering the common arguments-against, he also explained how surveys show that people with higher incomes are more likely to participate than people with lower incomes, and that 2.6% of Americans suffer from gambling addiction, not as widespread as some opponents claim. The problem here in Alabama, however, seems not to be whether to have a lottery – the 1999 referendum on Siegelman’s education lottery was defeated 54% to 46%, not exactly a landslide – but how to allocate the money from one. Two recent lottery bills were cited, and it was the fight over how to use the money that stopped their progress in the legislature.

What was compelling to me as I listened to these successive descriptions and proffered solutions was one common theme: this will move the state forward in positive ways. We should legalize, regulate, and monitor medical marijuana, one presenter said. We should improve and require re-entry programs and we should “ban the box,” another presenter said. We should have more and better practical-minded programs to get our young people ready to earn a living, yet another declared. A fourth stated unequivocally that we should have a lottery and 100% of its revenue should go to education. And these solutions didn’t come from supposed hippie-liberal outside agitators trying to implement a socialist agenda. They came from respected, hard-working state employees who looked at the facts and came to conclusions they were willing put their names on.

Though the auditorium in the capitol was nearly packed that morning, I walked to my truck in the midday heat and thought about how many more people needed to hear those presentations. A few of the gray suits probably wondered why I was there, a scruffy-bearded guy in casual clothes who did no glad-handing, but I’d say that more folks like me should be at these talks where real Alabamians talk about real issues, sans politics. Public-policy discussions aren’t all that sexy, and white papers rarely make good beach reading, but they’re both worthwhile nonetheless. To read more about the CPM Solutions Alabama presentations, the lengthier white papers on their findings are available to read on AUM’s website.

“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige,” a weekly column published every Tuesday afternoon, offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on life in the 21st century. To find and read previous posts, click here for a full list.

Love + Marriage: The Fitzgerald Museum’s Annual Literary Contest

[image error]Last year, it was “What’s Old Is New.” This year, it’s “Love + Marriage.” The Fitzgerald Museum’s annual Literary Contest for students opens its submissions period today, September 1, 2019. 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 Literary Contest: Love + Marriage

F. Scott and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald were daring and revolutionary in their lives and in their art and writing. One hundred years after their 1919 wedding 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: Fiction, Poetry, Multi-Genre

Categories: Grades 9–10, Grades 11–12, Undergraduate

General Guidelines for 2019 – 2020:

The Fitzgerald Museum’s annual Literary Contest is seeking submissions of short fiction, poetry, and multi-genre works that exhibit themes of love and marriage. Works with traditional forms and styles will be accepted, 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, so please be clear about that 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 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 Kwoya Fagin Maples for the undergraduate category and Joe Taylor for the high school categories. Maples is the author of the poetry collection Mend, teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and is currently an Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellow. Taylor is a professor at the University of West Alabama, an editor at Livingston Press, and the author of six novels and story collections. For more information, contact the Fitzgerald Museum or contest coordinator Foster Dickson. 

Sharing #GoodStuff: “We Have Signal”

One of the nice things about streaming services like Roku is that browsing is like shopping but for stuff you’ve already paid for. Though it’s not new, I recently came across the Alabama Public Television show “We Have Signal,” which offers a couple-dozen musical performances filmed at Birmingham’s now-closed BottleTree Cafe. Though it’s bad that I’m so behind the times, it’s also good . . . in that now I get to watch all these shows that are new to me.

Southern Movie 40: “Cool Hand Luke” (1967)

As far as I’m concerned, Cool Hand Luke is the one of the best movies ever made. Released in 1967 at the height of Paul Newman’s fame, it was preceded by the Southern movies Long, Hot Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, both from 1958, Sweet Bird of Youth from 1962, and the Texas-set classic Hud from 1963. Yet, it was George Kennedy’s portrayal of big-talking leader-turned-follower Dragline that won the film’s only Oscar (though Newman was nominated). Cool Hand Luke is the story of an anti-hero extraordinaire, a man who laughs in the face of brutality, who refuses stay down when beaten, and whose joi-de-vivre transcends the furthest reaches of authority.

