Friday, May 18, 2012
- Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing
- Tara Lynne Barr and Joel Murray
* * stars
Opens Friday at Colony Theatres
Screechy-voiced comedian-turned-dark-comedy auteur Bobcat Goldthwait once again attempts to mix the extreme with the profound in his new, bullet-ridden satire God Bless America.
He casts Joel Murray (Bill’s brother and Goldthwait’s co-star in that long-lost ’80s comedy One Crazy Summer) take the lead as Frank, a miserable divorcée whose life goes down the drain even more emphatically once he gets fired from his job and receives news that he has a brain tumor.
Already holding a pretty strong contempt for the uncivil times we live in, Frank forgoes putting a bullet in his brain in favor of putting one in the head of some spoiled-brat teen he sees on a reality show. This spur-of-the-moment execution gets him a fan in the form of Roxy (chipper newcomer Tara Lynne Barr), an enthusiastically antisocial teen who wants to tag along and join him on a righteous murder spree.
Together, these two roam the highways of America (surprisingly undetected by the authorities), busting caps in the asses of rabid right-wingers, reality-show douches, people who talk in movie theaters (my fave!) and dickheads who take up two parking spaces.
With God Bless America, Goldthwait gives us both a bloody indictment on our shallow, self-centered society and his very own, serial-killer road movie, occasionally getting his two stars to resemble classic, cinematic criminal couplings. (Am I crazy, or does Goldthwait have Murray and Barr dress up like Pumpkin and Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction in one scene?)
It appears that Goldthwait has a lot on his mind about how cruel, mediocre and asshole-ish our culture has become; he’s written preachy monologues that enable Murray and Barr to rant about our decaying society and its most corrosive inhabitants. However, for a director that has no qualms depicting the blasting away of a wailing baby in the opening minutes, Goldthwait seems to cop out when it comes to taking down bigger fish. Since we’re living in an age where 99 percenters want to see bankers, Wall Street tycoons and greedy corporations royally get theirs, aiming at easy targets like Bill O’Reilly and American Idol feels so 2008.
As with most of Goldthwait’s post-Shakes the Clown directorial work, God Bless America’s transgressive premise is merely window-dressing for the sympathetic, humanistic story that’s lurking underneath. And yet, this mash-up of violently unnerving shock and heavy-handed sincerity is uneven. You get a sense that Goldthwait—who, as weird as this may sound, is quite the impressive filmmaker—would rather make a movie where he didn’t have to do some quasi-anarchic, crazy shit to get people’s attention.
While Goldthwait’s heart is in the right place, it’s unlikely the blood spilled in his film will make annoying, loathsome people finally straighten the fuck up. Besides, some of us would rather see those people bitch-slapped instead of gunned down. Now, that would’ve been an awesome movie!
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
- Soda Pictures
As his fellow students protest and march—Tokyo had its '60s radicals, too—brooding college student Toru Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama) falls into a romantic affair with the delicate, damaged Naoko (Rinko Kikuchi). The two come together in unspoken grief after the suicide of their mutual friend, Kizuki, who was also Naoko's first love.
The young couple's first sexual encounter leads to a emotional breakdown for Naoko, who retreats to a countryside sanitarium. Watanabe, meanwhile, executes a retreat of his own—into books and ideas and the new vistas of college life. He soon encounters the beautiful, free-spirited Midori (Kiko Mizuhara), whose sunniness seems a light at the end of his tunnel. Then things get complicated.
Norwegian Wood is a beautiful and melancholy film that moves to its own unhurried rhythms. Not much happens, but when it does, it's tidal in force. Young love, the film suggests, is the same in any era or place—baffling, euphoric and occasionally scary as hell.
One fascinating aspect of the film's love stories is that, for the central characters, the sex is anything but casual. The young adults in Norwegian Wood are suspended between Japanese cultural tradition and the glad tidings of the sexual revolution drifting in from the West. For them, sex is decidedly liberating—but also inseparable from honesty, responsibility and loyalty.
Director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya) uses music to underline themes of past versus future; yesterday versus tomorrow. The traditional orchestral score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood is punctuated by snippets from the Doors and the Beatles. Keep in mind this is 1960s Tokyo, back when Japanese hipsters shopped for American vinyl records, and not the other way around.
Norwegian Wood is one of those great little films you can usually find migrating to home video in any given week. The film had a limited release in a few North American cities earlier this year, but otherwise you'd need to have attended a festival in Toronto or Venice to catch this one.
The Extras: English subtitles, an hour-long making-of doc and a featurette on the film's premiere at the 2010 Venice Film Festival, where it was nominated for a Golden Lion award.
Formats: DVD and various digital platforms.
Also New This Week:
- Liam Neeson continues his oddly convincing makeover into hard-guy action hero with THE GREY (DVD/Blu-ray/digital) concerning planes crashes, wolves and Dermot Mulroney.
- The acclaimed indie doc WE WERE HERE (DVD/digital) documents the AIDS crisis in 1980s San Francisco through archival footage and eyewitness accounts.
- The sci-fi drama CHRONICLE (DVD/Blu-ray/digital) was a surprise critical and commercial success earlier this year, and suggests that the found-footage gimmick isn't totally played out yet.
Plus: Glenn Close and Janet McTeer in their Oscar-nominated roles in the historical drama ALBERT NOBBS, Woody Harrelson in the cop drama RAMPART, Old Scratch in the exorcism thriller THE DEVIL INSIDE and the Criterion Collection's reissue of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH on Blu-ray and DVD.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Bloody capitalism: The missed opportunity of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's "Dark Shadows"
* * stars
Opens Friday
Usually, a plot synopsis does not service either a decent movie review or the movie in question. But speaking of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, it might just do the trick.
Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is out to get his. He wakes up from a centuries-long slumber to find out that the market in the fishing town his family once controlled has been monopolized by the same witch who cursed him to immortality and locked him in a coffin way back in the day.
Under the cover of perceived good intentions, he sets out to put the wayward Collins clan back on top. He enters in on a secret pact with the family’s reluctant matriarch (Michelle Pfeiffer) to keep his immortality a secret (oh yeah, he’s a vampire), hypnotizes some of the town’s best fishermen away from the competition, receives blood transfusions and oral sex from the family psychiatrist (Helena Bonham Carter, a real sport), and kills construction workers and hippies without regret. This dude is busy: he does all this while simultaneously courting the Collins’ barely legal governess (Bella Heathcote, yawn) and having airborne intercourse with the witch who’s cornered the market (Eva Green, hubba hubba).
Forgive Barnabas if he doesn’t have the energy left to weed the clichés out of his voiceover narration: “Blood is thicker than water,” he tells us twice, in a lame iteration of (what should be) Dark Shadow’s primary concern. Heredity, no matter how long you’ve been out of the game, is the primary weapon of bite-throat, er, cutthroat capitalism. If Daddy had it, you should have it, and if some perennially single broad gets in the way for a few hundred years, you sink your teeth into the competition and get her out of the way with whatever means at your disposal. After you’ve gotten in her pants, of course.
Dark Shadows is not quite what I want it to be: a subversive commentary about the ethics of the free market and the bloodlines of the 1 percent, all masquerading as a campy soap opera. In fact, it’s hard to believe after having described it that it’s such a bombastic bore, all its compelling complexity ultimately just a simplistic pretext for childish jokes about Barnabas’ Victorian propriety and anachronistic manner of speech in the supposedly free-living 1970s.
Burton once was an artist you could recognize from the way he filled Hollywood’s weirdo quotient by telling mainstream yet personal stories. But now he's more relevant as a person inadvertently responsible for charged political and sexual content that seeps out of the otherwise sanitary and plastic commercial movie machine.
Friday, May 4, 2012
- Photo by Adam David Kissick
- Two actors in DOG SEES GOD: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, produced by REP in June 2011
This afternoon, the company sent an email to members of the area theater community confirming that the company had ceased operations, effective immediately: "Following the unanimous adoption of a resolution by REP's Board of Directors, the company has filed for bankruptcy." The email was signed by C. Glen Matthews, the company's artistic director.
According to documents filed yesterday in the United States Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of North Carolina, REP has $224,507.77 in unsecured debts.
The company has no real property, but its personal assets, including lighting equipment, costumes and props, were valued at $9,932.14.
According to a profit and loss statement for April 2012, REP's monthly expenses included $4,070 in rent and $3,523.65 in office and administrative expenses.
For the first four months of 2012, the company reported revenue of $31,734.78, with nearly 80 percent coming from grants and donations.
The two largest debts are owed to figures associated with the company's new performance space at 213 Fayetteville St., which opened in the summer of 2009.
The largest creditor is Alphin Design Build, the contractor hired to renovate the theater space, which is owed $110,000. The second-largest debt, $60,000, is owed to Jean Pauwels, the owner of the building. Raleigh Ensemble Players does not have equity in the building.
Also listed among more than 20 creditors is Vincent Whitehurst Architect, who is owed $2,489, according to the documents.
Whitehurst and Will Alphin are owners of Foundation, a popular bar located in the basement of 213 Fayetteville St. Whitehurst designed the Raleigh Ensemble Players space and Alphin served as the contractor. Pauwels, the building's owner, operates a business in the same building, a countertop materials supplier called Pyrolave.
Gary Williams, the company's managing director, is owed $10,000 for unpaid wages.
REP, the Triangle's oldest independent theater company, had performed in Artspace, located on East Davie Street, for 20 years prior to its move to Fayetteville Street. In 2011, it was recognized by the Independent Weekly with an Indie Arts award.
In a 2009 article in the Independent Weekly, company artistic director C. Glen Matthews cited a desire for the greater visibility that a permanent downtown home would bring them.
Pauwels, for his part, was looking for a tenant for the four-story building he was renovating.
"I wanted something I would enjoy having around, something more unusual, more fun than a clothing store or fast food," Pauwels told the Indy in 2009. "Some artistic activity in the building would be good for Fayetteville Street, good for everyone. It would make downtown more lively."
But in the same article, the company acknowledged difficulties in paying its contractor.
At the end of March, $100,000 in debt to its contractor, company management asked the builder to stop further work. "We didn't want to get in over our heads more than we already were," said Williams.
There will be a meeting of creditors at 9:30 a.m., May 29, 2012, at 300 Fayetteville Street, Suite 130, Raleigh, NC 27601.
Calls to Alphin, Williams and REP board members Betsy Henderson and Don Davis were not immediately returned.
Friday, April 27, 2012
- Photo by Leigh Moose/ Side Yard Studios Photography
- Two models show off JulieApple Handbags.
On this night, Redress Raleigh took over the museum for its fourth annual Eco-Fashion Show, where eco-friendly designers are given the opportunity to show off the fruits of their labor. And after previously doing the show at such spots as Flanders Gallery and Edenton Street United Methodist Church, the people behind Redress thought the CAM Raleigh would be a perfect venue.
“At CAM, we feel like it fits with our aesthetic as well,” says Eco-Fashion Show co-producer Beth Stewart, “because it’s a beautiful place but it’s a renovated space. So, this used to be a different type of building and they’re re-using it.”
Eleven designers were on the bill, many of them local, culled from applications that were sent through the Redress Raleigh website. These designers also appreciated Redress’s stylishly green mission.
“I just really loved the concept of this particular show,” says Melissa Lowery, the designer behind SSD Jewelry, “because they incorporate recycled and upcycled materials, found materials, and I use a lot of that in my work.”
Started in 2008, Redress Raleigh has specialized in proving to Raleigh and other Triangle residents that eco-friendly fashion can be washable, wearable and accessible. They also put on shows to benefit other organizations. This year’s charity is ABAN (A Ban Against Neglect), which produces upcycled bags, wallets and other products using the discarded plastic bags that litter of the streets of Accra, Ghana’s capital city.
