Tennessee’s ‘Movie Mount Rushmore’
It would seem that the Volunteer State has more than its share of famous film personages . . .
Q: So, if the Great State of Tennessee were to have its very own “Mount Rushmore” dedicated to film, who would be on it?
To be honest, it was rather hard narrowing it down to just four nominees, but I’m sure you’ll agree that all four of the following personae have had an enormous influence on the course of cinema…
At the corner of Highland Avenue and 15th Street in Knoxville, Tennessee once lived the young writer James Agee, one of the credited screenwriters on two of the most respected films of the 1950s — John Huston’s The African Queen (1951) (adapted from the C. S. Forester novel) and Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955), which Agee adapted from the work by Davis Grubb.
Agee spent his formative years in the Marble City before later becoming the film critic for Time magazine in 1941, followed by becoming one of the most popular film critics in the country as he wrote for The Nation from 1942–48.
Agee’s article for Life magazine profiling the silent movie comedians Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, and Buster Keaton has been credited for reviving the latter’s career.
The two-volume book Agee on Film (1958) collects James Agee’s early film criticism and is considered top-shelf reading for any serious cinephile.
Also hailing from “K-Town” is my next nominee — a gentleman once known as ‘The Video Store Clerk to the Stars,’ when he worked at a Manhattan Beach video outlet. Director Quentin Tarantino was born March 27TH, 1963 in the heart of ‘Big Orange Country’ — Knoxville, Tennessee.
A great student as well as proponent of the preservation of classic cinema, Quentin is the son of an Italian-American actor/musician and a Tennessee nurse. When his parents divorced, Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, at the mere age of four.
As a first-time writer-director, Quentin presented his feature Reservoir Dogs at the January 1992 Sundance Film Festival. The film was an instant critic’s darling and quickly launched his career into the stratosphere — as well as helping to build Sundance’s continuing reputation as the ultimate “independent film networking destination.”
Reservoir Dogs was followed two years later by Pulp Fiction, which premiered at the Cannes film festival — winning the coveted Palme D’Or Award. At the 1995 Academy Awards the following year, Pulp Fiction was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.
Although Tarantino and his writing partner, Roger Avary, only came away with the award for Best Original Screenplay, the film’s box office success proved that Quentin’s filmmaking future was more than assured.
More recently, Tarantino has directed numerous films which have succeeded in both the popular and critical realms. These include Jackie Brown, Kill Bill (vols. I & II), Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight.
As of this writing, Mr. Tarantino has already been nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival for his forthcoming film Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, which will be released theatrically in the United States on July 26TH.
In fact, it was in his role as “Jules” in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction that my next nominee became a hit with audiences as well as critics.
Raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee by his factory worker mother and his maternal grandparents, Samuel L. Jackson was recently ranked as the #1 box office draw in the industry, raking in over a $6.9 billion total US box office gross, or an average of $87.5 million per film.
After graduating from Riverside High School in Chattanooga, it was at Atlanta’s Morehouse College in the seventies that Mr. Jackson joined the Negro Ensemble Company (together with Morgan Freeman). After switching his major from marine biology to architecture to theatre, he founded the “Just Us Theatre” before graduating from Morehouse in 1972.
Jackson made his feature film debut in the blaxploitation indie Together for Days (Michael Schultz, 1972). The film told a story Jackson could easily relate to from a personal perspective— that of a black radical activist during the politically and racially-charged atmosphere of the early 1970s. As an outspoken critic of the Morehouse College administration and their discriminatory policies, Samuel was a frequent leader of student protests there, even gaining him a criminal record.
Jackson decided to put some distance between himself and his immediate past by taking the next logical step to advance his career. Thus, in the summer of 1976 he moved from Atlanta to New York City to work as a full-time professional actor. He would spend the next decade paying his dues as he acted in plays for the Yale Repertory Company as well as other off-Broadway venues.
Throughout these challenging times for his film career, Jackson was supported and mentored by good friend and fellow Morehouse grad Morgan Freeman. He realized he had to be satisfied, at least temporarily, with small roles in made-for-tv movies and features — such as John Landis’ 1988 fish-out-of-water comedy, Coming to America.
