Newsletter: A review of "Sinners"
The film is not for the faint of heart — it's a nightmare that will follow you into your dreams — but if you are God-haunted, you’ll love the film
One of my readers wrote to ask me if I had cut him from my subscription list… because he hadn’t gotten a newsletter in so long. I hadn’t, and I haven’t cut you either. I’ve just been overwhelmed with the work of actually editing the damn memoir. If you’re frustrated, I thank you for staying with me.
I have to tell you about the film “Sinners”
Several weeks ago, Laura and I went to see the new blues-infused film “Sinners.” Created by Black Panther director Ryan Coogler, the film is set in 1932 in the Mississippi Delta, and it stars Michael B. Jordan playing the roles of Smoke and Stack, twin brothers and criminals who return to their hometown with lots of stolen money, having fought in World War 1 and served under Al Capone, only to be confronted with genuine supernatural evil.
You heard it here — this is going to win all kinds of Academy Awards.
When we saw it in the theatre, we loved it. We couldn’t forget it, so last night we sat down and watched it again on Amazon. I have to say, it’s even better the second time around, and I suspect we’ll watch it again in the future.
I’ve never seen anything like the mix of genres in this film—part vampire horror, part gangster, part action, and part musical. Best of all, it works because the mixed genre thing isn’t a bug — it’s a feature of the film, according to the Economist’s review, “The morals of ‘Sinners”’ a fantasia of vampires and the blues.”
It’s not for the faint of heart — there’s plenty of blood and gore and sex — but if you are God-haunted as I am, you’ll love the film. The moment when all the vampires chant the Lord’s Prayer is horrifying and makes an unexpected point about race and religion. Or as Variety puts it,
Horror movies often have grandiose themes, but “Sinners” is the rare mainstream horror film that’s about something weighty and soulful: the wages of sin in Black America, an idea that in the movie extends from the embrace of criminality as a way to transcend oppression to the literal “deal with the devil” that Robert Johnson is said to have made at a crossroads to gain his world-shaking musical gift. (As the visionary of the blues, he was essentially the inventor of rock ‘n’ roll.)
There’s another moment you won’t forget, what I kept hearing people call “The Scene.” It features the central character, gifted blues player Preacher Boy Sammie (Miles Caton), who as Variety describes him, has a “twanging guitar and lyrical voice [that] seem to swing the blues right up to the sky.” He calls up the devil (in the form of a particularly powerful vampire) with the power of his music — think “The Devil Goes down to Georgia,” but with more far intensity.
What haunts me about this character is the difficult choice he makes to leave his father and his preachin’ ways to pursue his passion. As his father says, “If you keep dancing with the devil, one day he's gonna follow you home."
For Preacher boy, turns out it’s true.
Preacher Boy escapes the devil, of course, thanks to a bargain one of his friends makes after Preacher Boy escapes the scene, but he can’t escape his past, which follows him, as you’ll see in the Marvel-inspired extra ending (don’t leave until after the credits are done). Here you find that the whole nightmarish attack of the vampires has left Preacher Boy with both his profound love for the blues, as well as a weekly horror-filled dream that he spends his life trying to shake.
It’s truly a devil’s bargain — you don’t realize the wages of sin until you’ve spent them — and Preacher Boy is truly a tormented soul.
I’ve never seen the devil play Irish folk music though. Maybe I just don’t get out enough. But watching the company of vampires sing and dance to that music was utterly entrancing. As The Economist says,
The film is a homage to the Delta blues, a monumental art form forged in grinding adversity. In a bold fantasia in its middle stretch, Sammie’s performance at the juke joint conjures up the spirits of the antecedents of the blues, and of its progeny, among them west African dancers and a DJ. Sammie’s music is a triumph, yet it is imperilled. His preacher father disapproves of it. Then there are the vampires.
They are musicians themselves; their taste is Irish folk. But they covet the blues. “I want your stories and I want your songs,” their leader growls. The vampires are predatory and appropriative, just as other, predominantly white styles of music, from rock’n’roll to country, preyed on the blues, profiting from its rhythms and chords. “White folks, they like the blues just fine,” a character says. “They just don’t like the people who make it.” Succumbing to the bloodsuckers means compromise and loss.
If you haven’t seen “Sinners,” and this sounds like your type of film, please watch it. You won’t be sorry. It’s so good, I’m not even going to try to review it.
Oh, wait, I just did.
Oops.
The editing continues
Well, the brutal process of editing the memoir continues. About three weeks ago, I sent my editor eleven chapters that I had rewritten completely, and she sent back massive changes, suggesting that I might need more time to edit.
But first I had to get through closing out the school year, which included guiding my students as they planned and executed the honors banquet, grading capstone projects, selling enough yearbooks so we didn’t go into the hole financially, and attending graduation. It was a busy month.
Oh, and isn’t that an amazing gift my students created for me?
Once I was through that, I was able to turn to editing again. I’m almost done with revising the eleven chapter rewrites, and then I’ll finish the minor editing of the rest of the memoir.
Is it worth it?
That’s the question I keep asking myself as I spend eight hours a day rewriting. If nothing else, I have found the editor of my dreams in Judi Fennell. I’ve learned an incredible amount from her.
I have been teaching writing and helping students edit yearbooks and newspapers — about 25 editions across my career — but I am still surprised as I step back and look at how little I know.
I understand this because of the craft Judi has brought to her work on my memoir.
I was talking to one of my beta readers yesterday, after reading a chapter to him — the first I’ve read to him in three months — and he was curious what an editor does.
I told him my editor asks questions in the margins which make me think (okay, yes, she also does a lot of line editing), and which I try to answer as I rewrite. Judi’s feedback has been crucial.
One of the reasons I trust her is because her goal for the book is the same as mine. I’m writing a memoir intended to show my readers how to leave a fundamentalist community, how to assimilate into the modern world, how to keep your integrity while doing this, and most importantly, how to find healing after you leave.
Oh, and although the subject matter is challenging, I’m trying to make it appropriate for a high school audience. If you’ve read my stuff so far, you’ll know why I’m working so hard.
And, no surprise to you if you’ve been following my work — I tend to go off on tangents. (I just have so much to say) I’ve learned from Judi that this isn’t helpful to the reader. It’s one of the reasons why I simply quit publishing chapters once I realized how much work had to be done on them.
I apologize for this, but if you stay with me, I’ll be publishing all the revised chapters and then continuing to publish a chapter a week after I get the entire book done and begin recording the book for Audible.
My goal is to have the editing ready for my copy editor by the time we return from our vacation on July 15. (I know, promises, promises…) Once I make those corrections, we’ll begin formatting for ARC readers, recording, doing our due diligence with our lawyer, and implementing our publicity campaign.
How are the edits coming?
I don’t know what this means, but I will share something with you. Yesterday afternoon, as I said, I read a chapter aloud to one of my beta readers. I actually needed to hear it read aloud so I could catch what was redundant and figure out how to cut the excess from the chapter.
To my surprise, afterward, he told me that of all the chapters he’s heard me read to him — and that would be all of the ones I’ve published online so far — this was his favorite.
I like to think that’s because of Judi’s editing.
I’d really love your reaction to this newsletter. If nothing else, leave a note telling me you still want me to keep writing in the comments below.
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