A few years back, writer-director Craig Brewer was struggling with panic attacks. Trying to get a first movie made can do that to a guy. The attacks became enough of a visitor in his life that he and wife Jodi named them. In deference to bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson, they christened that sinking feeling “Black Snake Moan.”
“Jefferson was always singing about snakes and scorpions and bugs that he can’t see in his room,” Brewer said recently. “But he can hear them and they’re gonna come and get him. I look at the song as an oddly spiritual thing that really called out a basic primal fear in myself.”
He paused. “I’m not lost that there’s a basic sexual innuendo that many people will hear.”
The maker of 2005’s much-praised “Hustle & Flow” – the cause of that deep moaning – relates the moment when he told one of his producers, director John Singleton (“Boyz n the Hood”) the title of his sophomore film.
Since he began his anecdote with the caveat, “I don’t know if you can print this,” you know we can’t. So let’s just say Singleton remarked tartly on the anatomically suggestive quality of the title. But then, the Delta blues tradition finds all manner of metaphors in the earthy life.
“Black Snake Moan” is the story of Lazarus and Rae.
Laz, played with power and grace by Samuel L. Jackson (the actor, not the parody of himself) is a one-time bluesman who now tends to his butter beans, tomatoes and other modest crops. His wife has left him for another man, and Lazarus is full of righteous ache and fury.
Christina Ricci’s character, Rae, is a defiant one. Brewer created a poster for certain teen boys when he captured Rae walking down a Tennessee dirt road in a pair of daisy dukes and a T-shirt emblazoned with a gun, and the U.S. and Confederate flags. A tractor driver honks behind her as she salutes him with her middle finger.
Like “Hustle & Flow,” this tale takes seriously – maybe even deliriously – the emotions of its common-folk characters.
“I have a tremendous love for these characters,” said Brewer, who was born in Virginia and traveled with his parents across the country before returning to their hometown of Memphis 15 years ago.
The characters are finely drawn and deeply felt.
Lazarus doesn’t go to church, but he talks to his friend R.L, a pastor. He also spouts the gospel and even feels a call to intervene. A crude, weak man may have shoved Rae onto the road near Lazarus’ farm, but God put her in his path for a reason. Once Lazarus learns that his damsel was in more carnal distress than he imagined, he chains her to a radiator to get her right.
Brewer knows he’s created a film that will have him dodging critical buckshot. In the history of this country and its myth-burdened South, there aren’t two more potent figures to put together than a black man and a white woman.
“He’s so tall and so old and so black. And she’s so small and so young and so white. I think audiences seeing that combo in that house are on edge because they think something bad is going to happen as a result of this, or possibly something sexual,” Brewer said of his touching but volatile pair.
“I’ve read certain people who immediately go to the obvious on this film and ask, ‘Is it misogynist? Is it racist?”‘ he said. “I know I’m going to be called shallow many times in my career, but I’ve gotta say if anyone comes to the end of this movie and truly believes I have a hatred toward women; well, it’s not true.”
“Hustle & Flow,” the aspirational tale of a pimp who wants to rap, had its detractors, too. A prominent critic called the film “rubbish” when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005. “Black Snake Moan” is a bolder, riskier – sure to be a more maddening adventure.
So how does a director bent on making films that might be labeled neo-Southern Gothic ready himself? It’s no surprise Brewer finds an answer – and a story – in the blues.
“Big Jack Johnson was teaching Sam Jackson the guitar,” he said. “And he told Sam, ‘If you hit a wrong note, just play it. There are no wrong notes in the blues.’
“Maybe I make movies about wrong notes. Maybe you hear it and you think, ‘I don’t like that.”‘
But you keep going, Brewer said.
“The bottom beat kicks in and the music turns out melodic than you thought.”
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com; try the Screen Team blog at denverpostbloghouse.com.
