m e m p h i s . c o o l

Finnegans Awake 

It is with distinct trepidation that I announce my singing debut -- and probably my singing farewell -- at a recital to be held in conjunction with the Muck Sticky Jamboree this Friday at the New Daisy.

In the event you don't know young Muck, he is self-described as a Southern-Fried, Comedy-Rappin', Bluegrass-Hip-Hoppin' Critter. He is a performance artist who champions pot smoking, delves into gospel music, wallows in vulgarity and is said to be adorable by those who know. Since I neither advocate nor embody any of these characteristics, you might well ask why I'm doing an opening song for him this Friday. I've been wondering that myself, although when he asked me to do a number with him (a tune, not a doobie), he said please. He's a well bred young man with good manners who loves his mother and wears pajamas in public. I was honored.

To find out more about him, go to http://www.mucksticky.com.

To find out what I'll be crooning, come to The Muck Sticky Jamboree at the New Daisy Theatre on Beale Street Friday. $7 at the Door, doors open at 7 p.m. Also appearing will be Taco and da mofos, and Mervous Thrifty. Dress is casual. Life is good. Carpe diem.

Here's what the Village Voice has to say on 40S:

Feb. 1
By Dennis Lim

...the two big winners—set in different quarters of the Memphis music world—neatly embodied the festival's split identity. Years in the making, Ira Sachs's FORTY SHADES OF BLUE, which picked up the Grand Jury Prize, traces the family fallout when an aggrieved son returns, destabilizing the relationship between an imperious music producer (Rip Torn) and his much younger Russian wife (Dina Korzun). Wordlessly eloquent about the patterns of estrangement and entrapment that infect family ties, the film is something of a throwback, an unshowy melodrama with a rapt, heightened naturalism that owes a sizable debt to Cassavetes (not least in a pair of superbly sustained party scenes). Craig Brewer's crunk fairy tale HUSTLE & FLOW snagged the Audience Award and the fattest deal. The movie's preposterous ending anticipates its Viacom embrace, and if nothing else, it was a blast to witness an industry audience take so warmly to the hero's home demo—and unofficial festival theme song—"It's Hard for a Pimp."

From the Chicago Tribune, Jan. 31
By Mark Caro

The Forty Shades of Blue entry on IMDB.com has been updated with the info about the Grand Jury award from Sundance as well as with some commentary.

To read some notes from when they filmed it last year, go to my CA blog.

I did some reporting on the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Award-winning movie "Forty Shades of Blue" last year. It was filmed in Memphis and I squeezed in a bit of work as an extra while I was interviewing and blogging about it for The Commercial Appeal.

Now that it's reaped some recognition, here are some of the media reports about it that I've gathered over the last few days:

From the Sundance Channel

“Forty Shades of Blue”

U.S.A., 2004, 107 Minutes, color
Director: Ira Sachs
Screenwriter: Michael Rohatyn, Ira Sachs

Returning to Sundance, Ira Sachs brilliantly harnesses a sophisticated cinematic lexicon to reveal the rich interior lives of his characters, the taut dynamics among them, and the unforgettable, visually detailed world they inhabit--all in a contemporary drama with archetypal overtones and profound emotion.

Forty Shades of Blue is the story of Laura, a Russian woman living in Memphis with Alan, a legendary music producer twice her age. Though she looks the part, Laura is no typical trophy wife. Vigilantly guarded, she sublimates her own desires out of a stoic sense of duty and a reluctance to impose on Alan's generosity. When Alan's estranged adult son Michael comes for a visit, an intuitive bond develops between them that destabilizes her tightly ordered world. Michael becomes a mirror that allows her to see herself and new possibilities.

Dina Korzun's riveting, coiled performance offers precious glimpses into Laura's smoldering soul. As in a Henry James novel, Sachs charts his heroine's subtle self-discovery with intimate precision. The always wonderful Rip Torn is Falstaff and King Lear both, as the crusty, intimidating patriarch forced to confront his mortality--his lushly appointed yet outmoded home a resonant metaphor for his predicament. As the third side of this quasi-Oedipal triangle, Darren Burrows brings exquisite sensitivity to the part of the disapproving son emerging from his father's shadow.

The power of Forty Shades of Blue confirms Sachs as one the most exciting voices in American cinema. — Caroline Libresco

On Ira from the Sundance Channel

Ira Sachs was born in Memphis in 1965. His first feature, THE DELTA was screened at Sundance, Toronto, and Rotterdam, and was distributed by Strand Releasing. Sachs was the recipient of the Emerging Talent award at the 1997 LA Outfest, and was awarded a 1999 Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. He was also a 2001 Fellow at the MacDowell Artist Colony, and has made several shorts, including VAUDEVILLE and LADY (Sundance '95). With FORTY SHADES OF BLUE, Sachs participated in the Screenwriter's Lab at the Sundance Institute.

Filmmaker Q and A:

Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. I was born there in 1965 and left to go to college in 1983, and have been back a couple of times to make films there.

What book are you currently reading?
Vanity Fair by Thackeray.

What music are your currently listening to?
Early soul, because that's the music from our film.

What was the first film you remember seeing?
The first film I can remember seeing is FANTASIA, which I was taken to on the day that my parents told we three kids that they were getting a divorce, so someone took the kids out to see FANTASIA.

What was the first film you took a date to and how did it go?
The first film I didn't take a date to is somehow what comes to mind. For years I always wanted to take my college boyfriend to KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, and after we broke up he sent me a note saying that he'd finally seen it with his new boyfriend.

Which actor, living or dead, would you most like to work with?
Gael Garcia Bernal and Maggie Chung

Did you go to film school? If so, where?
No.

If you couldn't make films, what would you do?
I don't know if I would do if I couldn't make films.

What stories or topics do you feel need to be covered at this point in time?
I think what I look for are films that are told from a very unique and particular perspective.

Red or Blue?
Too much being made of that distinction right now.

Low-carb or low-fat?
Low-carb

Anderson Cooper or Jon Stewart?
Anderson Cooper, he's one of us.

CD or MP3
I'm not quite fluent in MP3s, unfortunately, though I just set up my iTunes so it works through my stereo, so I'm ready.

New York Post, January 17, 2005

By Lou Lumenick

Rip Torn is making his very first trip to the Sundance Film Festival, which opens Thursday — but the 73-year-old acting legend cut his teeth in independent movies before most filmmakers there were born.

Though he's currently best known for his supporting roles in popular Hollywood comedies like "Dodgeball" and the two "Men in Black" movies — as well as his Emmy-winning turn as Garry Shandling's manager on "The Larry Sanders Show" — he gets back to his indie roots in "Forty Shades of Blue," a moody drama in which he stars as a legendary Memphis music producer tragically betrayed by his estranged son and his girlfriend.

A respected and prolific stage and TV performer in the 1950s and '60s, the Texas native was relegated by Hollywood to supporting roles, such as Bob Hope's buddy in the comedy "Critics Choice."

"I was working out at the gym in 1969 when a guy named Milton Ginzburg said, 'I read you would do any movie if you could do a lead,' " Torn recalled.

"And he threw me this script and said, 'I bet you won't do this,' and I replied, 'I guess you called me on that.' "

The movie was the landmark indie "Coming Apart," a sexually explicit, X-rated drama in which Torn gave a no-holds-barred performance as a troubled psychiatrist. He followed that film with the lead as Henry Miller in an X-rated adaptation of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer."

Of his vast body of work — the incredibly versatile Torn has played Judas, Lyndon Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Walt Whitman and Richard Nixon — Torn jokes, "with six children, not all of my choices were based on artistic considerations."

