Fresno Filmworks

March 2008

Honeydripper
  • Honeydripper
  • Friday, March 14, 2008
  • 5:30pm and 8:15pm
  • The Tower Theatre
  • 815 E. Olive Avenue, Fresno [map]
  • $10.00 General Admission
  • $8.00 for Students and Seniors
  • buy tickets →

[Sayles is] more concerned with spinning a ground-level human comedy than searching for pie in the sky. His movie is rich with characters and flowing with music.

Roger Ebert
Chigaco Sun-Times

In the endearing musical time-piece Honeydripper, the indie icon [Sayles] lets his narrative gifts take the lead and the social issues follow like a tight bass line.

John Anderson
Variety

A leisurely, atmospheric production with lots of time to appreciate [Sayles'] largely African-American cast, along with rocking musical interludes and just the faintest wash of spirituality.

Andrew O'Hehir
Salon.com


Watch the Trailer

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Synopsis

Iconoclastic filmmaker John Sayles, in his 16th feature film, continues his extraordinary examination of the complexities and shifting identities of American sub-cultures in the new film "Honeydripper." With his usual understated intelligence, Sayles uses the rhythms of the citizens of Harmony, Alabama to immerse the audience into the world of the Jim Crow south. It's a fable about the birth of rock n' roll–a quintessentially American subject, but with a fidelity to time and temperament that is unusual in an American director.

It's 1950 and it's a make or break weekend for Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover), the proprietor of the Honeydripper Lounge. Deep in debt, Tyrone is desperate to bring back the crowds that used to come to his place. He decides to lay off his long-time blues singer Bertha Mae, and announces that he's hired a famous guitar player, Guitar Sam, for a one night only gig in order to save the club.

Into town drifts Sonny Blake, a young man with nothing to his name but big dreams and the guitar case in his hand. Rejected by Tyrone when he applies to play at the Honeydripper, he is intercepted by the corrupt local Sheriff, arrested for vagrancy and rented out as an unpaid cotton picker to the highest bidder. But when Tyrone's ace-in-the-hole fails to materialize at the train station, his desperation leads him back to Sonny and the strange, wire-dangling object in his guitar case. The Honeydripper lounge is all set to play its part in rock n' roll history.

Written, Directed, and Edited by John Sayles
USA, 2007
122 minutes, PG-13