dear southern arts foundation,

i'm on a plane headed back to LA...can you please find a way to extend my tour immediately? perhaps through some sort of ponzi scheme or black market organ sales? or a combination of both? i don't want it to end!!

after jackson, MS, the home stretch of my tour took me to clemson university in clemson, SC. i met up with aga, the screening's organizer, and jeff, her fiance, and they took me out for tasty, tasty bbq ribs... oh how i will miss you, Southern Cuisine...

the screening that night was one of the best attended on the whole tour, which was impressive since we were apparently competing with some sort of christian revival just upstairs. almost the entire crowd stuck around for the q&a and asked some interesting questions. clemson university: takin' it over in the '09!

aga and jeff thanked me and suggested they might even try to have me back at clemson for future events, which i told them i'd do in a heartbeat. they turned in for the night but turned me over to aga's colleague, johnathan, and jessica, one of her students, and they took me to a local bar, where we met up with a handful of other people who had been at the screening. we talked about johnathan's involvement in the late-'80s boston punk scene and jessica's filmmaking aspirations and one of the other student's troubles with the police and around midnight johnathan gave me a ride back to my hotel. the next morning i headed to western carolina university in cullowhee, NC, stopping for lunch along the way.

dear waffle house,

look...we've had some good times...but this is just not a healthy relationship. when we don't see each other for a while, we get excited and we have a lot of fun together, but it always quickly turns into...regret... i think we need to spend some time apart. it's for the best...

the drive to cullowhee was probably the most scenic of the whole tour. i took smaller roads through the mountains and passed by some quaint little towns and gorgeous waterfalls along the way. upon arriving at western carolina university, i met up with my local contact, lori davis, who showed me to the university's guest house. pretty cool: i'd have a whole house to myself for the evening! one with paisleys on the wallpaper and everything...

a warning to my fellow southern circuit filmmakers, though: lori davis is a cauldron of LIES! believe not a word she says, for it will spell your doom.

actually, she was a really wonderful host and a lot of fun to talk to and hang out with. but i have to give her shit... it started at the guest house: she had picked up the wrong key. so we had to drive back down to campus to get the right one. then she told me they had set up a wi-fi connection at the house for me to use...but when i tried to connect it wouldn't work. then at dinner, she and professor elizabeth heffelfinger (also in charge of the screening, also a wonderful host, and also a fan of Ultravox!) told me not to expect too many students at the screening, and yet the theater was packed and i even sold out of the remaining box sets i had with me afterwards!

so clearly nothing lori davis says can ever be trusted...

kidding aside, the screening was a very memorable one, with a great q&a afterwards and a post-screening reception with coffee and cookies and lots of people not only buying box sets but also requesting autographs and photos with me, which was immensely flattering.

i helped lori clean up after the reception and she offered to take me out on the town afterwards. the only problem is there isn't much of a "town" out on which to be taken in cullowhee, so she suggested driving to nearby asheville, which she claimed was only 40 minutes away.

and this is where my joke about lori davis being a huge liar was born.

asheville is, in fact, OVER ONE HOUR away. but somehow lori had never clocked it, despite the fact that she commutes between asheville and cullowhee each day. by the time i realized her error in distance judgement, we were already past the point of no return, so we continued on and i gave her a mountain of grief upon our arrival, which she took very good-naturedly. she was incredibly embarrassed and i told her i would blog all about it. she begged me not to, but THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD, LORI!

despite the inconvenience, i was glad i got a chance to check out asheville a bit. lots of independent shops and clean streets and stuff to see. but since the drive took so long and since i had to get some sleep for my long drive the next day, we really only had time for a quick walk around town and one drink and then i headed all the way back to cullowhee.

the next day i drove past asheville (again) on my way to durham, NC and the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies. there i met professor lynn mcknight, who welcomed me and drew a map of the surrounding area so i could check it out in the remaining couple of hours before the screening. i didn't have time to see much, but i zipped through campus and had my final, genuine southern meal at nearby Bullock's BBQ. i had my first taste of brunswick stew, my first taste of carolina bbq, my first piece of fried chicken on the whole trip, and my first experience with all-you-can-eat complimentary hush puppies! (upon returning home i would discover that i had gained about 4.5 pounds on this trip. totally worth it...)

