The Saranay Motel
The Saranay Motel is a feature length film by Elliott Earls
Detroit, America’s greatest crumbling city has always given us muscle and music. It’s a hardscrabble town fueled by big dreams and big money. On these streets and in the shadow of the American dream we find two of Detroit’s least talented rappers, cousins Dougy and Big Buddy-Bud Prince, hustling towards their big break. After a series of sometimes violent, and ethically dubious, missteps the two are left destitute and homeless. Besieged by rivals on all sides, Dougy is eventually forced to leave his cousin and go it alone. While living in an abandoned alley and struggling to stay one step ahead of a blood thirsty fundamentalist-skinhead-speed-metal band, Dougy is moved to set out on a journey of self discovery by his reading of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” On this journey he’s given sanctuary by a blind Amish (un)holy man and his brother, who allow him to see the moral bankruptcy of his life, and reignite his childhood passion for hillbilly music. Under the tutelage of the (un)holy Seer, Dougy is born anew and is once again forced to strike out on his own. With this heightened sense of self and a new lease on life, Dougy returns to the streets and struggles to make music of authenticity and power. Dougy’s hybrid form of hip-hop and hillbilly music becomes a hit forcing him to confront a new and more insidious set of challenges, the perils of success.
The Saranay Motel is Elliott Earls latest body of work. Begun in late 2005 it is a work in progress. The Saranay Motel is comprised of four integrated elements:
- A feature length film - shot in HD video
- An exhibition of art objects
- A performance piece based on the film and objects
- And Music (a score and a record, drawn from the film and performance)
In December 2005, I spent two days in a flea-bag hotel on Detroit's famed Woodward Avenue with three digital video cameras, three actors, Sean Rhodes, a Range Rover and a grinding wheel. The goal was to produce a short digital film to be incorporated into my latest performance piece. Drawing inspiration from this experience, in late June of 2006 I "retired" to Hilton Head Island South Carolina in order to hammer out a screenplay and a plan.
Two weeks later with the assistance of Gary Wasserman, I drew together a loose network of stooges, flunkies, aspirant actors, graphic designers, yes-men, filmmakers and itinerant musicians. Over the course of four sun-baked days and five alcohol soaked nights (I was the designated driver), we managed to shoot over twenty hours of digital video footage. During this same four day period, my new band The Venomous Sons of Jonah cut two tracks with Timothy Day at Detroit's' Sonic Orchard Studios, Cluck Old Hen - a traditional clawhammer banjo piece - and Can't Nobody Flow. The former track takes this hyper traditional clawhammer sound and fuses it with hip-hop rhymes and late 80's style production.
The status of the project as of November 3rd, 2009
The first test screening of the film took place on October 29, 2009 at the Birmingham Palladium Theater.
Photographs from The Saranay Motel
In Suspension 01:06:56:01 |
Completed:Tuesday, October 9, 2007 9:27 AM |
Photo suite #2 from The Saranay Motel
Marcus Aurelius 00:52:12:11 |
Added:Tuesday, August 28, 2007 11:21 AM |
Notes on the photograph: From Marcus Aurelius' book, The Meditations:
The significance of death was very important in the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. He didn't believe in the afterlife. He wrote: 'We live for an instant, only to be swallowed in "complete forgetfulness and the void of infinite time on this side of us." "Think how many ere now, after passing their life in implacable enmity, suspicion, hatred... are now dead and burnt to ashes." According to Marcus Aurelius everything will be turned in absolute oblivion, even legends. "Of the life of man the duration is but a point, its substance streaming away, its perception dim, the fabric of the entire body prone to decay, and the soul a vortex, and fortune incalculable, and fame uncertain. In a word all things of the body are as a river, and the things of the soul as a dream and a vapour; and life is a warfare and a pilgrim's sojourn, and fame after death is only forgetfulness." 'Everything existing "is already disintegrating and changing... everything is by nature made but to die." 'The length of one's life is irrelevant, "for look at the yawning gulf of time behind thee and before thee at another infinity to come. In this eternity the life of a baby of three days and the life of a nestor of three centuries are as one." 'To desire is to be permanently disappointed and disturbed, since everything we desire in this world is "empty and corrupt and paltry." For Marcus Aurelius, death was desirable, because it would make an end to all desires.
(Thanks to Gavin Walsh)
The sentiment expressed by Aurelius in The Meditations cogently articulates the struggle faced by Dougy-G, the protagonist of The Saranay Motel film. It is Dougy-G's insatiable desire for material gain, fame and acceptance that propels the narrative and ultimately proves his undoing.
Photo suite #3 from The Saranay Motel
Capitulation 01:12:56:01 |
Completed:Tuesday, October 9, 2007 9:27 AM |
In Suspension 01:07:56:01 |
Completed:Tuesday, October 9, 2007 9:27 AM |
Clay on board from The Saranay Motel
Clay on Board #1, from the Objects from The Saranay Motel
Neotestudina Rosati 01:11:03:01
Neotestudina Rosati 01:11:03:01 |
Click here to see a much larger version of this piece. |
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 12:22 PM
Although there are approximately fifteen objects related to The Saranay Motel in progress currently in the studio, Neotestudina Rosati 01:11:03:01 is the first outside of the large photo prints to be completed. This object appears at 01:11:03:01 in the current edit of The Saranay Motel.
Hard paste porcelain head #1
The Ides of March Articulated in porcelain by Benjamin Teague |
Selections from a suite of large photo prints
Portrait of Horst Schicklegrüber Photo by Elliott Earls from The Saranay Hotel Suite Lambda photo print 42"x30", 2007. |
Keep in mind that the actual photo is 80" long. Click here to see a much larger version of this photograph. This should give you a better idea of the experience of the photograph. |
Portrait of Johnny Photo by Elliott Earls from The Saranay Hotel Suite Lambda photo print 53"x80", 2007 |
Keep in mind that the actual photo is 80" long. Click here to see a much larger version of this photograph. This should give you a better idea of the experience of the photograph. |