film

In the Year 2025

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Each December, I assemble a month-by-month retrospective with links to what I consider that year’s greatest hits. Alas, in 2025, we have what my curmudgeonly grandfather Kiki would call “slim pickings.” Most years, I crank out 60 or so posts; however, this year I only produced 40 (and not a one in November). The good news is that the paucity of publishing is a by-product of greater productivity elsewhere. I’ve just finished Too Much Trouble, a sequel to Today, Oh Boy. The new book is essentially “a Southern Gothic romantic Comedy,” and who doesn’t love a “meet cute” during a serial killer’s murderous spree?

Now I’m attempting to land an agent so I can upgrade publishers, a tedious exercise in filling out forms on on-line platforms. Here’s a common request: In one sentence, pitch your novel.

“Oh, y’all, it’s so good, set in 1972, a page turner, literary, with characters you care about, a weird ass combination of pathos and fun, Harry Met Sally meets Night of the Hunter.

Already, even before official publication, David Boatwright is working on a screenplay, and his short film Summerville 1970, inspired by Today, Oh Boy, has recently won a handful of awards on the festival circuit.

So, anyway, grab a beverage, kick back, and gaze into the rearview mirror of 2025 as Jalopy USA races towards the edge of a cliff.

NOTE: WORDS IN BOLD ARE LINKS TO THE POSTS.

January

One of my favorite filmmakers David Lynch died in January, which prompted Caroline and me to take in several of his works, including Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and, of course, Eraserhead.

February

I’m what our narcoleptic president would consider “a lunatic leftwing communistic fascist low IQ individual,” so I revel in doing political hatchet Howitzer jobs on Donny; however, for the sake of my sanity, I’m only including two in this retrospective, and this one is more of a hit job on Nancy Mace than it is an excoriation of 45/7.

Take it away, Nancy!

Governing as a Performative Art.

March

As an astute reader might infer from the above, I’m also not a fan of Lindsey Graham.

After reading the next one, entitled “Failed Poems, Fake Art, and Commerce,” you’ll definitely gonna wanna DM me so you can buy one of these fake paintings before they become unaffordable. By the way, Lowlife Bar now features the very first image in the post on the back of their hoodies. Lowlife’s located on the first block of East Hudson. Go grab you a hoodie before they sell out.

April

I attempted, unsuccessfully it would seem, to transform Today, Oh Boy into a screenplay, and this post explores the differences in the genres from a narrator/filmmaker’s perspective. Click: Novels Vis-a-Vis Screenplays.

May

Here’s what you get when you ask AI about Summerville 70.

“Summerville 70” refers to a recent 15-minute short film, an adaptation of a chapter from Summerville native Wesley Moore III’s novel Today, Oh Boy, depicting life and coming-of-age lessons in Summerville, SC, during the summer of 1970, directed by David Boatwright and produced by Paul Brown, which premiered in late 2025 and has been winning film festival awards.

(AI needs to work on its syntax. You could practically hang yourself with those dangling modifiers.

Anyway, I visited the set and gave Hitchcock a run for his money in fat boy cameo appearances.

June

Oh, yeah, I had a book come out in June. Here’s eloquent Alex Werrell’s introduction of Long Ago Last Summer at its launch at Buxton’s Books, which was, to quote my friend Lee Robinson quoting Alan Shapiro, “the storm before the calm.”

July

What’s real? What’s not? I can’t hardly tell (sic) cause Everything’s Ersatz.

August

Imagine if Flaubert had written the Hardy Boys series.

September

After the premiere of Summerville 70, I wrote this review in which I claim that David Boatwright, like David Lynch, creates “moving paintings.”

October

Caroline and I went to see Elvis Costello and Charlie Sexton.

November

the sound of one and clapping

December

Here’s the first chapter of Too Much Trouble, read in my gorgeous Lowcountry baritone.

Happy Holidays, Happy Solecist, Happy New Year and thanks for reading!

My Take on Summerville 1970, an Adaptation of My Novel Today, Oh Boy

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poster designed by Gil Shuler

Given that my novel Today, Oh Boy inspired David Boatwright’s and Paul Brown’s short film Summerville 1970, I won’t pretend that my critical assessment of their movie possesses the clear-eyed detachment that disinterest fosters.  

On the other hand, the number of authors who hated film adaptations of their work is legion.  For example, Gore Vidal considered the adaptation of his novel Myra Breckenridge “not just a bad movie [but also] an awful joke” and Donn Pearce, the author of the novel Cool Hand Luke, hated its screen adaptation. “They did a lousy job,” he said, “and I disliked it intensely.”  Other unhappy authors include Ken Kesey, Stephen King, and PL Travers.  Like I say, a lot of authors have hated films based on their works. 

