Gayle Harper

Photographer ~ Author ~ Traveler

5 GOOD REASONS TO SEE THE MOVIE “MUD” THIS WEEK

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  1. Don’t miss it on the BIG screen. It’s filmed along the Mississippi River in a wild, swampy region of southern Arkansas where there are few roads anywhere near the big river. The photography at almost river level is so intimate with this massive force of nature that you can not just feel it but almost smell it.
  2. The casting is perfect and the acting is superb. Writer/Director Jeff Nichols wrote the role of the main character, Mud, with Matthew McConaughey in mind and it had to be him! His sexy mix of bad boy and innocence is irresistible, but there is much more to this role than that. He is at home in the wild, wily, resourceful and wise; he will tell you any version of the truth that serves the moment and yet you feel his innate integrity and genuineness. The fierce, blind love he feels for Juniper, played by Reese Witherspoon, has not faltered since they were kids in spite of her fickle ways. Tye Sheridan gives a jaw-dropping performance as 14-year-old Ellis, one of the two river kids who discover Mud living on an island in the Mississippi and become his friends. The range of emotions behind his often stoic young face leaves you knowing how it feels to be raised in a barebones houseboat, to passionately want to believe in true love and to watch all that is familiar be dismantled board by board. Finally, Sam Shepard as Mud’s gritty, mysterious sharpshooter father figure is truly masterful.
  3. It is a visceral experience of a vanishing culture that most of us never knew existed. “River Rats,” as they often call themselves, live with the great river, sustained by its gifts and accepting it’s wild and constantly changing nature without reservation. Changes in laws, water quality and fish populations as well as drainage, industrial development and channelization are all bringing an end to this way of life. On my 90-day road trip alongside the full length of the Mississippi River, I met Tommy Groves, a river rat who grew up near Osceola, Arkansas, just 150 or so miles north of where Mud was filmed. Tommy grew up in a little cypress shotgun house on stilts where the Mississippi River came and went and the family survived on its bounty. Tommy’s a successful city dweller now, but he goes to the river every day and he knows he was blessed to grow up there. You can read the rest of his story on my blog post at http://bit.ly/harperriverrat if you like. Happily, the movie treated this ebbing river culture with respect, without even subtle hints at condescension.
  4. It’s 2 hours and 10 minutes of timelessness. The Mississippi River has been doing just what it does today since long before humans were around to notice. When Director Jeff Nichols wanted Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland, who plays Ellis’ best buddy, Neckbone, to feel the River’s timelessness, he handed them Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. “Just reading about the kids on the river in the late 1800s and then being able to go out and enjoy that same river, every day, was amazing,” said Sheridan according to Entertainment Weekly. As for McConaughey, he was quoted by contactmusic.com as saying, “The stage was the Mississippi river. To live there for a while, to camp out there, you quickly get the rhythm and the sense of smell and taste and humidity and weight, and how time trickles along like that river.” No matter how much agenda you walk in with, it is forgotten with the opening scene of Mud and swept away as absolutely as if you were sitting on the bank of the Mississippi.
  5. It’s about love – first love, idealized love, irredeemable love, unconditional love, unrequited love and fatherly love – without ever taking a step toward schmaltzy. And how can you not love that?

So – do yourself a favor, give yourself a break from all that’s going on and don’t miss this one! Here’s the trailer…

A Sweet River Rat and The Little Tug That Could

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Sorry for the long quiet spell. Following this little raindrop has been a bit like hanging onto a tiger by the tail. Experiences have been coming at me so fast, it has been impossible to find time to be at the computer. So many interesting, creative, beautiful people have been willing to share their homes, their time, their stories and their hearts with me that the time just evaporates.

