Going for Personality

Nobody tells you America's sweetheart was Canadian until you go to the VCU Southern Film Festival. O, Mary, I hardly knew ye.

This year's theme, "Screening Southern Music: Exploring Musical Traditions and Stereotypes in Popular Films" couldn't be any more up my alley. Music and film? I was so there.

"There" was the VMFA to see Mary Pickford in "Heart o' the Hills," a 1919 movie about a hell-raising mountain girl set to a live soundtrack created by the Hot Seats with banjo, fiddle, washboard and guitar.

As many times as the Hot Seats have impressed me, tonight took the cake.

Not long before the movie began, a guy sat down next to me, reeking so strongly of cigarettes I could hardly breathe. Luckily, the odor dissipated after a while, but then not half an hour in, he got up and left, never to return.

Mine was not to wonder why.

Of course a film made so long ago had plenty of dated tropes ("Mountain people were a primitive people"), although several people in the audience who'd grown up in Appalachia said they'd been pleasantly surprised that the film wasn't nearly as cliched or full of stereotypes as they'd expected.

They must have had very low expectations.

What took adjusting to were the scene cards telling the story because they were written in "Appalachian-speak," so it took a while to get used to all the misspellings (furriners for foreigners) and contractions. The phrasing - "It's so small in here ye cain't cuss a cat without getting hair in yer teeth" - was plenty colorful.

As one of the panel said after the movie, the Hot Seats really made tonight's experience. They'd worked out perfectly-timed music for every scene, using more traditional hillbilly music for the scenes in the mountains and southern music for the scenes set in the lowlands.

Naturally, "My Old Kentucky Home" showed up in the plantation scene with blacks serving cold beverages to the white folk. During what was described as a shindig, the played increasingly faster as the dancers at the gathering tried to out-dance each other.

One of the biggest laughs came in that scene when the old geezer stopped dancing to say, "Hold on, I lost my teeth!" Seemed a little corny to me, but I did laugh at the next story card that read, "After the jollification..."

The most uncomfortable scene for tonight's crowd was the one where people donned white robes and hoods (even for their horses) and set out as "night riders" to bring about some vigilante justice to the bad guys who'd bought up everybody's coal land. Too soon, still.

After the film there was a Q & A with history professors from VCU and UR, plus Josh from the Hot Seats, with many interesting questions asked and points made (including one by Josh's mother). Our VMFA host Trent said it was one of the best post-film discussions they'd ever had, probably because the crowd that stayed for it had lots to say about Pickford and the depiction of the people.

There was an afterparty at Grandstaff, but I passed on that to catch "What Was I Thinking?" at Richmond Comedy Coalition, a chance to hear real people read from their diaries before the improv troupe riffed on them.

Hysterical from the get-go.

Grace read from her 13-year old diary (complete with school photo inside), where she'd often made 3 or 4 entries in one day, talking about all the boys she liked. On one occasion, she'd made entries at 10:01, 10:08 and 10:21. That's a lot of teen-aged angst in 20 minutes.

Favorite entry: "I'm writing a soap opera called "Halls of Romance."

The comedy talent then skewered it all - the principal ("He was really good at running the school despite the allegations"), TV ("Next time on "Halls of Romance...") and 3-day relationships ("I don't feel like we connected on a connection-based level").

Next, Joey read from several pieces he'd written for the high school paper, despite not being on staff. One was about how girls were everywhere - and not just good girls - and another about beauty versus personality ("The brain wants good looks but knows it should look for personality").

Someone should have told 17-year old Joey that it wasn't the brain that was seeking good looks.

Favorite entry: "Also, I'm going to give atheism a try."

I give people like Grace and Joey major props because they lay their history out there and allow it to be the stuff of mock game shows (three punk rock bachelors competing for a punk rock bracelet), skits about a Britney Spears Halloween costume ("I'll just shave your head") and worshiping Barney ("And then he gave the world Baby Bop").

And that, I learned, is how you end a night with some serious jollification and no hair in your teeth.