The Commercial Appeal

Netflix Memphis BBQ movie makes debut Friday

‘Uncorked’ premiere was canceled by coronaviru­s

- John Beifuss Memphis Commercial Appeal USA TODAY NETWORK – TENNESSEE

Set and shot in Memphis, the Netflix movie “Uncorked” was supposed to have its world premiere March 14 at the South by Southwest festival in Austin.

A Memphis cast-and-crew screening with writer-director Prentice Penny had been set for March 19.

Coronaviru­s concerns caused the cancellati­on of both screenings. As a result, this drama about a beloved if fictional family-owned barbecue restaurant will have been seen by only a handful of viewers when it makes its public debut Friday on Netflix.

The pandemic should make Memphians especially eager to sample “Uncorked.” With the city under a safer-athome executive order from Mayor Jim Strickland, this story about food, drink and family arrives like a basket of comfort food for quarantine­d Memphians longing for the social connection of their favorite lunch spots, nightclubs and, um, liquor stores.

“I knew once it was going to be centered in the world of barbecue, there were only a few places where the barbecue resonates like gospel,” said Penny, 46, in a telephone interview from his hometown of Los Angeles, explaining how he came to shoot his movie in Memphis.

A writer, director and show runner for the HBO series “Insecure,” Penny cited Kansas City, Missouri, Austin, Texas and North Carolina as locations he had considered for “Uncorked” — until he visited Memphis.

“Memphis was the logical choice,” Penny said. “Not only is it a capital of barbecue, so much of the fabric of American life is rooted in Memphis. The city has had such a rich impact, not just on American culture but on Africaname­rican culture.”

Shot here from Nov. 10 to Dec. 12, 2018, with an additional five days in Paris (France, not Tennessee), “Uncorked” is the tale of a young man “who feels torn between his dream of becoming a master sommelier and his father’s expectatio­ns that he’ll take over the family barbecue business.”

That synopsis will accompany the movie’s thumbnail icon on the Netflix homepage. In a pun on the title, the movie’s promotiona­l tagline puts it more succinctly: “Some dreams can’t stay bottled up.”

The story’s protagonis­t is Elijah (Mamoudou Athie), apparently foreordain­ed to be the third-generation manager of Papa’s Kitchen BAR-B-Q, a beloved Memphis eatery founded by his late grandfathe­r and currently overseen by his father, Louis (Courtney B. Vance, perhaps most recognizab­le for his Emmy-winning role as lawyer Johnnie Cochran in “The People v. O.J. Simpson:

American Crime Story“).

The restaurant is a family affair, with Louis’ wife, Sylvia (Niecy Nash), its maternal hostess. “How your grandmama‘s feet doing, they still swollen?” she asks one customer, while dropping off a plate of ribs. “You tell her I’m praying for her.”

But Elijah is more interested in grape than pig. When he’s not at the restaurant, he works at Joe’s Wines & Liquor in Midtown (yes, the famous Sputnik sign makes a cameo), and he longs to be a master wine steward — a sommelier.

Louis doesn’t understand. “You know how hard your grandfathe­r worked to keep this restaurant in the family?” he asks his son. “You know what this restaurant means to the community? This place is historic. Frankie Beverly had a stroke there.” (As that line shows, Penny always balances the drama with comedy.)

Elijah, for his part, tries to make his obsession relatable to others.

“It actually kind of helps when I think of wine like barbecue,” he says, at a family meal. “Certain places just do certain things good. Like Memphis and ribs or Texas and brisket. It’s kind of like Argentina and malbec or Provence and rosé.”

Flirting with his future girlfriend (Sasha Compere) at Joe’s, Elijah connects wine to hip-hop. He says chardonnay is the Jay-z of wine because “it’s versatile, smooth, it can go with many things,” while pinot grigio is a white wine that can “get stupid,” so it’s more like Kanye West.

For Penny, “Uncorked” is somewhat autobiogra­phical. The inspiratio­n was his relationsh­ip with his father, Prentice Penny Sr., the second-generation owner of Penny Furniture, a store that was a fixture in Compton, California, until it closed in 1990.

Said Penny: “Growing up, that was always the talk — ‘When is Junior going to take over?’ In all of our family’s minds, it was assumed that’s what would happen. I was in high school when I kind of started to realize whatever I wanted to do, it wasn’t going to be that.”

Just as significant, the modestly budgeted movie fulfills Penny’s ambition to present African-american characters in contexts too often denied them by studio production­s. The family in “Uncorked” faces hardships, sure, but these do not include drug abuse or gang violence or the problems of the socalled “urban” dramas manufactur­ed by what Penny calls “quote unquote mainstream Hollywood.”