i returned to the CDS for a nice pre-screening reception on the building's porch and we screened the film to a crowd of just over a dozen people who stuck around for a pleasantly lengthy q&a. i wanted to make the most of my last night on the road, so mark, the projectionist, offered to show me around town and guided me to a nearby bar. we sat on the patio and talked about the south and los angeles and filmmaking and such and he checked out after one drink. i decided to stick around and thankfully happened upon some other people that i had met at the screening and the reception and ended up hanging out and dancing to a mix of michael jackson's greatest hits, reggae, and '90s hip hop until closing time. definitely a great way to say farewell.

you know a tour is the perfect length when you're caught between equal feelings of wanting to go home and wanting to stay on the road...i boarded my flight home with a strange balance of sadness and relief. and exhaustion, of course, from only getting 4 hours of sleep...

the southern circuit tour was truly an amazing experience and something that i hope to be a part of again in the future. it was educational, entertaining, exciting, humbling, inspiring, and tasty. i want more of all of it.

dear everyone who organized the tour, organized the screenings, fed me, sheltered me, gave me tours, loaned me umbrellas, showed me record stores, bought me drinks, changed my tires, invited me to their classrooms, drew me maps, lied to me about the location of asheville, danced with me, attended the screenings, asked me questions, and generally showed me a fucking awesome time on the road,

thank you all.

sincerely,
jeff

as robert frost said via ponyboy, nothing gold can stay. so it could be construed as poetic that after an extremely smooth tour thus far, i woke up in mobile with a flat tire.

the rental car company said they could either charge me $76 to come pick me up, or they'd trade in the car for no charge if i could get it to the airport rental office. no sweat: it was a slow leak, i figured i could probably just fill it up with air and drive it 10 miles before it flattened again.

but the air hose at the gas station was broken.

okay, fine: time to change a tire. it's something i've learned to do and have seen done quite a few times, but something i've never actually done. i always figured there would come a time when i'd be stranded somewhere and that would be my moment to put theory into practice, and now here i was. so i opened the trunk and started digging out the donut.

but just then, a guy in coveralls stopped me and said he'd change the tire if i could spare a few bucks for him. it seemed like he needed the cash a bit more than i needed to get in touch with my manhood, so i agreed and he got to work. he was a local dock worker who happened to be at the gas station and he said that when he saw me he said to himself "this guy's not used to getting his hands dirty." ouch. but fair enough. i told him that i'd never changed a tire and he said "god sent you an angel!" we laughed about it, but later i wondered why god bothered to flatten my tire in the first place...

i switched cars at the local airport with relatively little hassle and finally got on the road to montgomery, grabbing an absolutely perfect Waffle House breakfast on the way. oh, Waffle House...how i've missed you...i'm sorry i haven't been in touch...it's just...well, you know how life goes sometimes...

i arrived at the Lattice Inn B&B, which was adorable, and met the proprietor, Jim, who was equally adorable. after dropping my bags, i headed to the Capri Theater to meet martin, the theater manager in charge of that night's screening. time was tight due to the tire snafu, but he took me out for a pleasant dinner and we talked about his history running the theater for the past 20-odd years and his experience with the punk scene and the Great Capri Punk Raid of the late '80s, in which 30 cops were dispatched to break up a punk show being held at the theater.

the screening only drew a dozen people, but i considered that a victory for an indie punk documentary on a monday night in montgomery, alabama. and the next day, martin told me that the film outdrew new mainstream releases like Sorority Row, The Final Destination, Jennifer's Body, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs at the other theaters around town on the same night, so i guess it was even more of a victory than i realized! Tyler Perry's new movie still crushed us, though... so now i have a new nemesis...

