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Memphis-based "Forty Shades of Blue" premieres in a benefit for the Stax Music Academy

By John Beifuss
beifuss@commercialappeal.com

If "Hustle & Flow" was the Memphis movie scene’s noisiest success story, bum-rushing Hollywood with the aggressive confidence of its speaker-rattling rap numbers, Ira Sachs’s "Forty Shades of Blue" -- which debuts here Thursday in a fund-raising "Blue Carpet Premiere" -- has been the city’s stealth movie.

"Hustle" grabbed headlines, a $9 million deal from Paramount and the Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award. With much less fanfare, "Forty Shades" -- a "small, dark-horse film," according to Variety -- won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, meaning that a panel that included actor John C. Reilly, film critic B. Ruby Rich and producer Christine Vachon ("Boys Don’t Cry") decided it was the most worthwhile dramatic feature at the festival.

Announcing the award, Reilly said Sachs’s film "haunted us with its glimpses of the human heart." Reilly’s ghostly verb choice was apt: Since Sundance, "Forty Shades" has been a phantom film for most, insinuating itself into the awareness of serious movie fans through reports from prestigious international film festivals (including Deauville, Melbourne and Berlin) and enthusiastic reviewers (Slant published a passionate yet thoughtful rave by Keith Uhlich, who characterized the film as "deliriously beautiful").

This week, however, the elusiveness of "Forty Shades of Blue" in America ends.

Wednesday, the film -- distributed by Capital Entertainment’s First Look Pictures -- premiered at Lincoln Center in New York; Monday, it debuts at the Egyptian in Hollywood.

And Thursday, Sachs and "Blue" star Rip Torn will be at Malco’s Studio on the Square for a 6:30 p.m. "Blue Carpet Premiere" to benefit the Stax Music Academy of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. (The Academy is a nonprofit learning center that offers music education to inner-city young people.)

Co-scripter Michael Rohatyn also will attend, along with producers Donald Rosenfeld and Mary Bing, and numerous Memphis participants, including associate producer Adam Hohenberg.

"I was just incredibly moved by what they are doing at Stax, and I think the Academy is going to be a very powerful force for the next generation," said Rosenfeld, explaining why he wanted the premiere to benefit Stax.

"It’s a movie all about music, and the producers were very generous to help us out in this way," said Stax communications manager Tim Sampson.

A post-screening party will be held at the Stax museum at 926 E. McLemore. Music will be provided by former Stax recording artist J. Blackfoot, whose version of the Memphis soul classic "The Dark End of the Street" early in "Blue" foreshadows the wary relationships of the characters in the story: "Hiding in shadows where we don’t belong/ Living in darkness to hide our wrong..."

The movie begins its regular run at the Studio on the Square and the Cordova Cinema on Sept. 30.

Sachs -- whose first made-in-Memphis feature, "The Delta," premiered at Sundance in 1997 -- said he believes the film’s stealthy release strategy will work well.

" ’Forty Shades’ is a quiet film on some level, and when it works on an audience it resonates for days and even weeks after they see the movie," said Sachs, 39, who lives in New York. "It’s a film that stays with people."

He said hosting a premiere to benefit the Stax Music Academy is appropriate, because "what’s amazing for me about the pop songs that came out of Stax and other Memphis studios is how much they conveyed in two minutes and 28 seconds -- how much pain and how much heart and how much hope. The film celebrates that kind of genius and invention."

A moody and intimate character study shot in Memphis in February and March of 2004, the $1.5 million "Forty Shades of Blue" is the story of a famous Memphis music producer (Rip Torn) with a much younger live-in girlfriend (Russian actress Dina Korzun). The couple’s fragile relationship is upset when the producer’s somewhat resentful son (Darren E. Burrows) returns to Memphis for a brief visit and begins an affair with the girlfriend.

Torn’s character was based somewhat on such Memphis music legends as Sam Phillips. But the story was especially inspired by Sachs’s relationship growing up in Memphis with his father, Ira Sachs Sr., now a real estate developer in Park City, Utah -- a larger-than-life figure with an unapologetic appetite for good times and attractive women.

Sachs said such can-do figures have been among Memphis’s greatest innovators. "Memphis is not a city that’s driven by introspection," he said. "Things happen in Memphis. People have a great drive to make things and do things, and sometimes they succeed wildly. But they often are people who aren’t necessarily interested in speaking or articulating or sharing those feelings with the world."

Sachs was connected to some of the legends of Stax during his childhood, and that experience also informed the writing of "Forty Shades."

As a student at Lausanne Montessori School (as it was then called), Sachs’s best friend was Greg Isbell, the son of Al Bell, the head of Stax during the company’s final years. Isaac Hayes’s son, Vincent, also was in Sachs’s class.

Torn’s character in the film is named Alan James, "but for the first four or five years of the script, he was literally named ’Al Bell’ -- it’s such a great musical name," Sachs said.

"Hanging around as a kid, I didn’t know how cool it was to be around those people. But without being aware of it, you pick up a lot."

Although such Memphis musicians as Blackfoot, Jim Dickinson and Sid Selvidge appear in "Forty Shades," most of the classic soul songs heard in the film come from the catalogue of the late Bert Russell Berns, a songwriter whose hits included "Twist and Shout," "Hang on Sloopy" and "A Little Bit of Soap."

Said Sachs: "The music of Alan James we chose specifically not to be identified with Stax or Sun or Hi because those histories are so powerful we didn’t want them to interfere with our story."

Although American pop music is key to the film, Sachs’s elliptical directorial styles suggest the approach of international "art" filmmakers; he cites England’s Ken Loach, Spain’s Luis Bunuel and India’s Satyajit Ray as particular influences.

"Forty Shades" is "not like a lot of American films being made right now," Sachs said. "In truth, it’s very hard to make dramas -- straight, serious dramas that touch people in a way that’s very personal. A lot of films being made today are intent on offering escape from the personal. A film like ’War of the Worlds’ is about escape where this is a film about discovery."

The characters in "Forty Shades" aren’t always sympathetic, "but my approach is always to be empathetic with them. Philo of Alexandria wrote, ’Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.’ For me when I read that in some magazine article once, it seemed to describe the kind of movies I want to make, which are clear-eyed and aware of people’s weaknesses and follies but also empathetic because everyone is trying to figure out their approach to life."

More info:

What: Thursday’s "Forty Shades of Blue" blue carpet premiere and after- screening party with director Ira Sachs and star Rip Torn, a benefit for the Stax Music Academy.

When and where: The screening: 6:30 p.m., Malco’s Studio on the Square. The party: 8:30 p.m., the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.

Tickets: $50 for the premiere and party; $25 for just the party. For advance tickets, call 942-7685 or visit the Stax museum at 926 E. McLemore.