Tag Archives: Graham Gordy

Pulitzers Play Little Rock: LOST IN YONKERS at Arkansas Rep

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NS LIY RepAfter nearly three decades of shows on Broadway, Neil Simon won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1991 play Lost in Yonkers.   Though darker in tone than many of his plays, it still provided a host of laughs.

In October 1994, Arkansas Rep produced the play. The two boys at the center of the story were played by future filmmaker Graham Gordy and future Broadway producer Will Trice.  The matriarch who presides over the action was played by Anne Sheldon, a Little Rock native who’d left the city after marrying during World War II.

Others in the cast were Lori Wilner, Clif Morts, Elizabeth Aiello and Ed Romanoff.  The production was directed by William Gregg, a guest director at the Rep.  Mike Nichols provided the scenic design, while Don Bolinger was the costume designer.

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the first Pulitzer Prize for Drama being given. To pay tribute to 100 years of the Pulitzer for Drama, each day this month a different Little Rock production of a Pulitzer Prize winning play will be highlighted.  Many of these titles have been produced numerous times.  This look will veer from high school to national tours in an attempt to give a glimpse into Little Rock’s breadth and depth of theatrical history.

Creative Class of 2015: Graham Gordy

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Photo by Nancy Nolan

Photo by Nancy Nolan

From his days as a child actor on Little Rock stages to creator and writer of the upcoming Quarry on Cinemax, Graham Gordy has had a varied career in the performing arts.

After his start as an actor, he transitioned to writing while in Los Angeles working with the Groundlings. Though he still makes occasional appearances as an actor (including a stint kissing Reese Witherspoon’s neck in the Jeff Nichols film Mud), the focus of his career now is writing.

His plays have been performed in New York, but it is his work for film and television that has brought him the widest acclaim.  He was screenwriter for War Eagle and The Love Guru. In 2013, he wrote episodes of the Sundance series Rectify.

Gordy is currently at work on the Cinemax series Quarry.  It is set to premiere in 2016, after Cinemax picked it up for a whole season.  Filming took place earlier this year.

When not shooting on location, or doing “industry work” on the coasts, Gordy can often be found out and about in Central Arkansas supporting the local film and arts scene.

 

Graham Gordy discusses the film and TV industry at Old State House Brown Bag lecture today at 12 noon

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Photo by Nancy Nolan

Photo by Nancy Nolan

The Old State House offers regular noontime lectures on a variety of topics.  These “Brown Bag Lectures” take place at 12 noon.  The next one is today.

Graham Gordy, the award-winning Arkansan writer, will discuss how the film and television industry have changed after the Recession.

Gordy’s discussion is in conjunction with the Old State House’s “Lights! Camera! Arkansas!” exhibit which is currently on display.  It focuses on connections between Arkansas and Hollywood.

Gordy’s credits include include the current series “Rectify” the upcoming movie Quarry as well as the films War Eagle, Arkansas and The Love Guru.  As an actor, he has appeared in “Rectify,” My Dog Skip and The Last Ride.  As a youth, he also appeared on various stages in Central Arkansas.

Little Rock Film Festival Celebrates Opening of Ron Robinson Theater

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lrff_mp_hdr_logoLast week the new Ron Robinson Theater opened in the Arcade Building at the corner of President Clinton and River Market.  One of the anchors of this facility is the Little Rock Film Festival.
To celebrate the grand opening, the Little Rock Film Festival has scheduled a series of events.
Things kick off tonight with the documentary Ain’t In It for My Health.  This honest look at the life and career of Arkansas native and music legend Levon Helm was one of the highlights of the 2013 Little Rock Film Festival.  The film starts at 7pm.  It will be followed by a Q&A with Amy Helm.  Then at 9pm, Amy Helm and Handsome Strangers will take the stage for a concert.

On Saturday, January 18, at 3pm, the Ron Robinson Theater will be screen the “Best of the LRFF’s 48 Hour Film Project.”  the titles shown will be La Grande Fete, Surprise Party, Abbatoir, Vacation, The Door, The Plumber, Last Chance Romance, Drain, The Third Save, and Deuces.  

At 7pm on the 18th, the documentary Sleepy LaBeef Rides Again will be shown.  This documentary/concert film about Arkansas native Sleepy LaBeef will be followed by a Q&A with Sleepy LaBeef and Dave Pomeroy.  At 8:30pm, LaBeef and Pomeroy will be in concert.

On Monday, January 20 at 7pm, the HBO Documentary Film Moms Mabley will be screened.  A special Martin Luther King Day presentation about the iconic African American standup comedienne Jackie “Moms” Mabley, who broke racial and sexual boundaries and continues to inspire comedians to this day. In her directorial debut, Whoopi Goldberg pays homage to this pioneering legend.

Tuesday, January 21 will feature a program entitled “Locals Rule” at 7:30 pm.  These standout  Arkansas short films from the first seven years of Little Rock Film Festival represent some of the most creative work on the national festival circuit. From offbeat comedies to Gothic tales, these films show the vibrancy of the Arkansas Film Community.  The titles to be showns are Ballerina, Cain and Able, Mary, The Orderly, Pillow, Spanola Pepper Sauce, and The Van.

Wednesday, January 22 at 7:00pm may seem more like Halloween as The Little Rock Horror Picture Show presents One Please and Contracted.