His children — one by ex-wife actress Ann Wedgeworth, three by his late wife, legendary actress Geraldine Page, and two by his companion Amy Wright — will be with him in Sundance for the premiere of "Forty Shades of Blue," a project Torn holds close to his heart.

"Working on this film was a chance for me to come down to Memphis and be in the kind of place I grew up in," said Torn.

"I have made several films with musical backgrounds, like 'One Trick Pony,' and in this one, my character is a tough but emotional character, sort of a tribute to Sam Phillips, the man who discovered Elvis."

Director Ira Sachs praised his star.

"He's a complicated, cantankerous, brilliant man, and we wrestled every day on the set," he said. "But in the end, I have to say he knew what he was doing more than I did."

Back in October, Torn won over a Manhattan jury who cleared him of drunk-driving charges after he testified that his seemingly rambunctious behavior in a police video after a fender-bender in Greenwich Village was the result of being injured and tired.

"The jurors could see what happened, and they urged me to press charges, but I'm a former military policeman and I would never do that," said Torn.

"Actually, they've stopped me several times in the 6th Precinct and those guys are terrific," he said with a laugh.

"Usually they say, 'Oh, it's you. Get out of here!' "

Interview with Ira from Variety.com, Jan. 18

By Anthony Kaufman

“I'm interested in understanding the conflicts and complexities of identity," says Ira Sachs, "and how a person can play many different roles in their life at the same time."

Whether it's a gender-bending performer in his acclaimed short "Lady," a half-Vietnamese, half-black hustler in his debut feature "The Delta," or a Russian woman on the arm of a powerful man in his latest "Forty Shades of Blue," Sachs says, "I want to know how these identities shift based on desire and experience."

Steeped in literary theory at Yale and the racial politics of his Memphis hometown, Sachs has a unique identity himself, probably one of Tennessee's only gay Jewish auteurs. His films mix an intimate, elegant naturalism with a socially charged atmosphere. And his influences on "Forty Shades of Blue," he says, include British social realist Ken Loach, New Wave cinematographer Raoul Coutard and French maverick Maurice Pialat.

Also referencing films such as Bunuel's "Belle de Jour" and Satyajit Ray's "Charulata," the movie focuses on a woman's awakening to greater love. "The film was inspired by my relationship with my father's girlfriends," explains Sachs. "These were women from very different backgrounds than me, who would reveal themselves over time in ways that I would grow to love."

The movie was also generated by Sachs' impressions of Memphis. "I have an intimacy with that city that is just deeper than any other place," he says. Though he left the music capital nearly 20 years ago (for New York, where he worked as an assistant to the director on "Longtime Companion"), Sachs returned to his roots to shoot "The Delta," a dreamy, evocative drama that competed in Sundance's '97 competition.

Shot with non-professional actors on a shoestring budget, "The Delta" seems amateurish compared with the $3 million budget and talent he employed for "Forty Shades of Blue." His cast included Rip Torn, Russian thesp Dina Korzun, Darren Burrows and Danish thesp Paprika Steen ("The Celebration").

Sachs' longtime producer Margot Bridger notes, "He's become more confident." And though working with Torn was filled with "constant challenging, constant pushing," Bridger recalls, "it never got Ira off his rocker. He was completely able to absorb it."

Review from Variety.com

By Todd McCarthy

A naturalistic drama in which naturalism prevails at the expense of some needed drama, "Forty Shades of Blue" is a muted but nicely observed study of a Russian woman's gradual estrangement from her domineering Memphis music-legend husband. This long-awaited second feature from Ira Sachs, whose "The Delta" was a 1997 Sundance favorite, is bound to generate solid critical support in certain quarters, assuring a busy spin on the international fest circuit and sales in numerous territories. But aside from an excellent perf by Russian actress Dina Korzun, pic is too low-key to generate more than a modest following in domestic release.

Korzun, who copped fest acting prizes for her work in Pawel Pawlikowski's "Last Resort," cuts an immediately arresting figure as Laura. Slim and sleek, she pays great attention to her clothes and make-up in preparation for a tribute to her much older music producer husband, Alan James (Rip Torn), only to be ignored during the evening event, much as Brigitte Bardot was disregarded by Michel Piccoli in Godard's "Contempt."

The quiet, vacant look on Korzun's face as Laura endures the night alone instills the character with considerable mystery and fascination, even if one can't tell at this early stage if Laura is bored or herself a dullard of whom Alan has tired.

Laura and Alan have a 3-year-old son; more important, Alan has a grown son, Michael (Darren Burrows), a good-looking Californian who belatedly turns up for the celebration. Michael has effectively escaped the grasp of his condescending father and prefers to remain disengaged from the melodrama he generates.

Melodrama also seems to be something that doesn't interest Sachs and co-writer Michael Rohatyn. Despite the opportunities for fireworks provided by Laura and Michael's growing attraction, the arrival of the latter's pregnant wife and the constant potential of vituperative eruptions from Alan, the film remains subdued and impressionistic. Sachs deliberately presents relatively undifferentiated dramatic snippets rather than fully developed, multifaceted scenes; even when Laura and Michael finally get it on, it's presented abruptly, with no preparation or buildup.

Still, an understated portrait of Laura's unhappy life begins to modestly emerge. "I don't have the right to complain," Laura tells Michael at one point; life in the United States is so much better than what she used to have in Russia, where she met Alan. But she can't help but believe everyone around her is spoiled, and the title comes to reflect the many gradations of largely unarticulated dissatisfactions Laura feels.

Sachs' professed filmmaking hero is Ken Loach. While it's easy to detect that influence in Sachs' curious, intelligent, observational style, pic is still dramatically flat and visually wedded to a drab, old-school documentary aesthetic.

Also softening the overall impact is Burrows' performance, which strives for expressive minimalism but comes off as merely ineffectual. One can see that Michael would like to be invisible in his father's presence, but Burrows is recessive to a counterproductive degree, which stills the surface of the story's deep-running waters.

Torn is ideally cast as the aging, outsized music personality accustomed to being catered to, but the role seems a familiar one that provides few surprises; Alan is a bellicose, misogynistic tyrant who's never going to change, so it's only a question of what Laura is going to do.

Which leaves the picture to Korzun, who slowly but surely reveals Laura's torment and lack of fulfillment with a man more than twice her age in a city that appears staggeringly boring if you're not into the music scene.

The Commercial Appeal, January 22, 2005

By John Beifuss

PARK CITY, Utah -- It's probable that the words "Sundance" and "crunk" had never been used in the same sentence before this week.

But the juxtaposition became inevitable once rapper Al Kapone and dozens of other Memphians began arriving in chilly Park City to slather some hot buttered Southern soul onto the snowy streets of the Sundance Film Festival.

"All I ever knew about Utah was cold weather and Mormons," said Kapone, whose song "Get Crunk, Get Buck" is featured in "Hustle & Flow," one of two Memphis movies premiering at Sundance.

"But we're gonna crank it up," said Kapone, 32. "We're gonna get 'em crunk at Sundance."

Memphians are almost certain to have a good if not always crunk time at the famed independent film festival, which began Thursday and continues through Jan. 30. During this time the population of Park City -- a sort of mountainous jam-band Germantown, complete with a Wal-Mart disguised as a Swiss chalet -- is expected to swell from 7,500 to 44,000.

What's most important, however, is not whether Memphis embraces Sundance but whether Sundance embraces Memphis.

Movies by Memphis filmmakers occupy two of the 16 slots in the festival's prestigious American Dramatic Competition.

At stake is more than just bragging rights over a festival award. Sundance also represents a commercial coming-out party for the films that could lead to millions of dollars in distribution deals and future box office revenues.

