Dallas VideoFest's AltFiction goes online

I'm getting almost daily notices of film festivals pushing back to at least the summer. More interesting in the here and now are the fests that are going online. The latest is the Dallas VideoFest's AltFiction which will be online for FREE.

Here's the skinny from the press release:

Dallas VideoFest’s Alternative Fiction (http://videofest.org/Alternative-Fiction/ April 2-5) partners with Falcon Events, Dallas-based event producers, which specializes in producing live online and virtual events, to deploy the latest live online technology via a secure and robust platform to create a virtual film festival experience in your living room.

“We are recreating the festival experience, showing films, and connecting filmmakers with their audiences, with technology that is just right for the moment,” said Bart Weiss, founder and artistic director of Dallas VideoFest.

Alternative Innovation

Falcon Events has the technology and capability to include film introductions from the Festivals’ film hosts as well as Q&As following films. Viewers will be able to hear and potentially see the filmmakers as they answer the viewers’ questions. Falcon Events has very strict protocols in place to ensure each film’s content is not copied, and each film will only be available live.

Dallas VideoFest has been innovating with technology since 1987, such as showcasing HDTV and VR in 1988,  exhibiting interactive media, and pioneering using files instead of videotapes. We are constantly looking for new easy to connect with audiences, and this is the technology perfect for this moment in time.

“In this time when we are literally homebound, we are looking to be inspired. AltFiction’s narrative films will prove entertainment, inspiration and will be the cure for cabin fever,” Weiss said.

Movie lovers can go online and watch great films at specific times.  Like traditional film festivals, there will be questions and answers and intros to the films from hosts and from the filmmakers, but these will be done on video (and unlike the films themselves will be viewable later online). Audiences can ask questions of the filmmakers and have them answered in real-time. 

Here's how you do it:

 

1. Sign up at OnlineFest.us 
2. Browse content
3. Register for screenings you want to watch
4. Log back in before the event start time to begin viewing (an email reminder goes out 30 minutes prior to the start time)

In addition, viewers can expect a seamless switch into a filmmaker Q&A using a text-based tool that allows attendees to submit questions online.

Dallas-based actress shines in 'No Letting Go'

Cheryl Allison's long, successful career has taken her to Broadway, but she's back in Dallas and finally breaking out on the big screen as the anchor of the film No Letting Go, which is being released on demand on cable television starting today.

It's a harrowing tale based on a true story of a mother who struggles to keep herself and her family together as one of her three sons suffers from an anxiety that blossoms in his teen years into a full-blown bipolar disorder combined with haunting depression.

Allison knows the role well. She starred in the short Illness that won so many honors on the festival circuit that filmmaker Jonathan Bucari chose to expand into a full feature film. It's inspired by the real-life experiences of Randi Silverman, who co-wrote the script with Bucari. She co-founded a support group for parents raising children with anxiety, depression and/or mood disorders. The group has served more than 800 families in the past five years. Silverman talks about that experience here.

No Letting Go provides a perfect showcase for the realities these parents face. It's beautifully shot and ably acted, with Kathy Najimy particularly shining as a no-nonsense therapist. The cast also includes Richard Burgi of Desperate Housewives and a number of soap operas, and Janet Hubert of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Silverman's real-life son Noah Silverman stars as the 14-year-old suffering from mental illness. His brother's story is the film's inspiration.

In Fort Worth, Allison is regularly seen on stage at Casa Manana, but she might see more film roles coming her way once word gets out of her strong performance in No Letting Go. It's a film that rates seeking out for its frank treatment of a topic that people are often unwilling to openly discuss.

First look at JFK assassination film 'Parkland'

Austin State Hospital's turquoise brick walls look all shiny '60s-like in the trailer for the film Parkland. ASH stands in for Parkland Memorial Hospital, where President John F. Kennedy was taken after he was shot in Dallas. Check it out, conspiracy theorists.

Is Albuquerque the new San Antonio?