Therefore, my admiration of the project was by no means guaranteed.

That said, I loved Summerville 1970.  

photo credit Joan Perry

Shortly after David Lynch’s death, Caroline and I watched a documentary about Lynch’s transition from painting to movie making.  In the documentary, he described a revelation he experienced at film school: it suddenly occurred to him that he could make “moving paintings” rather than merely “moving pictures.”  

In other words, Lynch attempted to render each scene of his movies so visually interesting that each still could be frozen and stand alone as a painting.  

Like Lynch, Boatwright is also a painter, and like Lynch, studied at the American Film Institute in LA. Summerville 1970 is a “painterly film,” rich in color and artistic in layout.

For example, check out this photograph Caroline took of my cameo appearance during the premiere Friday night.

When Caroline showed the shot to me, she said, “It looks like a painting.”  

“Wow, yeah, that looks like it could have been painted by Hopper,” I said.

 “Or [Thomas Hart] Benton,” she replied, which indeed is more accurate.

One of the most vexing problems a short story writer and short film creator faces is having to constrict action within a confined space and time. David does a terrific job of compressing the events of poolroom chapter of the novel into a fluid narrative that doesn’t have one second of down time.  The movie has, as all good stories must, a beginning, a middle, and end. Crisply edited, the plot unfolds efficiently with a disquieting subtle sense of foreboding.  Of course, any work of fiction requires conflict, and in addition to the central physical conflict of rednecks attacking a hippie, we have other conflicts as well: a developing high school crush, the vet’s anguish, and the lost basset hounds’ wandering.[1]

To simplify matters, David took four of my characters – Rusty Boykin and Ollie Wyborn, the co-protagonists, and Jill Birdsong and Sandy Welch, the female leads – and fused them into two characters, i.e., into a single male and a single female.   In the film, the character Rusty is actually more Ollie than Rusty. For example, in Summerville 1970, Rusty, like Ollie, hails from Minnesota and knows karate.  On the other hand, like the Rusty of the novel, cinematic Rusty has embraced the counterculture of the late ’60s and early ’70s.  In the novel, Ollie is a conformist who wants to attend the Air Force Academy. Because the film is limited to fifteen minutes, these changes make a lot of sense. 

The Jill Birdsong character of the movie closely resembles Jill of the novel, only she’s less straightlaced and less shy, though the character does maintain a quiet shyness, nevertheless.

Olivia Brooks, the actress who portrays her, is superb, as is Thomas Williams, who plays Rusty.

Not only do the main characters shine, but the minor characters do as well. Patrick Basquill’s Bobby Ray Bossheen exudes mindless menace, and his two redneck cohorts, the twin brothers Andre and Remy Levesque, come off as authentically belligerent, not-too-bright country boys. In addition, David Mandell is a stabilizing force as the compassionate bartender who attempts to maintain peace. Jill’s wisecracking friend Nanci played by Sara Rudeseal is spot-on as well. 

My favorite character of all is David Boatwright’s invention, a Viet Nam vet who tells a horrific war story to the bartender and later breaks up the fight outside the tackle shop. The actor, Logan Marshall Green, makes the vet’s PTSD seem all too real as he draws heavily on his cigarette with shaking hands, knocking back whiskey after whiskey as he shares his horrible memory of a situation that brings to mind My Lai.

In addition, the costumes, sound, and editing are all superb.  It’s truly a pleasure to watch, and I hope you get a chance to see it.

BTW, here’s a LINK to a review of Today, Oh Boy that provides a link to its Amazon and Barnes and Noble pages. .  Rumor has it that it might be screened again at the Terrace for the general public.  Fingers crossed. 

[1] I got the idea of writing Today, Oh Boy after listening an audio book of Joyce’s Ulysses.  The basset’s actual name is Hambone Odysseus Macy, but the kids who find him on the side of the road dub him Mr. Peabody.  He is the Ulysses character in the novel who wanders all over Summerville to finally making his way home safely to his family.

Yesterday, Oh Boy

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Yesterday, Oh Boy

When my friend David Boatwright, who produced the cover of Today, Oh Boy, approached me about adapting the poolroom chapter from the novel into a fifteen-minute film, I jumped at the chance.  David whipped out a script, which I approved, then later made some significant changes. 

Near the end of the novel, which is set in 1970, Rusty Boykin, an ADD-riddled hippie-wanna-be from Summerville, South Carolina, and Ollie Wyborn, a straightlaced, straight-A transplant from St. Paul, Minnesota, join forces in thwarting an attack from a pair of rednecks whose favorite pastime is, to use the Lowcountry lingo of the day, “cutting ass,” i.e., beating up people they don’t cotton to.  