Cool Hand Luke opens startlingly with the red Violation tag of a parking meter popping onto the screen. Next, we see a staggering drunk using a pipe wrench to take the meters off their poles, each falling to the ground in turn. Finally, the man half-falls, half-sits on the ground and we get to see his face as light illuminates it while he opens another beer. He squints in the brightness, and two officers are there, one saying, “You better come with us, buddy.” The drunk smiles joyously and begins to laugh, and the titling tells us who he is: Cool Hand Luke.

As the credits roll, the scene shifts to hot and sunny rural roadside where a crew of sweaty men in blue prison garb swing their blades to clear brush. The bosses holding rifles crouch in the road and sporadically give permission for a man to wipe his brown or to sip water. After a few moments, a truck carrying new convicts passes by, and two of the men make a bet on how many there will be.

The new prisoners then unload in the empty camp, having arrived while everyone else is still working, and they are met by two guards and the warden, who is sprawling lazily in a rocking chair on his front porch. A trusty called Dog Boy and his bloodhound lurk nearby, watching. The four men in prison-issue pants and their own shirts are addressed one by one, and one-by-one they attempt to respond but are met with cold intimidation from one gun-toting guard named Honeycutt.  Lucas Jackson has been sentenced to two years for defacing public property— an inordinately long sentence. When he fesses up to the nasal-voiced warden that he was chopping the heads off of parking meters, the warden asks, “What’d you think that was gon’ get you?” to which Luke replies, “I guess you could say I wasn’t thinking, cap’n.” The warden also shares that Luke is a veteran with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and several Purple Hearts but failed to rise above the rank of private. Luke says sardonically, “I guess I was just passing time, cap’n.”

The four new inmates are then peppered with harshly worded rules, after receiving an admonition from the warden that he can be a “real mean sumbitch.” The men change their shirts in the bunkhouse as the cigar-chewing Carl the Floorwalker explains the dos and don’ts, punctuating each item with the same punishment: spending the night in the box. As he finishes, he catches Luke mouthing the words and smiling, and says pointedly, “I hope ain’t going to be a hard case.” Luke smiles silently but does not respond.

Soon, the men arrive from their work day, and the new arrivals have a whole new set of rules to learn: whose seat is whose, how each man gets a nickname. Here, we meet Dragline, the big, mouthy leader among the convicts, who attempts to engage Luke but is thwarted by Luke’s amused apathy. The evening passes quickly, and the dozens of men are out the door around sunrise to another work day. Somewhat pathetically, one of the new men, a friendly salesman who is naive to these harsh realities, gets tricked into paying a dollar for easy work, and when he asks for it, he gets shoved by the guard Honeycutt who points a gun in his face and says, “Get to work.” Which they do, swinging sling blades through dry brush in the hot sun. Another of the new men passes out in the heat before lunch. As they work, we also meet the walking boss Godfrey, called The Man with No Eyes for his mirrored sunglasses and his stoic silence. That evening, when the men return to camp, the duped inmate is put in the box for talking back to Honeycutt about the easy  job he thought he bought. The other men look on. Back in the bunkhouse, some of the convicts lament what happens, while others say that it will do him good to learn the rules: no talking back.

The next day begins before dawn, as the trucks roll through the blue morning with their headlights on. The men are digging ditches this time, but the monotony is broken by a buxom blonde in a simple dress who goes outside of her house to wash her car where the men can see. She makes every effort to entice them, even going so far as ringing out her soapy sponge onto her chest, as they soak in the sight hungrily. Dragline shows himself once again to be the leader by dominating the conversation and naming the woman Lucille. Later that night, some of the men quarrel in the shower, then they are off to bed, with Carl walking the floor, as Dragline whispers the name Lucille in the dark, goading them to remember and want her again. But Luke tells him, “Forget it,” and “Quit beating it in the ground.” Dragline gets angry once again at this new arrival. Tomorrow, they will fight.

