You don't have to tell me I'm Podunk. I hear every day how I work for a Podunk newspaper in a Podunk town in a Podunk state. Especially in my other job here at the newspaper, which involves editing the Friday Style section, which for the past 17 years has been devoted to covering movies.
In fact, if you ever suspect your ego is a tad over-inflated, spend a little time communing with the typical studio publicist. They'll have you understanding just how little you matter macht schnell.
I know because I have to deal with these people on a daily basis when I'm trying to pull together that Friday section. We established it as a review-driven section, because while we don't have access to Hollywood gossip or industry news, there's no reason we can't write about the movies as well as anyone in the world. So that's what we try to do. How successful have we been? Not for me to say. But we're still at it, when most newspapers--even those in less Podunky places like Atlanta--don't have a movie critic on staff.
We try to review every movie that opens in Arkansas, and maybe we would if we'd get a little more cooperation from people on the coasts (and in St. Louis) whose jobs seem to consist of telling us we can't get a screening link of their tentpole teen sex comedy because they're only screening for the Top 50 markets. (Though if we'd like to interview the gum-cracking chorine who plays the leading lady's best friend's dogsitter's niece they might could arrange five minutes on the phone. Oh and did we get the camera-ready full-page character chart they've so kindly provided for us?)
I used to get press kits that included pre-written "reviews" of the movie. All I had to do was insert the name of the theater that's playing the movie.
Piers Marchant, our freelance critic who's based in Philadelphia (one way we get around that "we're not screening our movie for Podunk oufits" rule) says that he's had publicists tell him that while our product is as good as any in the country, their bosses "just can't get past the word 'Arkansas.'"
Because when you're Podunk, you're Podunk. In some people's eyes, you can't be legitimate if you're from Arkansas. You can say that's ignorant, you can laugh about it, sometimes maybe you can even use it to your advantage. But it doesn't change the fact that that's the way some people think.
Maybe it's the way you think.
I remember about a decade back when Little Rock native Jeff Nichols' Shotgun Stories, a low-budget film about an internecine feud between sets of half-brothers set and shot in small-town Arkansas, came out. I thought it was one of the best movies of the year, and in retrospect that seems like an understatement. Most critics agreed with me, but there was one review I remember that basically took the attitude, "nice try, but ..."
Critics can disagree. But I sensed that the critic was playing defense against the movie because he couldn't quite believe that anything that came from a place so Podunk as Arkansas could really be that good. (I suspected that if I wrote what I really thought about Shotgun Stories I'd be subject to charges of homerism. I wondered if some of my enthusiasm for the film wasn't based on its provenance. When my review came out, there were people who accused me of over-praising the film because Nichols was a local guy.)
And last year I saw another movie made by local folks called All the Birds Have Flown South, which would have made my list of the best movies of 2016 had it been released. I've got a rave review ready to run when it's available to be seen, whether it's in theaters or home video or streaming on Netflix. It's a brave, unflinching film--you don't have to say it's good for an Arkansas movie.
A story someone should have written last year was about how many Arkansas artists, specifically people who were connected in one way or another to the late Little Rock Film Festival, had done so much work that meaningfully impinged on the national consciousness. (I'm thinking of Graham Gordy and his Cinemax series Quarry, Ray McKinnon's series Rectify, Nichols' movie Loving--an excellent film that opens with a perfect few minutes that ought to be taught in film schools everywhere--and I've been reminded that some of the filmmakers associated with Moonlight are Little Rock Film Festival alums.)
We know this. Others don't. And so a writer for an online publication like Indie-wire might assume that Arkansas is, you know, Podunk. So in writing a story announcing Nichols as the board chair of the brand-new Arkansas Cinema Society, which will bring light and culture to the Podunk state, she might assume that we don't have an arthouse theater here, despite the fact that Matt Smith has been at it for 17 years, first with Market Street Cinema and now with Riverdale, which last week screened Otto Preminger's 1965 film Bunny Lake is Missing.
That's not to mention that last week the Ron Robinson Theater, which doesn't actually qualify as an arthouse (but why not?) showed Louis Theroux's My Scientology Movie. (When we interviewed Theroux for our Podunk newspaper section that covers the movies he expressed delight and surprise; he thought his movie was only going to show in the non-Podunk coastal culture centers of New York and Los Angeles.)
Indiewire also informed us that, aside from the corporate sponsor-thon that is the Bentonville Film Festival, we don't have any film festivals either (we have about 18 of them). Or any ongoing film series.
Because Podunk places don't have these things. They probably don't have film critics either--and if they do it's probably some guy who also has to write columns for the Podunk newspaper's Op-Ed page.
I think Nichols' quotes in the Indiewire story were taken out of context. I don't think he meant to imply that there's no film community or culture in his home state. I think the Arkansas Cinema Society is a good idea. I want it to succeed.
I think it can work. So suck up those hurt feelings, you Podunk hillbillies.
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 03/28/2017