Germantown Planning Commission votes on Cordova Triangle rezoning
The Germantown Planning Commission voted July 10 in favor of rezoning Cordova Triangle as residential and single-family housing. In front of an audience of about 80 people, the commission voted 5-3 in favor of the rezoning.
The rezoning must go through three readings at the Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting.
As part of the city’s Smart Growth Plan, the 19.77acre Cordova Triangle was zoned as T4 (general urban) in 2007. The land sits between Germantown Road, Neshoba Road and Cordova Road on the west side of Germantown Parkway.
“It would no longer be a wise development pattern West of Germantown Road,” Cameron Ross, the city’s economic and community development director, said as part of the presentation to the commission.
Ross said the change was “to maintain the character and context of the surrounding neighborhoods (Neshoba North and Germantown Heights).”
Mayor Mike Palazzolo said that no developments have been presented for the land in the last 10 years. However, east of Germantown Road, Thornwood Development and GPAC’s anticipated concert venue will bring higher density to the area.
“I had so much respect for Fred Rogers, I wanted it to be really good,” said Kirkscey, 43, a Germantown native and Memphis University School graduate who began playing cello at age 6, in emulation of his older sister. “Of course, I grew up watching ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.’ When I was a little kid, 4 or 5 or 6 years old, I used to watch it every day.
“It’s definitely the most high-profile thing I’ve done,” Kirkscey said of the Mr. Rogers film. That’s largely because the movie was directed by Morgan Neville, who won the Best Feature Documentary Oscar for his 2013 music film about backup singers, “20 Feet from Stardom,” and whose other credits include 2015’s “Keith Richards: Under the Influence,” a documentary portrait of the piratical Rolling Stone.
A cellist in the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and a longtime contributor to local records and rock bands, Kirkscey has been a go-to musician for Bluff City filmmakers for close to two decades, contributing music to Craig Brewer’s 2000 debut feature, “The Poor & Hungry,” and writing scores for Brian Pera’s psychological melodrama, “Only Child,” and Mike McCarthy’s fishnet-stockinged sci-fi, “Cigarette Girl.” (Expect to hear excerpts from those films and more when Kirkscey performs and talks about his career at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Crosstown Concourse.)
Kirkscey’s introduction to Neville was made by Memphis’ Robert Gordon, an author and filmmaker who had collaborated with Neville on such nonfiction films as “Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story” and “Johnny Cash’s America.”
Neville’s theatrical followup to “20 Feet from Stardom” was a project co-directed with Gordon, the highly acclaimed “Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal,” a 2015 documentary that presented the infamous 1968 political-convention-coverage debates between conservative pundit William F. Buckley and liberal litterateur Gore Vidal as both a preview of our divisive present and an elegy for a more eloquent standard of TV analysis past.
Kirkscey composed the score for “Best of Enemies,” but the music was not as pervasive or as important as it is in the Mr. Rogers movie. The new documentary is not only filled with talk of love and other resonant emotions made to order for musical accompaniment but it showcases a man who was himself a musician and songwriter, as evidenced over the hundreds of episodes of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” produced for PBS from 1968 to 2001.
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” opens with black-and-white footage of Fred Rogers at the piano, applying music theory to his notion that a properly planned program could “help children through some of the difficult modulations of life.” The movie that follows is filled with snippets of Rogers’ performances and songs (including, of course, the TV theme that gives the documentary its title), most of which emphasize the empathetic host’s message that “love is at the root of everything — love, and the lack of it.”
As the Pennsylvania-born Rogers explains in the film, recalling his childhood: “Music was my first language. I was scared to use words.” Instead, he learned he could express emotions through his fingers, at the piano.
In another bit of archival footage, Rogers (who died at 74 in 2003) contrasts the respect he feels for his young audience with the crassness and consumerist indoctrination of commercial children’s programming.
“The space between the television screen and whoever happens to be receiving it, I consider that very holy ground,” he says.
Although Rogers did not taint this holy ground with partisan political discussion, his program touched, in its own simple, childlike and profound way, on such topics as racism and even assassination. A clip from an old black-andwhite episode evinces uncanny parallels to current events, when the literal puppet ruler, King Friday, orders a “border guard” to construct a wall around his kingdom because he is “against change.”
“The timing, yeah...,” marveled Kirkscey. “It’s hard to imagine a better time for people in this country to hear Fred Rogers’ message. His whole mission was trying to help kids. It’s in stark contrast to the callous treatment of kids who are apparently in detention camps. We could definitely used more love and compassion for our fellow human beings, and more honesty.”
After contemplating “a whole bunch of episodes of the show,” which had been sent to him by Neville’s office, Kirkscey recorded and edited the music that would make up the score on Digital Audio Workstation software (Jenny Davis of Crosstown Arts contributed flute); the work took place in the “studio” that originally was the dining room of his 1916 home (the plaster and wood give the space a warm sound, Kirkscey said).
The result is a score that complements the movie’s sometimes melancholic, sometimes playful and sometimes inspiring content, while also providing some sonic contrast to the simplicity of Rogers’ piano-based tunes. The music recognizes that “one of the themes the film exposes is Fred Rogers’ humanity, and his doubts and insecurities,” Kirkscey said. “And that’s something I can relate to, too.”
Distributed by Focus Features, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where Kirkscey saw it twice with an audience.
“It obviously has a strong impact on people,” he said.
Said director Neville, in an interview with the IndieWire website: “What I’ve come to realize is that Fred’s superpower was this penetrating emotional honesty and this ability to find one’s emotional bullseye. And ultimately if you’re trying to keep your adult defenses up, he’s going to penetrate those defenses. Your emotional bullseye is going to get hit at some point.”
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” engenders strong, sometimes contradictory emotions. Some viewers may find themselves inspired by Mr. Rogers’ devotion to kindness and understanding, while others may be filled with despair because the current state of the political and social culture is so antithetical to Rogers’ ideal. Kirkscey said he belongs to the first category.
“I personally felt mostly inspired and happy,” he said. “Watching that movie makes me want to go out in the world and be a better and kinder person.”