But it was just a few years earlier, after his 1981 performance in the stage drama A Soldier’s Play, that Jackson’s luck began to change. It was after one particular performance that he was first introduced to director Spike Lee, who would cast him for small roles in School Daze (1988) and Do the Right Thing (1989).
The late eighties were a busy time for Samuel, and in addition to Spike Lee’s ongoing series of films, Jackson played a minor role in the 1990 Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas as real-life Mafia associate Stacks Edwards.
But Jackson’s true personal and career breakthrough finally came in the film Jungle Fever (Spike Lee, 1991) when he portrayed the highly cathartic and autobiographical part of a crack cocaine addict, a role he had recently just left in the real world.
The New York Film Critics Circle led the way in their praise of the character of “Gator Purify” and audiences quickly followed suit, with the role proving to be the critical juncture of Jackson’s career. Samuel could add an additional bit of shine to his recent accomplishment when the jury of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival went so far as to create a special “Supporting Actor” award just for him and his outstanding performance.
Jackson would go on to achieve even further prominence and critical acclaim in the early 1990s — particularly with his first film collaboration with director Quentin Tarantino — Pulp Fiction (1994).
Among the film’s many intertwined plot lines, the edgy drama depicted with highly relatable subjectivity the everyday lives of two hit men. The film also allowed Jackson to transition from long-time supporting player to leading man — earning him an Oscar nomination in the process for his portrayal of the magnetic, yet short-fused Jules Winnfield.
Since then, Jackson has appeared in over 100 feature films, including the role of Nick Fury, the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the ever popular Marvel Cinematic Universe.
With his deep, resonant voice and ever-calm demeanor, the popular actor Morgan Freeman has grown into one of the most respected figures in modern cinema. Born on June 1, 1937, in Memphis, Tennessee, Mr. Freeman made his acting debut at the tender age of nine, playing the lead role in an elementary school play.
He later attended Broad Street High School (now Threadgill Elementary School) in Greenwood, Mississippi where, at the mere age of 12, he won a statewide drama competition. While still enrolled at Broad Street he also regularly performed in a radio show based in nearby Nashville, Tennessee.
Mr. Freeman’s first appearance on celluloid was as an uncredited extra in the acclaimed 1964 film The Pawnbroker, directed by Sidney Lumet. Morgan then followed this with his first credited film appearance in the family drama Who Says I Can’t Ride a Rainbow! (Edward Andrew Mann, 1971).
But it was in the roles of “Easy Reader,” “Mel Mounds the DJ,” and “Vincent the Vegetable Vampire” that Freeman first became familiar to television audiences on the popular PBS kids’ show The Electric Company.
In terms of cinema, Freeman considers Street Smart (Jerry Schatzberg, 1987), where he played the character of the pimp “Fast Black” to be his true breakthrough role. In the film, Christopher Reeve plays a reporter writing a sensationalized expose’ of a prostitution ring. And unfortunately, his fictionalized story has an odd ring of truth among the street community . . .
But the part that would begin to make Morgan Freeman a household name would be that of Hoke, the chauffeur for an elderly Jewish widow in the play Driving Miss Daisy, for which Freeman received his third Obie theatrical award (and which was subsequently successfully adapted for the screen in 1989 and directed by Bruce Beresford).
The 1980s and early 90s were truly Freeman’s “prime-time,” as he began playing rather prominent supporting parts in high profile feature films — particularly in the role of the wise, fatherly figure. In this regard, his portrayal of Sergeant Major Rawlins in Glory (Edward Zwick, 1989) and that of the redeemed ex-con “Red” in the 1994 Frank Darabont film The Shawshank Redemption are considered the two roles which made him a box-office mainstay.
Mr. Freeman now has over 100 feature films to his name, and has been nominated for the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award on five different occasions. He later won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004) and the Golden Globe for Best Actor in Driving Miss Daisy.
Yes, as you can see — Tennessee has quite the slate of movie talent!
*(So . . . when do we start carving on that mountain? :-)
- AUTHOR’S NOTE: A shorter version of the above essay was recently chosen by the Turner Classic Movies site as one of the top ten essays on the topic of . . . “If your home state had a ‘Movie Mount Rushmore,’ what four people would be on it?”
- You can read the other nine essays and visit the TCM Backlot HERE: https://www.tcmbacklot.com/movie-mount-rushmore-winners