Ira Sachs's "Forty Shades of Blue," shot in Memphis last February and March, debuted Friday night, followed by a party sponsored in part by the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission, the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Memphis & Shelby County Music Commission.

Tonight, Craig Brewer's rap-themed "Hustle & Flow" -- shot in Memphis last summer -- premieres.

"For indepedent filmmakers, this is the Super Bowl," said Brewer, 33, who bought enough food for one on Thursday night. He spent $421.21 on Vlasic pickles, Tecate beer, bacon, Oreos, cilantro, jalapeno peppers and other groceries to ensure that his condominium would be Memphis party headquarters for the week.

"Hustle" screens after a dinner party organized in part by Film Commission chairman emeritus Knox Phillips, whose dad, Sun Records legend Sam Phillips, receives a special dedication during the end credits of the film. After the screening, Kapone will perform, staining the winter white of Park City with the sound of "the Dirty South."

By any barometer, the Memphis movies are among the most hotly anticipated of the festival.

A lengthy article in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times chronicled Brewer's initially frustrating quest to produce "Hustle & Flow" in Memphis. The headline read: "Hustling Pays Off: Rejected by Hollywood, 'Hustle & Flow' becomes Sundance's must-see film."

The story reported that the $2.8 million "Hustle," financed by director John Singleton ("Boyz N the Hood"), is "at the top of most studio acquisition executives' list of must-see films."

Meanwhile, Variety on Wednesday named Sachs one of "10 Directors To Watch," praising the "intimate, elegant naturalism" and "socially charged atmosphere" of his films.

Sachs, 39, is a Sundance veteran. His previous feature, the Memphis-made "The Delta," premiered at Sundance in 1997, but that extremely low-budget film carried fewer expectations than the $1.5 million "Forty Shades of Blue," which was backed in part by Oscar-winning filmmaker Sydney Pollack.

According to Variety, Sundance in 2005 is "at a commercial peak," with "more deals, more celebs" and "more traffic jams" predicted for this year than ever before.

That enthusiasm is buoyed by last year's successes. Among the movies that debuted at the 2004 Sundance festival were such hits as "Super Size Me," "Garden State," "Maria Full of Grace," "Open Water" and "Napoleon Dynamite."

Although such celebrities as Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody, Alice Cooper, Kevin Bacon and Werner Herzog are expected at Sundance, the Memphis-related events may sometimes more closely resemble a Party Line column from The Commercial Appeal than the gossip page of Variety.

Among the Memphians in Park City for at least a couple of days this week are Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton; Convention and Visitors Bureau president Kevin Kane; CVB vice president of marketing Regina Bearden; film commissioner Linn Sitler; deputy film commissioner Sharon Fox O'Guin; music commissioner Rey Flemings; musician Scott Bomar, who composed the soundtrack for "Hustle & Flow"; actor and Elvis crony Red West, who has a large role in "Forty Shades of Blue"; Diane Jalfon of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; Film Commission board members Herb O'Mell and Mary Unobsky; and local exploitation auteur John Michael McCarthy, to name only a few.

"I'm going because I'm a proud Memphis filmmaker and this has been a watershed year for Memphis and Southern independent films," said David Merrill, 36, assistant locations manager for "Forty Shades of Blue."

"I really think people are going to see Ira's film, are going to see Craig's film, and say, 'That's really great, I'd love to shoot there -- who do I need to contact?' "

Wharton described his whirlwind visit to Sundance -- he arrived Friday and leaves Sunday -- as an "economic development" event.

"I want to impress upon the film community how pleased we are with the attention the movie industry has given us," he said, "and we hope to see more of it."

He said movies can pay off in making Memphis a "destination city" for tourists. "You're putting together a package, and you never know which arrow in your quiver is the one that's going to hit people the right way and pull them to your city."

Kapone said "Hustle & Flow" allows him to represent Memphis to the world at large. "I feel the movie is gonna remind the world of the originality that's come out of Memphis, and remind people of the passion and the heart and soul of the Memphis music scene that was around before now and that's gonna be here after us."

The Commercial Appeal, January 23, 2005

By John Beifuss

PARK CITY, Utah -- The Sundance Film Festival debut of Craig Brewer's "Hustle & Flow" was hours away Saturday morning, but already the Memphis writer-director was basking in the glow of the spotlight.

"You close your eyes and you look into the light, or the sun, and it makes your pupils so you can handle it when they begin shooting," said Brewer, 33, lids shut and face turned like a sunflower into the harsh light of an MSNBC camera prior to being interviewed outdoors on Main Street. As he talked, actor James Woods walked by and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh held court in front of other cameras a few doors down.

On Day Three of Sundance, Memphis filmmakers and their entourages of families, friends and public officials continued to spread the gospel of race-bridging Southern soul music and genre-busting Memphis independent moviemaking. They hoped to reach a temporary Park City population that by Saturday included thousands of film buffs, filmmakers and Hollywood deal-makers, their cell phone signals bouncing through a landscape of white-draped mountains.

Not every Memphis actor enjoyed the experience. Andrew Henderson, 3, who plays "Sam" in Ira Sachs's "Forty Shades of Blue," began crying near the end of the film's debut Friday, but not because he was moved by the story of an unhappy Russian woman (Dina Korzun) married to a self-centered music producer (Rip Torn).

"This is way past his bed-time," said Andrew's father, Chris Henderson, whose wife, Lena, is from Russia. Andrew won the part because he can speak Russian and English.

The Friday showing of "Forty Shades of Blue," shot February and March in Memphis, marked the first of back-to-back Memphis premieres. "Hustle & Flow," shot last summer, was scheduled to debut Saturday night at 9:30 Memphis time. The films are among 16 in Sundance's American Dramatic Competition.

Sundance programmer John Cooper introduced "Forty Shades" to a crowd that included Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton -- who carried an official proclamation declaring Jan. 21 to be "Ira Sachs-Forty Shades of Blue Day" in Shelby County -- and famed character actor John C. Reilly ("Boogie Nights," "The Aviator"), who is one of the five jurors selecting the winners in the American Dramatic Competition category.

Also attending were Korzun; Darren Burrows, who plays Rip Torn's son; cinematographer Julian Whatley; Dickon Hinchliffe of the British band Tindersticks, who composed the score; and a creative team that has been with Sachs since his film "The Delta": producer Margot Bridger, supervising sound editor Damian Volpe and editor Affonso Goncalves. Torn is scheduled to be at Sundance for the movie's screening today.

Alluding to the 1997 Sundance premiere of Sachs's ultra-low-budget first film, "The Delta," Cooper said: "We believed there was something great coming, and even if it took a few years, that great thing arrives tonight."

In the film, Rip Torn plays a Sam Phillips-like Memphis legend, which enabled Sachs to give roles to Memphis music-makers old and new, including soul singer J. Blackfoot, Stax guitarist Skip Pitts and punk rocker Nick Diablo.

"Music is still the only valid thing to come out of Memphis," Torn's character says at one point. It was "a moment of time that happened in Memphis that was pure magic," when blacks and whites came together.

Brewer made similar remarks to MSNBC. "I didn't want to make a black movie or an urban movie, really -- I wanted to make a Memphis movie," he said. "It's the metaphor of Booker T. & the MGs -- two black guys and two white guys, and really the only language they have in common is soul."

After the screening, a party in the 39-year-old filmmaker's honor was held at the mountaintop home of former Memphian Melinda Prosterman Gomez, who carpooled with Sachs as a kid. The party was sponsored in part by the Memphis and Shelby County film and music commissions, and the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"Everything that communicates the message of Memphis outside of Memphis, whether it's music or films, brings business to the city," said Regena Bearden, CVB vice president of marketing. "Take 'The Firm,' for example. We considered that a 21/2 -hour commercial for Memphis."

