Here’s the best rundown I’ve read about the story and the meaning of Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan. It’s from Brewer himself in a long response to a question from Black Film correspondent Wilson Morales. The IMDB says the Paramount Classics film, due in ’06 with Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci in the leads, is about “a white nymphomaniac” being “cured of her disorder by an older black bluesman.” Like everyone else I had interpreted the title in sexual terms (remember that actor in Full Metal Jacket exhibiting his appendage to a Vietnamese prostitute and calling it a specimen of “Alabama black snake”?) but that’s just the taking-off point.
