Wayne’s Column

I’m heading out the door in a few minutes to take the kids to see Pixar’s latest opus, Up. We had planned to see it in 3D, but when we checked the ticket prices, we learned that 3D costs an extra $3 per ticket. Recession, people! Somehow, I can’t bring myself to spend $11 each on a matinee. So 2D will be just fine. If the tech is anything like my first experience with digital 3D, I’m not sure it’s exactly a value-added bonus:

The following originally appeared as blog entry on my personal blog, then as a column in Coastal Homes and Lifestyles and now I’m posting it again. Reduce, re-use, recycle!

Last night, Savannah and I went to see the new Disney flick, “Chicken Little.” The film was showing on the only screen in Alabama to feature the new REAL D digital 3D technology. Gone are the blue and red paper glasses of the past. Instead, we received plastic glasses with polarized lenses. The glasses were modeled to duplicate the look of the glasses the titular chicken sports in the film. This means that even the most beautiful people in the crowd looked like complete dorks. Film truly is a democratic medium. In order to achieve the 3D effect, the polarizing lenses resolve a dual image coming from the new digital projector. I haven’t found out much more than that about how it works, but I’ll be looking into it after last night. You’ll see why soon enough.

We got there early to snag some primo seats — right in the middle, as far back from the screen as the screen is wide. (That’s the secret formula to the best seats in the house. Keep it between us.) There we sat — the two of us and four other early birds. We had our dorky plastic glasses and our snacks, and we were just waiting for the film to start. A twitchy-looking manager entered and asked that we all leave the theatre while his crew re-cleaned it. We had seen a couple of theatre drones in there doing a half-assed cleaning job when we arrived. I thought that was just the way they cleaned theatres these days. But now they were telling us they needed to clean again. Wow! Real customer service. Way to go, Manager Man!

The six of us gathered up our five-gallon buckets of soda, our bushel bags of popcorn and brick-sized boxes of candy — all puchased with 6 months, no interest financing — and headed out to form what would become a substantial line. As more and more people arrived, a sense of suspicion began to grow amongst the “Linies.” (That’s the term the popular media used to describe us. We prefer “Liners.”) “I wonder what this is all about,” said one. “I thought it was to get the glasses, but the glasses are right there in that box,” another noted. I decided to add a little dash of intrigue for the newbies. “The six of use all in there and they kicked us out.” The collective gasp from the Liners nearly sucked all the air out of the building, like the sudden pressure drop inside a hurricane.

Then a bunch of theatre goons walked past with about a half dozen stantions — you know, those pole thingies used for roping off areas. “They’re blocking us out.” “I heard somebody say something about reserved seating.” “No, it’s about the 3D. It doesn’t work if you sit too close.” I didn’t buy that. Why would any exhibitor spend a quarter million dollars leasing a new projector and screen only to sell LESS tickets? Of course that would explain the additional $1.50 charge on our tickets.

As more and more new recruits joined us veteran liners, I noticed a few impatient tweens edging their way in front of us. Now, I like kids as much as the next guy… as long as they’re my kids. If your kids get between me and the seats I’ve chosen using my special theatre calculus… Well, they better be insured.

Heir Manager returned to let us six orginal seat squatters back in. The unity of the Liners was broken. It was now a matter of Haves and Have-nots. We have been in the theatre already. The rest of you have not. Indeed that theatre was remarkably cleaner — not a single kernel of corn and only the lightest touch of stickiness to the floor, and that only for the sake of nostalgia. And, to my chagrine, the wing sections down front were roped off. I was at least partially wrong; I admit it. (Don’t get used to it.) Savannah and I grabbed our original seats and settled in for some three-dimensional, digital wizardry.

The place filled up pretty quickly with couples, families and a few brave souls who obviously lost a poker bet and were forced to bring a whole cadre of kids. And we all divorced ourselves from our shame and enthusiastically donned our dorky chicken glasses. Then the Manager-nator returned, looking even twitchier than before. He welcomed us to the theatre and the first-ever Disney 3D blah, blah, blah.

