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Film & TV

Incisive criticism, features, and news related to Texans on the screen—and behind the camera
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Film & TV|
November 1, 2004

They Came. They Sawed.

And they most definitely conquered. The inside story of how a ragtag bunch of hippies made the wildest Texas movie ever (and spilled no more fake blood than was absolutely necessary).

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Film & TV|
September 30, 2004

Mike Judge

“You can’t make all of TV and movies kid-safe. If you do, we’re all going to be watching the Care Bears. I think there should be things that are just for adults.”

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Film & TV|
December 1, 2003

Alamo Heights

So much is at stake that we almost—almost—believe the release date of Disney's epic-to-be was delayed from Christmas Day to April for the reasons the studio claims. But given the way historical movies usually turn out, can you blame us for smirking?

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Film & TV|
August 31, 2003

Love Thy Self-Help

America's notoriously needy readers certainly do—and for the robust health of this publishing genre, they have Dallas in general and Phil McGraw's agent in particular to thank.

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Film & TV|
May 31, 2003

The Story of O

Never mind that he got kicked out of St. Mark’s and dropped out of UT, or that his line readings seem a little . . . off. Somehow, Owen Wilson is the kind of guy who gets movies made. And he gets $10 million a pop, dude.

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Texas History|
February 1, 2001

The Whole Shootin’ Match

The most famous bank-robbing lovers of all time weren't nearly as glamorous as Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Although the fragile, pretty Bonnie Parker had her good points, Clyde Barrow was a scrawny, two-timing psychopath. They were straight out of a country and western ballad. And when they died in

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Media|
May 31, 1999

Lynch Mob

Like the coffee and pie in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, the Arlington-based fanzine Wrapped in Plastic is damn fine.

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Film & TV|
February 1, 1999

Picture Perfect

Why Peter Bogdanovich filmed in black and white, who discovered Cybill Shepherd, which onetime soap opera diva read for the role of Jacy, and other secrets of the making of ‘The Last Picture Show.’ Plus: A few words from the late Ben Johnson.

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Film & TV|
June 30, 1998

Ernest Goes to Texas

Borgnine: The word itself is barrel-chested, glaring, grotesque. And has a name ever been so suggestive of a face? Known for cinematic classics like From Here to Eternity and Marty (for which he won an Academy award in 1955), Ernest Borgnine last worked in Texas in the mid-fifties, when he

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Film & TV|
May 31, 1998

Dove Shoot

Ten years after the filming of the miniseries Lonesome Dove, screenwriter Bill Wittliff shares his photographic memories of life on the set.

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Film & TV|
April 30, 1998

Outtakes

AIR FORCE WON During the filming of Paramount Pictures’ I Wanted Wings (1941) at San Antonio’s Kelly Field, military aircraft soar overhead during a ground shot. The director angrily orders a general to “get those planes out of the air!”—and is promptly fired.HIGH JINKS Filmed in (and above) four small

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Film & TV|
April 30, 1998

Filminism

I thought it would be hard to make movies in this macho state, but we’ve come a long way, baby.

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Music|
April 1, 1998

Full Nelson

Ain’t it funny how time slips away? Before you know it, you’ve made two hundred albums, thirty movies, and had one amazing career. What follows is the Compleat Willie: a discography—including every U.S. album release as well as his early 45 rpm singles (before he signed with RCA in

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Film & TV|
April 1, 1998

Greg Germann

My dad teaches theater at Southern University in Baton Rouge now, but we lived in Austin for a while when he worked on his master’s degree at the University of Texas. He directed plays on campus and also wrote children’s plays that were performed there and in Houston. When I

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Joan Crawford in 'Montana Moon.'
Film & TV|
March 1, 1998

Joan Crawford

All her life, Joan Crawford raised other people’s eyebrows as often as she reapplied her own. From the time she arrived in Hollywood, the temperamental Texan provoked hostility and gossip, and her wide-eyed flapper persona soon hardened into that of a sleek, steely sophisticate. But the arrogance accompanied a massive talent;

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Film & TV|
March 1, 1998

Jensen Ackles

As a kid, Jensen Ackles used to poke fun at the “mushy” daytime dramas his mother regularly watched, but not anymore. Since last June, the Richardson native has starred on the hit NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives as Eric Brady, a mature-for-his-age teen who keeps his emotions bottled

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Film & TV|
March 1, 1998

Robert Benton

We moved to Waxahachie in the early forties, when I was about ten years old. I was a seriously dyslexic child, and no one quite knew what dyslexia was in those days. People just thought I wasn’t too swift. And my way out of it was drawing. It was something

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Film & TV|
January 1, 1998

Pulpit Fiction

HE MAY LOVE the smell of napalm in the morning, but Robert Duvall also has a certain affection for Texas. Over the years, some of his best-known films have been made here, including Tender Mercies (1983) and Lonesome Dove (1989). Now the 67-year-old has returned to the state again for

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Film & TV|
December 1, 1997

Austin, Storied

Just as Austin is the Dallas of the nineties—a booming cultural icon bordering on cliché—Austin Stories may be the Dallas of the nineties. The MTV sitcom, which debuted this fall, is weekly television’s first credible portrayal of Texas and Texans since J.R. got shot. (Walker, Texas Ranger? Kung fu in

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Film & TV|
December 1, 1997

Ara Celi

“When I was little,” Ara Celi says, “I used to watch TV and ask, ‘How do you get on there?’” At 19 the El Paso native set out for Hollywood to answer that question; once there, she quickly learned the three most important words in show business: audition, audition, audition.

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Film & TV|
November 1, 1997

Patricia Richardson

I thought that moving to Texas would be the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it saved my life. It happened during my junior year in high school, which was really traumatic. All my life I had never been at the same school for more than two years,

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Film & TV|
September 30, 1997

Reneé O’Connor

Their mission is to save the world, not conquer it, but the stars of Xena: Warrior Princess are winning television-ratings battles from San Angelo to Slovakia. The two-year-old syndicated show airs in more than eighty countries, making Lucy Lawless, who plays Xena, the first leather-clad TV lead since the Fonz—and

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Film & TV|
August 31, 1997

No Show

Cash-poor PBS stations can’t seem to come up with innovative new ideas, so they ought to resurrect an innovative old one: Newsroom, the best local public- affairs program in Texas history.

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Film & TV|
August 31, 1997

Elka

Like sadistic teenagers who introduce fire ants into an otherwise docile ant farm, the producers of MTV’s voyeuristic soap opera The Real World make casting decisions based not on avoiding conflict but on encouraging it. This season’s stereotypes are a jock, a poet, a comely lesbian, a city girl, a

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Film & TV|
August 31, 1997

Barbara Barrie

I enrolled at the University of Texas in 1950 during a post-war period that produced many talented individuals. Harvey Schmidt, Tom Jones, Liz Smith, Robert Benton, Pat Hingle, Word Baker, Kathryn Grant (later Mrs. Bing Crosby), and I all graduated with degrees in drama. We did lots of dance concerts

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Film & TV|
July 31, 1997

Heeeeeere’s Gary!

After years of laboring in virtual anonymity as Mr. Amy Grant, Texan Gary Chapman has his own talk show on The Nashville Network and is known by a vastly more flattering moniker: the David Letterman of country.

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