most of the southern circuit filmmakers seem to blog about how they get sick of watching their film over and over again, but that hasn't happened to me yet. sure, i might not have opted to watch the film this many times in a row on my own, but watching it with an audience is always interesting. thankfully, the reactions have been consistent, with the crowds generally responding to the same parts the same way. it's been great to confirm that most of the filmmaking choices my co-producer ryan and i made were successful ones, but it's also been educational to hear laughs at unexpected points, and to discover moments that don't work as well as we would've hoped. next time we'll have to do the southern circuit tour BEFORE we release the finished film.

this time, as the film started, martin invited me back to his office to show me news clippings about the Capri Punk Raid, and i figured that the laughs or gasps from such a small audience would be barely audible in such a big theater, so i sat out the screening for the first time. might not have been the best choice as a glitch with the DVD left the theater in blackness for 5 straight minutes or so and it took a second for martin and i to realize what was going on, but it was still fun to sit for a while and chat with martin about films and politics and the south. and during the q&a afterwards i told the crowd that the extended blackness was an artistic choice to symbolize the void felt by members of the early punk scene when shows were being shut down... they were a great group and most of them stuck around afterwards to ask questions, buy dvds, and say hello and thanks personally. quality over quantity!

all of the people i've met on the road have been extremely warm and generous and wonderful to talk to, but out of everyone so far martin reminded me the most of myself. i like to think of myself as a nice fellow, but i also have a propensity for cynicism and sarcasm, and some might say i'm hyper critical about movies and music and other things. turns out that martin hates stuff, too! he also comes from a punk background, and we both seem to share a tendency for rubbing people the wrong way and getting a kick out of it.

the morning after the screening, martin took me on quite possibly the snarkiest historical tour of montgomery possible. it was awesome: i learned all about the dirty politics, racism, and religious fundamentalism behind the sights we visited, including the capitol building, the dexter avenue church where MLK used to preach, hank williams' grave, the courthouse, the original white house of the confederacy, the site where rosa parks boarded that fateful bus, the f. scott/zelda fitzgerald house, and the nearby fountain that zelda fitzgerald got drunk and jumped into.

we ended the tour at a deliciously authentic bbq place called Sam's that still serves "Freedom Fries" (come on, sam...seriously??) and several thousand calories later, i was headed for jackson, MS. keeping with the theme of things not going so smoothly, my GPS decided to take me on a more "fun" route... taking me many, many miles out of the way (theoretically in an attempt to keep me on major highways rather than going the direct route on smaller roads). the silver lining is that my new route would send me through tuscaloosa, which is where george wallace stood in front of the door of the University of Alabama's Foster Auditorium to protest desegregation, which i was excited to have a chance to see.

aside from my re-routing, i also hit a dead-stop traffic jam just a mile or so from the university exit, so that gummed up the works as well. i pulled off the highway, found the auditorium, snapped a quick photo, and found a detour to get around the crazy traffic. after all that, i was really running late...i would need to speed the whole way to make it in time.

and that's when the rain started...

heavy sheets of blinding alabama rain caused everyone on the freeway to slow down to at least 40 mph for a while. it let up here and there, but it pretty much poured for the remainder of the drive.

somehow, i made it to millsaps college in jackson with a few minutes to spare before the screening...but then i couldn't get in touch with melissa, my local contact. after some frantic driving and calling and asking around, i managed to find the screening room JUST before the movie was scheduled to start. melissa introduced me and i offered an out-of-breath intro to the film.

afterwards i fielded a few questions and on their way out a number of the students made it a point to thank me for coming. melissa took me out for a late dinner and i tasted fried green tomatoes for the first time. (everyone who knows how good those things are and didn't bother to tell me is a huge jerk)

abigail, one of the PhD students (or faculty...or something...i don't understand how colleges work) who was at the screening invited me for drinks with her and her boyfriend and some other PhD people, so i met up with them after dinner at an irish pub. nothing terribly exciting, but some great conversation with some really great people. enough to make me hope that i end up in jackson, mississippi again at some point in my life so we can all hang out some more.

that's generally been a theme of this whole trip: great people who live very far from where i do that i hope i see again at some point. it's making me want to start working on another movie immediately so i have a shot at getting back on the southern circuit as soon as possible!

but for now i'll just keep enjoying it while it lasts...