Then the evening took a turn for the surreal. “You’ll want to keep your glasses on the whole time, during the previews and through the entire film.” Interesting. Maybe it takes a little while for the 3D effect to kick in — a warmup period for your eyes and brain. Le Managére continued, “Because if you take the glasses off during the movie, it could make you sick.” Huh? “The way the picture comes out, it kind of sends like signals that scramble your brain.” What the? The unity of the Liners was back. “We’ve had a couple of kids… toss their popcorn today.” Great. Somehow, I missed the part about the vomit-inducing, brain-scrambling signals in the ads for the movie. (And yes, he literally said “toss their popcorn.”)

“The signals can affect your brain kind of like an epileptic seizure.” Okay, the gloves were off. It was us versus them now, and we weren’t going along willingly with these Shadow Government operatives and their Mickey Mouse mind-control conspiracy — at least not without some free popcorn or something. “But it’s not a seizure.” Oh, okay. Whew. It’s like a seizure, but not an actual seizure. What a relief. Roll the movie, then Über Manager.

So the lights dipped low and the trailers started. The first screen that came up was a graphic that told us to take off our glasses for the previews. Now what? Who do I trust; the Mysterious Managismo or the team of Disney flunkies who hastily put together this art card? Playing it safe, I told Savannah to keep her glasses on, thinking her the more likely to urp because of the alien brain waves. I alternated between glasses and no glasses — not because I was testing the differing physiological effects on my system, but because I couldn’t make up my mind.

I don’t know if it was from watching the 2D trailers with glasses on or from the effects of the 3D imaging, but for the entire film I had a the taste of metal under my tongue and a mild nausea. Yeah, this is going to revive the box office from its recent doldrums: the threat of seizures and the sensation of having just eaten an aluminum can. Brilliant!

As for the film itself, I’d give it two out of five stantions. This is not only Disney’s first digital 3D film, it’s also their first 3D digitally animated film. (Talk about a marketing nightmare.) In their infinite wisdom, the brains at Disney sold all of their traditional 2D animation stations (and canned a bunch of animators) to replace them with 3D systems. Their logic is that films like Shrek and the Pixar ouvre are successful because they are animated in three dimensions. Note to Disney: It’s the stories. The Pixar films could have been hand drawn on bar napkins, and they’d still be better than Chicken Run, because they’re well written. And they don’t give you seizures!

The following story was published in the 1st quarter 2008 issue of Coastal Homes & Lifestyles.

When he leans forward, a hint of mischief in his eyes, one can’t help but be drawn in. He laces his stories with an amazing level of detail without ever getting mired in tedium. His descriptions paint as compelling a picture as any committed to canvas by the Great Masters, and his pauses are as carefully and effectively placed as rests in the symphonies of Beethoven or Bach. Such is his mastery of the medium that the listener laughs when he wants them to laugh, cries when he wants them to cry. One would be forgiven if they tried to respond, forgetting that the speaker is present only through the magic of cinema. It’s a testament to the masterful storytelling of Duke Bardwell in the upcoming documentary “Bayou Country.”

I feel that I know Duke Bardwell as well as if I had spent days on end with him, listening to him recount the highs and lows of his musical career. Yet, I have only met him on a handful of occasions. For most of the time I’ve spent with him, we have been separated both by time and the glass of a video screen. For nearly two years, while laboring with director Kris Wheeler to mould 40 years of plot into a compelling film, I’ve been privileged to study Bardwell his every mannerism, the timbre of his voice, the lines of his face. I’ve listened to him unspool his yarns countless times, yet they never grow old.

“Bayou Country” details the divergent paths of Bardwell and his song of the same title. Bardwell and guitarist Trevor Veitch penned the tune in 1969, when the two were backing iconic folk revivalist Tom Rush. As Veitch tells it, they were staying in a sleazy New York City hotel watching the moon landing and wrote “Bayou Country” because there was nothing else to do. In today’s politics, there is a new buzzword: change agent. That is exactly what “Bayou Country” became for Bardwell. When his life needed it most, that song offered him redemption in a most unexpected way. Behold the power of a song.

During the Renaissance, Italian artists embraced exotic pigments from the world over, but for the most important subject, the human face, they relied on terra verte pigment mined locally from the hillsides around Verona. Bardwell’s approach to songwriting employs a similar approach, as evidenced in “Bayou Country.” While verses that recount the political strife of the late ‘60s cement the song firmly in a specific place and time, it is the lyrics rooted in Bardwell’s Louisiana upbringing that give the song an ageless appeal. The song’s unnamed protagonist, who bears some resemblance to Bardwell, is richly layered with the local color of the bayou, rendering him with a timeless beauty worthy of Leonardo and Michelangelo.