Wharton -- attired in a tailored suit-and-tie combo that contained about five shades of blue -- told Sachs that his movie was "not really a film, it was a feeling. Memphis is not a place, it's a feeling, and you've done well in communicating that to the world."

A moody and intimate character piece, "Forty Shades" was inspired by the films of John Cassavetes, Robert Altman and Ken Loach, and also by the life of Sachs's father, Park City resident and former Memphian Ira Sachs Sr., a real estate developer who began doing business here in 1971.

"We only had one restaurant, a Chinese restaurant; now, we have 106 of them," said Sachs, 68. With his long, thinning hair, walrus mustache and the jungle-tropica sportcoat and beehive-decorated tie he wore to the premiere, Sachs suggested the Memphis partier of the 1960s and '70s who was the non-music source for Rip Torn's character.

"When you're a nice Jewish boy growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, you want your father to be a stockbroker, and believe it or not, to drive a nice station wagon," said the younger Sachs. "And he was out driving a Cadillac convertible with six women in the back." The seven Sachs siblings are the products of two marriages and four women, "but we all get along now," said Sachs.

"I have no guilt," said the elder Sachs. "Each day, I live it. I try not to offend anyone, but if I do, so be it."

Says Rip Torn in the film: "You gotta do in the world. You gotta make a choice, and you gotta do."

Review from HollywoodReporter.com

By Duane Byrge

Review from Newsweek

By David Ansen

Two remarkable performances dominate "Forty Shades of Blue," the atmospheric and haunting second film from Ira ("The Delta") Sachs, a director fascinated by cultural dislocations. Here, in this Memphis-set story, he observes what happens when a beautiful but lost Russian beauty, Laura (Dina Korzun) becomes the live-in girlfriend of a legendary music producer (Rip Torn) many years her senior. Sachs has a great eye for social detail: there's an Altman-like richness to the texture of his movie. But along with a great surface, Sachs adds psychological depth: at first we dismiss Laura as a shallow, venal, bored trophy mistress—which is how Torn's visiting English professor son (a miscast Darren Burrows) first sees her, before falling for her. But there are depths and complexities in Laura that this quietly observant film slowly reveals, never settling for easy, black-and-white conclusions. Korzun has a taut brittleness, like a whippet left in the cold, and Torn, gregarious and dangerous, tender and scary, is simply amazing. "Forty Shades of Blue" is a movie that seeps under your skin. It demands some patience, and rewards it amply.

Commentary from ParkCity.IndieWire.com

By Anthony Kaufman

While both are set in Memphis and directed by second-time filmmakers, "Forty Shades of Blue" and "Hustle and Flow" are perfect examples of the two poles of American independent cinema. Consider both movies' depiction of race: While Ira Sachs' "Forty Shades" focuses on a Russian woman alien to her surroundings and captures real-life blues musicians, skillfully integrating their sounds into the movie's commanding aural and visual landscape, Craig Brewer's "Hustle" includes a funny-looking, skinny white-boy as pot-smoking sound engineer, keyboardist and comic sideman to the black leads. If "Forty Shades" solidifies Sachs' reputation as a Euro-influenced auteur, with its evocative combination of neorealist and stylized impulses, "Hustle and Flow" has given birth to a new Hollywood craftsman, satisfying mainstream audience needs with a clich�d battle-over-adversity tale. It's no wonder that the former remains without a distribution deal and the latter went for a record-busting $9 million to Paramount Pictures.

Commentary from Rocky Mountain News

By Robert Denerstein

“Forty Shades of Blue,” a slightly better film (than “Loggerheads”), also moved slowly as it focused on a blustering Rip Torn as a music producer who helped popularize Memphis soul during the '50s and '60s.

Torn's Alan James, whose moment in the spotlight has passed, lives with a young woman (Dina Korzun) he met in Russia and with whom he has a 3-year-old son. When James' adult son (Darren Burrows) visits, he has an affair with Korzun's character and quiet tension builds as the movie meanders toward an inconclusive finale.

Commentary from The Salt Lake Tribune

By Sean Means

PARK CITY - For most of the week, the 2005 Sundance Film Festival was looking, in the model of the pimp-turned-rapper of Craig Brewer's "Hustle & Flow," like it could move from inspired art to lowdown street hustling as quickly as Brewer's crew snapped up a $9 million distribution deal.
But along comes the festival's juries, with their idiosyncratic and widely dispersed awards, to throw complications into a simple metaphor.
Complications abound in the Dramatic jury winner, Ira Sachs' "Forty Shades of Blue." I admired Dina Korzun's enigmatic performance as a Russian beauty whose comfortable life with a blues legend (played by Rip Torn) is challenged when his son (Darren Burrows, formerly of "Northern Exposure") visits Memphis. But the movie's ambiguous stand toward her dilemma pushes "enigmatic" too far.

Review from FilmThreat.com

By Jeremy Mathews

Despite a grand effort to make significant observations about its characters, “Forty Shades of Blue” suffers from a severe lack of insight. It’s a sure sign that a film is in trouble when the only character with any presence is a complete jerk. More time should have been spent developing (or at least creating) the main characters’ personalities.

Set in Memphis, the story centers around the Russian live-in girlfriend, Laura (Dina Korzun), and estranged son, Michael (Darren E. Burrows), of a music industry legend who is brilliant in his art but inept at everything else. Michael comes to town for an award his father is receiving, but is late and misses the ceremony. Once there, he watches Laura, Laura watches him, they talk and sense a connection that isn’t really felt through the characters or performances but suggested because it’s obviously part of the plot formula.

Michael is a boring angst-ridden character, and it’s hard to see any chemistry between him and, well, anyone. He is grumpy and understandably doesn’t like his father, but the screenplay might garner more sympathy for him if he ever said or did anything interesting. Even as an angry drunk, he’s unexciting.

The Commercial Appeal, January 30, 2005

By John Beifuss

PARK CITY, Utah -- A dream-come-true week for Memphis filmmakers at the Sundance Film Festival ended on a Hollywood-like note of triumph Saturday night when Ira Sachs's "Forty Shades of Blue" won the Grand Jury Prize for American dramatic films and Craig Brewer's "Hustle & Flow" won the Audience Award in drama.

Both movies were shot in Memphis last year.

"What a great night for Memphis," said Brewer, 33. "I'm calling it 'Lawler's Revenge.' Remember when Andy Kaufman used to fight Jerry Lawler? Kaufman would always say, 'I'm from HOLLYWOOD!' Well, guess what? We're from MEMPHIS!"

Since 1985, when actor Robert Redford founded the Sundance Institute to enhance what was originally called the Utah/U.S. Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival has been regarded as arguably the premier showcase for American and international independent films.

Actor John C. Reilly, a juror in the American Dramatic Competition that pitted "Hustle" and "Forty Shades" against 14 other films, said Sachs's feature "resonated in a personal, human way" and "haunted us with its glimpses of the human heart."

The award was something of an underdog triumph for writer-director Sachs, 39, whose intimate, challenging film lacked the buzz and mass-market appeal of "Hustle & Flow," although both movies share a Memphis music industry context.

"Forty Shades" -- which represents Sachs's second trip to Sundance, following the 1997 debut of his first feature, "The Delta" -- stars Rip Torn as a Sam Phillips-like music legend who lives with a much younger Russian trophy girlfriend (Dina Korzun). The film has yet to be sold to a distributor, but the award makes it certain that a deal soon will be made, probably with an art or specialty film company.