  • One Please– Summers in suburbia get weird when Michael Berryman comes to town. The short film is an Arkansas premiere from the award winning team behind ‘Pillow’.
  • Contracted – Russellville native Eric England returns to Arkansas with his latest project, Contracted, a feature length thriller about what can go wrong when the party goes out of hand. England’s previous films, Madison County and Roadside, both screened at the Little Rock Horror Picture Show. Director Eric England and actress Najarra Townsend will be in attendance.

On Thursday, January 23 at 7:30pm, an episode of the Sundance series “Rectify” will be shown.  The Sundance series, “Rectify,” created by former Little Rock resident Ray McKinnon, has deservedly landed on many critics’ best of the year list. The series follows Daniel Holden as he struggles to deal with life on the outside when DNA evidence releases him from prison  after he served 19 years  for a rape conviction. Following a screening of Episode 4 from the first season, writer Graham Gordy will discuss the project.

The week-plus long series will culminate on Saturday, January 25, with a screening of Ladder 49 at 7pm.  North Little Rock native film director Jay Russell will be in town to present his film, Ladder 49, starring Joaquin Phoenix and John Travolta. Ladder 49 is a 2004 film centered around the heroics of fictional Baltimore firefighter Jack Morrison, who is trapped inside a warehouse fire, and his recollection of the events  that got him to that point.  Following the screening of Ladder 49 the Little Rock Film Festival will host a grand opening party in the lobby of the Ron Robinson Theater. Music, Food and Drink provided.

LR Film Fest: Made in Arkansas Awards

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IMG_5408There are four awards presented to films in the “Made in Arkansas” track.   This year there were fifteen shorts and five feature films in contention for these awards.

Liza Burns won the Best Actor award for her performance in the feature 45 RPM.  (Note that actor is used as a gender non-specific term.)  The other nominees were Jeff Bailey for “The Discontentment of Ed Telfair,” Jeffrey Fuell for “Blood Brothers” and Graham Gordy for “Mary.”

The Charles B. Pierce Award for Best Short went to “The Discontentment of Ed Telfair” which was directed by Daniel Campbell.  The other nominees were “Diamond John” (directed by Travis Mosler), “Last Shot Love” (directed by Nolan Dean) and “Mary” (directed by Zach Turner).  Interestingly, the latter two and Campbell’s winning film were all grouped together in the “Heartbeats” block.

The award for Best Feature went to 45 RPM directed by Juli Jackson.  The other nominees were Last Summer by Mark Thiedeman and The Identity Theft of Mitch Mustain by Matthew Wolfe.

Mark Thiedeman won Best Director for Last Summer.  This is the third consecutive year Thiedeman has had a film at the Little Rock Film Festival.  The other nominees were Amman Abbasi for “Bad Water,” Zach Turner for “Mary” and Juli Jackson for 45 RPM.

Escape Velocity Launch Party

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cover

Tonight at 6pm at the Darragh Center of the Central Arkansas Library, the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies will host a launch party for the new book: Escape Velocity.  Edited by Jay Jennings, this collects the works of Charles Portis and represents his first new release in more than 20 years.  The book is published by Butler Center Books.
The evening will include remarks by Jennings, readings by Graham Gordy and music by Mandy McBride.  Last week, another launch event was held in New York City.

The book-which collects Portis’s nonfiction and short stories, as well as a memoir and a play-spans his half-century-long writing career, covering his early journalism from the 1950s when he worked for several newspapers up to more recent magazine stories published in the Atlantic and the Oxford American.

Escape Velocity brings together almost everything Portis has written outside his novels, both never-before-published work and hard-to-find stories that fans have known about for years and that new readers will delight in discovering.

Besides True Grit, Portis is the author of four other novels-Norwood, The Dog of the South, Masters of Atlantis, and Gringos. All of his novels are available from Overlook Press.

About the editor
Jay Jennings, a journalist and humorist, lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. A former reporter for Sports Illustrated and frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, Jennings is the author of Carry the Rock: Race, Football, and the Soul of an American City (Rodale Press, 2010), a book that focuses on the 2007 football season at Little Rock’s famed Central High School-a half-century after the tumultuous 1957 desegregation of the school.

Shakespeare’s South

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In partnership with the Arkansas Shakespeare Theater, acclaimed writers Graham Gordy, Trenton Lee Stewart, and Warwick Sabin will bring Shakespeare to the South for a very special Tales from the South on Tuesday evening, January 17, 2012, with stories centered around finding themselves, others, and even the South in the Bard. The live taping of the radio series will be at Starving Artist Café in the Argenta Arts District, Downtown North Little Rock. Live music by The Salty Dogs.

Doors open at 5pm, dinner is served 5pm-6:30pm and the show starts at 7pm. Tickets are $5 for the show, plus the cost of dinner. Seating is very limited. Tickets can be purchased online at www.talesfromthesouth.com.

“Tales from the South” is recorded on Tuesdays during “Dinner and a Show” at Starving Artist Café. The show airs locally on KUAR Thursdays at 7pm and is syndicated by World Radio Network, a satellite radio distribution service, available to more than 130 million listeners worldwide. Shows are also distributed nationwide to multiple public radio stations by PRX (Public Radio Exchange). Podcasts are available on ITunes, the NPR website, the KUAR website, the PRX website, and the “Tales from the South” website.

“Tales from the South” is presented by the Argenta Arts Foundation, with AY Magazine as the official media sponsor, publishing a story each month in the magazine. Additional support provided by William F. Laman Public Library, the North Little Rock Visitor’s Bureau and The Oxford American Magazine.