The Southerner Journal

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Have you ever wondered why so many movies depicting the South also contain an underlying crazy theme?

I guess that’s what they think of us in New York and LA.

One of my favorites is Crazy in Alabama, featured on HBO recently. It’s a comedy-drama released in 1999 written by Mark Childress, based on his own 1993 novel of the same name. It stars Melanie Griffith as an abused wife who flees small town life in the South for California to become a movie star - with her dead husband Chester’s head in a hat box.

Meanwhile back in Alabama, her nephew, the story’s narrator, has to contend with a racially-motivated murder involving a corrupt sheriff during the Civil Rights Era.

It’s an interesting model for any would-be Southern writer thinking of trying to get New York editors interested in stories that will also play well on the big screen.

I’ve been mining the movie field of late thinking of stories to tell myself.

One of my favorite books written by a Southern author and then made into a movie is The Prince of Tides, based on a 1986 novel by Pat Conroy.

It tells the story of the narrator’s struggle to overcome the psychological damage inflicted by his dysfunctional childhood in South Carolina and stars Nick Nolte as a football coach and Barbra Streisand as a New York psychiatrist. While changes to the film upset some Conroy purists, it was a box office smash and put Streisand on the map as a director. It was also recently featured on HBO.

Conroy is probably the premier Southern author of the late 20th century whose work has been both financially successful and also acclaimed in literary circles, unlike John Grisham’s work, which is relegated to the legal thriller genre. In spite of the film’s flaws, The Prince of Tides does capture both the character of the South and New York in the introspective times of the 1980s, making it an irresistible tale that will last - like Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men.

But neither of those movies is what draws me to the keyboard tonight.

I doubt if it qualifies for the National Film Registry, but another innocent little tale caught my attention today. Sometimes when the cable offerings are weak, it’s worth stopping on the story of Doc Hollywood, or Dr. Ben Stone, played by Michael J. Fox, not my favorite actor by a long-shot.

My first column mug shot: Hotter than MJF?

But in this one, which reminds me of a story from my own life, he plays a hotshot young doctor who longs to leave the drudgery of the emergency room and finally leaps at his chance at more money and less work on the West Coast. But along the way he gets off the Interstate and smashes his 1956 Porsche Roadster into a judge’s fence and is forced into community service at the small town of Grady, South Carolina’s general hospital.

There he meets and falls in love with an ambulance driver named Viloula but called “Lou,” sexy and smart and played by Julie Warner, who has in incredible nude scene emerging from one of Grady’s famous fishing lakes. The town is also known for its squash, which the mayor uses to explain a slice of life in his attempt to lure the doc to stay in town - as he bets him $10 that he will not score with Lou.

The story is perhaps just a bit too cute for serious movie critics. But it reminds me of a time when I was 23-years-old and just out of college working in a small town at my first professional newspaper reporting job.

It was 1984. The town was Bay Minette, Alabama. The paper was The Baldwin Times.

Upon graduating from the University of Alabama in Bear Bryant’s last year, I had lofty goals of one day working for a great newspaper like the New York Times. But in those days, the mobility of college students was far more limited than it is today.

I advised students at Loyola New Orleans from 2000-2002 who were able to make the leap to New York, DC and LA. But being poor and from Alabama during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, and George Wallace’s last term as governor, some of the best opportunities to break into newspapering came working for weeklies in small towns across the South.

The movie about Grady reminds me of those times, not because the stories are totally similar, but because some of the experiences and emotions ring true of being a young person trying to decide whether to make a life in a small town, where the living can be easy but perhaps not so lucrative, or making a break for the big city life and the big time bucks.

I also have to laugh at all the machinations people in small Southern towns will go to trying to lure young professionals to stay. This kind of scene plays out, still, in many towns across the country, as the out migration of the young and educated continues apace today. It is as true of Alabama today as it was in 1984, I’m sure, and can lead to some incredibly funny stories.

There’s not enough space and time here to tell them all. Maybe one day if I get around to writing a memoir.

Let’s just say I had a number of experiences with young women there, like Lou, who either wanted to seduce me to stay in Bay Minette - or to hook up with someone who could get them out.

I’m thinking of one particular young woman now about my age at the time who openly displayed a crush on me. I won’t reveal her name. She may still be there - or maybe she got out.

