Best of Enemies

Morgan Neville is an award-winning filmmaker who has spent twenty years working as a cultural documentarian. Neville has been nominated for three Grammys for his music films: Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, Muddy Waters Can't Be Satisfied, and Johnny Cash’s America. His other films include Hank Williams: Honky Tonk Blues The Cool School and Troubadours (Sundance ’11). Through his company, Tremolo Productions, Neville has also produced films such as The Rolling Stones’ Crossfire Hurricane, Pearl Jam Twenty, The Night James Brown Saved Boston and Beauty is Embarrassing (Independent Lens, 2013). His film 20 Feet From Stardom, which premiered opening night of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and went on to become the top-grossing documentary of the year, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Grammy Award-winning writer and filmmaker Robert Gordon has focused on the American south — its music, art, and politics — to create an insider’s portrait of his home that is both nuanced and ribald. His first book, It Came From Memphis, careens through the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, riding shotgun with the weirdoes, winos, and midget wrestlers. In 2003, he wrote the definitive biography of blues great Muddy Waters, the award-winning Can’t Be Satisfied, and his Respect Yourself, about Stax Records, also received accolades. Gordon’s documentaries include Stranded in Canton, made with photographer William Eggleston, and the harrowing Very Extremely Dangerous about Jerry McGill, recording artist and outlaw. His first film, All Day & All Night, showed at MOMA’s New Directors/New Films in 1990. He was writer and a producer on the Memphis episode of Martin Scorsese’s The Blues. As a team, Gordon and Morgan Neville have made four previous films together: Muddy Waters Can’t Satisfied, Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan, Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, and Johnny Cash’s America.