A Conversation with Willy Bearden

- Today, we're visiting the Cotton Museum in downtown Memphis with Willy Bearden.

There's a lot of history in this room.

- You know, there really is.

This is kind of everything that Memphis is about.

- Willy created much of the content that's around us here.

Willy is a filmmaker, a documentarian, a writer, photographer, a musician.

Occasionally, he's a disc jockey.

Willy Bearden is our guest this time, on A Conversation With.

[gentle country music] Hello, everybody, I'm George Larrimore.

Thank you for joining us, and thank Willy Bearden for being here with us on A Conversation With.

- Thanks for having me.

It's gonna be a fun conversation, I have a feeling.

- Absolutely.

We walked in here, in the Cotton Museum in downtown Memphis.

You've said that you've spent a couple of years of your life in here, getting this place ready.

- You know, I did, and I think if you look around this place, this is kind of the foundational story of Memphis.

I mean, it has all the parts.

It's cotton, but it's so much more.

It's transportation, it's blues music, it's culture, you know?

It's race, it's kind of everything that Memphis is.

- And in case you don't know Memphis very well, if you're new to this city or new to this region, Memphis was the cotton capital of the world for a long time.

Now, that's been a few years ago, but it was important in the foundation of the city, as you said.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Now, you've worked not only on this museum, but on the Blues Hall of Fame, the Gateway to the Blues, the Elvis Presley Museum in Tupelo.

Why is it that you, what is it that you get out of working at museum work?

- You know, that's a great question, and I always think that doing something like this, you take a deep dive into a subject, and it may be a very wide subject like cotton, and everything that kind of comes from cotton, all the cultural things, but the thing that I really like is that once you do the work, you write these text panels, you make the films, you gather the images, then, this place is telling that story virtually every day of the year.

Sometimes I kind of stop myself and go, "Wow, I have seven or eight places that I've done work, "and right this second, people are reading what I wrote.

"People are watching the films, people are listening to the audio."

And so I have always been the kind of filmmaker or writer, I want people to be able to to find what I've done, and for that information to be accessible to everybody.

If you write a book, yeah, not everybody's gonna buy your book.

If you show something on television, which I've shown many, many documentaries on television, they may show two or three times a year, these things teach all day long, every day.

- Now, you mentioned to me earlier, and there was a group of kids visiting here a little while ago, and you said to me earlier that in every group going to a museum, there is a couple of people who bought the tickets, who said, "Who's driving this bus," who say, "We wanna go."

And there's a bunch of people who don't really care about being there, that they're thinking about lunch.

- Exactly.

- But you're thinking about those people.

- Yeah, I mean, when I started doing this kind of work, I thought, well, there are gonna be people who are exactly where they want to be on the Earth when they walk in this museum or whatever.

And then, though, the other three people in the car are gonna be going, "How did you talk me into this?

"Why are we here, how much does it cost?

"When do we get to eat lunch?"

And so I started thinking, if I can serve those people, the people who aren't really turned on by the subject or don't think they are, if I can serve them, then, I've done what I was hired to do.

- Tell me about the documentaries that you've worked on, the ones that are important to you most, say, Overton Park, Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis Garage Bands, Victorian Village.

Why is it that you chose to do that kind of work?

Did you think it wasn't being paid attention to enough?

- Well, I think I came along at a time, I had been doing a lot of corporate work, and so I learned the craft of filmmaking and learned how to write, and I was going around the country producing corporate shows, producing a lot of corporate films, everything from training films for FedEx, and International Paper, and Fred's Dollar Stores, and all these people.

And you learn how to do this because it is a craft.

You are putting together that 10,000-piece puzzle that's never been put together before, right?

Whether it's a training film, or a new product film, or whatever.

And so you do that.

And then, I started thinking, well, I feel like I have a point of view.

I think I'm maybe a good enough filmmaker now, to start telling some of these stories.

So the first thing I did was called "Visualizing the Blues", and it showed on WKNO.

And they called me the next day and said, "That was great.

What are you doing next?"

And I kind of froze because I didn't know what I was doing next.

And I kind of blurted out, "I think I'm gonna do something on Overton Park, because the park was going to be 100 years old in 2001."

And so I kind of, I made that commitment.

And then, I had to figure out how to do it.

And I spent a year working on that film.

And then, as you start doing these things, people are interested in that, you know?

You get to explain these things.

And just more than just the facts, or nostalgia, or whatever, you start telling these stories, and then, that becomes a part of those people.

And I've told you before that I can't tell you how many times people have come up to me over the years and have quoted something to me, like telling me a story that I wrote, [laughing] you know?

And I would never say, "Hey, I wrote that."

