Tagline: Everything is hotter down south.
Black Snake Moan movie storyline. There was a time when Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) played the blues; a time he got Bojo’s Juke Joint shakin’ back in the day. Now he lives them. Bitter and broken from a cheating wife and a shattered marriage, Lazarus’ soul is lost in spent dreams and betrayal’s contempt… Until Rae (Christina Ricci).
Half naked and beaten unconscious, Rae is left for dead on the side of the road when Lazarus discovers her. The God-fearing, middle-aged black man quickly learns that the young white woman he’s nursing back to health is none other than the town tramp from the small Tennessee town where they live.
Worse, she has a peculiar anxiety disorder. He realizes when the fever hits, Rae’s affliction has more to do with love lost than any found. Abused as a child and abandoned by her mother, Rae is used by just about every man in the phone book. She tethers her only hope to Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), but escape to a better life is short-lived when Ronnie ships off for boot camp. Desperation kicks in, as a drug-induced Rae reverts to surviving the only way she knows how, by giving any man what he wants to get what she needs … Until Lazarus.
Refusing to know her in the biblical sense, Lazarus decides to cure Rae of her wicked ways – and vent some unresolved male vengeance of his own. He chains her to his radiator, justifying his unorthodox methods with quoted scripture. Preacher R.L. (John Cothran) intervenes, but it is Lazarus and Rae who redeem themselves. Unleashing Rae emotionally, Lazarus unchains his heart, finding love again in Angela (S. Epatha Merkerson). By saving Rae, he frees himself.
Black Snake Moan is a 2006 American drama film written and directed by Craig Brewer, and starring Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, and Justin Timberlake. The plot focuses on a Mississippi bluesman (Samuel L. Jackson) who holds a troubled local woman (Christina Ricci) captive in his house in an attempt to cure her of her nymphomania after finding her severely beaten on the side of a road.
The title of the film derives from the 1927 Blind Lemon Jefferson song. The film draws numerous references to the Mississippi Blues movement, not least in its title and soundtrack. During its March 2–4, 2007 opening weekend in the US the film earned $4 million, putting it in eighth place behind films including other new releases Wild Hogs and Zodiac.
More than the Mesopotamia of Music
“Here alone with a beaten, half naked white woman…I been toe to toe with the law in this town, for no more than being black and nearby.” – Lazarus
“Memphis is very much a character in a Craig Brewer movie. At first glance it’s a little rough around the edges,” says Allain, “a little dangerous, a little scary. Once you’re here and you’re in the rhythm of it, you understand that it’s a town that’s born out of music, born out of a black and white collision of music and that there’s this incredible creative energy that’s seething through. It’s already the Mesopotamia of music: The crossroads of blues, rap and R&B and all the Stax legends, Elvis, BB King and Isaac Hayes – just so much here. It’s a very real city, where black and white sit side by side and listen to the same music and enjoy the same food.”
But it is also a city of the Deep South. “We have a long history in this country of bad things happening to black men because of white women. This is danger. This is danger of the first order,” says Cothran. “Many, many black men have been killed for being in the proximity of this, let alone involved in this. With the proximity of a half-naked white woman, beaten up, the first things that any black man feels are steeped in American history. He realizes he is walking on precarious and dangerous turf, so he has got to be careful. Craig is writing about things we need to talk about – coming from a place of wanting to illuminate things that need to have light shed on them. There are a lot of dark places in all of us in this country. If a film like this can shed a little light, then we’re all going to be better off.”
Because of the subject matter, Director of Photography Amelia Vincent, who also shot Hustle & Flow, says she and Brewer decided to shoot the film in a “classically formal fashion, where everything is very deliberate and the framing is very precise. You want the audience to take in everything – every choice that Craig Brewer as a director has made – is a serious choice,” she explains. “There’s nothing random about what’s happening in the frame. You have a girl in white underpants running around on a chain outside a house. If that was not shot with a certain amount of deliberate technical precision and a classical approach, then the audience could avoid acknowledging the seriousness of the material. The color tone is informed by what is in rural Tennessee, so you see a lot of faded browns and a lot of green farmland.”
“The choice to shoot in wide screen format,” Vincent says, “really comes from what is in the frame, whether it’s a guitar, or a girl lying on a couch, or a chain being pulled between two people. The wide screen format made us look at a lot of westerns. The Misfits and The Searchers were a big part of our research. In terms of framing, it is nice to take a formal western approach. Instead of shooting over somebody’s holster, we just shot over the guitar to Rae on the couch.”
Singleton, the first African-American director to rise to the ranks of Hollywood’s top-tier filmmakers, with his explosive black exploitation film Boyz N The Hood, praised Brewer for “doing some really challenging things with the actors, the camera and the way in which he is telling the story.”
Singleton knew the subject matter of BLACK SNAKE MOAN would be provocative and evocative. “This story takes us to places where people are really uncomfortable” on many levels, he says. But he was never uncomfortable with it in the hands of this storyteller. “Craig was the first person I’ve had as a protégé, and it’s really fun for me being a director to watch Craig grow as a director and see him blossom with this movie. This movie started with our collaboration on Hustle & Flow. In the process of getting Hustle made, Craig said that he had just written a new script.” Singleton read it and pushed to get it green lit before Hustle & Flow. was even released.
Allain had been encouraging Brewer to keep working on BLACK SNAKE MOAN even when it appeared Hustle & Flow. would not be made. She was convinced it would take off, and she credits Singleton for being a catalyst in making that happen. The two have made five movies together. “The fact is John shared my excitement over Craig and wanted to help usher in this new voice. He put up all of his money and gave us the creative freedom as a financier to realize Craig’s dream,” Allain says. “John is an incredible talent and his energy and his excitement for the filmmaking process is very contagious. “
The story for BLACK SNAKE MOAN came to Brewer one evening. He carded out the entire movie that night, but he didn’t have a title in mind at the time. When Hustle & Flow. won the coveted Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, Brewer seized the opportunity to get this film made. “We just knew that if there was ever a time to get this rather challenging movie up and going, now would be the time,” Brewer remembers. “We put the pedal to the metal; we got the right cast members and started making the movie.”
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Black Snake Moan (2007)
Directed by: Craig Brewer
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, John Cothran Jr., Justin Timberlake, S. Epatha Merkerson, Brandon Raines, Adriane Lenox, Amy Lavere, Clare Grant, Claude Phillips
Screenplay by: Craig Brewer
Production Design by: Keith Brian Burns
Cinematography by: Amy Vincent
Film Editing by: Billy Fox
Set Decoration by: Meg Everist
Art Direction by: Liba Daniels
Music by: Scott Bomar
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content, language, some violence and drug use.
Distributed by: Paramount Classics
Release Date: March 2, 2007
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