Tagged: The South
Sinners: Michael B. Jordan’s Suits as the Smokestack Twins
Michael B. Jordan as Elias and Elijah Moore in Sinners (2025)
Vitals
Michael B. Jordan as the Smokestack Twins: Elias “Stack” Moore and Elijah “Smoke” Moore
Clarksdale, Mississippi, October 1932
Film: Sinners
Release Date: April 18, 2025
Director: Ryan Coogler
Costume Designer: Ruth E. Carter
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Sinners has been one of the biggest movies of 2025, with the highest opening weekend box office for an original film since Nope in 2022. Produced, written, and directed by Ryan Coogler, Sinners is set 93 years ago tonight from October 15 to 16, 1932 as the snappily dressed twin Moore brothers—recently returned from Chicago, where they were gunmen for the mob—have returned to their Mississippi Delta hometown to open a juke joint.
Smoke: Chicago ain’t shit but Mississippi with tall buildings instead of plantations.
Stack: And that’s why we came back home. Figure we might as well deal with the devil we know.
The Loveless: Willem Dafoe as Leather-clad Biker Vance
Willem Dafoe in The Loveless (1981)
Vitals
Willem Dafoe as Vance, lone biker and ex-convict
Rural Georgia, Summer 1959
Film: The Loveless
Release Date: August 7, 1981
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow & Monty Montgomery
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy 70th birthday to Willem Dafoe, the versatile actor born July 22, 1955, in Appleton, Wisconsin—not far from Sheboygan, where I just spent the weekend!
After an uncredited part cut from Michael Cimino’s ambitious 1980 Western epic Heaven’s Gate, Dafoe made his credited screen debut as the lead in The Loveless, which also marked the directorial debut of Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery, who co-wrote the screenplay.
Dafoe stars as Vance, a brooding biker who describes himself as “what you’d call… ragged,” joining up with his small gang at a truck stop off U.S. Highway 17 in Georgia, en route to Daytona to catch the NASCAR races. The year’s never stated, but context clues—like the cars, music, and 10¢ Cokes—suggest the summer of 1959, the same year Lee Petty won the first Daytona 500.
As in the film’s spiritual predecessor The Wild One (1953), the gang sparks mixed reactions from the townspeople: suspicion and fear from the older generation, curiosity and desire from the younger. As the sun sets and the tension rises, both visitors and locals grow increasingly drunk… and increasingly armed. Continue reading
Ben Johnson’s Cream Suit in The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Ben Johnson in The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)
Vitals
Ben Johnson as J.D. Morales, Texas Rangers company captain
Texarkana, Arkansas, Spring 1946
Film: The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Release Date: December 24, 1976
Director: Charles B. Pierce
Wardrobe Credit: Karen Jones & Bonnie Langriff
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Born 107 years ago on June 13, 1918, Ben Johnson was an Academy Award-winning actor and—like his father, Ben Sr.—a bona fide cowboy and rodeo champion.
Johnson’s screen career appropriately began as a stuntman in Howard Hughes’ controversial 1943 film The Outlaw, establishing the start of a half-century career that began with Westerns like 3 Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Shane (1953), Hang ‘Em High (1968), and The Wild Bunch (1969). After a more dramatic performance in The Last Picture Show (1971) resulted in Johnson’s sole Oscar win, the middle-aged actor diversified his filmography with major roles in non-Westerns like The Getaway (1972), Dillinger (1973), Red Dawn (1984), and Angels in the Outfield (1994).
Since today’s commemoration of Johnson’s birthday also falls on Friday the 13th, it feels appropriate to focus on one of the actor’s first of few forays into horror. The Town That Dreaded Sundown was loosely based on the real-life Texarkana Moonlight Murders when a still-unknown “Phantom Killer” attacked eight people—killing five—through the spring of 1946. Filmed on location in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas through the hot summer of 1976, The Town That Dreaded Sundown erroneously centered most of the action around Texarkana, Arkansas, which initially resulted in the city threatening director Charles B. Pierce… but has since become an annual Halloween tradition during Texarkana’s “Movies in the Park” series.
