What does your hometown mean to you? Do you find things in your community that you find in yourself? I myself was born in Memphis, TN, but I don’t get to spend much time there when I’m not going to school. It’s heartbreaking, in a way, to be so disconnected from it – 40 miles to drive from my home out in the middle of nowhere. However, I recently had the good fortune to watch two films from a local Memphis filmmaker, Mike McCarthy. He wasn’t born in Memphis; he was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. My parents and their families are from Mississippi as well, though I have few distant relatives who actually live in Tupelo. However, Tupelo runs in McCarthy’s blood. His first major film Teenage Tupelo – a rough and tumble comedy/drama – centers on the idea that he was born as an illegitimate child of Elvis Presley. McCarthy calls Elvis, “the king of American pop culture”. His latest two films, Tupelove and Native Son celebrate Elvis and his birthplace, Tupelo, Mississippi.
Tupelove is a short film about a young businessman named Norton (Corey Parker) stuck in a small town in Mississippi outside of Tupelo. This “man in a hurry” meets a mysterious woman named Vee (Amy LaVere) who takes him on a tour of Elvis’ hometown from his birthplace to the local fairgrounds where he played his ’56 concert. She seems a bit out-of-time: drinking vintage Pepsi, reading old issues of Captain Marvel (Elvis’ favorite superhero), and inexplicably changing into fashionable ‘50s-style dresses. Eventually, Norton realizes she was simply a ghost, but has learned never to underestimate a town without learning its valuable history. This 15-minute short film was made by McCarthy as a tourism video for Tupelo. It’s a great, well-written look at the place where Elvis grew up. The two actors in the film are fun to watch, especially the very lovely Miss LaVere who is just stunning to begin with.
Native Son is a documentary that picks up where Tupelove leaves off. The short film ends with Vee and Norton imagining feeling Elvis’ fingers as he stood on stage during the ’56 concert at the fairgrounds. McCarthy felt that such an important event in Tupelo’s history had not been properly represented. That famous photograph featuring Elvis reaching out to the screaming girls in front of the stage means a lot to McCarthy: he found out his biological mother was one of those girls. He initially believed she was the one who literally touched Elvis’ fingers. He later learned this was not the case, that she was back-a-ways from the stage. McCarthy successfully convinced the town to fund construction for a statue of Elvis posing as he did in the famous photograph. The documentary shows the impressive creation of the statue by Bill Beckwith, who uses only photographs to sculpt with from scratch (without the use of computers). Beckwith talks about how his artist influences shaped him just as he shapes clay. The statue was completed and installed just a few weeks ago. It’s amazing to find out how much a photograph can inspire in people: a film, a statue and a family coming together.
I first met Mike McCarthy at a screening of The Tree of Life with my good friend, Hunter Duesing (who has recently moved back home to Texas, where I wish him the best). In the time since, I’ve noticed he has a great sense of humor, an unique way of telling a story and an immense collection of comic books that confounds and depresses me. Yet the screening I saw of Tupelove and Native Son also showed me a side I didn’t realize before: a man searching for his past in the town where the King of Rock ‘n Roll was born. That, in itself, is a story worth telling and I can’t but feel privileged to have seen it.
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