Sachs, who grew up in Memphis, was influenced by European and Taiwanese cinema and classic American independent filmmaking. He co-wrote the "Forty Shades" script with Michael Rohatyn.

"The response to the film has been more emotional than I expected," said Sachs, who credited associate producer Adam Hohenberg of Memphis with making the production go smoothly. "That's been rewarding, because it's a difficult film and it's been finding its audience."

Writer-director Brewer said the Audience Award was "the award we always wanted." It's a "people's choice" award given to the film that is voted the best of the festival by the fans at Sundance.

"It's just so great that the film has been embraced like this, and that everybody got it," said Brewer, who returns today with his wife, Jodi Brewer, to his Midtown Memphis home. Sachs, who grew up in Memphis, will return to his home in New York.

Brewer's award was presented by actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. Brewer -- accompanied by "Hustle" producer Stephanie Allain -- came to the stage in a Sun Records T-shirt, and dedicated his award to "guys like me who've been making movies on digital video and lighting them with Home Depot clamp lights, and editing them on home computers ... toiling out there in Middle America and thinking you're on Pluto, far away from the heat."

"Hustle" also earned the Excellence in Cinematography Award in the dramatic category for director of photography Amelia Vincent, whose work was described as "breathtaking in its cinematic exuberance" by producer Christine Vachon ("Boys Don't Cry"), a member of the American Dramatic Competition jury.

Some 40,000 people attended this year's festival, which began Jan. 20 and ends today with special screenings of the award-winning films.

The award for "Hustle & Flow" should please studio chiefs at Paramount/MTV Films, who bought the worldwide distribution rights to Brewer's film in a $16 million deal that was the largest ever brokered at Sundance.

The deal included $9 million for "Hustle" and a guarantee of $3.5 million in financing each for two future films from producer John Singleton, who financed Brewer's rap-themed audience-pleaser with about $2.8 million of his own money. The deal also gave Brewer the right to final cut on the film, which is almost unheard of for an unproven filmmaker.

"The excitement with the deal is that the whole world will get to see our backyard," Brewer said. "The excitement with the Audience Award is it proves people are enjoying the visit.

"It shows that everything we were fighting for by trying to keep it authentic and keep it Memphis was worth it. Hopefully, this is going to signal the start of a new renaissance in Memphis."

For Brewer, whose only previous feature was the $20,000, made-in-Memphis digital video production "The Poor & Hungry," Sundance has been a real barn-burner of a movie industry coming-out party, with The Hollywood Reporter describing the writer-director as "hotter than flapjacks."

Already, however, "Hustle & Flow" is generating some critical controversy for its depiction of a pimp (Terrence Howard) in a midlife crisis who tries to redeem himself by becoming a rap artist, with the help of a high school buddy (Anthony Anderson), a white electronics wizard (DJ Qualls), and his two faithful "ho's" (Taryn Manning and Taraji P. Henson).

Former New York Times reporter Elvis Mitchell called the film "amazing" and said it was one of the best at the festival, while his successor at the Times, Manohla Dargis, called it not only "the most hotly anticipated film of the festival" but also "rubbish."

"Hustle & Flow" is expected to open across the nation close to the July 4 date on which the film's climactic action occurs. A special Memphis premiere is likely to be held in mid-June.

For about half a dozen reasons, I decided to look a little more closely at the world of film/videomaking. I've been taking some instruction, meeting new people and finding a low-grade adventure or two. Here's a recent account:


My life in Hollywood – a phrase stuffed with overstatement – may well have peaked and tumbled all in the space of four days. On a recent Sunday I auditioned for a part in an indie film. The following Wednesday was like the second half of a suborbital flight: The apogee was my taping a scene for a real movie. The anxiety-filled reentry was an audition for a major Hollywood movie. And the splashdown was a cold script reading in acting class.

A shoot, an audition, then schooling. I did it backwards and it was almost over before it had begun.

But what a ride it was.

My audition that Sunday was for a movie being done by the local MeDiA Co-op, a group of earnest young filmmakers, or, more properly now, videomakers. They are headquartered in a large Congregational church building and have a few credits under their collective belt, not only in making videos but in teaching the craft and making it more accessible to anyone with cinematic ideas.

The part I auditioned for was that of the Mayor of Winnipeg, a man described as possibly homeless, maybe gay and could be a former mayor of Winnipeg. Or perhaps none of these. But he is gregarious and enjoys hitting people up for money and conversation.

I arrived early and was the first to audition that day. I got a side and studied it well, but also chatted with the casting director, working on my ingratiating skills. I was finally called into a room with director Brandon Hutchinson, the camera operator, a young guy who read the other parts and a fourth person whose name, function and gender I cannot recall at all. I may have been a bit distracted trying to keep in mind all the tips and hints I found in a book and on the internet on how to do this audition thing.

I stumbled through the reading, doing, I thought, reasonably well. At one point, I made the director laugh, which I took to be a testament to my comedic abilities. It may have been more his reflex to the realization that he was going to have to sit through auditions of old guys reading these same lines all day long.

Not my problem, though. I had survived an audition. I thought carefully about what I had done well and not so well and filed it away in my hopelessly messy file cabinet of life lessons.

The next day, I got a call from my agent Pat West of Actors & Others. She works to get me paying jobs in this business and God love her for it. After weeks of hoping for a reading, the casting people at “Walk the Line” -- the Hollywood biopic on Johnny Cash and June Carter -- finally told her to send me over. This is the movie starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in the main roles. And it's helmed by James Mangold who directed "Cop Land," "Girl Interrupted" and "Kate and Leopold" among others.

Now this was not the role I’d originally hoped for. When Pat got the list of characters, she thought I’d make a great Bob Neal, the guy who was Johnny Cash’s first manager. I researched him and found his main claim to fame was being Elvis Presley’s first real manager. He was a country music deejay in Memphis, owned a record store on Main Street and knew Sam Phillips. That got him connected to Elvis and, after a year or so, he signed the rising star over to Tom Parker. He then picked up management duties for Cash. I didn’t know exactly what the role would entail, but I knew I was perfect for it. Except for being about 15 years too old. But I fixed that with an application of hair coloring, which horrified me when I gaped at the mirror for the first time. And several times thereafter.

Still, the call to audition never came. Pat worked on the casting people regularly to get them interested. I was taking considerable ribbing at work for “looking so much
younger now.”

Finally the word came down: The part was going to John Carter Cash, Johnny’s real life son.

I never had a chance.

But that was just one role. When Pat called on Monday, she said, "OK, you’ll be reading for the part of an L.A. record exec." Yes, I could do that! "And you need to have a good California tan. By Tuesday."

Right.

So I immediately called friend Nancy who was born in Hollywood and is an actress and for whom all this stuff is second nature. "Coppertone Endless Summer Faces," she said without hesitation. "It has moisturizer, so it’ll apply more evenly." As she speaks, I am scribbling this down like a reporter on deadline. In 10 minutes I’m at Walgreens and shamelessly cruising not only the tanning shelf but also the Cover Girl section looking for some concealer. At some point later I will ask "what has happened to me and who have I become?" The answer will occur when I warn Nancy that she is never to refer to me as a metrosexual. But at the moment I need to work on an instant tan and covering up my very few facial flaws.

Then I get a break, tan-wise. Pat calls and says the audition has been postponed from Tuesday to Wednesday. That’s great, because I get an extra day to slather on the Coppertone and work on my unctuous L.A. record exec persona. But I then realize it’s awful, because Wednesday is when I’m supposed to shoot my scene in an indie film in Oxford, "Dead by Sunrise."