Johnson’s cowboy background and persona suited his performance as Captain J.D. Morales, based on the case’s actual lead investigator: Manuel T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas. Continue reading
Cape Fear (1991): Robert De Niro’s Red Aloha Shirt as Max Cady
Robert De Niro as Max Cady in Cape Fear (1991)
Vitals
Robert De Niro as Max Cady, psychopathic parolee
New Essex, North Carolina, Summer 1991
Film: Cape Fear
Release Date: November 15, 1991
Director: Martin Scorsese
Costume Designer: Rita Ryack
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
In the spirit of Aloha Friday as we get closer to summer, let’s revisit Robert De Niro’s unhinged turn as Max Cady in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 reimagining of Cape Fear. Continue reading
Moonrunners: Kiel Martin’s Fringed Buckskin Jacket and Blue Jeans
Kiel Martin in Moonrunners (1975)
Vitals
Kiel Martin as Bobby Lee Hagg, daredevil moonshine driver and part-time guitar picker
Georgia, Fall 1973
Film: Moonrunners
Release Date: May 14, 1975
Director: Gy Waldron
Costume Designer: Patty Shaw
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Two rambunctious and fast-driving cousins speed through a fictional county in the deep south, running moonshine for their uncle Jesse while evading local sheriff Roscoe Coltrane and his connections to a corrupt local crime boss who drives a white Cadillac—all set to the music and homespun voiceover of outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings. And no, I’m not talking about The Dukes of Hazzard.
Four years before the Dukes debuted on CBS, Gy Waldron’s B-movie Moonrunners premiered in drive-in theaters across the South fifty years ago tomorrow on May 14, 1975.
Moonrunners could have been lost in the traffic jam of cheap ’70s hick flicks about moonshine and muscle cars until it was plucked from potential obscurity by Warner Brothers’ perplexing—but indeed prophetic—suggestion that it could form the basis for a successful TV show. Now best known as the rawer progenitor to The Dukes of Hazzard, Moonrunners has essentially all the same elements and characters but distilled into a dirtier, hornier jar of shine—seasoned with the visceral authenticity that comes from filming on location in rural Georgia and not a WB backlot. Continue reading
Justifed: Raylan’s Pilot Episode Charcoal Pinstripe Suit Jacket and Jeans
Timothy Olyphant as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens in the pilot episode (“Fire in the Hole”) of Justified.
(Photo by: Prashant Gupta, FX)
Vitals
Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, proudly old-fashioned Deputy U.S. Marshal
Miami to Kentucky, March 2010
Series: Justified
Episode: “Fire in the Hole” (Episode 1.01)
Air Date: March 16, 2010
Director: Michael Dinner
Creator: Graham Yost
Costume Designer: Ane Crabtree
Background
Inspired by a selection of Elmore Leonard stories like “Fire in the Hole”, Justified premiered 15 years ago this week on March 16, 2010.
The series began with a literal bang as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) demonstrated his quick trigger finger by outdrawing a “gun thug” in his assigned territory of Miami. Though he frequently insists “it was justified,” Raylan is ordered by his superiors to leave Miami, reassigned to the Lexington field office in his home turf of eastern Kentucky where he used to dig coal with now-criminal Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins).
“We weren’t what you call buddies, but you work a deep mine with a man, you look out for each other,” Raylan reflects of his and Boyd’s initial acquaintanceship. Continue reading
Blue Velvet: Kyle MacLachlan’s Black Jacket
Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet (1986)
Vitals
Kyle MacLachlan as Jeffrey Beaumont, inquisitive college student
Lumberton, North Carolina, Spring 1985
Film: Blue Velvet
Release Date: September 19, 1986
Director: David Lynch
Costumer: Ronald Leamon
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Today marks the 66th birthday of Kyle MacLachlan, star of the late David Lynch’s neo-noir thriller Blue Velvet. Lynch and “Kale” had first collaborated two years earlier for the director’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, which was met with poor reception. Undeterred, Lynch shifted direction with Blue Velvet, a more personal project that delved into his now-familiar themes of surrealism and the dark, oft-criminal underbelly of Americana.
