As the Texas A&M Aggie football team has the “12th Man” support of its student body, films shot in the Lone Star State have a guaranteed A-list supporting cast in Texas landscapes, locales and personalities.
Founded in Austin in 2007 and now with multiple locations in Austin, San Antonio and Houston, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (www.drafthouse.com) is among the state’s coolest group and event venues. Every year, the company’s Rolling Roadshow tour crisscrosses the U.S. or travels internationally, screening famous movies in famous places. For 2011, the focus was on Texas.
Starting with director John Ford’s 1956 classic The Searchers in Parker City and fittingly ending with Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 gem The Last Picture Show in Archer City, the month-long, 10-city tour included epics such as Giant and cult classic Blood Simple. Inspired by this all-star lineup, here is a rewind of some of the tour’s stops, flashing our own spotlight on group options in famous Texas film locales.
HUD (1963), CLAUDE
Paul Newman’s Hud Bannon is “the man with the barbed wire soul” in this Oscar-winning cowboy movie based on a novel by legendary Texas writer Larry McMurtry. Bad to the bone, Bannon boozes, brawls and joyrides in his Cadillac all over town. The Armstrong County Museum Art Gallery and Gem Theatre in Claude was a location in the film. Amarillo, some 20 miles away, is home to the iconic Cadillac Graveyard along with group-favorite The Big Texan (our cover shot for Meetings Focus Texas 2010).
LOGAN’S RUN (1976), DFW METROPLEX and HOUSTON
Life ends when you hit 30 in this sci-fi cult classic starring Michael York and featuring Corpus Christi-born Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Set in 2274, the movie was filmed in multiple Metroplex locations, including Arlington, Irving and Dallas, with some interiors shot at the Hyatt Regency in Houston. The Fort Worth Water Gardens, an oasis next to the Fort Worth Convention Center, was one of the principal shooting locations, along with mega-expo and trade show venue the Dallas Market Center. A remake is reportedly in the works for 2012.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974), KINGSLAND
Although remade several times since, nothing can top the lasting shock value of Austin-born Tobe Hooper’s genre-defining pop culture icon. While not for all tastes, more adventurous groups can gather and dine at Junction House, the Victorian-era house of horrors featured in the film that was relocated some 80 miles away to the grounds of the historic Antlers Hotel & Railyard in Kingsland, west of Austin and close to Marble Falls.
GIANT (1956), MARFA
Half a century before Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country For Old Men (2007) revealed the roaming vastness of the Far West Texas landscape, this sweeping epic of Texas cattle-ranching and oil made Marfa a star alongside Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, Rock Hudson and Dennis Hopper. Home to cast and crew throughout the film’s arduous production, the historic 40-room Paisano Hotel, opened in 1939 as a cattleman’s ranch, has private meeting rooms and banquet space for 100.
TRUE GRIT (2010), AUSTIN AND HILL COUNTRY
After making their directorial debut in 1984 with the Austin-based Blood Simple, the Coen brothers’ returned to the Austin area for this update of the 1969 classic, with Jeff Bridges in the “Rooster Cogburn” role immortalized by John Wayne. Scenes were shot in nearby historic Granger to the west and Blanco to the north, which sits within a 50-mile radius of leading Texas Hill Country destinations, including Fredericksburg, Johnson City and retail mecca San Marcos, one of the state’s top visitor destinations.
BONNIE & CLYDE (1967), NORTH TEXAS
This infamous tale of the Depression-era criminal duo ushered in the New Hollywood era of the 1970s, where actors and directors took over control from studios and producers. Alongside Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker, Warren Beatty’s powerful performance as Clyde Barrow was nothing compared to his forcefulness behind the scenes. The film was shot in multiple locations in the rolling hills north of Dallas, including Pilot Point, a “Texas Main Street City” listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Now an art gallery, the former Farmers and Merchants Bank building was featured in one of the film’s robbery scenes.
TENDER MERCIES (1983), WAXAHACHIE
Robert Duvall won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a faded country music star in this film shot in “Gingerbread City” Waxahachie and nearby Palmer, about 30 miles south of Dallas. Boasting nearly 300 structures and sites on the National Register of Historic Places, Waxahachie (also appearing in Bonnie & Clyde) is home to one-fifth of all historic sites in Texas. The centerpiece Ellis County Courthouse, featured in the film, is where Duvall practiced his guitar strumming.
THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971), ARCHER CITY
Based on a semi-autobiographical novel from Archer City native Larry McMurtry, this Oscar-winning study of restless youth in 1950s Texas—shot in black and white and also filmed in nearby Wichita Falls—launched the careers of Cybil Shepard, Jeff Bridges, Randy Quaid and Cloris Leachman. Prominent in the film, the event-capable Royal Theater is a music and entertainment draw, while the Lonesome Dove Inn and McMurtry’s “Booked Up” rare bookstore are other local attractions.