My entire movie future consists of one short scene and one quick audition and apparently they are destined to conflict.

So let's see: I have the one sure thing that I promised the Easton Pictures people in Oxford. It’s an actual speaking role with 10 lines and a shrug, and maybe the only acting job I’ll ever get. Or I can go for the tenuous part in the big Hollywood production with six words and a blip of screen time. Of course, it would pay real money. And the Oxford gig would cost me the gas. Yet I'd get a clip from it.

Weighed down by the excruciating need to keep rationalizing, I picked up the phone and called Karen at Easton Pictures. “I can be there,” I said, “but I have to be out by 1 p.m.” “OK,” she said. “No problem.”

I managed that crisis brilliantly.

Tuesday night was spent in a frenzy of preparedness. I chose and rejected jackets, shirts, ties. I shined shoes, selected cufflinks, packed toiletries and applied more tanning goo. I may have spent more effort preparing for this day than I did getting ready for my wedding. (This is less shocking than it seems. If one is auditioning or on camera, it's all about you, even if for a brief moment. But if you're a mere groom, you're only a supporting player who should do nothing to draw attention to himself; it's the bride on whom all focus resides. The one thing that's true in both instances: make sure you show up on time and hit your mark.)

Anyway, I rolled out early Wednesday to be on the road by 7:30 for a 9 a.m. arrival in Oxford. All along the highway, I practiced my lines. I’m pretty sure I looked like an idiot talking to nobody, but these days nearly everyone looks like an idiot if they’re
traveling alone, rapping to the radio, singing along with a CD or yammering on their cell phone. You know that a certain percentage are certifiably insane and conversing with Satan, but you just can’t always be sure which ones they are.

If I looked like an idiot in the car, I truly felt like one when it came time to shoot the scene. We were set up in a tiny office in the Lafayette County courthouse on the square in Oxford. I was behind a desk, a coroner being interviewed by a couple of FBI
agents investigating mysterious deaths that had happened years ago. But the director just had me read my lines in order, not even with the other actor reading his lines. The lack of interaction was unnerving. The two actors who played the agents (one was the director) were in the room along with the sound technician. When the director said “action,” my job was to pause, say a line, pause, say another line, and on and on. When I boomed out my line “I don’t know the M.O.!” Paul, the director, reminded me that I
didn’t need to project to the back rows as there were none. As odd as it felt, we did it in two takes. Everyone was nice as could be and said I did fine. I didn’t believe them, but it was kind of them just the same.

I then had to hightail it out of town to get back to the “Walk the Line” offices on Beale Street. I flew back, scarfing Captain D’s on the interstate, barely making it to a gas station to fill up, changed my outfit to something more L.A. sleazy (an even whiter shirt to set off the tan), and reported to the casting office. The pretty young functionary had me sign in, fill out a form and make a sign with my name, height
and role. I got my sides and then I got to wait.

A handful of people with various degrees of experience and nervousness were also waiting. One of my fellow students at the Red West Acting Studio was there angling for a role as a clerk. Another guy who was picked out of a crowd of extras was also hoping for the clerk part. We all studied our sides and moved our lips and squinted a lot. My record exec was greeting Johnny Cash and June Carter as they finished a concert at the Hollywood Bowl: “Fantastic Johnny, great June! What’s next?” This was my ticket. I worked it and oiled it and was ready to go.

Then Shirley the casting director came out. “Whew, I need a cigarette break,” she said to no one in particular. Then, to me: “What part are you reading for?” The record exec, I told her. “No,” she said, and my heart nosedived. “No. I want you to read for the
doctor.” The doctor, as it turned out, that was part of the family’s intervention to help Johnny deal with his addiction. I blinked and said OK. She said I might have to wing it but whatever I did, don’t say anything like “Well, Johnny, what can I do to help you?” because that sounds too much of an invitation for Johnny to say, “Get me more uppers.” No, I had to be more discerning about what I said. “OK,” said Shirley,
“I’ll be back in a minute.”

Once I realized all that fake tanning was for nothing, I got it into my head that cheesy would work well. I would say, “John, you’ve been on quite a trip, but now I’m going to help you take a real journey.” This was so bad it was good. This was going to go well. I was ready to play the firm, caring doctor.

And then Shirley came back into the lobby and looked at me and said, “OK, forget the doctor. I want you to read the preacher.”

Oh, Lord.

Now I was to audition for the family preacher in Johnny’s boyhood home of Dyess, Ark. Jack Cash was 14, two years older than Johnny. He was athletic, smart and wanted to go into the ministry. Johnny adored him. One fateful day, Jack went to school and was working in the shop when an accident with a saw caused him mortal injuries. He lingered for a few days and the scene takes place at Jack’s hospital bed, just after he’s passed and the family is gathered around. The Baptist preacher offers a prayer to the Lord to accept the boy and comfort the relatives.

The prayer, however -- the script lines -- hadn’t actually been written yet. Shirley had her uncle in Arkansas type up a prayer that might reasonably have been used in the circumstances. He faxed it to her and she gave me the copy. “This will give you an idea of what we want, but instead of where the prayer talks about him dying, well he’s actually just died, so make sure you change those parts.”

I knew it was time to start channeling my Dad. He started out as a country preacher with roots in Oklahoma and Arkansas. He rode the circuit in Tennessee and Kentucky and if anyone could be there for a grieving family and still be articulate in addressing God, then he was the man. So Shirley had me do the prayer a couple of times. I changed it around a bit here and there to give it what I thought it needed. It wasn't Dad, but his spirit was with me. “That was great,” she said, “you made me cry.”

Well, I don’t think I made Shirley cry, except in a figurative Hollywood sort of way. But she started chatting me up to get some of who I was on video. She kept reaching for her glasses and taking them off but looking insistently at me while she was doing it. I thought she was acting oddly until I finally realized she wanted me to remove my readers and I’m sure I was very smooth about the whole thing.

Well, we’ll see.

Finally I was finished. I walked to the car in a daze. I’d shot a scene that morning and auditioned that afternoon. I needed a dose of reality (as defined by Hollywood terms) and got ready to go to Red’s class that night.

And doggone if there wasn’t a cold script reading with a great part for me. Another mayor role, although not a sexually ambiguous Canadian ex-hizzoner. This one is a smarmy old goat who wants evil goings-on swept under the rug so he can look good. He’s wily, sarcastic and abusive. I got my teeth into that one. And then we were told to memorize the lines for next week’s class.

Oh, yeah, someday I’ve got to wrestle this memorization bear down. My brain cells find it extremely difficult to commit words to memory. Then when I try to layer on an accent and choreograph some action, it becomes gruesome. I can’t really say that I’m cut out for this sort of thing. But there’s no question that it’s been fun trying.

Still, I might just stick to the keyboard. Screenwriters get Oscars too, you know. And they don’t have to supply a tan on demand.

The Commercial Appeal's team came in second in the corporate Spelling Bee last night at the Coors Belle. We swept past everyone but the ringers from MLG&W who -- give them credit -- were quite good. Tom Prestigiacomo gave us the word "exhilarated" and I knew then I was sunk. That's one of a half dozen words that I can never quite keep straight. I argued that it be spelled "exhilirated" (although as I see it in print is obviously wrong). John Beifuss ended up spelling it "exhilerated" which I knew was wrong the instant he said the offending "e." Didn't matter anyway.

Main thing is the Literacy Council got some nice bucks from the proceeding. And remember, if you can't read, you can't blog.

