Honeydripper, a film by John Sayles

For the old Phelps Grocery in Midway, Alabama, shuttered since 1977 and overgrown with vines, the HONEYDRIPPER production meant rebirth as a classic 1950 juke joint, the Honeydripper Lounge

HONEYDRIPPER is all about such transformation: a second chance for an aging bluesman, a rocket kick-off to a young guitar turk’s career, and the rise of rock ‘n roll itself. Capturing that mid-century moment in time was key to bringing HONEYDRIPPER’s story of musical metamorphosis to life.

“We needed fields of high cotton, an army base, and a town center that could look 1950 convincingly,” said writer, director, and editor JOHN SAYLES. “We found most of that in Butler County, Alabama, along with a warm reception from the local people. The mayor of Greenville read the script and said “I’d love to have at least one of those two little boys” (the young music fans who bookend the start and close of the film) “be a kid from Greenville.” And that’s ABSALOM ADAMS, the kid playing the homemade keyboard. There was a lot of pride and excitement around the production.”

HONEYDRIPPER, John Sayles’ 16th feature film, and the 13th produced by longtime collaborator MAGGIE RENZI, was shot in the southern Alabama towns of Greenville, Georgiana, Anniston, and Midway in the late summer and early fall of 2006. A comfy 1912 Tudor house in Greenville served as Sayles’ and Renzi’s housing, nerve center, and BBQ party headquarters, and Renzi recalls, “One rockin’ afternoon off the musicians jammed in the lobby of the Hampton Inn — not that there were many afternoons off.”

Sounds from the Choir

The Alabama townspeople became major contributors to HONEYDRIPPER. “Out of 46 speaking roles, 18 were cast in Alabama, including the members of the New Beginnings Ministry choir in Greenville,” explained Renzi. “We asked New Beginnings to give us their best singers, and wow! We couldn’t have duplicated that sound. The local people have the right accents, the looks — I had a crowd of extras, and after they got through with wardrobe and styling, I asked them to raise their hands if they looked just like old photos of their parents and grandparents. Every hand went up.”

Even for native Alabamans, recreating the Deep South of 1950 was not effortless. “We had to hold a seminar in how to pick cotton,” recalled Sayles, “because it’s all mechanized now. We got people over 50 to show us how it was done. The extras in the cotton fields won a new appreciation for how hard their parents worked!”

Sayles points out that most African Americans have some family connection to the agricultural south, from before the great northward migration of the WWII era, and some of his cast took the chance to visit family origins and research genealogy.

Rock ‘n Roll Roots

HONEYDRIPPER grew out of Sayles’ fascination with the genesis of rock ‘n roll. “There was no single moment when R&B, blues, gospel, jazz, and country all came together to create this thing called rock ‘n roll,” he said, “but a big change came with the advent of the electric guitar. Before that, the piano ruled — it produced a lot more sound than a little acoustic guitar. Suddenly, a poor boy like Sonny (GARY CLARK, JR.) could travel around with a portable, cheap, high-volume electric guitar and peel the paint off the walls. There were lots of Guitar Sams and Guitar Slims in those days. Everybody was moving around and listening to each other — white and black. Hank Williams was from Georgiana. Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Lee Lewis were sneaking into black clubs. Chuck Berry was famous for recreating percussive piano rhythm drive using guitar licks. Black and white servicemen were filling the juke joints on their nights off—an army base would be a huge economic resource for a struggling bar owner like Tyrone, the DANNY GLOVER character. Radio and jukeboxes spread the music quickly.

“At the same time, I wanted to capture that poignant period when the old blues styles were waning, like the salty medicine-show hokum that Bertha Mae (DR. MABLE JOHN) sings. In any field—sports, music, politics — these times of change are incredibly rich.”

No Lip-Sync

Live music’s raw immediacy is hard to capture when actors are lip-synching to pre-recorded music, and Sayles wanted both the music and acting unfettered and fresh. Apart from Danny Glover, who doesn’t play piano but did a very convincing job ‘playing’ to SONNY LELAND’s boogie-woogie piano (HENDERSON HUGGINS‘ hands stand in for Glover’s in close-up), all the actor/musicians performed live, often improvising. “KEB’ MO‘ decided his street-spirit character Possum could only play in the key of G,” laughed Sayles.

The movie’s high energy is embodied in handsome young guitar prodigy Gary Clark, Jr., who plays Sonny. “He’s from Austin, Texas, a big discovery at the South By Southwest Festival. When we first saw him play, he had just turned 21, and finally he could appear unchaperoned in clubs that serve liquor.”

A high point in the filming — and the climax of the movie — comes when Sonny, guitar wailing, leads the Honeydripper’s entire dance floor out of the club and into the neon-lit night. “Gary had to be able to really carry off that stunt of jumping up on the parked car while he’s playing,” said Sayles. “The shot called for our most elaborate set-up—a crane shot rising over the club, the dancers, the Honeydripper marquee and the competing club next door.”

