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I DREAMED I SAW JOE HILL LAST NIGHT--PAST SIMULATIONS
[MY FAMILY'S ALWAYS BEEN IN WHISKEY, SPRING 2014]
ESSENTIALS
WISE WORDS
"God gives nothing to those who keep their arms crossed."
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--African Proverb
READINGS
CURRENT WORK
PAST
SIMULATIONS
MY FAMILY'S ALWAYS
BEEN IN WHISKEY
Spring 2014
Taking place in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1955 (an extremely eventful year in United States history), My Family's Always Been in Whiskey focuses on a fifteen-year-old girl, Jennifer Dandy, who is not only a straight-"A" student but one of the best drivers of her father's moonshine. Yet, to drive for her family, "Jenn" must adopt an alter ego, "James," dressing, talking, and acting like a boy in order to be accepted in the masculist culture of moonshine brewing and fast driving.
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Jenn and her sister Betty are left with the responsibility of "administering" the family business while their father, Colton, is in prison. Unfortunately, they are unaware that the Dandy business, and its family employees, have been targeted for elimination by an elderly matriarch of the Harlan crime scene (chiefly moonshine), "Queen" Madge Beauchamp (based in part on Margo Martindale's masterful Emmy-winning turn as Mags Bennett on the F/X television series Justified, who in turn was based on real-life 'shine doyenne Maggie Bailey, though, save for moonshining, the redoubtable and greatly respected Ms. Bailey [six United States presidents sent personal condolences on the occasion of her death at the age of 101] was never guilty of either Mags' or Madge's more reprehensible activities).
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Jenn faces the monumental tasks of outwitting master criminal Madge (and her underling "gun thugs") and saving her family and its business, with the eventual goal of getting out of moonshining altogether. But to say that others had different plans would be a massive understatement.
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My Family's Always Been in Whiskey emerged from the (supposedly) disastrous news that the department faculty (who for years have tried to find an excuse to eliminate the course!) canceled the class, supposedly due to low enrollment (largely because of mismanagement of the graduate program, enrollment had declined severely). Actually, there were four graduate students enrolled plus four undergraduates who the instructor had asked to participate (a practice he started with Truck Stop at the End of the World ), thus easily meeting the University-mandated quota of seven students. However, as mentioned, an excuse was both needed and available, so...
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To note that the naysayers could not have been more wrong would be rubbing it in...so it is highly satisfying to so note it! Two of the originally registered graduate students, plus the four undergraduates, were registered as independent study students. It was uncertain that the simulation could be run with only six participants (eight to twelve is usually the optimal number), especially since five of them were female, and this simulation taking place in Harlan, epicenter of the "good old boy" universe!
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The scrappy, ill-matched group could not have acquitted themselves more impressively. They shifted, morphed, combined, and separated character trajectories, with one of the female class members portraying a male rock-and-roll singer, some of the male characters dropped, and one pivotal female character (Betty Dandy) added. They proved adaptable, creative, and indomitable, in a way becoming the first class to realize what seems to be the destiny of the course: to survive as a beacon of hope in the darkness of unimaginative, doctrinaire education.
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Fun Facts and Trivia
-- Jennifer's souped-up car was nicknamed "Little Bastard," after the nickname for the car James Dean raced and died in, that same fateful year, 1955.
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-- The final performance became a social occasion for family, friends, and fellow students to share not only knowledge, but food! The instructor prepared some "Southern" dishes, such as pan-fried chicken, cornbread, cherry cobbler, and homemade lemonade.
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-- This simulation featured at least one "Only in a Rich Holt Class" moment, involving the Player (a male character based on Elvis Presley) who was portrayed by a female, Samantha Raines, a rather accomplished practitioner of the art of cosplay (specialty: Pikachu from the Pokemon games).
Since the main character, Jennifer, cross-dresses in the simulation, pretending to be a boy named James, there is a terrific scene in which Jenn, supposedly in her "James persona," is tasked with picking up the Player and driving him to his next gig. Unfortunately, Jenn/James imbibes too much moonshine and, forgetting she's supposed to be a boy, perhaps takes the "picking up" aspect of her assignment a bit too literally, hitting on the Player ("he"'s supposed to be heart-throb Elvis, after all!) who thinks "she"'s a boy, and, as they say in the movie promos, "hilarious hijinks ensue."
So there was a girl pretending to be a boy hitting on a girl pretending to be a boy. As one student remarked on the course evaluation: "only in a Rich Holt class!"
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