Emily D. Edwards's "Bars, Blues, and Booze"

Emily D. Edwards is a professor of media studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She began her media writing career as a journalist, reporting for ABC and NBC affiliates in Alabama and Tennessee. She has written and produced news stories and documentaries for both radio and television. In the early 1970s when employees in small and medium market stations wore many hats, Edwards wrote, produced, and directed television news, commercials, and public service programs. In 1984 she earned a Ph.D. in journalism and mass communication at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and moved back to Alabama to direct the broadcasting program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 1987, she joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she is now a professor in the Department of Media Studies.

Here Edwards shares some reflections on a cinematic version of her new book, Bars, Blues, and Booze: Stories from the Drink House:

The movie question is interesting because I am a filmmaker and initially considered making this as a documentary. I chose to write a book instead because 306 pages can tell more stories than two hours of edited video tape and some subjects didn't like the idea of being on camera. If this book was reimagined as a feature film, a fair number of stories would have to be cut, and it would need an ensemble cast and alternate, multiple story structure, imagine movies like Dreamgirls (2007), Crossroads (1986), Get on Up (2014) and Blues Brothers (1980) with the structure of a movie like Crash (2005).

Visit the official Bars, Blues & Booze website.

Writers Read: Emily D. Edwards.

--Marshal Zeringue

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