Redress has also been known to put on other events apart from the fashion show. In March, they had a benefit show at Kings Barcade, featuring such acts as Kooley High’s Charlie Smarts and hip-hop band The Balance, to raise money to put the fashion show together.
“We do like to do some networking and fun events related to the eco-fashion show,” says Stewart. “But we mainly try to do more educational events than anything else. And the eco-fashion show is our main thing.”
The show had quite an eclectic collection of designers on hand. Leopold Designs had various female models saunter down the catwalk in hand-dyed silk, while the sophisticated Kendal Leonard and the vintage Rocket Betty both had their own ideas of what should pass for bridal wear.
Perhaps the most refreshing part of the evening was the diverse selection of models that were pouting and strutting for their respective designers. JulieApple Handbags, the first designer of the evening, had women (and a few little girls) model the trendy bags. SSD Jewelry had both men and women get on the runway. JBelle Designs and Leopold Designs features many middle-aged models for their sections.
- Photo by Leigh Moose/ Side Yard Studios Photography
- Model Ashton Edens takes the runway wearing SSD Jewelry.
There were young models who appeared to take their modeling careers thing quite seriously. But there were others, like Raleigh-based secretary/receptionist Cortney Rice, who was doing it on a lark.
“I think to go into the professional world, you gotta start really early now,” says Rice, who has done fashion charity shows at such Raleigh nightspots as Mirage and Solas. “I think they get you at 16, 17 – start you out early. So, I’m kind of past my prime. I’m 25, so I’m doing it for fun now.”
As for 16-year-old Raleigh model Ashton Edens, ol’ girl is in it for the long haul.
“It was just for the fun at first,” says Edens. “And, now, I’m starting to get into it and auditioning for a lot of stuff.”
She finds walking down the runway at a Redress show to be a step up from previous shows she’s done. “It’s a lot cleaner, I guess. It’s more refreshing, you could say. It’s not as clumped and it’s not as dark.”
- Photo by Leigh Moose/ Side Yard Studios Photography
- Raleigh mayor Nancy McFarlane addresses the crowd gathered Friday night at CAM Raleigh.
“I was surprised because, a lot of times, it’s hit-or-miss in terms of kind of the skill level of designers,” says D.C.-bred stylist Stephanie Ford, who relocated to Raleigh from Paris. “But I was really surprised and impressed with a lot of the different designers.
The only minus she had was the ticket price.
“I think $50 is kind of high, on the high end, for a ticket price. I mean, up to $35 is kind of reasonable.”
In the end, the environmentally conscious fashionistas of Redress Raleigh did what they sought out to do. To paraphrase Project Runway’s dapper-ass Tim Gunn, they made it work.
Says Stewart: “Really, the main three things [for us] are to help raise money for charities, to help expose local artists who like to incorporate recycling and up-cycling materials and to help eco-conscious practices with their businesses. So, that’s really cool.”
Thursday, April 19, 2012
New company has almost all the "Proof" we need: Exit Through Eden at Raleigh Ensemble Players
3.5 stars (out of five)
Exit Through Eden
Raleigh Ensemble Players
Through Apr. 22
Catherine, the bright, bewildered daughter of a deceased mathematical genius, isn’t the only one with something to prove in this current production of David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama. A new director at the helm of a new theater group is having to present a few bona fides as well.
This production marks the maiden voyage for director Jason Sharp’s company, Exit Through Eden. Sharp has achieved notice in a series of supporting roles in shows including Violet at Hot Summer Nights and Raleigh Ensemble Players’ Distracted, and this recombinant production largely relies on colleagues he’s worked with on stage in recent years.
For the most part, that’s a pretty good move. Betsy Henderson, a distinguished mid-career Raleigh actor, convinces here as the edgy, aching and alienated Catherine. An equally accomplished Ryan Brock ingratiates here as Hal, an unapologetic math geek and possible romantic interest. And it should shock no one that Page Purgar’s supporting work is solid as Catherine’s disbelieving older sister, Claire.
