MY TOP 5: Texas Movies

My home state has been through a lot over the last 200 years.

This Saturday, March 2nd, is Texas Independence Day. That’s the day that we won our independence from Mexico and became our own sovereign nation, The Republic Of Texas, in 1836.

(This is why people think that we’re allowed to secede. In fact, it was only recently that I found out that this was wrong. We aren’t, though. Sorry, secessionists).

Less than ten years later, US President John Tyler signed the bill to annex the small country to become a huge state.

Since then, there have been a lot of movies made in and about Texas. Some great, some terrible, but all showing a different facet of an interesting state.

Here are my five favorites. (Notice that none of them are called The Alamo.)

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971)
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Written by Peter Bogdanovich/Larry McMurtry
Based on a book by Larry McMurtry

What do you do when you’re young and your hometown is dying in the early 50s? Well, you see a lot of movies, play football and have sex. That’s what the boys in Anarene, Texas do. All the time. They’re also trying to figure out their futures. Should they leave, like everyone else seems to be doing? Or do they stick around and run the old theatre that hardly anyone goes to anymore?

At this point, all of that is pretty much beside the point. The Last Picture Show has become a legend of 1970s filmmaking. The story is amazing, the acting is its equal and the attention to period detail is perfect, down to the beautiful black and white cinematography that makes you feel like you’re just as stuck in that dying West Texas town as these kids are.

Speaking of those kids, the cast is a who’s who of future stars: Randy Quaid, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Eileen Brennan and, of course, the Bottoms brothers, Timothy and Sam…who no one remembers now, but they were pretty big in the 70s. The older generation is awesome, too: Ellen Burstyn, Cloris Leachman, Ben Johnson and Clu Gulager. Yes, the guy from Return Of The Living Dead.

Peter Bogdanovich directed bigger movies (What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon), but he would really never be better. And few movies would ever show us how desolate it is to grow up in small town West Texas.

GIANT (1956)
Directed by George Stevens
Written by Fred Guiol/Ivan Moffat
Based on a book by Edna Ferber

Mostly famous because it was the last film that James Dean was in, Giant also happens to be a damn fine film about being Texan when the oil boom was really happening. Filmed in Marfa (again, in the west side of the state) it truly is “a film as big as Texas.”

When Bick Benedict meets Leslie (Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor at their most beautiful) sparks fly and wedding bells ring. Bick takes Leslie back to his cattle ranch in Texas and starts to raise a family (including Dennis Hopper).

And then there’s Jett Rink (Dean). He’s a cowboy who envies everything that Bick has, including Leslie. But when Jett hits the jackpot with oil, things almost take a turn.

It’s a long film, but worth every minute. It’s a bit soapy, but not so much that it’s overly silly. It’s the least of Dean’s films, but that’s not saying much when you consider who awesome his other two films are.

The little town of Marfa has basically made a cottage industry out of remembering the filming of Giant. Walking into El Paisano Hotel (where most of the cast and crew stayed during filming) is like walking into 1950s Texas…except for the room that has been turned into a shrine to the film. (By the way, Jimmy’s room was TINY!) The house, unfortunately, is gone with the wind (literally), but the memory of the film lives on and on and on.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)
Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Based on a book by Cormac McCarthy

I promise I’ll get out of West Texas, but there’s a beautiful desolation about that part of the state that draws me to it. And no film captures that desolation than No Country For Old Men.

Ostensibly about a loser (Josh Brolin) who just wants to get out of his small town with his wife (Kelly Macdonald). When he finds a bag of money, that’s his ticket. Unfortunately, that bag has a lot of baggage, the worst of which is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a hitman whose job is to get the money back, no matter who gets in his way. Everyone gets in his way.

What the movie is really about, though, is the loneliness of a small desert town (again, that most photogenic town, Marfa) and wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of there to start a new and better life. Texas is a huge state, but the small towns can be suffocating. The end of the movie does nothing to alleviate that feeling. People die. Life goes on. Nothing changes.

If you want more of Marfa, also check out There Will Be Blood, which was being filmed at the same time as No Country. That one almost made it on the list, but I had to get out of West Texas.

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Written by Kim Henkel/Tobe Hooper

The movie that started it all. If you don’t know what this movie is about, then not only have you been living under a rock for the last nearly 40 years, but you obviously didn’t pay attention to the title. Go ahead. Read it again.

If you haven’t seen this movie, be ready. It’s not nearly as gory as everyone remembers it being (most actual violence takes place just off screen), but it’s every bit as intense. Decades of sequels and terrible remakes have done nothing to dilute the power of the original.

And to think, it all started with a former UT student who dreamed of grabbing a chainsaw off of a display and mowing through the Christmas crowd at an Austin Montgomery Ward’s. (Sadly, that store is now a Target.) Tobe Hooper’s a weird guy.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre didn’t have to take place in Texas, but the fact that it does somehow makes it a little bit scarier. The stereotype of remoteness of Texas cities (and it was FAR more true back then) makes the situation just that much more life-threatening for these kids. They’re all alone out there. No one is going to show up to save them. They have to do it themselves.

This is one of the best horror films of all time. Tobe Hooper would never be this good again. (Poltergeist is almost a Tobe Hooper movie, but it’s really more of a Spielberg movie.) And we get to claim it.

Also, in case you didn’t know, no matter what John Larroquette tells you at the beginning of the movie, it’s NOT based on a true story. It is, however, loosely inspired by Ed Gein, who also inspired Psycho and Buffalo Bill from The Silence Of The Lambs.

DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993)
Written and directed by Richard Linklater