'The 'Vous' is in view: Rendezvous barbecue documentary reaches Memphis theaters

A slab of Rendezvous ribs requires about 90 minutes of basting and grilling before the meat is ready to be served to the waiting mitts and hungry maws of the restaurant’s loyal customers.

In comparison, “The ‘Vous,” a documentary feature film that dives deep into the history, environment, family ties and charcoal pits essential to the Memphis barbecue emporium, required close to seven years of preparation — shooting, cutting, mixing, seasoning (with music and so on) — before it was ready for consumers.

The film is loaded with mouth-watering closeups of glistening pork. But, according to the filmmakers, the project's chief ingredient is something that can't be served on a Styrofoam plate: food for thought.

“We were not trying to make a movie about who has the best barbecue,” said Jack Lofton, the film's co-director. “We wanted to make a movie about what makes an institution — a place that is now internationally recognized and arguably the most famous barbecue restaurant in the world.”

“A place with a storybook, almost timeless quality,” added co-director Jeff Dailey.

After a successful year on the film festival circuit, “The ‘Vous” begins a run of at least a week at the Malco Paradiso, 584 S. Mendenhall, on Friday, Jan. 25. The booking represents the 82-minute movie’s first theatrical run; the filmmakers hope others will follow.

Lofton and Dailey and some "cast members" will be in attendance opening night, and will participate in question-and-answer sessions after the 7:25 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. shows.

"The 'Vous" had its world premiere here in 2022, at the Indie Memphis Film Festival, where it won the “Hometowner" award for best Memphis-connected feature film. (Among the jurors was screenwriter Larry Karaszewski, whose credits include "Ed Wood" and "The People vs. Larry Flynt.") The movie subsequently screened at such prestigious events as the Austin Film Festival and DOC NYC, the world’s largest documentary film festival.

A New York Times writer singled out "The 'Vous" from among the DOC fest's 100-plus features, noting the movie's “compelling” portrait of the restaurant, “from its inception through the Jim Crow era, the civil rights movement and up to the present.” Meanwhile, an Austin Chronicle reviewer warned that the movie might be “a dangerous watch for anyone who views it in a state of hunger” because “those ribs jump off the screen, tempting any and all meat eaters."

Both based in Little Rock, the filmmakers got the idea for "The 'Vous" when they read a story by Geoff Calkins that appeared in The Commercial Appeal on Dec. 19, 2016. The story chronicled the combined 100-year careers of "Rendezvous legends" Robert Newman and Percy Norris, two of the most popular and charismatic members of the restaurant's celebrated staff of bowtied waiters.

Said Lofton: "My immediate thought was, why hasn't anybody done a film about this place from the perspective of the people, their experiences and their stories?"

The two friends had been jonesing for a project to get their creative juices flowing. Both were film-industry professionals and documentary veterans. "We were on the ground running, filming in Memphis two days after we saw the story," Dailey said.

A native of Hughes, Arkansas, and a frequent Memphis visitor, Lofton, 42, was bit by the movie bug when he won the role of Joaquin Phoenix's stand-in during the making of the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line" in Memphis, in 2004. (By pure coincidence, his sister, Katie, was Reese Witherspoon's stand-in. "They picked us not even knowing we were brother and sister," Lofton said.)

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He earned a master's degree from the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock and a law degree at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, but never lost his interest in film, serving for five years as the executive director of the Little Rock Film Festival.

More important, he began making films. He co-directed "Ann Richards' Texas" (2012), a feature-length documentary portrait of the straight-shooting Democratic governor of Texas. Another provocative project was "God Hates Gaga," a short documentary that followed attempts by the hate-mongering Westboro Baptist Church to picket a Lady Gaga concert.

Meanwhile, Little Rock native Dailey, 52, was charting a comparably edgy course, working as a director of photography and camera operator on such projects as "West of Memphis" (2012), a documentary about the "West Memphis Three" murder case produced by Peter Jackson, and "Hail Satan?" (2019), director Penny Lane's look at the controversy-stoking Satanic Temple.

"The 'Vous" gave the filmmakers a chance to work with less divisive but similarly rich subject matter, Lofton said. "At a time in America when we're more divided than ever, this is a story about people from different backgrounds coming together," he said.

Ensconced in an alley across the street from the north entrance of The Peabody, The Rendezvous — known for its “dry-rub” style of rib seasoning — has been a fixture of Downtown since its founding in 1948. The restaurant remained loyal to the city center, even as other businesses abandoned Downtown in the wake of the 1968 sanitation workers' strike and assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"We saw Downtown slowly die, but we stayed and we prospered, and we saw Downtown come back to life," said Rendezvous co-owner John Vergos, son of the restaurant's late founder, Charlie Vergos.

Lofton said the restaurant tells a story of “the culture of its people and the culture of its place,” populated by a cast of “larger-than-life characters, from the Vergoses to the legendary waiter to the kitchen managers and staff. What connects them, what principles do they have? What are the mechanics that make it function and how did it get from a small smoky hole-in-the-wall to a place that can serve 3,000 people a night?”

Vergos said this story is what interested him about the project. “We have people wanting to film here all the time, but we don’t want to be involved in debates over barbecue. This is more a story about the people at The Rendezvous. It’s really more about the soul of a city, and Memphis going through major transition.”

Dailey said the filmmakers honed their film from "hundreds of hours" of footage. Vergos admitted that seven years of cameras can be "a little tedious. They were with us for Easter, for funerals, for Christmas — they were at my mom's house on Christmas Eve." But the result was worth it, he said.

Robert Cox, 34, who has worked at The Rendezvous for 15 years, agreed. “They never stepped on our toes in the kitchen,” he said. “We were able to be ourselves, which is probably why it came out so genuine.”

Watching the film also is a "sentimental" experience, Cox said: Seven of the people captured by the cameras — including Newman and Norris, the subjects of the story that inspired the film — died between they time they were filmed and the time the movie was finished.

"It hits me every time, when I see their faces onscreen," Lofton said. "It was an incredible opportunity to spend time with each of these people and get to know them. We had no idea we were creating something that was documenting the end of their lives."

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Rendezvous BBQ documentary playing in Memphis: Story behind The 'Vous