David’s major change in the second draft of the script was fusing Rusty and Ollie into one character, which I again approved, given I had complete confidence in his intelligence and talent, and because as a practical matter, there’s virtually no room for character development in a fifteen-minute movie.  Another significant change, which added gravitas to the film, David created a new character, a Viet Nam vet who relates a harrowing account of wartime mayhem to the bartender, played my former student, David Mandell. 

So anyway, David Boatwright and his producer Paul Brown raised the needed money and assembled a crew of costume designers, cinematographers, assistant directors, sound people, make-up artists, art directors, property managers, actors, a stunt coordinator, a basset hound, etc. and shot the film in four days. 

The exterior shots, which included fisticuffs and car chase, were filmed on bucolic Wadmalaw Island and the interior shots at the defunct West Ashley restaurant Bearcat, which has been transformed into a ’70s era bait and tackle shop/bar complete with pinball machines and a functioning jukebox on loan from my friend Thom Piragnoli.

I asked David if I could have a cameo, and he said, of course, so yesterday I spent twelve amazing hours on the set being part of an incredibly complicated matrix of moving parts. 

When I arrived at seven, an actor was seated having his hair tended to. One of the make-up women said she would do my hair next, and I explained, “But I have no hair,” removing my hat, and she said, “Great!,” meaning, I take it, less work for her.  After I introduced myself, another woman said, “Oh, these young actors can’t wait to meet you. They’re walking around with the book.” 

Indeed, they were incredibly appreciative. Each one sincerely thanked me for writing the novel.  Two actors, twins brothers playing rednecks, asked me why their characters were so angry. When the actor Logan, who played the Viet Nam vet, thanked me for, in his words, “creating all of this,” I told him that, in fact, David had created his character and dialogue. He said yes, but I had created the world around him. To my mind, his performance and speech are the climax of the film. 

I abstractly knew that it would be cool to see characters I had created “come to life,” but had underestimated how gratifying it ended up being.  It was especially moving to see Jill Birdsong, modeled on the high school version of my late wife Judy Birdsong, performing her role, and I especially enjoyed the actor Patrick Basquill, who brought the bully Bobbey Ray Bosheen to life. The creepiness he brought to the role reminded me of William Dafoe’s portrayal of Bobby Peru in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart.

Also, it was really weird to hear the name “Rusty,” my childhood nickname, called out throughout the day. Sometimes, I thought they were referring to me. And Thomas, the actor who plays Rusty, looks a lot like I did in high school, except he has blue eyes, high cheek bones, brown hair, and isn’t riddled with freckles and acne. 

In other words, he’s skinny.

from left to right, Thomas Beck, Rusty Moore, and “Rusty Boykin”

It was such a wonderful day, the best ever in my life as a writer, and I can’t wait to see the finished product, entitled Summerville 1970, which will make the festival circuit and premiere sometime in the fall at the Terrace Theater on James Island.

Before I end this way too egotistical account, I want to acknowledge my wife Caroline Tigner Moore, without whom the manuscript of Today, Oh Boy would have been found in a drawer after my demise, rather than becoming a published novel. 

Caroline has encouraged me throughout but also has bravely said, “Un-uh, that doesn’t work, why don’t you do this instead.” She’s tactfully guided me through the interviews and the whole befuddling process of my post-teaching career, including offering encouragement in my avocation of creating “fake paintings.” 

After my beloved Judy Birdsong died, I imagined the lonely life of a wounded epicurean, but Caroline has enriched my life in ways I could not have imagined, especially in establishing a loving family that includes my wunderkind stepdaughter Brooks, who is as kind as she is brilliant, and a trio of pets, KitKat, the demi-mutt, and our blue-eyed ragdoll cats, Juno and Jasmine.

Love to them and to you!

PS. Here’s a link to the Kirkus review of Today, Oh Boy that includes an interview and links to purchase it via Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or better yet, get it from your local independent book store, which in Charleston is Buxton Books.

Eraserhead Revisited

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From Painter to Filmmaker

The death of the brilliant film director David Lynch has spurred my wife Caroline and me to revisit his oeuvre.[1]

We started with the Jon Nguyen’s 2016 Lynch documentary The Art of Life, the culmination of four-year’s worth of conversations, twenty in all, recorded at Lynch’s home in LA. I had not been aware that Lynch was a painter, a highly skilled and prolific one at that. 

Throughout the documentary, we listen to Lynch narrate his life story while watching him in the act of creating paintings and sculptures. Interspersed are 8mm home movies of him and his family from the ’50s and ’60s. If you love Lynch, you’ll love this film, enjoy its leisurely pace and artful presentation.

What struck me most was Lynch’s revelation that “moving pictures” could be “moving paintings.”

So post epiphany off Lynch went to the American Film Institute where he resided in stables owned by the institute, and there he made his first feature film Eraserhead, transforming the narrow halls and small rooms of the stables into movie sets. 

By the way, I first saw Eraserhead in 1989 as a refugee from Hurricane Hugo, a dozen years after its original release, the again in the mid-’90s, and for the third time last night with Caroline.[2]

Dr. Caligari’s Great-Great Grandchild

In the fall of 1973 or 4, at the University of South Carolina, I had the great fortune to enroll in a multi-departmental course on German Expressionism, the prominent artistic movement of the Wiemer Republic. This class really broadened my intellectual horizons. We read Hesse, Kafka, and Bertolt Brecht; analyzed the paintings of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Emil Nolde; listened to the music of Schoenberg and Alban Berg; and watched each week in the student union’s theater an expressionistic Wiemer film. We began with the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and ended with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Murnau’s original Nosferatu was also among the films we saw and analyzed. It was, by far, the most interesting and rewarding course I’ve ever taken. 

Obviously, Caligari heavily influenced Eraserhead in its set designs, dark themes, and murky black-and-white lighting. Also, Eraserhead is essentially a silent movie with only four minutes of dialogue in its 89-minute running time. The protagonist Henry, played by Jack Nance, waddles Chaplin-like throughout the film in what amounts to a Kafka nightmare. Though Eraserhead’s billed as a surrealistic horror movie, both Caroline and I found it to be hilariously funny. I can’t remember the last time I saw a film that produced so many out-loud laughs.

On the other hand, one significant way in which Eraserhead doesn’t resemble a silent movie is in its soundtrack. Unlike a silent movie whose soundtrack is more or less pasted on afterward, the soundtrack of Eraserhead consists of irritating sounds arising from the action, sounds like rain hissing, a radiator hissing, the mewling and crying of that abomination of a baby whose arrival marks the turning point of the plot. Caroline aptly described these background noises as “a plaid of sounds,” which provides a sort of underlying mechanical, menacing buzzing. 

Caroline also suggested that the central theme lay in Lynch’s hatred of fatherhood, though I saw it more as a strangely puritanical parable about the dangers of premarital sex. Ends up Caroline was correct. Lynch’s daughter Jennifer was born with severally clubbed feet and had to undergo several corrective surgeries as an infant, and she considers her birth defects as the major inspiration for the infant of the film.

At any rate, we had a fun night and look forward to checking out Lynch’s next film The Elephant Man, which, although more mainstream, shares with Eraserhead a very malformed human being at the center of the action.

[1] Why do I feel guilty using “oeuvre” when EB White would applaud its economical aptness? Perhaps because American anti-intellectualism lurks in the shadowy shotgun shack of my subconscious mocking me like the bully it is? 

[2] Caroline, who minored in art history and has a master’s in psychoanalytical criticism, is the perfect companion and provides a wealth of cogent observations that would have escaped me otherwise.

James Brown Silent at the Apollo

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The other night Caroline and I stumbled across the 1928 silent film Our Dancing Daughters on TCM and watched the whole damn thing. As the hepped up actors herky-jerkyed across the screen, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t mind living within the confines of a silent movie. For one thing, I’m practically deaf, so how convenient it would be to have utterances appear in writing, floating in the air long enough for even the slowest of readers to decipher. 

Also, facial cues are a breeze to pick up on in a silent flick. In my adulthood, on more than one occasion, I’ve had a highschool friend tell me that she had a crush on me back in the day. Well, in a silent movie, picking up on flirting is less of a problem.

On the other hand, music in silent films is generally melodramatic, a solo piano tinkling or a muted orchestra holding forth. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, the hardest working man in showbiz, would be wasted in a silent movie, though his amped-up dancing might give Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin a run for his money.

The Godfather came up in conversation last night at the Blind Tiger Porter-Gaud alumni party. I was chatting with former student Jamie Ewing, reminiscing about driving his cousin Willy Hutcheson to school in the 90s with the late Erin Burton and my two sons. On our trip from the IOP and Sullivan’s Island, we listened to various CDs Monday thru Thursday, but Friday mornings were dedicated to JB.

I told Jamie that I saw the Godfather live in ’75 at the Carolina Coliseum, one of the few white folks to attend that extravaganza. Then Jamie floored me with this revelation: he waited in line at the Apollo Theater in Harlem[1] to see James Brown lying in state, one of the hundreds to file past the coffin.

I mean, one of the greatest albums of all time is Brown’s 1963 Live at the Apollo, and Jamie can boast that he saw James Brown dead at the Apollo.

Bravo, Jamie, and RIP Barnwell, South Carolina’s, most famous citizen, the hitmaker who gave us “Pass the Peas,” “Gimme Some More,” “It’s a Man’s World,” “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” . . . 

[1] I know “in Harlem” is redundant, but ain’t everybody as hip as you and me.