In the light of day, the first thing we see is Luke’s head snap back as Dragline lands a hard shot. The two shirtless men have on boxing gloves and are fighting in the small yard. Dragline, who is much larger, is winning easily, but Luke refuses to stay on the ground even though he is being knocked down over and over. At first, the men who have formed a circle around them are cheering Dragline on, but the mood changes as they see that Dragline’s pummeling of this hardheaded man has crossed the line from teaching him a lesson into sheer brutality. The begin to murmur, “Stay down,” but Luke will not. In the end, he is lying in the dirt, badly beaten, but he has taught Dragline the lesson: Luke never gives up, even when he is clearly beaten. 

That evening, the men are playing cards. Unlike the previous time he was offered to join the game, Luke is playing this time, but rather than facing the other players as one normally would, he is turned sideways away from them and not looking at anyone. As the game progresses, Luke raises and calls and raises and calls, until he pushes every other player out of the game. When that happens, Dragline, who is not playing, reaches across table, shows his cards, and declares, “Nothin’. He beat you with nothin’. Just like to today when he kept coming back at me . . . with nothin’.” Smiling, Luke replies without looking at him, “Yeah, sometimes nothin’ is a real cool hand.” He now has his nickname: Cool Hand Luke.

After a brief montage that shows the men working, Luke has a visitor on one of their off-days. He walks through the yard, where men lounge, get haircuts, and jump rope. It is his mother, who is sick but smiling and chain-smoking in a makeshift bed in the covered back of a pickup truck. The first thing Luke says is, “How’d you find me?” Rather than calling her Mother or Mom, he calls her Arletta, and they have an uncomfortable talk as his other family members stand nearby and don’t interact. His mother tells him that his wife has left and brought his things, and their conversation consists mostly of vague references to his behavior, the pain it has caused, and the need for letting go. Arletta tells him that she’ll be dead when he gets out, and we learn that Luke never knew his father. She will be leaving the farm to his brother, and Luke agrees that that’s fair. Arletta tries to explain the strong feelings that she has had for Luke, but his response tells us that it won’t matter much. Once their talk is done, cut off by the guard, Luke exchanges a few words with his nephew. telling him to stay out of trouble, then he is handed his banjo and told that there is no reason for him to come back home again. The scene ends with one of the inmates singing the country gospel song “None But Thee” and playing a twelve-string guitar.

Back out on the road, the cold-hearted guard Honeycutt informs them that they will be tarring a whole road that day. It is clear in the men’s expressions that this is terrible work in the hot sun. They grab the shovels and begin pitching loads of sand onto the new blacktop, and among them Luke is working fast. Dragline tells him to slow down, but Luke takes it as a challenge, making the work into a game and inciting the others to do the same. They begin working at a furious pace, running from sand pile to sand pile, slinging it wildly. The guards are confused by what is going on but don’t stop them. The smiling men keep working and shouting . . . and when the road is paved, there is still daylight! They have completed the awful task that was supposed to drain and demoralize them in less time than expected. Led by Luke, rather than by Dragline who stresses the importance of following the rules, they have defeated the guards who want to break them down. They end the day smiling and laughing as the guards look on.

The next scene in Cool Hand Luke involves one of the most iconic situations in all of movie history. The men are hanging around in the bunkhouse with a drenching rain outside, suffering from the heat, and Dragline is pontificating about how Luke can eat anything. The men are listening when Luke, in his quiet way, says, “I can eat fifty eggs.” Dragline is stopped in his tracks, slack-jawed and dumbfounded, and he replies, “Nobody can eat fifty eggs.” The bet is on! Next, we see Luke jogging and Dragline “training” him, praying, manipulating the rules, anything else he can do to help their chances. Watching Luke eat those eggs is a nauseating thing. In his jockey shorts, he chews and paces as the whole group is held in rapt attention. After thirty-two eggs, Luke looks just about done, but as Dragline talks his talk, it comes out that every last dime in the camp is riding on the bet. Luke smiles and gets back to work: thirty-three . . . Until, finally, Luke downs the last one with Dragline moving his jaw to help him chew. Luke becomes, to his fellow inmates, the man who can do anything. But he is left lying flat on the table, surrounded by egg shells, in a Christ pose as Carl the Floorwalker mumbles, “Nobody can eat fifty eggs . . .”

