An unlicensed driver driving a beaten-up convertible filled with stolen lawn ornaments – including a life-sized stag that is propped in the passenger’s seat, facing foward – various firecrackers and cheap whiskey. Bicycles that move backwards, glasses that empty themselves. A fight at Bambi’s, a bright pink topless bar that was filmed in Knoxville.
All the things that make a movie great – humor, originality and a keen perception of human nature – are refreshingly presented in the 1999 cult classic movie, Box of Moonlight. Box stars John Turturro (of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?) as Al Fountaine, an anal-retentive middle-aged engineer.
As a foreman for a construction company and a father, Al can’t see past his own rigid rules – dinner is at 7 p.m. every night, nobody gets off work until exactly 5 p.m. and everything has a plan and a proper place. He is a good man at heart, but his uptight attitude ostrasizes him from his employees, his 8-year-old son and his wife.
And then … a gray hair twirls to the ground in slow motion. Al starts seeing things backward – a glass that a waitress pours sucks itself back up into the pitcher and a boy riding his bicycle floats the opposite direction of his pedals. Although Al doesn’t know it, he launches himself into his own rebirth.
In the movie, which is filmed in Knoxville and in rural East Tennessee, Al rents a car and sets out to find a memory of his childhood, Splashee Lake. From the beginning, you know you’re in for a treat. Al finds a tape labeled “Eddie’s Mix,” which serenades the viewer throughout the movie with funky music that just adds to the odd flavor of the scenes – music such as “Mexican Radio,” “Blues Before Sunrise” and Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand,” to name a few.
Along the way, Al comments to himself. “Life is a drive,” he says, almost smiling. “It’s not where you’re going, it’s how you get there.”
Al finds Splatchee Lake, not Splashee, and has a chance encounter with the Rev. Lovencoddle and his wife, which is as bizarre as it is hilarious.
The wife limps along with a pink cast on her arm, and the preacher carries with him a small axe.
“Have you found Jesus, Al?,” the preacher gently asks Turturro.
“Why, is he missing?” Al shoots back, before leaving infuriated.
Next Al meets Buck, a.k.a., The Kid (played by Sam Rockwell from The Green Mile), a 20-something dude who wears a Davy Crockett costume, eats Oreos in milk for breakfast as if it was cereal and who lives in half a trailer. “I got a really good deal on the house.”
The Kid is the most fascinating character. He tells Al he’s “off the grid” – he tore up his Social Security card, he’s never paid taxes, and he is convinced the government is building a nerve gas factory near his home – which, coincidentally, is the construction site Al had been working on.
Forced to spend the night with The Kid after losing his keys, Al is originally huffy because, although he was driving aimlessly, he feels that he has “something important to do.” And he does.
The two become unlikely friends – and Al begins to learn how to loosen up and boogie down. They also meet pretty Purline and Flodie (Lisa Blunt and Catherine Keener), who happen to frequent the same swimming hole that Al and the Kid do.
The scenes and characters are right on the money – you really can’t get a better representation of local East Tennessee color.
One of my personal favorite scenes is where a flock of people crowd around a delapidated billboard outside of a Piggly Wiggly.
“There’s Jesus there, in that sign! In the flames, right underneath the hamburger!” a man yells, as folks rush to find a vision of their savior in the weathered Burger King ad.
“Do you see it, Al?,” the Kid asks, staring.
“No,” Al replies.
“Damn, I always just miss these things,” the Kid laments seriously, as the local TV crew zooms in on the flames.
“That’s Jesus, all right,” you hear in the background. Priceless.
Local color plays an important role in this gem of a movie. The car rental lot is an ugly orange and brown atrocity familiar to the more run-down end of Knoxville.
Bambi’s topless bar is also nearby, reminding me of some dives that you see along Chapman Highway.
Remember the fat sheriff that hollers at the three fugitives in Oh Brother as they huddled in the barn? He plays an unwitting sheriff breaking up a tomato fight, in another wickedly written scene.
They’ve even got the real-life news anchors from Knoxville, Gene Patterson and Kristin Hoke.
Keep an eye out for an appearance by Greeneville local Benny Snyder, known to his friends as Our Phat Papaw. Benny plays one of the extras, a construction worker in the beginning of the film with a nearly bald head and some kickin’ sunglasses on.
And finally, unlike so many films that think being memorable means being depressing, this movie will actually make you feel good at the end, with no wishy-washy or overtly sentimental crap added.
The story is genuine, the warmth palpable and the acting superb.
“Life,” says Al, “is a tomato right off the vine.”
Words of wisdom.
So maybe this spring break, when you’ve got the time to watch it a couple times, rent it and kick back … Box of Moonlight is well worth the effort.

Author