to those who have been refreshing this page endlessly over the past two days, wondering if i ever made my flight, your nightmare of uncertainty is over!

i made it into alexandria just in time to meet up with my hosts for the evening, david and nicole holcombe, before heading over to the screening.

i knew that during my trip i would find plenty of people who run counter to the standard "southerner" stereotype. but i didn't think i'd run into a hungarian folk dancing doctor and a batik egg-painting belgian with a statue of don quixote on their lawn and massive solar panels on their roof.

they had prepared dinner for me, but my late arrival meant that we would have to heat it up after the screening, so we headed downtown and the holcombes taught me a bit about alexandria. they prepared me to be disappointed by the size of the crowd, yet the screening ended up being the most well-attended thus far!

at a pre-screening reception, they had wine and cheese and grapes set out and the holcombes introduced me around to other members of the alexandria arts community. neurosurgeons and social workers and playwrights and historians...relatively few of them were punk rock fans, but it was a crowd united in support of independent film in a city where cinema is usually defined by such fare as "Paul Blart: Mall Cop".

after the screening, the holcombes and i enjoyed a long, leisurely dinner of delicious, homemade etouffee while talking about art and politics and the south and the artists who have stayed with them and their involvement with the local arts community. at the end of the meal, i ended up with a signed copy of david's book of short stories, one of nicole's hand-painted eggs, a guide book for new orleans, and a big can of local cajun seasoning. and belgian chocolate for dessert!

the next morning, they served french toast (with REAL maple syrup...) and fruit for breakfast and sent me on my way with one of their umbrellas, just in case. it's hard to say which quality i admire more: their devotion to the arts or their sheer generosity. amazing people... (visit them at holcombegallery.com!)

i had the day off, so i decided i'd spend it in new orleans. it was my first time there, so i wanted to have a quintessential french quarter experience, and i think i accomplished just that: ate a catfish po' boy at johnny's, wandered through the flea market, went to the voodoo museum, watched street performers, went into the St. Louis Church during mass, dropped by william faulkner's old house, shopped, sampled a praline cookie, and saw the house of the rising sun.

coincidentally, the holcombes already had plans to journey to new orleans the same night to see a play, so they offered to take me out to dinner in the big easy so they could hear about my day. if david wasn't already a doctor, i'd insist that they see one to diagnose their generosity disorder.

after another lovely dinner, i continued my Official New Orleans Experience with a few hours of wandering up and down bourbon street, listening to various shitty cover bands play "sweet child o' mine" over and over again. i had three items on my bourbon street "to see" list: someone fighting, someone puking, and boobs. the only item i was able to check off was boobs, i only caught the aftermath of the other two: puddles of puke or a wafting stench from somewhere, and bouncers shoving dudes out of clubs or cops arresting people. semi-bummer. but hey: boobs! it may not sound like it, but it was actually an okay time.

i stayed out much later than i should have, forgetting at the time that the next day's screening was in the afternoon rather than the evening. waking up at 8am was rather painful, but i needed to sample a beignet from cafe du monde before leaving. i dragged myself there, got an order of beignets to go, and enjoyed them while sitting on a bench in jackson square. i can understand why cafe du monde is so close to st. louis cathedral: i'm sure many people have had impromptu religious conversions after tasting those things.

i headed to mobile, AL, hoping to see the World's Largest Rocking Chair along the way, but i was running late. when i arrived at my hotel, charlie smoke from the mobile arts council was unexpectedly there waiting for me, along with the hotel's manager, to insure that i got a proper welcome and had an easy check in. gold stars for hospitality all around!

i dropped my bags and charlie drove me around town a bit before heading to the screening room at the local library (which is actually much more impressive than it sounds). i really didn't expect much of a crowd on a sunday afternoon, but we had over 50 people, which was great. after the screening and q&a there was a reception with a very impressive spread of food, and after that charlie took me on a more extensive tour of the city.

i didn't expect much out of mobile, to be honest...i imagined it would be somewhat run-down and/or industrial. but it really is an impressively quaint city with a burgeoning cultural scene, a mellow vibe, and a lot of potential. like alexandria, there is a community of people there working diligently to expand the artistic and cultural horizons of the city...it's an inspiring thing to witness and it feels great to be a small part of their efforts.

