UnderCurrent

Artimus Pyle, former drummer for Lynyrd Skynyrd,now 71, shows up to introduce this film “Street Survivors” (and an occasional return for narration) before turning things over to the actor who portrays him in this VOD flick. Ian Shultis plays a younger version of Pyle, who ran from the crash site in a remote Mississippi field on a cool and quiet October morning in 1977. The true story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash that its release is coming in the middle of a pandemic, when not very many people are rushing to get back on planes again. The film delivers on the promise-or threat- of its title in a big, vivid way, with enough drawn out suspense once engines start backfiring and enough grisly carnage on the ground to give most viewers plane panic. “Street Survivors” is actually first class as convincingly harrowing aeronautical disaster movies go, if you’re a follower of the genre that has Peter Weir’s 1993 “Fearless” to live up to. Pyle is legally prohibited from participating in a movie that’s tells the full Skynyrd story.

Lynyrd Skynyrd band crash site in Gillsburg, Mississippi 1977.  Band members featured inset.

Other band members who survived or their estates filed a lawsuit trying to stop this one, although an appeals court eventually let Artimus and the production company proceed. Some argue that writer-director Jared Cohn’s choice to keep some of the band members undefined, although lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, portrayed by Taylor Clift does get plenty of air time as a sort of mythological supporting player in Pyle’s story. Once Pyle gets his on screen prelude out of the way, the movie jumps to Pyle as a young man thrashing on the drums in his garage, when he gets the call that Van Zant is interested in having him fill in for a mentally exhausted and drug bent drummer Bob Burns. Also, members of Aerosmith, who refused to board the ill-fated CV-240, are featured is this movie. Visual effects directors Joe Lawson, Eric Yalkut Chase and Eve McCartney’s visual dizzying shots that have Pyle tending to the surviving members as well as surveying the deceased crash victims. Ronnie Van Zant is portrayed as a TV throwing jerk in one scene, then as a rock deity in another, we have no real verdict on that. No actual Skynyrd compositions are used because of legal issues, the only song was J. J. Cale’s “Call Me the Breeze”, the obvious absence of their signature song “Free Bird” was apparent. the film does offer an epilogue with Artimus Pyle playing a drum solo at a gig with his namesake band. On a personal note, having been not yet born when Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane went down that fateful day, my mother was an avid Skynyrd fan being from the south, she shared that she wept when hearing of the accident. “It was a JFK moment for me” having just purchased their new album Street Survivors that very day she said, knowing exactly what she was doing, when hearing the horrific news. It was truly the day the music died.

Zack Bush IMOU500.