For example, there was Tommy Groves in Osceola, Arkansas.  A self-described “river rat”, Tommy grew up in a little shotgun house on 6’ stilts, in the floodplain on the river side of the levee.  Every year when the water rose, his Daddy would take Tommy and his sister in a boat to the levee to meet the school bus and fetch them again in the afternoon. Only twice did the water actually get into the little house. I asked him why the family was willing to stay there and deal with the mud and the floods. “The Mississippi was our home and our way of life,” he said with a gentle smile. “We actually looked forward to the water rising. We were poor and when the water came up that meant the rabbits would be easy to get. There were lots of times we would have gone hungry if it weren’t for the rabbits.” 

He felt it was a blessing to grow up there, close to nature, to family and to the river he loves. They were a musically talented family and on Sunday afternoons they would gather in the front yard to sing and play for the neighbors who came to listen. “It was the only entertainment we had,” he said.  He still plays every Saturday night, but now it is in a theater he owns downtown.

Tommy’s Daddy didn’t trust banks. After losing $100 when a bank failed during the depression, he refused to take another chance. So, when he planted his land in soybeans at just the right time for several years and made a big profit, he stashed 300 thousand dollars in fruit jars. Eventually Tommy convinced him to put it in CDs and since that was also timed just right, the family prospered.

Tommy became a realtor and now owns 50 rental houses in Osceola. He’s also an electrician, a plumber and a carpenter and he was a policeman for a time. Plus, he’s a darned good fisherman! He fishes the Mississippi almost every day and has landed a number of 80+ pound catfish. He’s careful with those big ones and usually puts them back because, “They feel like my brothers and sisters.” Only once did he keep one that size, to give to a hungry family with 10 kids.

Tommy is a soft-spoken gentleman whose eyes show the joy he finds in life. When I asked if he had traveled much, he said, “Only for our senior class trip and to take the family to Branson.” He’s thankful for the life he has been blessed with and just couldn’t see anyplace else he would rather be than right here beside this big river. Thank you, Tommy, for your time and your open-heartedness!

Osceola is also the site of Arkansas’ busiest river port, where products like grain and rice are loaded onto barges for shipment downriver. When Eric Golde, of the Osceola Chamber of Commerce asked if I’d like to ride one of the tugboats working the port, I didn’t hesitate. These tugs are somewhat like a smaller sibling of The Phyllis, which I rode for 24 hours back upriver.  The tug we rode, “The Tommy Ross”, has a 1,200 hp engine (compared to 6,000 hp of the towboat).  It’s made to maneuver the barges around in the port and shuttle them to and from the larger tows. It’s another piece of the massive industry that is all but invisible to most of us, shipping millions of tons of products on the river.  After making our way down a steep, muddy incline of loose rocks, we signed in and were welcomed aboard. Deckhand Eddy Smith gave us earplugs for protection, then showed us the engine room. Up several flights of stairs, Captain Tommy Pinion welcomed us to his domain and then chatted casually as he expertly guided the tug into position, putting its squared-off bow flat against the end of a barge.  The two deckhands attached it, and then walked along the narrow ledge of the barge to the front.  It’s dangerous work that requires strength, balance and agility. As I watched them move with relaxed precision, they reminded me of mountain goats.  It happened to be a beautiful, blue sky morning for my ride, but the tugs run 24 hours a day in all seasons and all weather. I can’t imagine walking on those slippery metal surfaces in cold rain or freezing temperatures with the icy river below. 

 It all happened very smoothly and within an hour or so, the empty barge was tied into position near the grain elevator and the heavy metal hatch doors were banged open, ready to be filled with rice. 

The loaded barge was brought back into the “slack water harbor” and attached to the others awaiting their ride to New Orleans. 

Several Captains have told me it is tricky business driving a boat with a squared-off front and this much power without a barge in front. You must move slowly and carefully or the boat will “want to do a nosedive”.  It was easy to see that dynamic as we chugged out to the barges.

It’s fascinating to see how this section of the barge-moving industry fits into the larger picture and with luck, I might see what becomes of these products once they reach the mouth of the Mississippi as well.

This drought-parched land finally received a good, soaking rain in the night. You could almost hear the earth slurping it up! I’m sure the farmers are doing a happy dance!

Around this next bend is Memphis…are you ready??  Meet ya there!