charlie took me for a seafood dinner at a restaurant overlooking the bay where i sampled fried okra, fried oysters, garlic and cheese grits, hushpuppies, crab bisque, and gumbo. it was sub-par quality, but it was certainly a uniquely southern meal.

earlier at the screening, a contagiously upbeat guy named max introduced himself and invited me to check out the indie movie house that he owns and operates downtown, the Crescent Theater. i was pretty exhausted after dinner, but i generally live by the principle that 20 years from now it's possible that i'll look back and be glad that i went out, but it's highly unlikely that i'll look back and be glad i got a good night's sleep.

the theater was only a few blocks from my hotel, and when i arrived max not only didn't charge me admission, but he refused to let me pay for my popcorn or my bottle of cane sugar-based root beer (i have an affinity for gourmet sodas, so this was a particular treat). i was one of only 4 people in the theatre, but i sat up front because the first few rows were made up of leather La-Z-Boy-style chairs. max introduced me to my fellow theater-goers and then introduced the film, "Adam", a romantic dramedy about a guy with asperger's syndrome, which was pretty entertaining. after the film, max gave me a ride back to my hotel and bought an extra "Let Them Know" box set for his projectionist.

(has anyone out there ever done a study to see if maybe the spirit of southern generosity is the real cause of global warming? or if it can be harnessed to provide renewable fuel?)

after saying goodbye to max, i hit the streets once more to see if anything else was going on, but it quickly became obvious that mobile is a bed-early-on-sundays city, so i headed back to my hotel in the hopes of cranking out another blog entry and getting to bed early enough to catch a full night's sleep for the first time since i left home.

only one of those things happened. but hey, 20 years from now...

The First Four Days

so my tenure as a southern arts film tourist has begun...

it was an exhausting beginning, catching a red-eye flight and changing planes and then driving for an hour or so, all with a 50-pound suitcase and a 58-pound backpack to lug around... but once i arrived at my first stop, everything got pretty cool pretty fast.

my bags were so heavy because they were (and still are) filled to the brim with dvds of my movie, "Let Them Know: The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records". it examines the careers of the Stern brothers, who founded the band and record label referred to in the title and contributed more than their share to the LA punk scene in the '80s. the dvd is packaged as part of a box set that also contains a double LP compilation of bands covering songs from the BYO catalog and also a full-color hardcover book. beautiful package, but murder on the spine...

upon arriving in bowling green, KY, i sat down for dinner with steve white, the film's host for the evening and the director of the western kentucky university broadcasting program. with us were majorie from the broadcasting department and campus radio station and her punk enthusiast boyfriend, jason. i was hoping to dive right into the southern cuisine on this trip, but we instead went to a nice italian restaurant, which was quite tasty...definitely a step up from airplane food.

the screening and q&a went well despite some audio problems. afterwards, a few students approached me to thank me and even had me autograph their "Let Them Know" box sets, which was incredibly flattering. they were looking to enter the film industry themselves, so it felt kinda cool that i had maybe reassured them that it's not as tough as it seems to break in. i remember being in their shoes and being at a crossroads and being completely petrified of what would become of me after graduation, so it feels good to be on the other side and to be able to say, "don't worry...just go for it."

it had been a long day, so i collapsed pretty early and then got up the next morning to talk to steve's editing class. i was worried i'd run out of things to say and would have lots of dead air but apparently i can run my damn fool mouth like a champ. i managed to fill just under an hour by answering maybe 7 or 8 questions. and again, some students approached me afterwards to say thanks and again it really warmed my little heart.

after that i had the day to kill, so i strolled through bowling green's downtown area and then went to what seems to be the city's biggest tourist attraction: the Lost River Cave. it was a toss-up between that and the corvette museum... tough decision.

i walked along a nearby hiking trail and visited the butterfly sanctuary while waiting for the cave tour to begin. only saw a few butterflies...one of them was dead on the ground when i walked in... i don't know if they can legally call that a sanctuary.