Although Luke has been on a high for a few scenes, shifting the dour culture of the prison camp to suit his fun-loving attitude, he has a caught the attention of the guards, who don’t like his influence on the other men. In the next scene, the men are working on a roadside and encounter a rattlesnake, which they try to chop with their blades. Luke grabs it by its tail for The Man With No Eyes to shoot, then throws the headless snake carcass at the walking boss’s feet, smiling, and speaks to the silent man as though they were pals, complimenting his shooting and reminding him to get his walking stick. The walking boss is clearly not amused or swayed by this, and Dragline tells Luke later that he has crossed line. Luke, of course, doesn’t care.

Shortly thereafter, a summer thunderstorm appears, and the men quickly shuffle into the trucks. All of them except Luke, who begins to rant at the sky and at God to show him something. Of course he is disappointed and comments, “Just standin’ in the rain.” Again the guards are watching, just as the prisoners are. By this point in the movie, we can see why Luke did not fare well in the military despite being a valiant soldier, why he has ended up in prison for years on a minor violation, why his wife has left, and why his mother left the farm to his brother. Luke is neither lazy, nor stupid, nor shiftless. He is handsome and determined and likable, but he wants answers to the big questions, and his whimsical disdain for the pettiness of regulations and norms angers those in power.

Back in the bunkhouse, Luke receives word that his mother has died. Silently, he retreats to his bunk, facing away from the men and out the window as they walk away to give him space. Luke begin to play a song on his banjo, then sings the tune, picking up speed and volume as he goes. The next day, instead of going out onto the road with the others, he is put in the box and is told that, when men face some tragedy like a mother’s death, they often “get rabbit on their blood” and want to take off for home. He will stay put for a while. The guard who puts him the small, closet-like building tells Luke that he is sorry, but Luke only scoffs at him before he closes the door. Rather than being allowed to work and take his mind off his dead mother, Luke is locked in with his thoughts for days.

Luke is released on the Fourth of July, a holiday even for the chain gang. That evening, as they play loud music, dance, drink beer, and shout, we see Luke down on the floor, sawing his way through and making an escape route. As Carl comes to survey scene at first bell, Dragline distracts him with a dirty book as Luke gets away. The guards may not have noticed Luke had it not been for another inmate who tries to follow too, but does a poor job of it.

The guards put the dogs to the task of chasing Luke through the night and into the next day, but no avail. Luke zigzags over fences, crawls a rope across a stream, and dives off a railroad bridge to confuse the dogs. As the day ends, the car returns to camp without Luke, but with a dead dog carried by the trusty who woefully tells the warden, “He ran poor old Blue to death . . .”

However, Luke won’t be gone long. In the next scene, a car pulls up to the roadside work site and Luke is shuffled up, smiling, to stand on an embankment in front of the other men. As he stands there, leg chains are put on him, and the warden remarks sardonically that he can have the reminder of hearing them clink all the time. Luke responds, “I wish you’d stop being so good to me, cap’n.” The warden’s face changes. he smashes Luke with a blackjack, and proclaims that Luke she never speak to him that away again. Luke then lays on the ground, and the warden gives one of the most famous speeches in movie history: “What we’ve got here is . . . failure to communicate. Some men, you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week. That’s the way he wants it. Well, he gets it!” Then adding, “I don’t like it any more than you men,” he strides away.