But, you know, you learn these things and you put it out on a film or whatever, and then, that becomes information that you've passed on and actually given somebody that gift of that knowledge.

- Let me ask you something.

Why, or just say that for someone who is 32 years old and just moved here from Columbus, Ohio, doesn't know Memphis from Miami.

Why is it important to those people to know the history, not only of this city, but of this region?

I mean, Memphis is a regional city.

Why is that important that they know the things that you can tell them?

- You know, Memphis is really at the center of a lot of what American popular culture is.

I mean, if you look at rock and roll, blues music, transportation, all of these things that we're known for, that doesn't happen everywhere.

So you may be from Iowa and there are lots of great things about Iowa, but there are so many different things that have been innovated here and created here that we just take as American culture now.

But it happened here.

So yeah, I would say somebody new to Memphis, to really understand this place is to drink it in, it is to really kind of savor that you're in a very special place on the planet.

- I'll ask you what people ask you all the time.

What are you doing next?

- Oh gosh, [chuckles] I always have four or five projects going on.

I'm writing a memoir, just writing about my life, 'cause I feel like I've had a pretty interesting and charmed life.

So I'm doing that.

I'm working on a project on Overton Park now.

And I've got, gosh, I don't know, I just finished writing some historical text panels for the Bearwater neighborhood, which is up north of downtown around, you know, to what we know as the Uptown neighborhood now.

So I just do a lot of different projects.

I have things working that I know I'll be working on for a year or two.

And that's okay.

I mean, that's what I do in my spare time, you know?

And lots of times there's no money for this.

I mean, so kids, if you're out there thinking you're gonna make a lot of money making films, it just doesn't work that way.

So, but you look at if there is, you know, if you look at legacy, and you look at what you've left for people, and knowing that these films are gonna be around for a long, long time, and books are gonna be around for a long, long time, then, that's certainly enough for me.

- And you've written a lot of books too.

You've written a lot of books too, - Yeah.

- You like doing that as well as a way of sharing history.

- You know, I do.

And what I found is that when you did a documentary film, you would wind up with, I don't know, maybe a couple of 100 images left over that didn't make the film, but they're great images, and really helped tell the story.

So a publisher got in touch with me.

And when I did the Overton Park film, they said, "Would you do a book?"

And I thought, well, I guess I can.

And I sat down and did that and I really enjoyed, that's just kind of another deep dive into the subject.

And you start collecting all of these images and you tell the story of those images.

And so that book has sold well over the years.

Same thing with the Cotton Museum.

I did a book on cotton after we did this museum.

My wife, Kim, who is the executive director of Elmwood Cemetery, she and I worked on a book on Elmwood together.

And we still liked each other enough at the end that we got married, [laughing] so... - And that was the next thing I wanna talk with you about is that you met Kim while working on a documentary in 2002, I think that was.

- In 2002, yeah.

- On Elmwood.

- On Elmwood, I was doing, I thought my second hour-long documentary needs to be something that also tells the story of Memphis.

It was a very wide story.

And people say, "To know Me mphis, you must know Elmwood," 'cause you go to Elmwood Cemetery and drive around and you see that, "Okay, well, I know this street name.

"So the street was named after that person, huh.

"Okay, well, here are the Civil War soldiers here, here are the Yellow Fever victims."

So everywhere you turn in Elmwood Cemetery, there's an opportunity to hear that story that is uniquely Memphis.

It's 80 acres, there are 80,000 people buried there.

And everybody has a story, as we always say.

- Always.

- Everybody has a story.

So during the pandemic, Kim wanted to kind of give something to the community.

So we started this series called, "My Elmwood".

And we would get people who had, maybe somebody who had been their mentor who's now buried there, or someone who was a relative, or someone that they wanted to get to know better.

And they would come to Elmwood and tell the story of this person.

And so they were like these little mini documentaries.

And I think we did like 15 of those.

And they might be 10 or 12-minutes long, but we have images in there.

And so we put those on their website.

And those are available at elmwoodcemetery.org.

So, and that was just another way of saving these stories and bringing these stories to light.

- Now you, in, I guess it was 2010, you made a feature film.

You directed, produced, wrote a feature film, "One Came Home".

- Yes.

- What was that experience like for you?

- You know, doing a film like that is very hard.

And I pretty much work alone, I like to work alone.

I don't mind hauling the gear and I go shoot things that I do just by myself.

Dragging around 30 or 40 people, cast and crew, is very tough.

On the other hand, working with actors was wonderful.

I loved working with the actors, and directing, and being able to tell this story, this fictional story, which was kind of based in truth from my family from the 1940s.