anyway, our guide gave us a surprisingly entertaining talk about the cave's history...apparently they used to have a night club in the cave's entrance in the '30s due to the natural air-conditioning (tommy dorsey and dinah shore both played there!). they still have a stage and a bar and a dance floor set up, all of it opening out onto the cave river valley...it really would be amazing to see shows there. touring bands: get on it!

after the history lesson we got in a little boat and buzzed along the river that runs through the cave and learned about civil war soldiers writing on the walls and jesse james using it as a hideout back in the day. definitely a much more interesting tour than i'd expected.

finally, it was time for me to leave kentucky and head to nashville, TN, and i arrived just in time to grab an amazing southern lunch at Arnold's. thanks yelp.com!! embarrassingly large portions of roast beef and mashed potatoes and greens and cornbread pancakes and strawberry pie went down my gullet, along with sweet tea that felt like a kick in the teeth from an angel made of sugar.

fair warning: i'm probably going to talk about food a lot in these entries.

after lunch, i met with joEl from vanderbilt university, checked out the screening room (nice!), and settled into my (luxury) dorm room before heading out to check out the city.

i weaved my way through the downtown streets for a while, snapping a few photos and soaking the place in. i ended up on broadway for dinner at Jack's, which has a well-deserved reputation for its bbq, and then did my best to walk off the meal while checking out all the bars in the area. it was a wednesday night, but the town was still pretty lively. most of the bars had no cover charge, so i wandered in and out of a bunch of them, checking out the various country bands on the various stages. it's not really my favorite form of music, but the technical talent of some of the musicians was truly astounding.

i got some ice cream and wandered up on a bridge that overlooked downtown and then explored some of the side streets before heading back to my dorm. nashville's all right in my book.

the next morning, i had agreed to speak to professor jen gunderman's History of Rock Music class. i was a little nervous about filling 75 minutes of time, but jen and i decided to do an "inside the actor's studio"-style q&a and she prompted me with questions about punk music and i did my best to sum up 30 years and countless subgenres in about an hour while also offering up personal anecdotes about my film and music career. i managed to get a few chuckles out of the crowd, so hopefully some pieces of what i said had some educational value. the class that was in the room before us was a History of Country Music class and their guest speaker that day was Kix Brooks from Brooks & Dunn, so my class probably felt relatively cheated.

after class jen took me to lunch with sarah childress from the film studies department and ben, one of her students. afterwards, sarah took me to a local record store (they still have those?) and said she'd buy one CD based on my recommendation. after browsing the selection, it came down to Minor Threat's Complete Discography or The Dead Milkmen's Big Lizard In My Backyard...i eventually settled on Dead Milkmen (sorry, ian...) figuring that it might be slightly more accessible.

next was pizza with some other film students...or at least one of them was a film student...there was also some undeclareds and a nursing student in the mix...but it was fun, anyway.

finally, time for the screening. i think we pretty much had 95% of the punk population of nashville in the audience...all 20 of them. the movie seemed to go over well, as did the q&a and a small, informal reception afterwards (punch and cookies!).

this morning, i made it to the airport just in time for my flight to alexandria, LA...only to find that my flight was delayed JUST long enough for me to miss my connection and now i'm sitting in the atlanta airport, trying to rectify my blogging delinquency and blasting Pantera on my iPod to try and block out the shitty music they're pumping in through the airport PA system.

actually, i'd better head for my gate to make sure i don't miss my flight... later!

Southern Circuit Welcomes Jeff Alulis and "Let Them Know: The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records"

Southern Arts Federation welcomes Jeff Alulis with his feature documentary film, "Let Them Know: The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records," to the 2009-2010 Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers beginning Tuesday, September 15, at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY, and concluding on Thursday, September 25, at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in Durham, NC. Along the way, the film will also screen in Nashville, TN; Alexandria, LA; Mobile, AL; Montgomery, AL; Jackson, MS; Clemson, SC; and Cullowhee, NC.

More about Jeff Alulis, "Let Them Know" and the tour schedule

Web site for "Let Them Know: The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records"

Audio interview with Jeff Alulis