S TA R S T R U C K
The South’s New Hollywood
TATE TAYLOR ON DEVELOPING NATCHEZ AS A PREMIERE FILM DESTINATION By Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
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Award-winning producer and director Tate Taylor has made Natchez his home, and now he is trying to bring the movie business there with him. Photo by Tim Marsella, courtesy of Film Natchez.
efore Wanda Sykes headed home after filming for Breaking News in Yuba County hwas complete, she took the time to hscribble a note in the guest book at Tate Taylor’s restored historic home in Church Hill, Mississippi. She wrote, “I can’t believe I’m going to say this. But the most creatively fulfilled and embraced I have ever felt was in Natchez *bleepin* Mississippi. When are we coming back?” Bringing first-timers to the South is one of the best, and most fulfilling parts of Taylor’s job as a director, he told me. He and his partner in filmmaking and in life, producer John Norris, have spent the last decade promoting Mississippi, and Natchez in particular, as a premier film destination. In addition to bringing their own projects, including Get On Up, Ma, and Breaking News in Yuba County to the Mississippi Delta—the couple also works to showcase the region’s vast natural and architectural beauty and its range through their production studio Crooked Letter Pictures, and their nonprofit Film Natchez. 36
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“Natchez in particular has such a diversity in its location-ability,” said Taylor. “All periods of architecture are here—from the lavish to the shacks.” The best example of this, he explained, is Get On Up, the 2014 James Brown biopic starring Chadwick Boseman. The scene in which Brown performs his iconic Live At the Apollo show at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, for instance, was filmed in the transformed Margaret Martin Performing Arts Center on Homochitto Street in Natchez. “We had to go from Georgia to Paris, to Vietnam,” said Tate. “We had to be in the 1930s all the way to the 2000s. And you can find all of that here.” A native of Jackson, Taylor moved permanently back to his home state a few years after directing the 2011 Oscar-award winning film The Help, when he embarked on a nationwide search for “an old house that needed restoring in the middle of nowhere that no one could find.” He landed at Wyolah, a one hundred acre property centered around an 1836 Greek Revival home in the tiny community of Church Hill, Mississippi— twenty miles north of Natchez. “So,” he said, “it was an old house that brought me back to this region.”
In the middle of nowhere as he was in Church Hill, Taylor said Natchez quickly became his community. “And I just saw what a sleeping giant the town was, and how much need there was for ideas and opportunities for people who have been underserved,” he said. After years of promoting the area from within the film industry, in 2019 Tate founded the nonprofit Film Natchez—an organization that “aims to promote the film economy in Natchez through outreach, education, and support.” Though stunted a bit by the 2020 pandemic, the organization has already hosted several workshops and seminars, bringing top level representatives from various factions of the film industry—from stunt coordinators to writers to special effects to casting—as resources for locals interested in exploring such work themselves. “A lot of what we do is based on the fact that when I and Octavia [Spencer] wanted to get into the business— we were both production assistants on A Time to Kill in Canton, Mississippi—we didn’t have two pennies to rub together, but we had the opportunity to leave and to go and seek out our dreams,” said Taylor, explaining that for a lot of people in the South, the barriers to entering this industry go beyond financial ones. “A lot of people just don’t have that opportunity. Film Natchez is built around the idea of giving people the opportunity and an access point to our business.” Beyond its educational initiatives, Film Natchez also actively promotes Natchez as a film destination by spotlighting its various backdrops and local actors and actresses, as well as Mississippi’s competitive film incentives, expanded by Senate Bill 2603, which former Governor Phil Bryant signed into law in 2019. These include cash rebates up to $5 million on eligible expenditures and payroll, as well as tax reductions on eligible rentals and purchases. “This was paramount in opening the doors,” said Taylor. “People can make their films anywhere. Without the film incentives, it was a nonstarter for any studio to come here.” Such investments by the state, Taylor emphasized, have proven themselves to have an incredible impact on the communities selected as sites for film projects. “It’s tried and true,” he said, citing the $17 million that went directly into Greenwood’s businesses during production for The Help—and that’s not to mention the boost in tourism the town experienced following the film’s success. “It’s a shot of adrenaline,” he said. “We have two movies filming in Natchez right now, and I can’t tell you the merchants who come up to me and throw their arms around my neck and say, ‘You don’t know me, but we just had our best month ever.’ It makes the city proud and then they start spending money, and homeowners start taking pride in their city and spending money. It goes beyond the fact that the movie people are here in town.” Over the last year, Taylor himself has made some significant investments in Church Hill and in Natchez, having overseen the openings of three—with one on the way—culinary experiences in the Adams and Jefferson County area. Church Hill Variety Restaurant and Farm, which is settled near Taylor’s property at Wyolah, will offer an elevated dining experience centered on locally-sourced (from the adjacent farm, when possible) ingredients. The restaurant will also boast a farm store with grab-and-go meals and produce. “Jefferson County is a very underserved county,” said Taylor. “There is not a restaurant other than Hunt Brothers Pizza at the Chevron. There’s