So it was incredibly hard to do, especially doing a period piece.

You gotta dress everybody like it's 1946.

Lots of problems, but you know what?

We had such a good time.

We shot 20, I guess 22 days over about a 30-day period.

We shot at Davies Manor, which is the oldest home in Shelby County.

They were so nice to us to let us use that as a location.

We shot in other locations down in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and here, in downtown Memphis at Ernestine and Hazel's and a few places like that.

But it was an incredible experience to do that.

Once we were finished with the film, it played at the Studio on the Square for three weeks.

And we made a little bit of money on that.

I just never could take it to the point where we could take it to a national level.

- I gotcha.

- But it was worth doing.

- All right, in terms of a full disclosure in this interview, - Yeah.

- You and I have known each other.

We've been friends for a long, long time.

- 52 years, I believe.

- Fity-two years.

- Yeah.

- We got to know each other first at Northwest Mississippi, what was then, called Junior College, in Senatobia.

My first memory of sitting around a dorm room smoking cigarettes and telling lies.

And listening to you talk about your hometown of Rolling Fork, Mississippi.

And I remember thinking at the time that this must have been what it was like to listen to the young Mark Twain talk about Hannibal because of the characters that you described and the places you went, and the things that you saw.

What was Rolling Fork to you in terms of who you are today?

- Yeah, I just always assumed everybody grew up in a very loving atmosphere, you know, in a little town where they knew everybody, and they were able to get around, and know everybody, and all that.

And I found out pretty quickly after I left there that not very many people did that.

And I think I was around people who were storytellers.

I was around people who took time with me and were very kind to me.

And I just think I had permission.

Just kind of that blanket permission to run around in that town and learn things.

And I have a very good memory.

[chuckles] And I just remember things that people have told me, and all of the nutty people, 'cause there were a lot of nutty people.

There are nutty people everywhere, you know?

[chuckles] And just kind of knowing all those characters, it just... And that was my most favorite thing, when people would sit around and start telling the stories.

And I read one time that Eudora Welty said, when she was a kid, she couldn't wait for the grownups to start talking.

And she said she would sit there quiet as a mouse and listen to people tell stories.

- And you've told me a number of times that you would sit where your mother worked at Evelyn's Beauty Shop and listen to the women who having their hair done, telling those stories.

- Oh, they would talk about everything.

I mean, I knew so much gossip from people.

And I would just sit there and listen while my mother was doing a shampoo and set on somebody, and she's rolling their hair up and all that, you know?

And my job as a kid was to pick up the bobby pins off the floor and all that.

But I just loved listening to people talk.

And then, later in my career as I got a little older, I started hanging out in the pool hall.

And I kind of feel like I got my graduate degree at the pool hall because there was a different kind of person, and a different kind of story, [chuckles] and a different kind of experience in the pool hall.

So yeah, I just think that, I just think that I kind of squeezed every drop [chuckles] out of that experience that I could and it served me well.

I do remember one time when I was a senior in high school, the principal calling me in and he said, "Willy Bearden, if you keep running your mouth, you're never gonna amount to anything."

And so I do a lot of public speaking now, and usually, when I'm speaking somewhere and somebody introduces me, I tell that story that he said I would never amount to anything and I say, "You know, I've been running my mouth for 70 years, and I've done okay with it, you know?"

So take that, Mr. principal.

[laughing] - Now, you came to Memphis in the early '70s, a lot of jobs, met a lot of people.

But you've expressed to me how people helped you along the way, people that you've met, people made opportunities available to you.

Tell me about how that affected you and how you play that out now.

- Well, you know, people have been so kind to me over the years.

When I got in the film business, it was 1978, I went to work at Motion Picture Laboratory because you helped me get that job.

You had worked there.

You were a color timer there.

And I was able to go there and get in the film business.

I did color timing, I did film setup, I did editing, and finally, I was an account exec for several years there.

So it really gave me a career.

But I used to, I'm sure I asked the stupidest questions imaginable, but there were photographers who worked there, and filmmakers, and editors, and all these people who were so kind to me and would answer every stupid question I had.

And so I've taken interns over the years.

I always, you know, when people call me just kind of out of the blue and say, "Hey, listen, I'm thinking about doing this.

What do you think?"

I always try to pay back those kindnesses that people did for me.

And especially like taking on interns and things, and just letting people see if they want to be a part of this business.

So yeah, I've tried to pass that along.

It is very important to me.

- I think it's one of the things that you've said to me many times is that notion of being encouraged and encouraging people in turn.

And I think that's, if anything, if anyone takes anything away from this conversation, I would like for them to take that away because you do that so often within the life that you live.