Born in Louisiana on the Bayou Manchac, he becomes a world traveler, but he longs for the idyllic life of fais do-dos and Cajun women he left behind amid the Spanish moss and big oak trees. Though the lyrics speak of a longing that is specific to and idealized vision of life in Louisiana, the rich detail and understated emotion tug at the heart of the wayward traveler in everyone. It speaks to the oft-spoken desire of us all to return to an unattainable place—a more innocent past.

Like the hero of a Howard Hawks film, the protagonist owes much of the displeasure in his current situation to a woman. That doesn’t make Bardwell a cynic on the topic of love, however. “You and I,” a song penned as a wedding gift for his sister, reveals the heart of a hopeless romantic. As with “Bayou Country,” the lyrics are dripping with rich Southernisms and water imagery, as evidenced in verses that compare the smoothing effect of a woman’s love on a man’s hardened countenance to the power of a
rushing river: “like running water over stone, you wear away my edges in due time,” he writes.

The power of Bardwell’s storytelling is never more poignant, whether in anecdote or in song, than when he is transparently self-effacing. Throughout “Bayou Country,” the film, Bardwell lays bare his soul on the disappointments of a career spent within an arm’s length of greatness, but always obscured in the shadows of those who would brave the glare of the limelight. The film itself examines the fatal flaws and missed opportunities that resulted in Bardwell walking away from music, seemingly forever, in the mid-1980s.

A cursory viewing of the film would give the impression that his fatal flaw was in addiction and women or, as Bardwell puts it, “drinkin,’ snortin’ and cavortin—heavy in the cavortin’ back then.” A closer viewing, however, reveals those abuses as merely a symptom of a restless spirit and a perpetual dissatisfaction with the status quo. Bardwell himself suggests that these flaws stretch back to his childhood. “I was probably officially A.D.D., only they didn’t have Ritalin back then. You just got your ass whipped, and I got my ass whipped all the time.”

Though Bardwell’s time with Tom Rush was brief, he benefited from the influence of songwriting icons such as Janis Joplin, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell. The songs he wrote in the months immediately after his dismissal by Rush would find their way into the heart of a new project—a Baton Rouge band called Cold Gritz and the Black-Eyed Peas. Shortly after the band debuted on the Louisiana scene, with their signature swamp funk sound and interracial line-up, they scored an unprecedented record deal with legendary producer Lou Adler. The band, however, imploded before the album could be finished. Only “Bayou Country” was released and remains the band’s sole legacy.

Within a few short years following the break-up of Gritz, Bardwell’s charm and musical prowess earned him a regular gig with old friend Casey Kelly, opening for Loggins and Messina. Those experiences led to an opportunity to play and record with Jose Feliciano. While recording with Feliciano, he got the chance to work with Elvis’ drummer, Ronnie Tutt. The two hit it off, and Tutt invited Bardwell to audition for an opening as Elvis’ bass player. He got the gig. Unfortunately, Bardwell’s time with Elvis was tumultuous, and when the relationship ended, he was left embittered and disheartened.

Duke earned a few more once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, playing with Gene Clark of the Byrds and Emmylou Harris. But after a handful of years trying to achieve success on his own terms, Bardwell walked away from the music business altogether—at least until “Bayou Country” reminded him why he had begun playing music in the first place.

Today, Bardwell plays neither for money nor fame, but for the love of music and the joy of the crowd. The clarity and self-awareness with which he tells his story reveal him to be a man wounded from the journey, certainly, but also redeemed. In addition to running his own small business, he plays on a regular basis with at least four different acts and has created his own line of pepper sauce, “Unca Duke’s Geaux Jus.” Bardwell’s pepper sauce, like his stories and his songs, reveals the character of the man; it is spicy with a hint of sweetness, seductive with a considerable kick, imbued with the flavors of the bayou, and it always leaves you wanting more.

Wayne Franklin is a filmmaker living in Birmingham, Ala. He is a co-producer and editor on the documentary “Bayou Country.”

To view this column as it appeared in the magazine, click here.