Luke returns to work and explains what happened to other men while they eat lunch. He only got about a mile and a half, he tells them, before a policeman caught him driving a stolen car. After the explanation, while Dragline tells him to lay low, Luke is wrapping a string around his finger and staring off into the distance. Back on the roadside, Luke is working, and the guard who attempted to show him kindness while putting him in the box remarks that he has heard that Luke doesn’t believe in God, and that that may explain why a nice young man has ended up in prison. Luke ignores the jibe though, and asks to go relieve himself. Th guard responds that he can, but that he should continue shaking the bush the whole time so they know he’s still there. As Luke moves down the hill, The Man with No Eyes readies himself with his rifle, then begins to shoot warning shots at the bush where Luke is. After three shots and no response, the guard goes and looks— Luke has escaped again! This time, he has tied the string to the bush before running off. The guards go to get the dogs.

Meanwhile, Luke has made his way to a small store where two black boys are outside. He convinces one to get an ax by telling him that he bets he can’t use one. Luke then sends the other boy into the store to get all of the chili powder, pepper, and curry powder he can. After cutting of his leg irons with the ax, Luke showers the dirt with the powder and tells the kids to enjoy the show when those dogs start sniffing all of it up.

Next we see the camp, the men are lying around, and it is mail call. Carl announces that Dragline has mail and  hands him a magazine. Dragline is confused and hands it to another man to see who it’s from: he can’t read. As the men thumb through it, they realize what has been sent. There in the middle is a picture of a smiling Luke with two women, one on each arm! They go crazy with joy.

Later, the men are sitting around again, and one of them Coco, who has been Dragline’s main sidekick, asks to see the magazine in exchange for a cold drink. Dragline takes the deal, and as Coco looks, the door to the bunkhouse opens. Luke is carried in and dropped. The warden declares that he will now wear two sets of legs chains and that there won’t be a third time. The men gather Luke up, but all they want to know is: tell us about the picture! Luke, exhausted and beaten, tells them that it is a fake. No, that’s isn’t possible, they reply, but he yells at them that is. “Stop feedin’ off me,” he growls and wanders back to his bunk.

Back on the job, Luke is given special attention by the guards. He is harassed and badgered, then put in the box at night. The scowling Northerner that the men call Society says that Luke won’t make it, but the men disagree. Eventually Luke does make it through the week, and it looks like he is home-free with a day to rest. But the guards have another idea. Honeycutt stops him and makes him dig a ditch in the yard . . . then another guard makes him fill it in . . . then Honeycutt comes back to make him re-dig it. The weakened Luke tries halfheartedly to fight back, but Honeycutt hits him with a night stick, and Luke begins to dig again . . . then he is told to re-fill it again . . . and that’s where Luke breaks. He begins to beg not to be beaten anymore and concedes in mumbles that he will get his mind right. Through the chain link fence windows, the other men watch him, and when he goes inside, they turn their backs on him. Their hero has been brought low, and when Luke falls, no one helps him up, so he shouts, “Where are you now?”

Out on the road, the guards try to make an example of Luke. He is made to fetch the water bucket for the men, then he is made to fetch the rifle for The Man with No Eyes, then he is made to fetch the turtle he shoots. However, when he is made to carry the turtle to the truck, to be cooked for lunch, Luke’s true colors show. He has used the trips to the trucks to steal all of the keys! He jumps into one dump truck, cranks it up, and drives right through the prisoners and guards, as Dragline jumps in, too. Too late, the guards discover that they are helpless to chase him.

Cool Hand Luke‘s final scenes center on this escape. Dragline is his normal, animated self – perhaps even more so now – and Luke continues to play it cool. Dragline begins to make plans for them to shake up the world, but Luke says no, that he is going by himself. Now, we see how Dragline has become as pitiful and pathetic as he was strong and dominant in the beginning; he has shifted from a leader to a lost follower, asking out loud, “What’m I gon’ do . . . all by myself?” Dragline calls after Luke in the dark as he walks away but the latter man doesn’t even acknowledge his presence.