Copied word for word:

did you eat Sparks
We have art to save ourselves from the truth. - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

After Im dead Id rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one. - Cato the Elder (234-149 BC; AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)

Yesterday I took my 15-year-old daughter to the East High parking lot and let her get behind the wheel of the family van. And then I let her actually put it in gear and operate it. We started out with the brakes. No accelerator until you master the brake. And then turning. Gently. Easy. See if we can put it into a marked parking space. OK, did good. Try reverse a couple of times. Just fine. She's going to be a good driver. I'm not going to lose sleep or my mind. Well, maybe I'll lose some sleep.

I'm just wild about Suzi, a terrific writer and dogged reporter. She's written a book published last year titled "Sex in the South" and it'll open your eyes. She's jumped on the blog bandwagon, so check it out at Planet Suzi.

I could lay out a complex psychologic rationale for not blogging in a while. But then you'd know too much and be entirely sorry by the revelation. Or I could splain how a lot has been going on, but that's mere blather. Plus I could have posted it as it was going on and have been done with it.

But in fact it's my muse who has been tormenting me. Loutish behavior on my part is actually to blame, not the muse. She has made sure to put thistles in my shorts and employed other means of distraction. I have an exceedingly long repair job ahead, but at least she's permitting this much on the blog.

My Dad used to tell me of a story his father passed along. Seems that my great grandmother Mary Jane Grogan Sparks was observing her son, my grandpa Tom Sparks, playing out in the yard one day. In some preteen zeal he overturned a log, an act that sent all manner of crawlies into action. "Gosh!" yelped the surprised young Tom and when his mama heard that bit of profanity, she gave him a good whipping.

In the mid-1960s I asked my mom if "hell's bells" was acceptable. I was spared the rod but it was made quite clear that it was not a phrase to be uttered, not around her anyway.

And so that brings us to today.

That little video clip referenced below is a nice bit of practiced corporate outrage, British style. It is slightly brilliant. They use some Americans along with the Brits to diffuse some of the heat. They get to make a great deal of fun of America's current obsession with publicly uttered and viewed malfunctions. It's done with such good cheer that it seems churlish to condemn it. And the participants are having a fine time and taking it without much seriousness, about the same level as we do when taking dopey internet quizzes. Fun and gone. And they use professional actors who are, we suspect, merely acting.

This video vulgarity disturbs some people not because it's about naughty words but because some are worse than others. Now we're into the fine-tuning of smarm. A co-worker allowed as she was glad the "p-word" wasn't on the clip as it was the one term she could not abide. ("P," as in the incomparable Miss Galore's first name). My co-worker is fine with all the others. But another viewer says she objects to the single syllabled "c-word" that appears liberally in the clip. That's interesting since most of the participants in the segment who utter it are women, although this is the group that apparently finds it most objectionable.

Both words refer to the same bit of female anatomy and while my sampling is far from scientific, I gather that women are less amused by such usage. I think the reason why has many parts but I'm going to stop now because every thoughtful followup I'm trying to write seems to want to take on secondary meanings. And I'm not touching that (*$&%#% ... see!).

Although, since we're in the neighborhood, I always did like the term employed by Terry Southern in the magnificent satire "Candy": honeypot. It's romantic, tasteful and gosh, maybe even Mary Jane Grogan Sparks wouldn't thrash me too much.

British and American actors talk dirty on this video. I mean it. The story explaining why is here.

Here are links to the Beale Street Music Festival performers. These are official Web sites where available. Blues groups are (B) and regional outfits are (R). If any of these turn out to be bum sites, lemme know.

Friday, April 30:
George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic
The Offspring
Chaka Khan
Styx
Saliva (R)
Charlie Musselwhite (B) (R)
Joss Stone
Trapt
G. Love & Special Sauce
Michael Burks (B)
Smile Empty Soul
Johnny Clegg Band featuring the music of Juluka and Savuka
Sound Tribe Sector 9
Bettye LaVette (B)
Mrnorth
Slick Ballinger & the Soul Blues Boyz (B) (R)

Saturday, May 1:
Journey
Puddle of Mudd
Anthony Hamilton
Collective Soul
Jerry Lee Lewis (R)
Fuel (R)
Buddy Guy & Double Trouble (B)
Bernard Allison (B)
Indigo Girls
Robert Earl Keen
Lucero (R)
Doug E. Fresh
Eric Sardinas (B)
Sister Hazel
Porch Ghouls (R)
Renee Austin (B)
Paul Thorn (R)
Switchfoot
Robert ‘Wolfman’ Belfour (B) (R)
The Gamble Brothers Band (R)
Shinedown
Ellis Hooks (B)
Yonder Mountain String Band
Delta Moon (B)
Zac Harmon and the Midsouth Blues Revue (B)

Sunday, May 2
Foo Fighters
Steve Miller Band
Three 6 Mafia (R)
Live
Gov’t Mule
Bar-Kays (R)
Charlie Daniels Band
Little Milton (B) (R)
Anson Funderburgh & The Rockets with Sam Myers (B)
O.A.R.
Tone-Loc
Bela Fleck & the Flecktones
Richard Johnston (B) (R)
The Wailers
Drive-By Truckers
Free Sol (R)
Sonny Burgess & The Pacers (R)
Otis Taylor (B)
Josh Kelley (R)
Super Chikan & The Fighting Cocks (B) (R)
Tinsley Ellis (B)

Endeavoring to stay abreast with everything (no Janet Jackson jokes accepted at this time) and one thing I oughta do is link to the CA's blog registry. Here there be a growing number of local blogs and yes, you need to get signed on to it. It's cheap and easy, like most of my friends.

RSS is a wonderful thing. So I'm told. I'm trying it out now, but because I prefer to drive this blog with stick shift instead of on automatic, I'm lurching all over the road trying to get it to work. Give me a day or so.

I've done little more than hang around the set of "Forty Shades of Blue" for the last few days taking notes, pictures, interviewing, being an extra in some party scenes and posting to my CA blog. Squeezed in a quickie interview with Cybill Shepherd to get reaction to the Martha Stewart verdict. Capped off glamorous weekend by going home and being drafted to move furniture and clean out the kitty litter box.

You can't touch dat.

The glamorous life of a backgrounder.

Got my call to be an extra on the set of "Forty Shades of Blue," being filmed in these precincts. Rip Torn stars as Alan James, a Sam Phillips type of character who produces black music in Memphis in the '60s and '70s. The director is former Memphian Ira Sachs. I can't understand why I don't have a major speaking role, as impressive as my audition was. Still, sometimes one must exhibit patience. They'll appreciate me better once they see my slouch. Yes, I'll wear the black fedora.

Perhaps we worry too much. A study released by Ball State University's Center for Media Design tells us that Most research misses the facts: Americans use twice as much media as they say.

Apparently researchers had to stalk people to get this info, but we're the media, we don't care. Anyway, I'm glad to hear all that griping about the media is not offset by a determination to ignore it. And I'm not surprised. Memphis Cool says he always fibs to telephone surveyers.

As for me, I'm just happy to walk into a men's room and find a newspaper opened to one of my stories. As long as it hasn't been editorialized on.

A newly released study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project gives us some numbers on who is blogging and how much. Thanks to Rachel for pointing out the AP story on the study.

Interesting how the wire service lede puts it this way: "Despite the potential of turning every Internet user into a publisher, relatively few have created Web journals called blogs and even fewer do so with regularity, a new study finds."

The AP stressed that the survey showed only 2 percent of Internet users maintaining blogs. First of all, let's correct the news service in one respect: the survey was conducted among adult Internet users, which means those under 18 weren't counted. But as any parent can tell you, there's an enormous amount of use among teens.

