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Saturday, January 21, 2006
Hollywood unkind to South
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kim Wall, an Atlanta native and resident of Stone Mountain, plays a Kentucky socialite in "Glory Road."
On screen, she’s a snooty Southern woman.
In “Glory Road,” Kim Wall plays a Kentucky socialite who just doesn’t understand Don Haskins, the basketball coach at Texas Western. Her lines required her to use a word once reserved for blacks: “coloreds.”
It made Wall uneasy.
“Saying words like that always make me nervous,” the Stone Mountain resident told me. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think I am like that. It’s probably a silly concern, but it’s a fear that I have.”
Wall conquered her angst. She nailed the scene, and it survived the cutting room floor. You can catch the actress’ work in theaters across the county.
Wall has been an entertainer for decades. She and a friend took a modeling class when she was a kid. That led to acting workshops and, eventually, a major in drama at the University of Georgia. Then she spent four years studying acting in New York City.
Her credits include plays, commercials and voice-overs. She can bark like a dog and meow like a cat (excellently, I might add). She can invoke different accents, especially those that demand a twang.
“Glory Road” isn’t her first foray onto the silver screen. The Atlanta native played a “butch cop” in “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Her character rebuffs a request from a sweet-talking Daisy.
“Daisy always gets her way,” Wall said. “It didn’t work with my character.”
With “Glory Road,” and “The Dukes of Hazzard,” Wall has two high-profile flicks to her credit. Back-to-back films — one comedic, one true drama.
Both Southern fried.
Hollywood isn’t particularly kind in its portrayals of the South. Seldom do the producers and directors get us right. Granted, it’s hard to capture the essence of a region with so many strange, seductive nuances.
The regional bias is hard to ignore. Or dismiss. Especially if it’s your home.
On film, we’re dimwitted yahoos. We live in towns inundated with racist Bubbas and downtrodden, oppressed Leroys. We’re ignoramuses, and we’re content, save for the obligatory enlightened character who gets deemed eccentric by everyone else in town.
And unlike “Glory Road,” many of these movies aren’t representative of any set time period. It could be 1950 as easily as it’s 2006.
John W. Cones, a writer and Texas native, has researched the issue. In his 1997 book, “What’s Really Going on In Hollywood,” one chapter carries this subheading: “Hollywood’s Rape of the South.”
Cones informally critiqued more than 200 movies that spanned from the 1920s to the early 1990s. He wrote that “negative portrayals of the American South in Hollywood films are particularly offensive and often include the negative or stereotypical portrayals of people, places or things in the Southern U.S.”
“Nothing has changed,” he surmised via telephone from his Los Angeles office, but he couldn’t say for sure because he hasn’t updated his research.
Wall, though, thinks otherwise.
“It’s gotten better,” she said, noting that Atlanta actors audition for diverse, rich roles. In fact, Wall just auditioned for the role of a psychiatrist in an upcoming action thriller.
“Actors here are extremely happy with the roles that are cast out of here,” she said.
“We would love if they cast everything out of here, but we really love it when directors cast Southern roles out of here rather than New York or California. Here, they get real Southerners.”
And not an entirely scripted one.
