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Male Speaker: When the AV Club travels, we always make time to visit top cultural landmarks. If something memorable happened in the world of film, TV, books, or music we want to go there. We’re not just tourists, we’re pop pilgrims. The Memphis of Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 Indie classic “Mystery Train” was haunted by its past and also perhaps haunted by Elvis. We’re headed to the Arcade Restaurant where in the movie “Mystery Train” a young Italian traveler heard a story about a hitchhiking Elvis ghost. We’re going to sit down and talk with Sherman Wilmott – he was a production assistant on “Mystery Train” and he’s going to tell us some of the stories he had from when he worked on the set.. What can you tell us about why Jim Jarmusch picked the Arcade Diner as one of his locations? Sherman Wilmott: My assumption was Jarmusch is – he came to Memphis, got off the bus or the train, or however he got here – I would assume he took the train here – and he walked around downtown Memphis and wrote the script. If he took the train he would have gotten off right across the street from us at the train station and would have found the coolest 24-hour diner in Memphis. Male Speaker: And it was cool back then even though the neighborhood had kind of fallen apart? Sherman Wilmott: Yeah, this was kind of the beacon in the neighborhood, it was 24 hours a day, they had great fried chicken, they had great all-night breakfast – it was very “Mystery Train”-ish long before Jarmusch got here. This was our main headquarters here in this corner so for several weeks, especially on the weekends, we were disturbing the business of what was across the street or our house. We would come in prime time, 6 o’clock, Friday nights, set up our cameras, our lights, block off the streets, and put the Shelby county sheriffs out there. So we’d leave it like six or seven in the morning on Saturday. Of course business would have been ruined. Needless to say that anyone in that establishment, its business was destroyed for the weekend so he would occasionally do things to upset the set like throw his garbage out in the street, drag the garbage cans along the sidewalk, make as much noise as possible just to show his appreciation for losing his weekend take. Pretty much anyone who comes to Memphis to film shoots at this corner because it's got a great look – it could be the ‘50s, it could be the ‘70s, it could be the ‘20s – without a whole lot of set decorations. And Dr. King was [inaudible 2:39] Memphis stopped, especially the downtown, for 20 or 30 years. Memphis kept this kind of almost Hollywood-ish like facades all over town. This diner was so realistic and so cool that there wasn’t a lot of set decorating going on inside the diner. When you look around is there a better diner ambiance anywhere? And this isn't like – they didn’t make this for Hollywood – Hollywood comes here and films here. It's just got a great feel. I mean, look at the counter here -- this is where people’s elbows have been for many years. It's just a place where you come in and you dig in and people have done that for 80 or 90 years. Male Speaker: Thank you so much for sitting down with us, Sherman. It was fantastic. Sherman Wilmott: Oh, my pleasure. Come to Memphis any time. Male Speaker: Great to meet you. Sherman Wilmott: You as well. End.

Memphis: Arcade Restaurant - Set of Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train

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Billing itself as “Memphis’ Oldest Café,” The Arcade Restaurant has been at the corner of Memphis’ South Main Street and G.E. Patterson Boulevard since 1919. Just steps away from the train station, the restaurant has seen its surroundings rise, fall, and rise again with the fortunes of the city. Once the bustling heart of Memphis’ downtown, the neighborhood around the Arcade fell into decline in the 1970s and ’80s. By the time Jim Jarmusch arrived to shoot his 1989 film Mystery Train, hard times had overtaken what had become an especially seedy part of town.

But as Sherman Willmott—who worked as a production assistant on the film—tells us in this installment of Pop Pilgrims, the Arcade remained a “beacon” through it all, serving up reliably delicious food 24 hours a day in a classic diner setting. Besides, the surrounding seediness suited the needs of Jarmusch’s film. With overlapping stories that converge at the dilapidated Arcade Hotel—torn down shortly after Mystery Train shot there—it’s a film partly about how the legends of the city’s past intersect with the everyday present, and how newcomers sometimes have trouble discerning the mundane from the mythic.

In a neat twist, Jarmusch’s decision to shoot in Memphis’ less-reputable corners had an unexpected impact on the city’s onscreen life. A plaque commemorating  “Modern Filmmaking In Memphis” now stands outside the restaurant, hailing Mystery Train, the first major feature to shoot primarily in the city since King Vidor’s Hallelujah! in 1928, as the beginning of a revival for filmmaking in Memphis. Jarmusch’s movie helped inspire other filmmakers to turn to Memphis, and the years that followed saw everything from Great Balls Of Fire! to The Firm to My Blueberry Nights shooting in the city. Each of those films, and others, further followed Jarmusch’s example by using the Arcade as a location. 21 Grams even has a sandwich named after it, which we found easier to stomach than the film that inspired it.

Which brings us to the big question: How’s the food? Pretty tasty, we can report. Owners Harry and Karan Zepatos, the third generation of the Zepatos family to run the restaurant, serve up classic Greek diner fare that continues to attract locals and tourists alike. Patrons can even sit in the booth once favored by another Arcade regular, Elvis Presley. Sure, it looks like every other booth at the restaurant, but that’s an element of its charm: The Arcade remains reassuringly unchanged no matter what goes on outside its doors, or who passes through them.

More Pop Pilgrims

Total Episodes: 33