- Well, and people, like I say, people have done that for me.

I got to know Shelby Foote, who's the great writer, you know, the great novelist and writer, historian, wrote about the Civil War.

The first thing I had on Channel 10 in, I guess 1998 or '99, he called me the next day and said, "I sure enjoyed what you had on television.

I hope you'll do more of that."

And then, he and I got to be friends on the phone.

And he always encouraged me.

And I mean, for somebody who was such an established writer and just kind of a sage, for somebody to take the time to give me a compliment and to encourage me, it was just, it was everything to me, you know?

I mean, if you need permission, Shelby Foote's good enough permission for me.

- You were saying it's one of the things about working here in the film business is that you have to do everything.

So what do you say to young people who want to follow where you went?

- Well, you know, as far as my experience, yes, you do have to do everything.

I mean, if you live in New York, or Chicago, or Los Angeles, you can be an associate producer or an assistant director.

You can't be that in Memphis.

You better know how to do everything.

So when I started my business, I saw very quickly when I was out on my own that I had to become a good writer.

I had to become a shooter.

I had to become an editor.

And thank goodness that technology was pushing along at that point in history to where we moved from having to pay three, four hundred dollars an hour to edit at a facility to where you could do it on your desktop.

And so I've been doing, I probably had the first non-linear, computer-based editing system anywhere around here.

But I saw that technology and I knew that how my business was, that I had to know how to do everything.

And I used have employees, and I do prefer to work alone, but you need to know music.

You need to know how to mix audio.

You need to just know how to do a lot of things or you're not gonna make a living.

- You and I often say in a conversation that everybody's got a story.

- Yeah.

- What's your story?

- You know, everybody has that foundational story, that something has happened to them or they've been through something, whatever their experience has been.

- And you grew up in a difficult family life.

- I did, I grew up in an alcoholic home.

My father was an alcoholic.

And so, you know, back in the '60s, people didn't talk about these things.

These days, people talk about these things.

People talk about going into recovery.

People talk to kids about parents who are maybe addicts or something.

They didn't do that back then.

It was, you could get fired if they knew you went to AA or, you know, and just people, that was the World War II generation, and they were great for a lot of things, but not that.

And it just, it devastated a lot of people.

And you know, and as far as my family, it was just always a lot of chaos.

And you were never quite sure what was going on.

And I was just kind of ready to get out of there.

And there were traumatic experiences that happened to me I still think about to this day.

And I know that I'm just like everybody else out there.

You know, everybody has those things.

And so I always try to tell people, you know, no matter what's happened to you, that doesn't have to define you.

And talk to people about that and reach out, because especially today, there's so many services for people.

There are so many people who've been through exactly what you've been through, and you can get help.

And I went to a 12-step program for friends and relatives of people who are addicted to alcohol, drugs, whatever.

But I went there and I really learned a lot.

And it set me free from a lot of what had kind of haunted me.

And you start to realize that, you know, no one's immune to that, no one is immune to that.

So by talking about these things, by facing these things head on, then, people do get well and people are able to flourish.

- People often ask me what you're like, people who know who you are, but don't know you.

And they ask me what you're like because they know that you and I have been friends for a long time.

And I always say that, that of everyone I know, or everyone I've ever met, I think you've taken your God-given talents and made the absolute most out of them, more than anyone I've ever met.

- Really?

Well, I thank you for saying that.

I thank you for thinking that.

I've certainly tried, I've certainly tried.

I, you know, I wanna- - And you're still trying.

- Well, I, yeah, absolutely.

- Present tense.

- Yeah, I am, I'm still trying every day.

But one thing that I do understand, 'cause I've had a lot of people who've come to me and they wanna be filmmakers, wanna do documentaries, wanna do this kind of work, they say, "But I just don't think I'm good enough."

And I say, "Do you know what?

"B-plus is good enough.

"It may not be A-plus, but at some point, you have to finish something."

'Cause I know people who were probably 10 times better writers than I am, better shooters and all this stuff, who've never finished a film.

And so that doesn't even matter.

You don't even get in the game, you don't get on the field if you can't finish something.

So, believe me, I've learned how to finish things.

I don't miss deadlines.

I can do it, and it may be B-plus, [chuckles] but I take what I have known and I try to do the best I possibly can with it.

- Well, you're A-plus.

[Willy laughs] Willy, thank you for being here.

And thank y'all for joining us, on A Conversation with Willy Bearden.

We really appreciate you being here.

We appreciate the people at the Cotton Museum allowing us to come in and work here today.

Thank you for joining us and we'll see you again next time.

[gentle country music] - George, thank you so much for having me on.

[gentle country music] [acoustic guitar chords]