Luke wanders over to an old clapboard church that is empty. In the silent loneliness, Luke attempts to talk to God in his way. “Hey, Old Man, you home tonight?” he asks. Luke’s monologue then proceeds to blame God for stacking the deck against him, for giving him no chances to do right, but he also accepts his own flawed choices. When he receives no answer out loud, Luke says, “Well, that’s what I thought,” and gives up. Outside we hear trucks drive up then Dragline calls out, “Luke!” The guards have descended on the area and caught Dragline almost immediately. He has made a deal with the officers that, if Luke gives up peacefully, they won’t even beat him. Luke knows better though, despite Dragline’s pleading. He walks, still smiling, to the door, and the many law enforcement officers, guards, and the warden get out of their cars. Luke says, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate,” right before a bullet strikes him through the heart. The Man with No Eyes has put an end to Cool Hand Luke.

Dragline attempts to comfort Luke, but there is nothing he can do. Luke is taken out to the car, and Dragline freaks out! Wailing, he grabs The Man with No Eyes and wrestles him to the ground, but the other men overtake him. This is not the confident, sneering Dragline who beat Luke so badly in the fistfight, this man lacks direction and is almost helpless. The warden tells the driver to take Luke to the hospital, but the driver protests that it’s an hour away, that Luke will die on the way. He  is overruled, and we know that Luke will die alone. In the movie’s final scene, Dragline is back on the chain gang, telling the men about Luke’s final moments before they all get back to work.

As a document of the American South, Cool Hand Luke depicts the region’s chain gang system as well as the violent intolerance of those in power. Lucas Jackson is a man who lacks worldly ambition, who sees no reason to respect arbitrary rules, and who has no place in a conformist society built on fear and punishment. In a 2008 review of the movie, critic Roger Ebert wrote, “Rarely has an important movie star suffered more, in a film wall-to-wall with physical punishment, psychological cruelty, hopelessness and equal parts of sadism and masochism.” That was the South in the late 1960s. Cool Hand Luke echoed the visuals that Americans had seen in newsreels from places like Birmingham, Alabama earlier in the decade, and that propensity for violence would be further evidenced the next year, 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed.

While I’ll conceded that Hollywood films can have a tendency to portray criminals as heroes and law enforcement officers as villains, this time the portrayal had historical backing. After the Civil War, the South’s notorious convict lease system had partnered with sharecropping to create a new version of slavery in the region, and in 1932, Robert Elliott Burns’ I Was a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang let American readers into this secret world. In both cases, there were real Southerners who executed those system on daily basis. Though they may fictional, the characters and scenario in Cool Hand Luke are not without historical precedent.

Though a person living elsewhere shouldn’t watch Cool Hand Luke and say, “Now I understand the South,” that viewer could acknowledge that he or she had experienced something essential (and ephemeral) about Southern culture: that willingness among authority figures and their enforcers to crush opposition when they view it as a threat. As long as Luke was just an annoyance, playing little games or grinning to himself, he was largely left alone . . . but when the other men began to follow his example, it was time to show all of them who’s in charge.

Dirty Boots: “Montgomery’s Mayoral Election, 2019”

[image error]Today, August 27, the people of Montgomery, Alabama will elect a new mayor, and the result will likely be historic. Current mayor Todd Strange, who was elected in 2007 when then-mayor Bobby Bright was elected to the US House of Representatives, is not seeking re-election, and of the twelve qualifying candidates, most of them, including most of the frontrunners, are African-American. Put bluntly, Montgomery will probably have its first-ever black mayor.

As a place, Montgomery is heavy with symbolism and history. Of course, it was the first capitol of the ill-fated Confederate States of America; it is also the state capitol of Alabama where Governor George Wallace implemented his segregationist agenda in the 1960s. Slaves were once auctioned in Court Square, about a block from City Hall, and within a few blocks of that City Hall are the sites of Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955 and the attack on the Freedom Riders in 1961, as well as the route of the Selma-to-Montgomery March in 1965. The city’s first black elected officials – four city councilpersons, one woman and three men – took office in the fall of 1975, forty-four years ago. In Montgomery’s two-hundred-year history, so far the mayor has always been white and male.