One night she displayed this crush a little too openly at a Christmas party, held at the Holly Hills Country Club, when, after a few too many glasses of wine, she tripped on the hem of her long dress and fell right into my arms. It was a classic scene of a drunken Southern debutante right out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald or Tom Wolfe novel. As she fell toward me - and I still recall the scene in real-life slow motion, in part probably due to my own inebriation - the top of her bright red dress slipped down off her left breast, fully exposing the nipple for virtually everyone at the party to see.

It bordered on a scandal, since she also happened to be the chamber of commerce president’s daughter, making her the perfect ambassador to try grabbing me for life. Perhaps like Doc Hollywood I should have more actively pursued that road, but there were complications.

Now at 50, do I harbor any regrets about leaving small town life there?

Only one. And it happened many years later.

In 2002, back when it was announced that the Alabama governor’s race results came down to 3,000 votes in Bay Minette, I went back there from New Orleans for The New York Times - to investigate the election.

But when Siegelman conceded, I was pulled out of Bay Minette and sent back to New Orleans.

Knowing what I know now, since the Jill Simpson affidavit came to light, I wish I had stayed and worked my sources. I learned how to cover a courthouse and develop sources there, in that courthouse. It was the best school in the world for getting hands-on experience in that world, in more ways than one. Don’t even ask about the secretaries in those days.

But of course it takes time and money to really work a story like the election, just as it takes time and money to work up a full scale relationship with a fine smart woman - in a small town or anywhere else.

And in the news game, there ain’t never enough time - or money.

Life blogs on…

Now that I think about it, there’s plenty of craziness to go around and write about in this world. And it’s not all in the South.

I’m thinking now of a crazy New York editor, a woman, in part a figment of my imagination.

And I’m also thinking, if I had stayed in Bay Minette, either time, none of this would have ever happened - the good or the bad. Perhaps there is no stopping fate in any event - if there is such a thing.

I’m not convinced.

Life is not like a box of chocolates or cherries. It’s more like a full-blown meal.

How good it turns out to be any given time is complicated and turns on choices and chance, luck and timing.

It can be as scrumptious as the fried green tomatoes in mushroom sauce at Jacquimo’s in New Orleans, or as spare as the BLT at the drugstore in Bay Minette.

And I’m convinced, politics and government do matter - in all kinds of ways many people don’t even seem to fathom, certainly not in a crazy place like Alabama. Maybe you have to be a little crazy to try to break out - or to try making a difference here.

Maybe you have to be a little crazy to try making art - or a living - as a writer in this world, if you didn’t start out in it rich.

I can only wish good luck to the striking writers in New York and LA. I hope they win that fight to get part of the proceeds from sales on the Web Press. One of these days maybe I’ll get a share of my own in that world, after we get rid of George W. Bush.

I understand Childress did it while working a day gig at Southern Living, not exactly a bastion of great journalism.

Long live the movies…

By Ronald Sitton

NORTH LITTLE ROCK (Dec. 20) - My recent down time for gall bladder surgery gave me an opportunity to read UAM English professor Mark Wegley’s copy of “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman following Wegley’s showering praise of the book and the author, who spoke at a conference at the University of Central Arkansas this fall.

I spend so much time reading texts and literary journalism that I seldom make time for fiction. “American Gods” justifies taking a break from the norm.

The book starts with a prisoner, Shadow, who’s waiting to get out of jail. The warden stops by to let Shadow know he can go home early. Seems like a good sign? Not really. Shadow finds out his wife and best friend died on the way to pick him up from jail. At the funeral, he finds out his wife caused the wreck because she was performing fellatio on his best friend. Shadow discusses the incident with his dead wife the night after her funeral. Things get interesting from there.

The general theme behind “American Gods” suggests immigrants brought their gods to America and then forgot about them. Without continual belief and ritual, the gods lose power. Mr. Wednesday, who happens to be rounding up the old gods for an apocalyptic battle with newer gods, gives Shadow a job as bodyguard. Shadow must decide what he believes while he practices coin tricks to pass the time.

Though Gaiman does a good job describing some of the older deities, I never understood the reasoning behind why one god would be more powerful than another. Nor does Gaiman confront any current deities except to point out where victors of a battle would do their best to wipe out belief in the old deities, including assuming the holy days for their own deities. However, it made me want to pick up Bulfinch’s Mythology.