Don't blame San Antonio tourists if they assume the Alamo is made of adobe. Two major network TV series set in the Alamo City are being filming in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Night Shift is a medical drama set at "San Antonio Memorial." Here's the plot description from NBC:
 

At San Antonio Memorial, those who work the 7pm – 7am shift are a special breed. Welcome to the night shift, where every day is a fight between the heroic efforts of saving lives and the hard truths of running a hospital. After a grueling tour of duty in Afghanistan, adrenaline junkie TC Callahan became accustomed to combat, but he could have never guessed that his toughest battles would be fought right here at home. TC and his irreverent team of late night docs know how to let off steam with the casual prank or two, but when lives are at stake, they are all business. Unfortunately, the night shift is now under new management, and boss Michael Ragosa is more interested in cutting costs than helping people. But TC has never met a rule he couldn't break, or a person he won't stand up to. And it's clear that not even Jordan, TC's ex-girlfriend and now Ragosa's second in charge, has a chance at keeping him in line. If Ragosa wants a war... he'll get one.

The pilot for Texas Rangers show Killer Women was shot in Austin, but the pilot (and we can assume the series) is set in San Antonio and the show is now ready to lens in Albuquerque. Here's the story:

Of all the notorious lawmen who ever patrolled the violent Texas frontier, none are more storied than the Texas Rangers. Being the only female ranger in this elite squad isn’t going to stop ballsy, badass Molly Parker (Tricia Helfer). Molly is committed to finding the truth and seeing justice served. While she’s surrounded by law enforcement colleagues who want to see her fail, including Police Lieutenant Estaban Salazar (Vic Trevino), the Rangers have her back, led by Company Commander Luis Zea (Alex Fernandez). Molly’s also got her brother Billy (Michael Trucco) and his wife Nessa (Marta Milans). On the verge of getting divorced from her smarmy husband Jake (Jeffrey Nordling), Molly begins an affair with sexy DEA agent, Dan Winston (Marc Blucas).

 At least Dallas has TNT series Dallas shooting there for a third season and Austin stole Revolution from North Carolina and brought the apocalypse to Central Texas.

Two Dallas natives in Texas Film Hall of Fame

Here' s my report for the Dallas Morning News from the Texas Film Hall of Fame. It should soon be behind a paywall, so I present it here in its entirety.


BY JOE O'CONNELL
Special Contributor

AUSTIN — On the way to school in Oak Cliff, young Stephen Tobolowsky would act out plays. On Thursday, the character actor whose name you don’t know but whose face you do was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame.

He was joined by fellow Dallas native Robin Wright, San Antonio’s Henry Thomas (E.T., All the Pretty Horses) and Houston’s Annette O’Toole (TV’s Smallville) at Austin Studios on the former site of the city’s airport.

Photo by Joe O'Connell

Tobolowsky, who has acted in more than 100 film and TV projects, including Groundhog Day and Memento, said he had a revelation about his career while playing the role of a professional bass fisherman years ago. A car arrived, he thought to take him to the set, but the driver had mistaken Tobolowsky for a pilot he’d been sent to pick up. Then, said pilot showed up, thinking Tobolowsky must be the cabbie.

“In one day, I was mistaken for both a jet pilot and a taxi driver en route to my role as a bass fisherman,” he said. “That is the life of a character actor.”

Photo by Joe O'Connell

Princess Bride director Rob Reiner introduced Wright at the ceremony and said he had seen more than 100 young actresses before Wright arrived. “She walked in the room and I said, ‘Oh, my God, she is the princess bride.’ ”

While born in Dallas, Wright was raised in California. However, she returned yearly and fondly recalls jaunts to Cedar Creek Lake, where she swam and ate watermelon.

Wright, with a recent role in Netflix’s House of Cards, said the joy of her career has been “sharing stories and receiving them on a daily basis and getting paid for it.”

It’s the 13th year the Austin Film Society has inducted new members to the Texas Film Hall of Fame, which raises funds to aid independent filmmakers and serves as a kickoff to the South by Southwest Film Festival. Also honored this year was Richard Linklater’s 1993 teen film, Dazed and Confused, which received the Star of Texas Award.

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, an old Linklater pal, presented the award for what he called one of his favorite films of the 1990s.

Austin Film Society founder Linklater said he was still learning his craft while making Dazed and Confused and had his uneasy moments.

“I had such high ambitions for what I was doing,” he said. “If I ever felt less than certain, I could see how hard the cast was working and realize how much it meant to them.”

Actress Dana Wheeler-Nicholson (TV’s Friday Night Lights) serenaded the cast with a sultry rendition of the Led Zeppelin song “Dazed and Confused.” Linklater’s film is named for the song, but he was unable to get rights to use it in the film.

Why I'm making a documentary about Gary Kent

This is a clip from a press conference we had Saturday in Dallas for the documentary Love & Other Stunts about indie film legend Gary Kent. Watch it, and you'll see why I'm making this movie! Check out the IndieGoGo campaign here! With nine days to go we are 79 percent funded.

Louisiana Film Prize eyes Texans

What? First Louisiana lures Hollywood in to shoot movies that once upon a time chose to lens in Texas. Now it wants Texans to come and play the Cajun way? That's Gregory Kallenberg's insidious plot, friends. Kallenberg, a tech writer for the Austin American-Statesman when I first him in the late '90s, is now a respected documentary filmmaker residing in Shreveport. He believes in the Shreveport area so much as a perfect filming locale that he's backing that with $50,000 in cold, hard cash. That's the payout to the prize winner. The only catch is the entered short film must be shot in the Shreveport area. Post production, etc. can happen anywhere. The rough cut must be submitted by July 9.

It's the second year for the prize, and Kallenberg says entries last year came from as far away as Los Angeles and Chicago. Teams also came from Dallas and Houston, but nary a one from Austin. Check out the details here.

Texas indie filmmakers score big

It's been a good week for Texas independent filmmakers.

Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck.

At the Sundance Film Festival, IFC purchased domestic rights to Dallas auteur David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints and sent his already soaring career into orbit. It stars Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck and Ben Foster, and is about "an outlaw who escapes from prison and travels across Texas to reunite with his wife and the daughter he's never met before."

Meanwhile, HBO ordered a comedy pilot from brothers and former Austinites Mark and Jay Duplass. They'll write and direct the half-hour pilot titled Togetherness. It's about "two couples living under the same roof who struggle to keep their relationships alive while pursuing their individual dreams."

Maybe that MovieMaker Magazine love has some merit, but perhaps they ought to extend it statewide.

Texas Sundance entries have Dallas pedigrees

(From today's Dallas Morning News. Stories are behind a pay wall, so I present it for you.)
 

Texas Sundance entries have Dallas pedigrees

BY JOE O’CONNELL

Special to The Dallas Morning News

            Austin gets the Texas indie-film buzz, but the Lone Star State contingent at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival is full of North Texans.

            Yen Tan worked in marketing for Neiman-Marcus in Dallas until he trekked to the Capital City in 2010 with a plan to make a living as the go-to graphics guy for indie film poster art. His third feature film Pit Stop, the parallel stories of two blue-collar gay men in small-town Texas, premieres at Sundance later this month. Tan co-wrote the script with Dallas’ David Lowery, whose feature Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is in dramatic competition at Sundance.

12-year-old Elise Gardner, star of Spark poses for
a film blogger as her mother Mary Catherine watches.

            “It’s like winning the lottery,” said Tan of Sundance in Park City, Utah, which carries the mystique as a magical place where independent film dreams come true. “I’m scared to have expectations. I don’t want to be disappointed.”

            Tan said he quietly flew under the radar in the North Texas film scene with Lowery and Fort Worth’s James Johnston, a Pit Stop producer, before decamping to Austin.

Indie film proves a small Texas world with Austin-based Kelly Williams—yet another Pit Stop producer—programming Fort Worth’s Lone Star International Film Festival while keeping his hand in seemingly every independent movie of note, including Kat Candler’s latest Sundance short Black Metal about a rocker/dad who must deal with the guilt when a killer’s actions are linked to a love of the rocker’s music.

“We’ve all grown up together,” Williams said following a press screening in Austin of Pit Stop clips, Candler’s film and two shorts set to premiere at Sundance satellite festival Slamdance. Williams, Tan and Candler and many others share space at an Austin film production site where relationships bloom and ideas tumble back and forth.

“It’s so incestuous,” said Candler whose short Hellion played at Sundance in 2012 and is being expanded into a full feature. “There’s not a competitiveness about the community, yet everyone’s voice remains unique to them.”

Part of it is the shoestring nature of independent film that require the wearing of many hats to make a living. Candler’s two Sundance shorts were crowd-funded with donations through Web site IndieGoGo. Both star Jonny Mars, arguably the most intriguing actor in Texas indie film. The former Dallas resident also produced Black Metal and directed the 2012 documentary America’s Parking Lot about rabid Dallas Cowboys fans.

Andrew Irvine is Candler’s teaching assistant in the University of Texas Radio-Television-Film program. His frank and funny short Hearts of Napalm, about a young couple’s sexual miscommunication, will screen at Slamdance. Irvine, 30, is seeing a dream forged as a Plano teenager come to fruition.

“I’m old enough now to realize that since this is the first time it will probably never be this good again,” he said of his upcoming Park City adventure.

UT film student Annie Silverstein, whose background is solidly in the documentary form, will see her fictional short Spark screen at Slamdance as well. It’s a touching story of a boy left to deal with the daughter of his father’s love interest and some tempting fireworks.

“Sometimes using fiction you can say things that are more true than in a documentary,” said Silverstein who founded a program that taught Native American youth to use film to tell their stories.

“I’ve lived in many different cities before, and I’ve never felt so accepted so quickly,” she said of Austin. “I feel lucky. That’s not normal in artistic communities where anxieties and egos can get in the way.”

These filmmakers mark a second Texas indie film wave. The first will also be represented this year at Sundance with Richard Linklater premiering Before Midnight and Robert Rodriguez screening his 1993 debut El Mariachi. Austin’s latest “it” film director Jeff Nichols’ Mud starring Matthew McConaughey also is slated, along with works by newish Austin transplants Andrew Bujalski (Computer Chess) and David Gordon Green (Prince Avalanche with Paul Rudd).

           

JFK assassination pic 'Parkland' adds cast

Add Zach Efron and University of Texas grad Marcia Gay Harden to the cast of Tom Hanks-produced Parkland, which tells of the goings on at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. They join Billy Bob Thornton and Paul Giamatti in the film, which is set to shoot in mid-January in Austin.

I'll have a mention of the film--including why they choose to shoot in Austin instead of Dallas--in Thursday's The Austin Chronicle. My brief will also tell you about a "major Hollywood film" that will be shooting in Austin soon, too. Think things that move... Look for the link here shortly.

JFK assassination tale 'Parkland' coming to Austin

Hmm...so why is a Dallas-set film about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy filming in Austin? Beats me, but that's the plan for Parkland, which is set to shoot (no pun intended--seriously) in the Capital city in January and February of 2013.

The cast includes Billy Bob Thornton, Paul Giamatti and Jacki Weaver. Tom Hanks is producing.The name comes from Parkland Memorial Hospital where JFK died after being shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

An extras--and speaking role--casting call is set for Sunday, Dec. 16 from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Clarion Inn & Suites, 2200 S I-35. The want Secret Service agents, lookalikes for JFK, Lyndon Johnson, John Connally, the beautiful Nellie Connally, Dallas police, reporters and the general public. You can also sign up for nonspeaking roles online here.

Goodbye, J.R. Ewing

With word of the death of Larry Hagman--in Dallas with Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy reportedbly at his beside--here's a short piece I wrote for The Dallas Morning News in 2009 about Hagman's induction into the Texas Film Hall of Fame. Oh, and I took this horrible photo, too.

 

Hagman remembers ‘Dallas’ days

BY JOE O’CONNELL

Special to the Dallas Morning News

       AUSTIN--In the winter of 1978, Larry Hagman drove the cast of the new television show “Dallas” around the city of Dallas in a converted bread truck showing them dive bars and much fancier restaurants. He was the only native Texan among them, and felt it his duty, his television wife Linda Gray said Thursday as Hagman was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame.

       “He’s’ the consummate actor,” she said of television’s J.R. Ewing. “He’s funny. He’s absolutely adorable. He’s the man you love to hate, and he’s my best friend.”

       He also apparently makes a great pitch man for efforts to expand Texas’ incentive program aimed at attracting more movies to film in Texas. As Hagman, told it, he parading around the Texas Capitol this week handing out $10,000 bills (with his own photo on them).

       “You have all these fans here and you’re going to get your money back a hundred time over,” Hagman said as he echoed the night’s clarion call. “You can’t miss.”

       Hagman, looking gaunt from a 1995 liver transplant, said younger fans today are more likely to remember him from “I Dream of Jeannie” than “Dallas,” but the latter surely left the larger cultural mark.

       Also inducted into the hall of fame were Powers Boothe, an MFA grad of SMU and Snyder native; “Twilight” director Catherine Hardwicke, a McAllen native; and Billy Bob Thornton, a native of Arkansas? No worries; his roles as Davy Crockett in “The Alamo” and as a high school football coach in the big-screen “Friday Night Lights” earned him the Tom Mix Honorary Texan Award, so named for the western star who actually hailed from Pennsylvania.

        They walked a roped-off red carpet in a tent on the tarmac of Austin’s former airport turned by the Austin Film Society into a film studio, while patrons who paid up to $500 to bask in the glow held up digital cameras trying to get a shot through the phalanx of television cameras. A bartender aptly named Estrella (star in Spanish) served up endless libations.

       The lesser-known ducked past the cameras with little notice. Among those was Don Stokes, the Dallas film pro and president of the Texas Motion Picture Alliance, a film lobby group aiming to convince the Legislature to increase spending for its financial incentives program. The  legislation passed unanimously out of House committee this week.

       “There are a couple of television series pilots (at least one eyeing Dallas) that, if they bill passes in time, we have a significant shot at getting here,” Stokes said.

       Event emcee Thomas Haden Church termed the legislation a “call to arms,” noting that a West Texas-set film he is a part of is about to shoot in Australia. “I’m a Texan and I’d really like to see the Texas film industry flourish,” he said.

       Boothe spoke of growing up on a cotton farm in Snyder and, in a fit of teenage rebellion, telling his father, “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my life, but it’s sure not going to be this. So I chose the movie business.”

       The hall of fame ceremonies unofficially open the South By Southwest Film Festival, which begins today and runs through March 21 in Austin.

TNT's 'Dallas' gets second season

TNT announced today that it will give Dallas a second, 15-episode season to air in 2013. It's good news for the city of Dallas where the show's first season was shot. The original Dallas from way back when was mostly shot in Los Angeles, so it's a major Texas win for a Texas icon. Janis Burklund of the Dallas Film Commission confirms on Facebook that it will continue to lens in the Metroplex.

What's most interesting in TV Guide's report is that Dallas is the most viewed new series this summer on basic cable. I credit it all to the return of J.R. Ewing and the rest of the original cast. Larry Hagman steals every scene they give him.

'GCB' goes to TV heaven

ABC has officially cancelled GCB, the Dallas-set show starring Kristen Chenoweth, based on the book Good Christian Bitches and at one point known as Good Christian Belles. Controversy over the title and subject of religious hypocrasy wasn't the killer; it was bad ratings. The pilot shot in Dallas, but the series was made in Los Angeles.

David Lowery poised for film big time

As reported by Deadline, Texas indie auteur David Lowery is on the verge of jumping into a whole new level of filmmaking. He will direct his own script of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which is sort of a modern Bonnie And Clyde. Rooney Mara, Ben Foster and Casey Affleck are attached to the cast. A film shoot is set for this summer in Canada.

Lowery and producing partner James Johnston been toiling as the Dallas/Fort Worth indie filmmaking names in recent years, most notably with St. Nick, which premiered at Sundance and then won the grand jury prize at the 2011 South By Southwest Film Festival.

And, of course, credit must be given to Lowery's magnificent mustache, which now must never be removed. Congrats, David and James!

'Carried Away' and blurbed

That Dallas Morning News blurb you see on the cover of the DVD of Tom Huckabee's film Carried Away is from a column written by yours truly back in 2010.

The last time I was blurbed was long ago for Tim McCanlies' Dancer, Texas.

Here's wishing great success to Huckabee and the film. It's set to come out on DVD, video on demand and television through Vanguard Cinema in June.

Meat Loaf moves to Austin

That's what he said last night at the Texas Film Hall of Fame awards show.

Here's Angie Dickinson, who accepted an award for the film Rio Bravo.

See more photos from the event here.

Here's my report from the evening for The Dallas Morning News:


Dallas native Meat Loaf is moving back to Texas


By JOE O’CONNELL

AUSTIN — The Dallas native behind “Bat out of Hell” is moving to Bat City.

Legendary rocker and actor Meat Loaf was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame on Thursday, but perhaps the bigger news is his purchase of a home in Austin, a city famous for its large downtown bat population.

“Who better to live in Bat City than Meat Loaf?” he told a crowd in the Austin City Limits studios, referring to his 1977 album that has sold 43 million copies.

Just as big a lure is Austin-based filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. Meat Loaf said he met Rodriguez 11 years ago and the director talked of putting him in a film. It has yet to happen.

“I will be in a Robert Rodriguez movie come hell or high water,” Meat Loaf joked.

He was serious when recounting discovering theater as an alternative to the too-quiet confines of study hall at Thomas Jefferson High. That led to a lead role senior year.

His big break came in Los Angeles when he applied for a job parking cars at the Aquarius Theater the same day as auditions for the musical Hair and talked his way into a part. He went on to roles in films including The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Austin-shot Roadie and Fight Club.

“Acting is about truth,” he said. “It’s what we all attempt every time we walk onto the movie set.”

The man born Marvin Lee Aday explained Meat Loaf isn’t so much a stage name as a moniker given to him as an infant.

Joining Meat Loaf in the Texas Film Hall of Fame’s 12th class were actor Barry Corbin (Urban Cowboy, No Country for Old Men) and director Douglas McGrath (Emma, Infamous ).

The Austin Film Society stages the event yearly in advance of Friday’s SXSW Film festival opening, and uses proceeds to aid independent filmmakers.

Corbin is also in the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, but, while he can ride a horse, he said he’s only likely to do it for an acting job these days.

“I’m a fake; I’m not a cowboy,” the Lamesa native said, and urged “Let’s keep up the good work and bring more films to Texas.”

Actor Danny Trejo, a regular in Rodriguez’s films including Machete, was named an honorary Texan, while Angie Dickinson accepted the Star of Texas Award on behalf of the film Rio Bravo.

The classic western was Dickinson’s big break. “What made it great was two words: John Wayne,” she said of her much more experienced co-star. “I stretched and got on my toes and got all I could while I was there.”

My top 10 stories of 2011

I did some interesting nonfiction writing in 2011, but also found the opportunities for a free-lancer to be teasingly ephemeral like a batch of bright fake flowers appearing from a magician’s sleeve then as quickly evaporating. Here are my highlights from the year:

10. I’ve been penning a The Dallas Morning News column about the film industry for the past six years and previously wrote similar columns for the Austin American-Statesman and The Austin Chronicle dating back to 2000. It was a long run, but I decided to stop with my December column. I need to focus my energies elsewhere, in particular on my fiction writing.

9. Writing about writing was a hallmark of the year. My long interview with Tom Grimes appeared in The Writer's Chronicle, the magazine of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), and I got to talk to some writers I admire a lot, including A.G. Mojtabai.

8. The Austin Chronicle was kind enough to ask me to do some pretty extensive coverage during this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival. And, yes, I got to meet both Pee Wee Herman and Elmo!

7. I've been reporting on the Texas Film Hall of Fame festivities for The Dallas Morning News for years, but I know you'd really rather see the photos.

6. Austrian filmmaker Barbara Eder told me about how her dangerous experience as a foreign exchange student led to the film Inside America.

5. I've tended to do more book interviews than reviews, but I somehow managed to transform myself into the Austin American-Statesman's go-to reviewer of Texas fiction. At least until the bottom dropped out and the paper pretty much stopped generating its own reviews and replaced them with wire service reviews. And then the editor changed (see my note above). Ouch! My favorite book to review? Mat Johnson's Pym.

4. Actor Paul Giamatti is a cool guy, but interviewing Win Win director Tom McCarthy along with Giamatti was a double treat.

3. My wife Tiffany is a big fan of the TV show The Waltons, so I planned a surprise trip to Schuyler, Virginia, the home of the very autobiographical story’s author, Earl Hamner. The Dallas Morning News asked me to write this piece about the small town intrigue surrounding the show's local roots and also ran a lot of my photos.

2. I’ve been blogging at The Austin Chronicle about the Texas Longhorns football team for a few years now. I shared the chore this year and tried to advise my counterpart to write as if no one is reading, to play with the form, to never ever make it boring. My favorite sports piece this year actually had a point to make about coaches training their defensive players to lead with their helmets.

1. The writing I’m most proud of from this past year wasn’t officially published anywhere, and it wasn’t necessarily my best work. It was instead personal and it had to do with loss. Jacob Payne lived much of his life in a wheelchair and had many lessons to offer all of us about living fully. I have now written obituaries for both of my parents and my brother Casey, who died in an accident on Halloween. I’m still processing it all, Last night I dreamed I was dreaming about my mother and Casey. No doubt Casey enjoyed the trick of visiting me in that complicated fashion. Casey’s friend, the singer/songwriter Bob Livingston, said Casey’s death is a reminder to all of us to hold tight to this “sweet, sweet life.” I couldn’t say it better.

SHOT IN TEXAS: TV replaces films as local moneymaker

After a 12-year run--the last six in The Dallas Morning News, but previously for both The Austin Chronicle and Austin American-Statesman--this is my final Texas film industry column. I'll still be blogging, but I want to spend more time concentrating on fiction writing and other projects.--Joe


BY JOE O’CONNELL
Special to The Dallas Morning News
Filmnewsbyjoe@yahoo.com
Joeoconnell.com
@joemoconnell

Janis Burklund was in full action mode last week. Khloe Kardashian had, without notice, posted online that she was organizing a toy drive for the Children’s Hospital of Dallas, and Burklund’s Dallas Film Commission office was suddenly besieged with phone calls.

It’s a clear sign of the present and likely future of the Dallas film scene: television rules and reality TV buzzes. Feature films? Not so much.

Lamar Odom’s trade from the Los Angeles Lakers to the Dallas Mavericks brought his Kardashian wife and reality show Khloe & Lamar to town. More than 2,000 people crowded Dallas City Hall to donate toys after her web shout-out.

Meanwhile TNT’s Dallas is bringing some old-school attention to the city with its 10-episode shoot—production is on hiatus until 2012 with three episodes to go.

Burklund’s three-person office can’t afford a proper media tracking service these days, but it only takes a quick web search to see interest in the show that doesn’t air until June.

“It’s been ongoing for about a year with constant news and publicity about the show,” she said. “There’s lot of interest overseas.”

The Dallas Film Commission tracks its fiscal year from September to September, and Burklund is just now getting solid numbers for the last year and slightly more of both plusses and minuses: network television series shoots came and as quickly went with the quick cancellations/non-renewals of Lone Star, The Good Guys and Chase.

The controversial Dallas-set show originally known as Good Christian Bitches, later as Good Christian Belles and most commonly as GCB produced a pilot in North Texas but then retreated to Los Angeles for the series shoot.

“When all three shows didn’t stick, we had to wait for new ones to create again,” Burklund said. “We had to go through another cycle, and luckily Dallas was already in the cycle.”

The commission tracked 292 projects in its last fiscal year, including $73.6 million in direct spends on television and film, plus another $26.3 million in videogame projects. The way that money reverberates around the economy leads to an estimated almost $230 million economic impact.

“It was a good year,” Burklund said. “It was well above the last six or seven years.”

But feature films continue to be a no-show both in North Texas and the state as a whole. Texas film incentives haven’t slowed the flow of projects to states like New Mexico and Louisiana that offer a lot more.

“Our incentives program works best for television,” Burklund said. “Television understands in a different way about having the good crew base, good talent base, diverse locations and easy access through DFW (International Airport). They may be here for years, so they have to think, ‘If all incentives went away today, where would we want to be?’ ”

Feature filmmaking in Texas has thus turned into a mix of low-budget independents and higher-profile projects by primarily Austin-based Texas auteurs like Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater and to a lesser extent Mike Judge and Tim McCanlies.

Perhaps add to that list reclusive Austin resident Terrence Malick, who is quickly losing his rep for waiting a decade or more between projects. He shot likely Oscar nominee The Tree of Life largely in Smithville (and partly in Dallas) in 2008 and took three years to release it, but actually shot another as-yet-untitled film starring Ben Affleck in Oklahoma in 2010.

Now Malick has publicly announced two more upcoming projects: Lawless and Knight of Cups. In September he shot scenes with Christian Bale during the Austin City Limits Music Festival, and followed that in November filming Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara at Austin’s Fun Fun Fun Fest. The shots have been reported to be for Lawless, but Malick never releases plot details or future filming plans if he can help it.

Walking into the night

I took this photo last night as we were leaving a Dallas nightclub in the wee small hours.

My favorite recent street photo by far.