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"The Honeydripper," a John Sayles film

A Review by Allan Maurer

copyright by Allan Maurer, 2007

Photos (except for still from the Honeydripper) copyright by Rene Wright, 2007

An obnoxious drunk is the only actual customer in Tyrone "Pinetop" Purvis' (Danny Glover) juke joint, The Honeydripper. An aging jazz blues Queen sings to a bar where her husband is the only appreciative listener. Owner and jazz pianist, Tyrone Purvis wants to hold on to his acoustic jazz shows, but the rent is due and the place is empty.

Director John Sayles, who's penned such genre classics as "The Howling," and financed this film with proceeds from his Hollywood scriptwriting and script doctoring, understands plot. Things get worse for "Pinetop" Purvis and his Honeydripper bar.

Birth of Rock and Roll

Set in a small Alabama town in the 1950s as the blues was about to birth rock and roll, "The Honeydripper," examines that seminal cultural event in microcosm. Sayles has said his interest in the beginnings of things and in the 1950s inspired the film, which he and his producer and longtime companion, Maggie Renzi made for $5 million and shot in five weeks. You'd never know that from the rich look of this film, which Sayles shot in 35mm and with resourcefulness equal to his heroes' in The Honeydripper.

Pinetop's troubles deepen quickly. The Honeydripper landlord sends a thug around to make sure he knows that if he doesn't come up with the rent in days, he's through. The electricity in the place goes in and out. Tyrone is broke. He shows the resourcefullness we want from our heroes, conning a liquor delivery man (Sayles, doing an impeccable Southern accent) into letting him have a truck load of booze meant for a rival's establishment. If the rival finds out, says Mateo, his friend and the Honeydripper's only real employee, (Charles Dutton, who is perfect), Purvis will be in even deeper trouble.

Things Get Worse

Still, things get worse. The musician he hopes will save the place, famous New Orlean's musician Guitar Sam, who plays eletricfied blues--a big move for the piano and acoustic Honeydripper--never shows up on the train.

The local sheriff (Stacy Keach) wants a part of the place. Tyrone's wife is going through a spiritual challenge, attending evangelical tent meetings. His step-daughter, China Doll (Yaa DaCosta), has the eyes of all the town's young men, and Tyrone worries about her.

As in many of Sayles films, multiple stories unfold simultaneously. After the film, which we saw at the University of Virginia film festival in advance of its general release, Sayles noted Honeydripper only has a few threads running at the same time compared to some of his other films.

Mary Steenburgen appears in what is more than a cameo, but not by much, in a scene with Tyrone's wife, Delilah (Lisa Gay Hamilton). Steenburgen's Southern matron wants to imagine that she and Delilah are friends, not servant and employer, yet she does not know Delilah's daughter is now grown up and offers toddler clothes to her mother. The film offers several self-contained set-pieces that enrich the narrative.

Sayles said after the film that he gives each actor a substantial biography of the character to be portrayed, which takes the place of rehersals, which he seldom has time for on his budget.

While "The Honeydipper" focuses on close groups, Tyrone's family and friends, including the young wandering bluesman he feeds and frees from picking cotton, and their varing subplots, it retains a dramatic force centered on Pinetop Purvis and his troubles that keeps the pace heady.

Beginnings of things

The film touches on the origin not only of rock and roll, which in the beginning and often still is just electrified blues, but also of blues itself, via the primative homemade instruments many of the early blues players learned on. They included a wire nailed to a porch post and played with a piece of metal (such as a penknife) acting as a sliding fret. Many blues slide guitarists started out playing just such an instrument, called a Diggerydoo.

Two youngsters who want to play the blues are featured beginning to end as part of the small town community, one running his fingers over a soundless homemade piano keyboard, the other trying variations of a diggerydoo. They are part of the community Sayles' portrays.

The homemade electric guitar that Sonny (Gary Clark, Jr.) carrries evolved directly from that wire nailed to a post, just as rock evolved from electric blues. Sayles' interest in "the beginnings" of things is evident.

With the help of Mateo, China Doll, Sonny, and even the Sheriff, Tyrone manages to prepare a money-making weekend using the traveling guitar player, Sonny, as a substitute for Guitar Sam.

Meanwhile, Purvis has to deal with his wife, Delilah, who is flirting with Jesus instead of paying the kind of attention she normally does to "The Honeydripper." That creates yet another problem, because the Sheriff's deal with him includes coming by for her fried chicken whenever he likes.

A musical climax

All of this takes place back in the days before everyone knew what their musical heroes looked like, so it was not uncommon for juke joint and bar owners to pass off musicians as someone famous to draw a crowd.

The plot of musically driven stories are well known to us all, just as much as westerns, crime dramas or comedies. We know there is a muscial climax coming. The plots of origin stories, the beginnings of things, also follow well known patterns. While these basic structures make the film a bit predictable, they are not without their own satisfactions, which is the secret of their persistence through time.

The whole film has a mythic feel to it, something like the origin stories of comic book superheroes. Keb Mo plays a blind street musician who makes knowing, cryptic comments, suggesting both the blind soothsayers of myth and the very real blind bluesmen common in the South for the first half of the 20th century.

We get a sense of rightness from these stories and the mythic, iconic, archetypal figures we enjoy and find meaningful no matter how many times we encounter them. Part of it is just genre convention, and that too sets up our expectations and provides satisfaction when they're fulfilled. But, Sayles', as usual, does have a few surprises up his sleeve.

A conflict between Sean Patrick Thomas' character and a cottonfield hand builds throughout the movie, coming to a climatic moment as Sonny rips into electric rock, packing the Honeydripper with dancers. But it ends differently than you might expect.

I wanted to mention that the performances in "The Honeydripper," are without exception on the mark, although the speed of filming created a few stagy moments.

One of the notable aspects of Sayles' films right from the start is that they bear re-watching. They're very much vivid films with effective imagery, but they also have a literary quality that gives them layers conventional Hollywood fare tends to lack. Another aspect that I don't see mentioned as often as it perhaps should be is that Sayles writes satire that doesn't need one-liners to be funny. Then, again, he writes some decent one-liners, too, although you need the contex of his films to get the jokes, generally.

I've seen "Return of the Secaucus Seven" and "Brother From Another Planet," "Lone Star," "Nine Men Out," Lianna," to name my favorites, among others, numerous times and with often growing pleasure. I'm looking foward to seeing "The Honeydripper" again when it hits general release and owning it on DVD eventually.

Photos: Column one: Sayles discussing "The Honeydripper" following its showing at the 2007 Virginia Film Festival. Column two: top: still from "The Honeydripper" showing Danny Glover as "Pinetop" Purvis with his wife Delilah (Lisa Gay Hamilton); Glover as Pinetop Purvis; Sean Patrick Thomas at the Virginia Film Festival.

We'll be adding a larger piece about Sayles and his films soon. Look for it soon in our upcoming Home Filmfests department. We'll link to it here.

For more about Sayles and The Honeydripper see:

LINKS

http://honeydripper-movie.com

(includes Honeydripper film trailer and Sayles/Renzi's blog, much more).

http://johnsayles.com/

From The Reeler:

http://www.thereeler.com/features/a_sayles_job.php