After a 45-year-newspaper career in Memphis, John Beifuss retired October 1st from The Commercial Appeal (CA), where he worked most of those years.
He covered everything, but he was mostly known for his movie coverage, which included reviews of commercial films as well as Indie Memphis and other local and area film-related events. For many years, CA readers tried to out-predict him on who was going to win the Academy Awards that year for the “Beat Beifuss at the Oscars” annual feature.
Beifuss loves horror and gory movies. Like really gory movies. I accompanied him to many movie previews of some of the most grisly films I’ve ever seen. Some still stick in my mind, dammit.
He also was in a movie, playing a dad who drank a pureed dead-fish milkshake in the independent film, What I Love About Concrete. Beifuss was the recipient of the 2016 Indie Memphis Vision Award.
I met Beifuss, a journalism graduate of Northwestern University, at the old afternoon paper, the Memphis Press-Scimitar, where he began working in 1981. I still regard Beifuss, who I consider one of my closest friends, to be one of the best daily newspaper writers in Memphis. He could do everything from brilliant, colorful feature stories, including human interest pieces, to “hard news,” which included fires, murders, car accidents, and other topics.
While most of us resorted to tape recorders at some point, Beifuss rarely used one. He usually just interviewed everybody and wrote it down on those narrow newspaper note pads. He could just get it right doing it that way. Why resort to technology?
He also wrote a children’s book, Armadillo Ray, which was published by Chronicle Books. It was illustrated by Peggy Turley, who created the character.
I asked Beifuss to tell me some of the most memorable stories he had to write. These included the Shannon Street Massacre, the St. Jude hostage crisis in the 1980s, the Sundance Film Festival premiers of Craig Brewer and Ira Sachs, and area productions of films by Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, and Alejandro Iñárritu.
He also wrote beautiful obituaries for my brother and my father — a very special bond we share.
I remember at one point at the Press-Scimitar when Beifuss was going to quit and go traveling in Paris, France. I let him know what I’d heard about the paper’s plans for him. They loved him. He ended up staying. I hope he doesn’t hold that against me.
Beifuss has been telling people, “I’ll show you how to do retirement.”
So, stay tuned. I have a feeling he’s going to continue doing some writing. He bought his own laptop (not one that belonged to the CA) this week.