“I’m a huge fan of movies like ‘Good Will Hunting’ or ‘Manchester by the Sea’ or ‘Chef,’ and I was sort of feeling like those very slice-of-life movie, those movies about everyday existence, even a movie like ‘Ladybird,’ we weren’t seeing that with black people,” he said

“In our movies about fathers and sons, usually the father is absent. But that just wasn’t my life or a lot of friends of mine’s life.”

In another example of the film’s defiance of narrative straitjack­eting for black characters, Penny sends his protagonis­t, the would-be sommelier, to France for a few days.

“A lot of movies with white casts, everybody goes to London or everybody is in Paris,” he said. “I don’t ever seen people of color travel internatio­nally in movies, unless it’s a spy movie.

“So, to me, to have a movie where an African-american man from Memphis, all of the sudden now he’s biking in Paris or going through the Musée d’orsay and looking at priceless works of art by Monet and Cezanne — on camera, that becomes so powerful. Without saying ‘Here’s a message,’ it gets the point across.”

Searching for an authentic location for their all-important restaurant set, producers met with the owners of the Cozy Corner, the BAR-B-Q Shop, A&R Bar-b-que, The Four Way and other family-owned pork palaces and soul food sanctuarie­s. However, shutting down a working restaurant for three weeks of shooting was not practical.

Instead, the production rehabbed an empty space on Elvis Presley Boulevard that once was home to Chenault’s, a diner popular in the 1950s and ‘60s. “It had all the texture and peeled paint and the feeling of layers of history, which is what we were looking for,” said location manager Nicki Newburger, a veteran scout for filmmakers working in Memphis.

The space was transforme­d into a convincing mock restaurant, with tables, booths, a kitchen, a posted menu (”Get Yo Grub On!”), and a framed portrait of Barack Obama paired alongside a 1968 Ernest Withers photograph of striking Memphis sanitation workers carrying “I AM A MAN” signs.

What really sold the illusion to confused passersby, however, was the line that extended out the door of extras pretending to be customers.

“People would show up and think it was an actual restaurant and be disappoint­ed because we would have to turn them away,” Newburger said.

“That happened more than a few times,” confirmed Penny.

Some other key locations included Memphis Internatio­nal Airport; the

Hutchison School; the C.C. Entertainm­ent Center, a blues club on Danny Thomas; the East End Skating Center; the Keith’s Farm/fayette Packing Co. meat storehouse in Eads; the West Clinic in Germantown; the Woodland Tree Service lumber yard; and Downtown’s Flight Restaurant and Wine Bar, where father and son watch a Grizzlies game. (Says Louis about Mike Conley: “If he wanna be more popular he gotta cut that hair. That boy looks like he steals car in Wakanda.”)

“I’m genuinely convinced that our city is perfect,” said Newburger of the wide variety of locations. “You can get any look you want, practicall­y, and in such close proximity.”

“I wanted to visually show up a city that hadn’t really been seen on camera in a very stylized way,” Penny said. “Originally we were going to film in the summer, but the winter just made it so much more gritty and atmospheri­c and textured.” In one scene, in fact, snow falls — a Memphis rarity, captured on camera.

Adding to the texture, the soundtrack is loaded with Memphis hip-hop. The movie opens with “Juice” by Yo Gotti, and before the final credits come to an end viewers will have heard Blac Youngsta, Moneybagg Yo, Key Glock and Marco Pavé. They’ll also hear the first-ever movie dialogue reference to Top’s BARB-Q as a good place to catch your man when he’s cheating.

Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission­er Linn Sitler said the appearance of “Uncorked” on home screens at a time when public venues are closed makes the movie “a gift of uncanny timing.”

“The family presented in the film is loving and supportive and strong,” Sitler said, perhaps conscious that the enforced closeness of the past few days have frayed some Memphis nerves. “You’ll want your family to be like theirs.”

Penny, for his part, found support in Memphis. He said when he was scouting locations, people would invite him and his group inside, as if welcoming old friends. “I didn’t really know what I was walking into, how gracious and kind everybody was.”

 ?? NETFLIX ?? Joe’s Wines & Liquor take a star turn (along with actual star Mamoudou Athie, playing a wine store employee) in “Uncorked.”
NETFLIX Joe’s Wines & Liquor take a star turn (along with actual star Mamoudou Athie, playing a wine store employee) in “Uncorked.”

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