Diddley-Bow to Mouth Harp

From the two little boys with their homemade instruments (the string contraption is called a diddley-bow, and now you know where Bo Diddley got his name), to blues and R&B legends many decades their senior, HONEYDRIPPER is jammed with musicians celebrating the joy of ensemble music-making. A stellar musical line-up of more than 40 musicians appears on the HONEYDRIPPER soundtrack, including masters like Delta Blues revivalist Keb’ Mo’; Motown pioneer and ordained minister Dr. Mable John (Bertha Mae); sax man EDDIE SHAW (Time Trenier), who played with Howlin’ Wolf; blues harp ace JERRY PORTNOY (studio tracks), who is a veteran of Muddy Waters’ band; and many others.

Taking it on the Road

The musicians themselves are heading on tour as the best possible ambassadors for HONEYDRIPPER. The Honeydripper All-Star Band includes Gary Clark Jr. on guitar, Dr. Mable John on vocals, Henderson Huggins (Tyrone’s piano-playing hands) on keyboard, Eddie Shaw on saxophone, and ARTHUR LEE WILLIAMS (Metalmouth Sims) on harmonica, rocking out with music from the film and from their own illustrious careers. The Honeydripper All-Stars national tour kicked off at the Chicago Blues Festival, continued at the River to River Festival in New York City, and will play several other blues festivals, including Long Beach Blues Festival and Monterey Jazz Festival. The All-Stars will also accompany the film’s premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September.

High-Calorie Sound

A crack team of music production, recording, and editing pros managed a complex layer-cake of sound that encompassed live location recording, studio tracks, and post-production wizardry to bring it all together seamlessly. Music Supervisor TIM BERNETT, Composer MASON DARING, Mixer JUDY KARP and the rest of the audio crew took pains to record live location sound with as high quality as possible. An unusually high proportion of location sound was preserved when studio-recorded tracks were spliced in during the post-production audio edit. “For example,” recalled Sayles, “when we used the location dialogue for ALBERT HALL (the tent revival preacher) overlapping with the congregation call-and-response, it made the revival scenes much more alive and authentic.”

While much of HONEYDRIPPER’s music was written for the film (most by Mason Daring, though Sayles himself contributed some original compositions), many of the old-time blues, boogie-woogie, and R&B tunes on the soundtrack are in the public domain. One of the more arcane duties of the music team was investigating potential copyright snarls; music clearance expert CHRIS ROBERTSON did detective work to ensure that all the non-original music was, indeed, part of the public’s musical legacy. Robertson even employed a “forensic musicologist” to study five particular cuts to be certain they were public domain material.

Looking Good and Feeling Right

Another key contributor to the HONEYDRIPPER look and feel was Director of Photography DICK POPE, BSC, best known for his work with English filmmaker Mike Leigh. Pope shot HONEYDRIPPER in Fuji 35mm. “Along with TOBY CORBETT, the Production Designer, and HOPE HANAFIN, the Costume Designer, we worked out a couple of ‘arcs’ in the visual storytelling,” explained Sayles. “We emphasized the dirty, dusty, hot life of a soldier or cotton picker, and what a respite—and a chance to dress up — a club with music or even a revival tent would be. Another strategy was using wider lenses the first two thirds of the movie, to accentuate the emptiness of the club, then switching to longer lenses for the rock and roll finale to make it seem even more crowded than it was.”

After their typically intense shoots, Sayles and Renzi retreat to the haven of an editing studio within their quiet upstate New York home, where much of the post-production can be accomplished with collaborators coming in as needed. “Sometimes I think that’s my favorite part,” sighed Renzi.

Spreading the Word by Going to the Source

Renzi and Emerging Pictures are focusing on a novel and innovative plan to reach HONEYDRIPPER’s audience: “We have three separate constituencies who could really connect with this movie. There’s the usual John Sayles indie art-house audience, and we already know something about how to speak to them. There’s the blues-aficionado audience, and they have an incredible network of publications and websites and events that we will tap into. But blues buffs are mostly white guys over 40. How do we connect with a younger African-American audience, the Sonnys and China Dolls of today?”

The solution: get them to market the film for you. “The association of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) is a fantastic resource.” With the help of Mark Wynns, a marketing consultant from Atlanta, Will Packer (from Rainforest Films and Producer of STOMP THE YARD) and Ira Deutchman (HONEYDRIPPER Associate Producer and Emerging Pictures distributor), who teaches film business classes at Columbia University, the team proposed a short marketing course and project for HBCU college students: the course teaches them about film marketing and publicity, and the students design and execute marketing campaigns to promote the film. Five percent of the money earned by the film’s theatrical release in their market will be donated to a special scholarship fund for that participating school.

Have Fun

Discussing the need for such ingenious strategies, Sayles remarked, “Maggie and I have had to reinvent the model of being independent filmmakers over and over, because every film is a different challenge, the business keeps changing, the rules are never the same.

“But with HONEYDRIPPER, working in those small Alabama towns, we learned all over again why it’s fun. The music is terrific, and the people were such a pleasure. I think that sheer enjoyment comes across in the picture, and that’s what we hope our audience will take away with them.”