Gaiman’s book flows such that you don’t really realize where time goes as you pick it up and put it down. For the college crowd, it’s a nice break from the mundane.

Grade: B+

Notes oF INTEREST
Lake Okechobee Violated

Government Attempts to seize ACLU documents

Save the Internet

The National Conference for Media Reform

I’m planning to attend this conference in January, though I still need to find a hotel. Confirmed speakers include:
# Jonathan Adelstein, FCC Commissioner
# Ben Bagdikian, author, “The Media Monopoly”
# Eric Boehlert, author and journalist
# David Brancaccio, PBS
# David Brock, Media Matters for America
# Adrienne Maree Brown, Ruckus Society
# Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy
# Rosa Clemente, R.E.A.C.Hip-Hop
# Jeff Cohen, writer and media critic
# Flavia Colgan, MSNBC commentator
# Mark Cooper, Consumer Federation of America
# Michael Copps, FCC Commissioner
# Malkia Cyril, Youth Media Council
# Davey D, DJ and Hip Hop Activist
# Phil Donahue, Television Host
# Laura Flanders, radio host
# Linda Foley, Newspaper Guild-CWA
# Jane Fonda, Actor and Co-Founder, Women’s Media Center
# Kim Gandy, President, National Organization for Women
# Dan Gillmor, Center for Citizen Media
# Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News
# Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
# Robert Greenwald, Producer and Director
# Maurice Hinchey, U.S. Representative
# Ben Hooks, Civil Rights Leader
# Janine Jackson, FAIR
# Rev. Jesse Jackson, Civil Rights Leader
# Van Jones, ColorofChange.org and Ella Baker Center
# Gene Kimmelman, Consumers Union
# Mark Lloyd, Center for American Progress
# Rev. Tim MacDonald, Civil Rights Leader
# Robert McChesney, President, Free Press
# Bill Moyers, Journalist and Author
# John Nichols, Journalist
# Alex Nogales, National Hispanic Media Coalition
# Anthony Riddle, Alliance for Community Media
# Paul Rieckhoff, Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America
# Andrew Jay Schwartzman, Media Access Project
# Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge
# Matt Stoller, MyDD.com
# Makani Themba-Nixon, the Praxis Project
# Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers
# Gloria Tristani, Benton Foundation
# Cenk Ugyur, The Young Turks
# Katrina Vanden Heuvel, The Nation
# Noah Winer, MoveOn
# Rev. Lenox Yearwood, Hip-Hop Caucus

Editor’s Note: Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men is routinely listed in the top five novels in American literature, although it appears to have dropped off the radar screen of the masses in today’s so-called “conservative” TV-driven American culture. It is still available in book stores and worth the read, especially for the middle class and working poor who are often misled by politicians who really do not have their economic interests in mind. It may be “the culture stupid,” but the remake of this movie should be at the top of their list to see before the Nov. 7 election.

Movie Website and Trailer

Key Quote: “If you don’t vote, you don’t matter.”

by Henry B. Rosenbush

Charismatic, controversial and mendacious best describes the life of Huey P. Long, whose political career included tenures as railroad commissioner, state senator and finally governor of Louisiana (1928-35). His assassination in the State Capitol building on the evening of September 8, 1935 has historically been attributed to Dr. Carl Weiss, although evidence culled in the 1990s suggests that Dr. Weiss was framed. Trained in law, Long’s journey to the gubernatorial mansion was filled with personal corruption, but on the other side, Long brought numerous benefits to his dirt-poor state.

Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer winning novel, All the King’s Men was a scathing examination of Populist Southern Governor Willie Stark’s rise and fall. The novel inspired four films, the 1949 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Actor (Broderick Crawford) and Mercedes McCambridge (Supporting Actress), a 1953 version produced by James Cagney, the 1989 Paul Newman version “Blaze,” a comedic retelling from the point of view of stripper Blaze Starr, the recent 2006 film with Sean Penn, two made for television adaptations, a TV special, an opera and an excellent Ken Burns documentary in 1987.

While the 1949 film remains the best of the lot the most recent version at least was released during the upcoming election season. It’s a shame that this one has slipped quietly away, dropping off the top 50 list last week. Roundly panned by critics (of 134 national reviews it only received 14 positive nods) for myriad reasons; casting numerous Brits in the roles of Southerners, murky subplots, a shaky narrative, well, you get the idea.
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