THE ROUGH SOUTH OF LARRY BROWN is a film of extraordinary power; Hawkins was able to elicit sincere and revealing comments from both Larry and Mary Annie Brown. He recorded the natural flow of words that provide genuine insights into what it was like to be Larry Brown, a man who determined relatively late in his life that he wanted to write fiction. His first aim was to provide financial support for his family, but ultimately he set out to express himself as a literary artist like those whom he admires, including Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, and Harry Crews. Near the end of the film, Brown admits that he still feels in awe of his literary heroes, but, at the same time, takes pride in the degree of success he achieved. Mary Annie Brown, on the other hand, makes clear how hard it was for her and her three children during the years when Brown was working with so much determination to see his work into print.
I asked the Browns to comment on how they came to feel so at ease with the cameras intruding into their lives. Larry said that he had known Gary Hawkins "for a number of years and we became friends." Mary Annie says, "I felt that Gary . . . was a person who would not do anything that would be hurtful to us. I liked Gary the first time I met him. . . . He seemed very caring of how the film would be true to us as a family and of Larry as a writer."
The result of Hawkins's hard work is a film with at least three distinct angles. Hawkins certainly focuses on Larry Brown as a "rough South" writer, but he also put strong emphasis on the Mississippi landscape. The scenes he filmed at Larry's home near Oxford evoke the continued agrarian nature of North Mississippi: its farm land, its remoteness and its torpid heat.
When he began the film, Hawkins did not expect Mary Annie to be "such a large presence" in the film, but she became a vital part of the documentary. Hawkins has said, "You always hear about the writer, you never hear about what it's like to be the spouse of the writer." Hawkins's movie makes that connection clear.
Adaptations of three stories from FACING THE MUSIC provide the third major component of the film. He adaptation of "Samaritans" with Will Patton is particularly poignant.
Overall, and sadly, now that Larry Brown has died, the movie provides unique insights into the writer, his family, and his work that nobody else will be able to document.