Certainly, whomever wins the mayoral election next week will achieve a personal victory – it is quite an accomplishment to become a mayor, moreover of a state capitol that is also home to a quarter-million people, two Air Force bases, and five colleges – but, this one will also be a symbolic victory and a significant statement about the city’s present and future. Montgomery has, in recent decades, shifted to have a majority-black population, which has so far not been reflected in either a city-council majority or a mayor. (By contrast, at the time of Rosa Parks’ arrest, Montgomery was about 60% white.) Though I’m more interested in a mayor’s skills, abilities, and ideas than in his or her race, I do believe that we all recognize the fact that, given our city’s history, it is high time for this historic moment.

However, having an African-American mayor won’t instantaneously alter or repair Montgomery’s history, nor will it in-and-of-itself change Montgomery’s present circumstances. The next mayor will face significant challenges: struggling public schools, a regressive tax structure, little public transportation, a lack of recycling options. I’ve heard candidates say in public forums that they want to “bring people together” and “move the city forward,” and those are commendable goals, but . . . the task will be to implement programs that give people cause for coming together. No matter the name (or race) of the winner, most Montgomerians will then shift to a distinctly pragmatic attitude: okay, now let’s see what you’re going to do.

That will be my attitude as well. Having lived in Montgomery my entire life, I have seen my hometown change dramatically. Affluent suburbs and most of the shopping options have moved eastward, and private schools have doubled and tripled in size. Downtown has gone from being virtually empty at night and on weekends to housing a reinvigorated entertainment district. And with the prosperity of first the Southern Poverty Law Center then Equal Justice Initiative, I’ve seen what I never would have imagined in the 1980s and ’90s: the prominent placement of nationally renowned social-justice history markers and sites. I hear people sometimes claim that Montgomery hasn’t changed . . . Anyone old enough to have seen the intersection of Taylor and Vaughn roads go from cow fields to a commercial epicenter can’t deny that Montgomery has changed. I think they mean that it hasn’t changed in the ways they’ve wanted. The questions now are: what will change next, and will those changes be for the better of all or to the detriment of some? The new mayor, who will serve a term through late 2023, must be able to answer those questions with actions and policies that have real effects on the lives of real people, which will be the way that our city can transcend the history that we should never forget as we hope to leave it behind.

“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige,” a weekly column published every Tuesday afternoon, offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on life in the 21st century. To find and read previous posts, click here for a full list.

Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “Feeding the Family”

[image error]When I ask my kids what they want from the grocery store, their answers are usually not the ones I hope for. Among the common requests are individually packaged snack foods and sugary drinks. While I’ll admit my own affection for chewy granola bars and Grapico, in making my list I’m not asking what they want to snack on. I’m asking what they want to eat.

The challenge as a parent (and as a person with a long family history of heart attacks) is: I’m fighting a constant battle against the brightly packaged, sugar-added “food products” that were born in laboratories, not in the earth. And I’ve become convinced, the more I read and pay attention, that these Frankenstein-foods are at the root of our collective unhealthiness, and also of our dependence on a system in which we need the insurance to pay for the drugs that will be prescribed by the doctors to counteract the effects of sitting around and eating trash.

I can be guilty of this, too. My work as a writer is mostly sedentary, and my work as a teacher means that leaving campus for a meal is difficult. Getting up to move around and having healthier, fresher foods on-hand both require forethought and effort on my part, since neither is a naturally occurring aspect of my typical weekday. Rather than involving physical activity, my work is often done hunkered over a keyboard or a student’s paper for so long that my upper back has to crackle and crunch itself back into the upright posture of a homo sapien. And when it comes to carrying a lunch and snacks, it is so much easier to choose foods that are pre-packaged and don’t need refrigeration, which means they’ll be processed and loaded with preservatives.

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