That said, it is the complete breakdown, taken here directly from the report, that is far more interesting:

-- 21% of Internet users say they have posted photographs to Web sites.
-- 20% say they have allowed others to download music or video files from their computers.
-- 17% have posted written material on Web sites.
-- 13% maintain their own Web sites.
-- 10% have posted comments to an online newsgroup. A small fraction of them have posted files to a newsgroup such as video, audio, or photo files.
-- 8% have contributed material to Web sites run by their businesses.
-- 7% have contributed material to Web sites run by organizations to which they belong such as church or professional groups.
-- 7% have Web cams running on their computers that allow other Internet users to see live pictures of them and their surroundings.
-- 6% have posted artwork on Web sites.
-- 5% have contributed audio files to Web sites.
-- 4% have contributed material to Web sites created for their families.
-- 3% have contributed video files to Web sites.
-- 2% maintain Web diaries or Web blogs, according to respondents to this phone survey. In other phone surveys prior to this one, and one more recently fielded in early 2004, we have heard that between 2% and 7% of adult Internet users have created diaries or blogs. In this survey we found that 11% of Internet users have read the blogs or diaries of other Internet users. About a third of these blog visitors have posted material to the blog.

A story on the survey ought not diminish the role of blogging but rather to show, as the survey says, "that more than 53 million American adults have used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content available online." About 44 percent of U.S. adult Internet users are involved in this.

Note also the comment made by the survey that the 2 percent number might be higher. Most of the people I've talked to in researching my upcoming blog story created their blogs within the last year. The survey was taken between March 12 and May 20, 2003. This amounts to a small eternity in tech-time, a point barely acknowledged in the substandard AP story.

Of course I do have a prime suspect for "Memphis Marvin."

One of the comments on our Delta Blues blog is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. I don't know if any of the other "Blab Five" found it amusing, but I found it worth repeating here:

Ugh, this bug-eyed blog sounds like a cheesy Food Network show. Instead of Lisa and Dweezil, you guys are Leslie and Sparky -- strangers in a strange land. "Oooh look! A tamale! Who'd a thunk?"

You know, playing into this whole Robert Johnson myth is sooo whitebread. ("Oooh! white bread! Who'd a thunk?") I mean, sure. Legendary guy and all. But there are plenty of other blues singers who are better to listen to and more influential who only get cursory mention in your blog.

Next time, why not have ALL your feature writers infiltrate the Delta? Call it Media Eye for the Poseur Blues Guy.

Cue the Blab Five of Appeal:

Leslie Kelly (food): Impress the blues poseur in your life by making a tamale! Put it in a picnic basket and get on Hwy 61!

Barbara Bradley (style): Bluesposeurs like loose women. But no loose denim! Keep those "Blues" jeans guitar-string tight.

Jon Sparks (ambiance): Win his heart by crooning 12 bars of "Hell hound on my trail" by moonlight at Robert Johnson's grave.

Bill Ellis (mojo): And if that doesn't put the devil in Mr. Jones, slip him a pinch of conqueroo to wake the dead, so to speak!

John Beifuss (entertaining): Finally, videotape your bluesy graveside debauchery for a lasting reminder of your trip to the Delta!

Come on Appeal... Let's get to work on those blues poseurs!

Lovingly,
Mississippi Marvin

Memphis Cool would like to cavil about how busy he's been and use that as an excuse as to why he hasn't posted. But busy people don't want to hear about it. He can go off and do DDR at the mall for all we care.

Last week's blogging energies went to the Delta Blues trip which was pretty fine but too short. I want to go back and spend an evening at Club Ebony in Indianola tossing back those 50-cent tonic waters and keeping it real. I could take another night enjoying Greenwood's Alluvian Hotel with the largest ottomans I have ever seen. What's that all about?

Then I got to hang out with a group of poker-playing (but not poker-faced) Live Journalers Saturday night and they talked so much on blogging that I about got writers cramp. That's good, though. That's good. Thanks to Trisha, Lesley, Lindsay, Meg and all for giving me a clue.

My usual enigmatic reporter's disappearing act was marred, however, by my car's failure to start. And the gated parking lot at the apartment complex was unforgiving. I couldn't even get out without having to go back and explain it all to the LJs who really wanted to get back to Texas Hold-em. And ask how I could get the hell out of the complex.

All is well now. My 89 BMW 325i, with 201,000 miles, just wanted to be appreciated. And have a new fuel pump. And mentioned in Memphis Cool. All done now, and for only $287. Purrrr.

While we're on the topic, the cat who has the desk next to mine is Bill Ellis, the CA's music writer. Besides being a very fine writer, he is also a particularly good purveyor of the blues.

So I got this bright idea to blog from the road. Foodie Leslie Kelly and I are going to Greenwood to sample and savor some Delta blues and food. We go Wednesday, but we've started the blog already. Can't wait to meet Satan.

And where would you think Memphis Cool gets his Mojo reconstituted? Here, natch.

"By that rosy lampoon's effluvious burning and with help of the simulchronic flush in his pann (a ghinee a ghirk he ghets there!) he scrabbled and scratched and scriobbled and skrevened nameless shamelessness about everybody ever he met ..." And so Joyce dreams and I'm awake, except when it's reversed.

He's a quality superbeing, this Captain Comics is. My membership in the Legion of Superfluous Heroes seems to have lapsed. Possibly from that time I failed to escort the little old lady across Sam Cooper Blvd. Talk about squealing tires! I'll reapply, but meanwhile enjoy his site (and his columns on Sunday in the Fanfare section of the CA).

Phone survey captured my ear yesterday and asked for a male between the ages of 18 and 49 who dines out regularly. Oh, said I, I'm 54. Oh, well, thank you, the programmable telepollster said. Click.

Why you ungrateful marketing scum. Don't you know who I am? I'm making your fine life possible. I'm also the boomer who's gonna use up all your Social Security and never let you forget that all your music is merely derivative of ours. Thanks to us you have political consciousness and cheap transportation, environmental awareness and the Internet. Hope you choke on your demographics.

I may be mature, but few have ever accused me of maturity.

To my muse for whom I remain in a continuous state of cardio-flagellation.

I'm doing a story on Memphis blogging, bloggers and blogs and all that. I've talked to a few folks and need more to discuss blogging generally and specifically. I want folks who are local and who do it with fair regularity. I might even buy you a cup of coffee AND link to your blog.

Speaking of which, regional bloggers need to know about the CA's blog registry. Feel free to sign up.

Memphis Cool is falling all over himself touting my new blog at the CA. Newer even than this one. Friday's print column gives it a big push along with the other blogs at the newspaper. Links to the left, check 'em out. I'm tired of flogging blogs, but it's hardly over yet.

And a fine time was had at Zinnie's East with a gathering of bloggers. Any grouping of more than one blogger tends to find vigorous disagreement, so that first sentence probably won't be unanimously endorsed by the group. Maybe not even the second sentence. In any event, Mike, Michael, Chris, Brock, Mark, Len, Tom, Eric, Adam and I convened and dissected the state of blogging. Great stuff, glad to meet you. And links to all in my sidebar. Special thanks to Mike for making it happen and offering up a nice report on the proceedings.

My friend and former colleague Larry Nager was unceremoniously canned from The Cincinnati Enquirer last month. The city's alternative weekly Cincinnati CityBeat tells it like it is. I was glad to provide some quoteworthy material. Yes, Larry can ruffle feathers. He can also cover music as well as anyone out there. Anyone.

Forget the sleep.

This blog is barely registering on anyone's radar and is too peach-fuzzed to even have an archive. Yet I've got another blog -- Sparks on Memphis -- that debuted minutes ago at The Commercial Appeal, or, as Mike puts it, the Death Star.

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