Since so many of us will be heading to Austin in but a few days, it makes sense to get in a Texas state of mind. Just last week, I rented the new DVD release Under the Same Moon, about a woman who leaves her son with her mother to work in Los Angeles. When the grandmother dies, the kid goes in search of her, crossing the border in Texas. There's a great commercial for it which includes the copy:
TIME Magazine raves that 'Adrian Alonso could melt Lou Dobbs' heart, if he had one.'
And there’s lots more movies set, in whole or in part, in what was long the nation’s largest state.
This is a long list, but it still only scratches the surface. There’s a lot of stories in Texas:
Like Water for Chocolate - this is a trailer in Spanish. It has a bit of that shower scene when the sister eats some of the passionate quail with rose petals and rides off on horseback, naked, with the revolutionary. The Laura Esquivel novel it’s based on comes complete with recipes. Most of this story takes place in Mexico, but right along the Rio Grande, and it has a few parts in Texas, too:
Also a larger-than-life tale is Tim Burton's Big Fish, made shortly after his own father's death.
Texas without oil? Couldn’t be! Giant is very much a story of its decade, the 1950s. It stars James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, but also an early appearance by Dennis Hopper.
Also from the 50s, Rio Bravo (dir. Howard Hawks) is classic John Wayne fare. Also with Ricky Nelson, Dean Martin and Angie Dickinson. Rio Bravo is a common Mexican name for what we call the Rio Grande. Less well known is the first name given the rio by the Spanish - Rio de las Palmas after the semi-tropical jungle of sabal palms that once filled its flood plains. The last of that ecosystem (an Audubon sanctuary near Brownsville) is going to be walled off from visitors by the Border Wall. Thumbs down on that!
Ya can’t very well do a review of Texas stories without remembering The Alamo!! And it might be the only John Wayne role where his character (Davy Crockett) dies.
Those Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns are deliberately non-specific as to their location, but generally it’s somewhere near the border. Regardless, it’s not right to list Texas westerns without mentioning Clint Eastwood, so we’ll add The Outlaw Josey Wales to our list of Texas movies.
Jake Gyllinhaal’s character in Brokeback Mountain makes his troubled married home life in Texas.
There aren’t many spaces wider or more open than West Texas, setting for a couple of stark, brutal Peckenpah-esque tales I’ve written about before: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Tommy Lee Jones’s directorial debut, and the recent Coen brothers hit, No Country for Old Men
And, of course, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is set in Texas. As was 1994's The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, an important break early in the acting career of Texan Renee Zellweger.
Wim Wenders likes isolated small towns, and that’s where his Paris, Texas is set. Peter Bogdanivich’s The Last Picture Show is small town Texas, too. As is the rather gruesomely campy madefor-TV story The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom, starring Holly Hunter.
Houston we have a problem. Much of Apollo 13 is set in space, but always connected to what happens on the ground at NASA’s Mission Control. I’m usually annoyed by tear-jerkers, and Terms of Endearment is no exception. It too features an astronaut, albeit in a very different context. Space Cowboys is a different kind of astronaut movie, combining NASA and a goodly measure of Cowboy iconography in the persons of stars Clint Eastwood, Texan Tommy Lee Jones, and James Garner.
And you can’t hardly talk about Lone Star movies if you leave out John Sayles’s Lone Star. It’s one of my favorites of his movies. And, of course The Lone Ranger is a Texas Ranger.
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, starring Paul Newman in the title role, is based on a true story set in the Trans Pecos country. When I first moved to NM, I did a series of pilgrimages up and down the entire Rio Grande (and the Pecos), including a stop in Langtry, Texas, home of the famous "hanging judge".
Tin Cup is another mostly forgettable movie where Kevin Costner plays an over-the-hill athlete, this time a golfer in West Texas, where grass (as well as water) is a scarce commodity. But ya gotta love an opening song with a chorus that rhymes A little bit is better than nada with the whole enchilada
.
Selena was a daughter of Texas, pure and simple. There’s a lot of other documentaries about Texas musicians, too. (Go for it in the comments...)
Candace Bergen’s late husband, French director Louis Malle, had quite a diverse oeuvre. Perhaps one of the lesser known of those is Alamo Bay, about racial tensions around Vietnamese fishermen who relocate to the Gulf Coast of Texas in the aftermath of that ill-conceived military misadventure.
Another border-themed entry is called (surprise!) The Border, starring Jack Nicholson as an El Paso customs agent surrounded by corruption on all sides. He finally decides to do the right thing: help a young woman whose baby is stolen from her in the midst of an illegal border crossing. I’m including it mainly because I really like the Ry Cooder/Freddy Fender song that it opens with:
For the conspiracy-minded, Oliver Stone couldn’t very well tell his story of JFK leaving out Dallas, home of the famous grassy knoll and book depository.
Another recent entry, also based on a true story, is Charlie Wilson’s War - well worth seeing, as it plays into today’s headlines. And Charlie Wilson, wouldn’t you know it, was a larger than life Texas Congressman.
And, lest we be left thinking that Texas is all harsh, brutal rough-and-tumble, let’s close with Tender Mercies, by Horton Foote (who also wrote the screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird), a charming small movie about redemption and second chances. And a very small, very charming coming-of-age story was filmed in the tiny, remote west Texas town of Sanderson, called Dancer, Texas, population 81 79. (I've been there, too.)
So, even with all these movies I’ve listed, so please fill in some of the ones I've left out in the comments.
