The South Never Plays Itself—available now from
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Since The Birth of a Nation became the first Hollywood blockbuster in 1915, movies have struggled to reckon with the American South—as both a place and an idea, a reality and a romance, a lived experience and a bitter legacy. Nearly every major American filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter has worked on a film about the South, from Gone with the Wind to 12 Years a Slave, from Deliverance to Forrest Gump. In The South Never Plays Itself, author Ben Beard explores the history of the Deep South on screen, beginning with silent cinema and ending in the streaming era, from President Wilson to President Trump, from musical to comedy to horror to crime to melodrama. Beard’s idiosyncratic narrative—part cultural history, part film criticism, part memoir—journeys through genres and eras, issues and regions, smash blockbusters and microbudget indies to explore America’s past and troubled present, seen through Hollywood’s distorting lens. Opinionated, obsessive, sweeping, often combative, sometimes funny—a wild narrative tumble into culture both high and low—Beard attempts to answer the haunting question: what do movies know about the South that we don’t?
Praise for The South Never Plays Itself
Beard takes the reader on a journey throughout the South and a variety of films that embody it, for better or for worse—period dramas, horror, movie musicals, and any genre you can muster. . . . He methodically and thoughtfully attempts to answer the question of which versions of the South are represented on screen and why—and how those versions helped establish . . . the South as we know it.
—Chicago Reader
Beard knows how to turn a phrase . . . blending personal tales and family history into his critical analysis of the South on film.
—Library Journal
Ben Beard brings a keen eye to the South on screen, calling out the lies and hypocrisy of Hollywood. His book is a reckoning of the images, from D.W. Griffith to Ava DuVernay. Truthful and insightful, this book is a much-needed addition to any film buff's library. —Greg Proops, host of The Smartest Man in the World
Breezy, jazzy, self-confident, and deeply Southern fried, The South Never Plays Itself reads like a novel, zipping through the history of films in and about the South with flair and panache and encyclopedic authority. This is a passionate, literate, page-turning deep dive through the films of Southern history; the good, the bad, and the very ugly, with impressive detail throughout. Beard tells it all, without pulling any punches. — Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Synthetic Cinema: The 21st Century Movie Machine
This is the greatest book about the South on screen I've ever read. Okay, it is probably the only book of its kind, but that's just partly why it's great. From The Birth of a Nation to Twelve Years a Slave, and much in-between, Ben Beard tours us through the South he has known, loved, and hated as it is represented in American film, with an approach as personal as it is readable and provocative. —Patrick McGilligan, author of Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Light and Darkness
In this engaging, often surprising blend of memoir and cultural criticism, Ben Beard refines a rich vein of unexplored material into an expansive alternative history of the movies. By juxtaposing unjustly neglected works with new takes on established classics, he has produced an insightful, highly browsable book that any film lover should enjoy.—Alec Nevala-Lee, author of Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction
What an eye-opening and significant book Ben Beard has given us. This is a long overdue examination of some of America's most important films through the lens of the South...a wonderfully satisfying read.—W.K. Stratton, author of The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, A Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film
This is the book about Southern movies that I have been waiting for. Insightful and passionate, Beard takes us through a century of American movies about the South. Never pulling its punches, this book finds a South full of contradictions, conflicted self-delusions, and tangled racial realities. —Katherine Orrison, author of Written in Stone: Making Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 Epic, The Ten Commandments
Ben Beard gives a damn about Hollywood, the South, and their complicated, decades-long relationship. And after reading his insightful road trip through movie history, you will, too. —Brian Raftery, author of Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen
Ben Beard may know more than anyone about Southern movies. The South Never Plays Itself helps the rest of us connect with not only those movies, but the vastly misunderstood region they claim to represent. This striking book is a history of over a century of cinema, as well as the deeper roots, mysteries, shadows and light of one part of the country that explains the gifts and challenges of the US today. —Gareth Higgins, author of Cinematic States: Stories We Tell, the American Dreamlife, and How to Understand Everything and founder of www.moviesandmeaning.com
This wonderful compendium offers further proof that ‘black history’ is really the history of all Americans. The selections Williams and Beard have skillfully woven together reflect the astonishing richness of this subject. The result is an ingenious, compellingly readable sampling of historic events both well known and obscure, inspiring and appalling. It will satisfy those who inhabit this terrain as well as the interested tourist.
―Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution