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.

E.T.'s Henry Thomas in Texas Film Hall of Fame

                                                                                    Photo by Joe O'Connell

 My report from the Texas Film Hall of Fame for the San Antonio Express-News:

AUSTIN — If Henry Thomas hadn't become an actor, he'd likely have spent his adult life saving and rehabilitating horses. Instead he was inducted Thursday into the Texas Film Hall of Fame.
Save for a lucky break in an open audition for the 1981 film “Raggedy Man” (directed by Jack Fisk and starring Fisk's wife, Sissy Spacek), Thomas, who called himself a “pretty good horseman,” might have missed out on a career spanning more than 30 years — including memorable roles in films such as “All the Pretty Horses” and “A River Runs Through It.”

Read more 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.

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.

Texas Film Hall of Fame awards

Renee Zellweger

Rip Torn

Connie Britton

Kyle Chandler


Britt Daniel of Spoon

Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler of Friday Night Lights

Ted Nugent plays "The Star-Spangled Banner"

Tattoos on Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson's head

Beth Broderick in the crowd

Emcee Wyatt Cenac

Richard Linklater

John Hawkes of Winter's Bone

Robert Rodriguez

Liz Smith

Actor Shiloh Fernandez and director Catherine Hardwicke


Gary Dourdan of CSI

Britt Daniel

Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson

Ted Nugent and John Pierson

Joey Lauren Adams

Ted Nugent, Shemane Nugent and their son

Birds?

Rip Torn, Renee Zellweger, 'Friday Night Light' in Texas Film Hall of Fame

The Texas Film Hall of Fame is a semi-swanky celeb-gazing fest put on by the Austin Film Society that opens the South By Southwest Film Festival every year. The names of honorees are released in drips and drabs in advance of the March 10 event at Austin Studios.

Our first names for 2011 are Rip Torn, Renee Zellweger and the TV show Friday Night Lights (not to be confused with the movie and the book). Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton are accepting and Jesse Plemons, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson and Brad Leland are in attendance for Lights as it celebrates its swan song.

Along with them, presenters will include usual suspects Catherine Hardwicke, Luke Wilson, Richard Linklater and Thomas Haden Church.

The host is seemingly non-Texan Wyatt Cenac of The Daily Show fame. But wait! He grew up in Dallas and attended Jesuit College Preparatory School.

More names will be released soon, I'm sure. My next guess is Owen Wilson. Wanna take odds?

Texas Film Hall of Fame

The biggest moment of the 2010 Texas Film Hall of Fame was when Bruce McGill strummed the William Tell Overture on his neck just as he’d done in 1978’s Animal House. Tim Mathison held up a microphone so we all could hear. The University of Texas alumnus McGill followed it by flashing a hook ‘em Horns sign.

Quentin Tarantino--rumor was he didn't want to talk about his Oscar losses--zoomed through and barely stopped for one photo. I didn't get it.

Tim "Otter" Matheson and Bruce "D-Day" McGill.


Bruce McGill with Richard Linklater lurking behind him.


Catherine O'Hara accepted an award for Lockhart-shot Waiting for Guffman


Michael Nesmith of The Monkees!


Robert Rodriguez later gave a replica of his signature hat to Tarantino.


Lyle Lovett.


Lukas Haas.

Some SXSW tales...

I've been running around covering the South By Southwest Film Festival the last few days, writing for three different markets. Here is a story on the Texas Film Hall of Fame for the San Antonio Express-News, and something also about Robert Rodriguez's talk today.

I'm also blogging the fest at the Austin Chronicle.

Saw Tim McCanlies' The 2 Bobs tonight. What a departure for him!

Texas Film Hall of Fame

I got out my crappy camera for some star gazing last night. You can read my article about it in the Dallas Morning News here.


I don't think this photo quite conveys how strange Brendan Fraser's hair is (it looked like he'd just had a weave removed). No, he's not a Texan, but he introduced one. Who is that Beastie walking past him?


Billy Bob is now an official Texan. Here he is with Dennis Quaid.


Connie Britton won the hotness award of the night. She is much younger looking in person than on Friday Night Lights (both the movie and the TV show).


Powers Boothe is graduate of the school that shall forever be known as Southwest Texas State.


Larry Hagman was joined by both his real-life wife of 55 years and his Dallas TV wife Linda Gray.


Friday Night Lights stars Dana Wheeler-Nicholson (you know from Fletch) and Brad Leland.


Director Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Thirteen).


Thomas Haden Church did a hell of a job as emcee. I interviewed him by phone once and found him to be very down to earth.


Kyle Chandler, the coach on Friday Night Lights, with his very attractive wife. Secret fact about him? The coach smokes cigarettes.


Keith Carradine, a presenter and non-Texan, is still easy.