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Eddie jemison gay11/9/2023 ![]() Jemison also appeared in "Only Kidding" at the Wisdom Bridge Theatre, "A Christmas Carol" at the famed Goodman Theatre, and "T Bone N Weasel" at Victory Gardens. His credits include "The Wizards of Quiz" at the Nation Jewish Theatre, a theatrical telling of the late-1950's quiz show scandal involving irksome genius Herbert Stempel and rich kid Charles Van Doren, as depicted on film in "Quiz Show" (1994). As a graduate of Louisiana State University and Swansea University in Wales, Jemison moved to Chicago in the early-1990's and began acting on stage. King of Herrings is available on VOD Tuesday.Actor Eddie Jemison has been a rising presence in Hollywood since the mid-1990s. They were finding this sad character in it, and she was cutting through all the rawness.” But the more people who saw it, the more who started seeing through the film’s more menacing tone. When we were showing this movie early on, it was getting really dark responses. “She provides the balance the film needs. She would remind me to give more and to not hold back,” he says, repeating again that Lamson’s Mary calms Herrings’ more sinister verses. And as I would be busy directing, she would direct me. I would tell her stuff, but she would really just take over. One actor who was easy to work with was Lamson, his wife in and out of the movie. Jemison hopes Herrings is enough of a success that he can take the LSU crew down to New Orleans and film a new project “with the exact same actors, like repertory cinema.” Much of the cast, and some of the crew, go way back to their LSU days, back to around the time Soderbergh was filming sex, lies, and videotape, and casting many of King of Herrings’ actors in his early movies. This is Jemison’s directorial debut, which he shares with co-director Sean Richardson. It looks very indie and cheap, but in this case that works quite splendidly. The film was shot in color, but given a high-contrast black-and-white treatment in post-production, a look that solidifies the film’s forgotten time and place. The world is lived in and worn, and the four characters are in no big rush to leave it. Cracked vinyl seats, flickering fluorescent lighting, bowling alleys, dog tracks, laundromats. ![]() They live in a world that must smell like old cigarettes and cheap beer. The film works not only because of its delicate sleight of hand with the star of the film - as Jemison says it, the film may play like a boys club but it’s really about Mary - but also because its characters chew the screen. “Everyone wanted to know the end of the story, so I knew I had something there that was working.” “I had this scene I wanted to write where a guy says ‘c**t’ a lot,” he says, adding that the class got involved and the film blossomed in front of him. The film came to be during an acting workshop in which Jemison was asked to write a script. “It was a blast being a big jerk with a Napoleon complex.” Me more obviously, but also Joe Chrest, who’s easily the most assertive of all of us,” he says. I’ve always hated that, but what can you do? For this, though, I cast everyone against type. He’s had small parts in Waitress, HBO’s Hung and Bruce Almighty, but he’s most recognizable in fellow Louisiana State University alum Steven Soderbergh’s films, including as sweaty computer expert Livingston Dell in the Ocean’s 11 movies. Jemison, as the pig-headed misanthrope, plays against type he is widely remembered as a dweebish character actor, frequently playing mild-mannered men in technical positions usually involving numbers or computer code. It’s her movie,” Jemison says of King of Herrings, which played at last year’s Phoenix Film Festival and is available digitally Tuesday. “Whenever people start thinking the movie goes too far, it really centers all back around on Mary. When Ditch pushes his caustic sense of humor a little too far within the group, The Professor (played by Joe Chrest) plans a retaliatory strike by befriending Mary, Ditch’s lonely seamstress wife. Lamson plays Mary, much-better half to Jemison’s Ditch, the wildly offensive leader to his circle of misfits and miscreants. Jemison admits the word is tempered not by his four male stars, but by the film’s female lead played by the lovely actress Laura Lamson, the actor-director’s real-life wife. On the other side, though, people hear the word and laugh they aren’t grossed out.” Old ladies, as it turns out, don’t like it. “But a lot of people are turned off by it. It was their scene and their language,” Jemison says of the word. “The Sex Pistols called each other c**ts. ![]() Which is why he spent some time shrugging his shoulders at little old ladies at festival screenings of King of Herrings, a film he wrote, co-directed and starred in that follows four on-again/off-again buddies who are not shy about dropping the taboo word that many American audiences still cringe at. ![]() When given the choice, Eddie Jemison C-words.
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