But at first Eric Hale appears to be acting more for the camera than the stage, in what initially translated into an almost deadpan, is-he-even-acting take on Robert, Catherine’s prickly father. Things improved considerably during both characters’ rewarding, dramatic argument at the start of the second act, but Hale’s later negotiation of Robert’s reversals leaves me still with questions about his range.
In such nacent independent companies, a skeleton crew is par for the course. In this show, director Sharp’s set design conveys the grungy backyard of an aging Chicago house. His lighting design, however, left us squinting at a noticeably dimmer backdoor area where several key scenes take place.
But if Sharp largely relied on the comforts of the known in casting this production, I should caution him against the same when it comes to script selection. This production marks the fifth time PROOF has been produced in the region in the past decade. For that reason alone I hesitated before committing to see the show—and I imagine some portion of this company’s potential audience did so as well.
The same point should be considered—carefully—by all artistic directors in the region now planning their fall season. Twelfth Night’s been done. Ditto for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
And, in this credible opening bid by Exit Through Eden, so has Proof.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
When it was announced that filmmaker and previous Full Frame Career Award recipient Ross McElwee (Sherman's March) would curate this year's "Family Affairs" thematic program on Saturday, many McElwee admirers must have exclaimed "Of course!"
If there is a documentary filmmaker who knows how to merge family matters into his films, it's Charlotte's McElwee. In the 2004 film Bright Leaves, he delved into North Carolina's rich tobacco history while exploring his own family history and trying to maintain a bond with his skateboarding, preteen son, Adrian. His new film, Photographic Memory, which will receive its world premiere Friday at Full Frame, shows that the bond hasn't strengthened. Adrian has turned into a typical teenager—sullen, obnoxious, slightly self-destructive—who makes McElwee flee the country in order to better understand him. And, also, to prevent him from ringing the little punk's neck.
McElwee recently talked to the Indy about his latest film, his program at Full Frame and just how things are going between him and his son.
Independent Weekly: So, you're been summoned back to Full Frame to curate this year's "Family Affairs" thematic program. How did this union come about?
Ross McElwee: Full Frame is a wonderful event that, though homegrown—at least from the perspective of this Southerner—has achieved an international reputation. I was asked to curate a section on films about family, and since I've made a few of those myself, I guess they thought I was a natural choice for curator. I did refine the definition a bit by narrowing it to autobiographical documentaries about family, which complicates the filmmaking in interesting ways.
Your new movie Photographic Memory shows you coping with your, shall we say, ornery son by traveling to France and getting in touch with people from your youth. You appear to juxtapose your more adventurous youth with your son's, which has him always at the mercy of his computer or some device. Is this your way of telling kids to put down the damn iPhone and experience life?
Not really. Or maybe I'm just suggesting that young people perhaps consider calibrating a little the ratio of online life to actually living. But I'm not a Luddite about social media. It's clearly here to stay. I think one of the things I'm interested in in my film is the way things have changed so radically in only one generation in terms of communication and artistic expression. The effects of the generational shift from analog to digital has been massive—on our society, and on the world as a whole. But I'm certainly not saying that my generation's way of expressing itself was better than my son's. There was no dearth of foolishness associated with the analog 1960s and '70s.
You really dive into your relationship with your son quite honestly and nakedly. Has he seen the movie, and will he be there to check it out at Full Frame?
Adrian has traveled with me to Venice, Lisbon, Paris and Los Angeles, where he has helped me present the film in public and even taken questions from the audience after screenings. He's accepted the film on its own terms, perhaps more than I have.
You also quietly mourn the death of film in the movie. With film print currently going the way of the 8-track tape, was this something you really wanted to explore in this film?
Yes, it was certainly intentional that the demise of film and its replacement by high-definition digital video be acknowledged in my film. But I don't think of it as a major theme. It's more of a filmmaker's lament—a somewhat romantic, low-decibel cri de coeur—but not especially worth dwelling on. So, I don't. It just comes up now and then and also functions as a metaphor for the difference between my son's world and my own.
Finally, as someone who been to several Full Frame festivals and received the Career Award, how important has this festival been for you, and what would you like people to take away from it?
Just try to see as many films as you can. The lineup of documentaries is stunning. They were culled from more than 2,000 entries from all over the world. And, also, savor the experience of sitting in that dark room with other strangers and relating to a world that is not completely your own—in some ways, the opposite of Facebook.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Those familiar with Ira Glass' wry, quizzical voice as the host of public radio's This American Life will get to experience his unique brand of storytelling in person when he appears at the Durham Performing Arts Center on Saturday, March 23. The appearance comes after a week in which This American Life made headlines when a piece involving monologist Mike Daisey's trip to a factory creating Apple computer products was revealed to be mostly fabricated. We were able to get Glass on the phone in New York to talk about his appearance at DPAC, and while we were told by his representative in advance that he wouldn't go on the record about the Daisey incident, he surprisingly made a short statement at the interview's end—after we'd discussed everything from his new style of presentation to his surprising history with North Carolina and more.
Independent Weekly: Tell us about your appearance at DPAC.
Ira Glass: Basically, I stand onstage with an iPad. With the iPad, I can run music and clips and audio from various things. And I can re-create the sound of the radio show this way. It's basically me talking about how we make the show, what we do in making the show, and just kind of an excuse to play funny, memorable clips from the show.
How has using the iPad changed the way you do these live performances?
I mean, at a gig like this—it used to be any time I was onstage, I had to have CD players and a mixing console, but now I can run all that from the iPad. I have a mixer for all my clips—it's amazing, and it's something I can do onstage. It's much better than just sitting behind a desk, which is very unnatural, for me anyway.
It's sort of like how high schools will do musicals with these devices that can re-create an entire orchestra.
I should steal that! I should get that on my iPad and cue the orchestra and sing songs from The Music Man.
It'd be appropriate for your venue.
I'm always so bad at venues like that, where people are used to seeing Broadway road shows, and there are these massive flies behind the curtain to move scenery, and then it's just me onstage with an iPad. But I do believe I will deliver an evening of entertainment for people.
How did you enjoy your last trip to Durham?
I love North Carolina. When I was reporter based in D.C., I did a bunch of reporting in North Carolina, and vacationed in North Carolina, and I just fell in love with the area. It's like Maryland, where I'm from, only better in every aspect.
My only understanding of Maryland comes from The Wire, so I'll take your word for it.
[Laughs] Yeah, well, I didn't have to grow up in the housing projects or anything. I felt perfectly safe. I mean, seriously, when I was coming up, the only TV or film existence Baltimore had was the films of John Waters, and you could feel good about that.
But I don't know what happened that made Baltimore, you know, the single most fucked-up place in America—like if you have a crime drama, and New York and Los Angeles are just not dangerous enough, then the place you locate it is Baltimore. I don't know when we made that transition.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
There were some surprise winners at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament last weekend in Brooklyn, even as last year's victor, Dan Feyer, won his second straight championship. Filling in answers to a very difficult puzzle with a dry erase marker on a whiteboard before a crowd of 600 vanquished contestants, Feyer defended his title in rather anticlimactic fashion, beating the runner-up by more than three minutes. (Finishing second was none other than Tyler Hinman, whom viewers of the 2006 documentary Wordplay would recognize as the red-haired wunderkind who became the tournament's youngest champion. Hinman went on to win the next four competitions before being deposed by Feyer).
No, the surprise winner wasn't Feyer, but the 140 entrants—about a quarter of the total—who bested Dr. Fill, a ruthless competitor with a novel approach to solving and with a realistic shot at finishing first, despite having never competed at the tournament before.
Allow me to explain.
Dr. Fill is a computer algorithm created by Matthew Ginsberg, an AI expert and crossword constructor. It's not the first of its kind—a team of computer scientists from Duke brought a cyber-solver called Proverb to the tournament in 1999—but it's undoubtedly the best: While Proverb limped to a bottom-half finish, in simulations of the previous 34 tournaments, Dr. Fill would've won three outright.
