It is called the “Emmy” of the cable industry, and neighborhood video artist Lee Murray has been nominated for it.
Murray’s adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story “Ligeia”, The Red Lion, the Young Queen, was selected from hundreds of entries to vie for the top spot in the Performing Arts category of the 15th annual Local CableACE awards, a national competition, sponsored by the National Academy of Cable Programming.
Pat Nicks, cable communications assistant director of Irving Community Television Network, which funded The Red Lion, says the system is excited about the nomination.
“It’s really an imaginative use of science fiction,” she says.
Murray, who wrote, directed and produced The Red Lion, says it is typical of the work he has done in the past decade, much of it with collaborator David Smith: Self-indulgent, totally non-commercial and perfect for the late-night cable audience.
The Red Lion features the team’s trademark blending and clashing of concepts, images and sounds in a sci-fi soap-opera retelling of the Poe story about a mysterious woman and the man who is bedeviled by her.
Themes of obsession, subordination of the will, death, reincarnation and wild speculations of philosophy are played out by garishly and humorously costumed actors. Sets were built using the guts of old aircraft, and scenes are bathed in otherworldly, saturated hues of red, orange, blue and green light.
In one scene, a woman with a gold metal screen hat fixes a serious look on her face and says: “Contagion moves along the routes of commerce,” while thin industrial metal tubes gyrate behind her.
In another, a Neiman-Marcus charge card is quarantined, since it helped to start a plague that has devasted the world.
To study Murray’s work, with its rich colors, intriguing sets and costumes, intricate soundtracks and cerebral dialogue, you might think he is the type of guy who lives in a tony loft near Downtown, where the décor is retro-chic and obscure music plays from a high-tech CD system.
Instead of a swank loft, he and artist Barbara Simcoe have lived in the same rambling apartment building at the corner of Swiss Avenue and Fitzhugh Street – not the “mansion side” of the street, he points out – for 10 years.
The steps leading up to the apartment are tired, but the hallway walls come alive with the bold colors and striking imagery of Simcoe’s paintings.
Inside rows of books with titles such as Prophet Against Empire by William Blake and Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche share space with collections of religiously-inscribed candles and well-worn, comfortable furniture.
In these modest surroundings, Murray and his collaborators have produced hours of inspired video images. With miniscule budgets, Murray uses what is at hand; props and costumes are likely to have come from his closets.
Our neighborhoods also are a part of Murray’s work.
“We stay here because it’s a complex place,” he says. “It’s a good inner-city mix of cultures and opportunities and visions.
“It’s an interesting place – too interesting, sometimes, with the crime – but it’s Swiss Avenue up here, it’s Deep Ellum down the street, and the library at the other end of the road.”
The time between video projects is not a time for hobbies or other diversions, Murray says.
“I don’t have free time. What I’m working on is my business and also my life. I don’t enjoy anything any more than I enjoy ‘The Project’, and working on ‘The Project’ is what I do.
“The idea is to keep moving,” he says. “If I ever became satisfied, I’d have to quit.”