MacLachlan stars as Jeffrey Beaumont, a college student who returns to his hometown of Lumberton, North Carolina to help his family following his father’s heart attack. Taking a secluded shortcut to his parents’ home after a hospital visit, Jeffrey discovers a severed ear in a vacant field… launching him into a dangerous conspiracy involving a sultry lounge singer and a sadistic gangster. Continue reading
Selma: David Oyelowo’s Navy Suit as Martin Luther King Jr.
David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma (2014)
Vitals
David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr., iconic civil rights activist
Alabama, January to March 1965
Film: Selma
Release Date: December 25, 2014
Director: Ava DuVernay
Costume Designer: Ruth E. Carter
Background
Since 1986, Martin Luther King Jr. Day has been observed on the third Monday of each January since President Ronald Reagan signed Rep. Katie Hall’s proposed bill into law. Though King was actually born on January 15, 1929, “MLK Day” follows the pattern of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act that designates several American federal holidays to be permanently observed at the start of the workweek, like Presidents Day and Memorial Day.
Nominated for Best Picture at the 87th Academy Awards, Ava DuVernay’s 2014 drama Selma chronicles the events leading up to the famous Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, organized by nonviolent activists to protest the widespread denial of Black Americans exercising their constitutional voting rights. Continue reading
Silkwood: Kurt Russell’s A-2 Deck Jacket
Kurt Russell in Silkwood (1983)
Vitals
Kurt Russell as Drew Stephens, mechanic and former nuclear plant technician
Oklahoma, Fall 1974
Film: Silkwood
Release Date: December 14, 1983
Director: Mike Nichols
Costume Designer: Ann Roth
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Fifty years ago tonight, chemical technician and labor activist Karen Silkwood died in a mysterious car accident near Crescent, Oklahoma. Silkwood had recently testified to the Atomic Energy Commission about safety concerns at the Kerr-McGee Corporation plant where she worked and was subsequently found to be contaminated with plutonium.
On the evening of November 13, 1974, the 28-year-old Silkwood was en route to meet a journalist from the New York Times and her national union representative when her white 1973 Honda Civic crashed into the wall of a concrete culvert off Highway 74, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. Contemporary findings strongly suggested foul play, though it was more likely that her pursuer’s intent was to intimidate Silkwood rather than to kill her.
The tumultuous last year of Karen Silkwood’s life was depicted in Mike Nichols’ 1983 drama Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep as the titular technician, Cher as her co-worker and roommate, and Kurt Russell as her boyfriend and fellow Kerr-McGee colleague Drew Stephens. Continue reading
The Last American Hero: Jeff Bridges in Denim
Jeff Bridges in The Last American Hero (1973)
Vitals
Jeff Bridges as Elroy “Junior” Jackson, Jr., moonshine runner and aspiring race car driver
Gaston County, North Carolina, Fall 1972
Film: The Last American Hero
Release Date: July 27, 1973
Director: Lamont Johnson
Wardrobe Credit: Alan Levine
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Amid the playoffs ahead of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Race at Martinsville a week from today on November 3, today’s post celebrates one of the more underdiscussed “mooonshine movies” that also draws on the link between Appalachain bootleggers and stock car racing.
Photographed by cinematographer George Silano against an authentic North Carolina autumn in late 1972, The Last American Hero was adapted from Tom Wolfe’s Esquire essay about moonshiner-turned-NASCAR star Robert “Junior” Johnson, represented on screen by Jeff Bridges (in one of his first starring roles) as Elroy “Junior” Jackson, Jr., who speeds through the mountains of North Carolina in his ’67 Mustang to run moonshine for his father Elroy (Art Lund) and brother Wayne (Gary Busey). Continue reading