The name "Dr. Fill" is a pun on Dr. Phil McGraw, and in crossword lingo, "fill" also refers to the words in the grid (the "entries") collectively. Not coincidentally, fill is one facet of crossword puzzles that computers have already mastered, not in the solving but in the making: While it takes human ingenuity to come up with lively themes and tricky clues, computers have proven adept at generating interlocking words to fill in the white squares.
That's a pretty straightforward task for a machine: Draw from a database of kosher character strings and fit them into a grid. It's a math problem. But finding answers to clues like "Late riser?" (GHOST) or "Turn left, say?" (RADICALIZE)—that's a taller order.
Documentary filmmakers investigate Frank Matthews, 1970s East Coast heroin kingpin and Durham native
The life of notorious Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas may have gotten the epic, big-screen treatment with American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington as Lucas. But if you ask documentary filmmakers Ron Chepesiuk and Al Bradley, there was another black, New York capo named Frank that made Lucas look like small potatoes.
Chepesiuk and Bradley collaborated on The Frank Matthews Story: The Rise and Disappearance of America's Biggest Kingpin, which will be playing Friday at the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham. It's a fast-paced, investigative chronicle of Matthews, the Durham-born drug dealer who ended up controlling all the heroin dealings up and down the Eastern Seaboard in the early '70s. The only black drug lord to have direct ties with the famed French Connection drug pipeline, his Brooklyn-based operation stretched across 20 states, making him a target in the eyes of both the feds and the Italian Mafia. In 1973, Matthews went from gangster to fugitive when he jumped bail, supposedly taking with him $15 million–$20 million and a beautiful girlfriend, and hasn't been heard from since.
"I came across Frank Matthews and I was just fascinated by this story," says Chepesiuk, 56, a Canadian-born, true-crime journalist and author who has spent five years researching Matthews. "You know, a young, Southern kid goes north and makes it big as a criminal. And not only that—it follows some of the usual patterns—but he becomes an international dealer. And perhaps, I would say, the first, big, African-American drug dealer in history."
Chepesiuk got together with documentary filmmaker and music-video director Bradley (also known as "Al Profit") last fall to collaborate on the film. "For me, the crime story is interesting," says native Detroiter Bradley, 36, "but also the history of Durham and just looking at the conditions in America that allowed the stars to align in the late '60s and '70s—with the rise of drug use and the civil rights movement, etc.—all kind of coming together to allow this creation of the black super-gangster of the early '70s."
The pair traveled to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Durham, snagging interviews with friends and confidants, fellow black mobsters who did business with Matthews, and law enforcement officials who were (and still are) on the hunt for Matthews. They found that Matthews' legend has turned him into a real-life Keyser Söze, with those who knew Matthews—especially folks from Durham—not wanting to say much. Says Bradley, "You almost get the impression in Durham that people think he's on the outskirts of town, waiting to hear something bad about him and he's gonna come in and do something."
Even law enforcement officials gave cooperative but limited support. "They didn't want to give us too much information, and they certainly didn't want to give us and pictures or anything," says Bradley. "Whereas, you know, I did a documentary on the Detroit Mafia and one of the federal prosecutors gave us a box with, like, a hundred pictures in it and said, 'Do what you want. I don't care.'"
"He's an urban legend," adds Chepesiuk, "and that's one of the reasons why I thought it was important to do this project."
Bradley and Chepesiuk hope that these leery people will see the film (which is also available for sale and digital download at www.frankmatthewsmovie.com) and perhaps contribute to a second, more personal volume of the Matthews story they're planning to do. "We're hoping that once people see what we did with the first documentary," says Chepesiuk, "they'll step forward and be willing to volunteer information and to help us out to do a follow-up documentary, which would be even more comprehensive than the one we just did."
Of course, they also hope that this doc will get a certain someone out of hiding. Jokes Bradley, "Maybe Frank will show up [at Hayti] to defend his honor."
The Frank Matthews Story: The Rise of Disappearance of America's Biggest Kingpin plays Friday at 7 p.m. at the Hayti Heritage Center. Bradley and Chepesiuk will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. Admission is $5. For more details, call 683-1709 or go to www.hayti.org.
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