f>(> ! ., I I 1 9 9 7 t: i i c 39 GEORGE STEVENS EDNA FERBEfi ELIZABETH TAYLOR-ROCK HUDSON; JAMES DEAN •" MfUVJMtr ll I » • «7 A Few W o r J s A I; o II ( TEXAS M O V I E L A N D S C A P E S Jon S c h w a r t z X Each landscape is formed by the point of view of the spectator; it is a spiritual tnmtm MiChuJ u/o experience, the reflection of a culture." Magnum L a n d s c a p e , / 996 i 9 • Fall I 9•>7 61 ow a century old, movies are the of plazas; The Alamo's San Antonio tingly leads a procession of more than A TEXAS MOVIE LANDSCAPE Nbackward-glancing tinM machines looks like a conventional western 200 cars — police, media, curiosity THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN of our collective and ever-changing land- town."1 Perhaps this was a concession seekers — in hot pursuit. Spielberg's scapes. At best, they give us something to James "Happy" Shahan, owner of the landscape is one of cars and roads: If The Last Picture Show is the quintessen- memorable to dream and think and 22,000-acre Brackctrville ranch where stolen cars, highway patrol cars, cars tial small-town Texas movie, what then (xpjtul upon: in Giant, James Dean The Alamo was filmed, who — when with gun racks, used-car lots, car wreck- would be its urban equivalent? Unfor- pacts off his inheritance, a parched and Wayne's financing dried up — found ing yards, highway road markers, gas tunately, there is none. But had Billy Lee seemingly worthless strip of land that monies to complete what became known stations, police roadblocks, and lots of Brammer's The Gay Place (Austin: Texas ssill soon he wet with oil. At worst, they as Alamo Village. In the long run, this car crashes. Obviously, this was before Monthly Press, 1978) ever been filmed, mix the reel with the real so as to obscure generic Western set turned out to be of "Drive Friendly" signs dotted the things might have been different. and confuse; in JFK, Oliver Stone edits more value than a period Mexican Texas landscape. Set in an unnamed place resembling staged Dallas (grassy-knoll footage with town; Shahan has since brought over Once a genre has been lampooned, Austin, brammer's book is comprised "I 12 seconds of / a p ruder documentary — }0 productions and thousands of tourists can the revisionists be far behind? The three novellas linked together by a com- IB years later, let the viewer beware! to Braekettville. quintessential small-town Texas movie mon landscape presided over by a These Texas landscapes aren't always Filmed in Marfa, George Stevens's is Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Lyndon Johnsonesque governor named svhar they seem to be. lint sometimes Giant 11956) is an epic for its 201 - Show (19711, which co-screenwriter Fenstemaker. Upon its 1961 publication. they're a lot more. minute running time alone. Bringing his Larry McMurtry calls "a kind of anti- The Gay Place (its title taken from an While post-World War II movies Virginia bride home to Reata, a sprawl- Giant."* "Anarcnc, Texas, 1951. obscure F. Scott Fitzgerald poeml found set in New York C-ity or London or ing cattle ranch. Rock Hudson and Nothing much has changed." reads the few readers in spue ol considerable faris were satisfied to capture a local I li/.ibeth Taylor ride for miles in a eon film's poster The film ends as it begins, critical acclaim: Brammer was likened to imbiance, Texas-based movies required vcrtible over a roadless desert. At first a with a slow pan of the town's main Fitzgerald, and his novel was hailed by the mythic landscapes to complement their speck on the horizon, a three-story. street. It all looks the same, except mm likes of dore Vulal and David llalberstaiu more-often-than-not mythic narratives. seven-gabled house comes into view. the picture show has played its last movie as being the best ever written about Chronologically, these evolved as histori- Out of place in the desert, this Gothic (appropriately Rett River). Ironically, American politics. cal myth, stones set in the 19th century edifice provides a unique setting for this nothing much has changed — and yet It didn't take long for Hollywood liber th.it pitted man against a hostile land- saga that covers 25 years of changing everything has changed. Small-town als Paul Newman and director Martin Ritt scape; family saga myth, stones set in the traditions and shifting social orders. America has died. to become interested. The husband and 20th century wherein the landscape has In 196.?, Martin Ritt brought Larry And so it is with these landscapes. wife writing team of Irving Ravelch and been harnessed, freeing the generations to McMurtry's Horseman. Pass Hy to the Nothing has changed, and everything has Harriet Frank, Jr. was hired to pen the clash among themselves; and cartoon screen as Hud. Ruthless son Paul New- changed. Frame by frame, Giant is the script. With a talent tor writing colloquial myth, a List gasp lampooning ot our man and principled patriarch Melvyn same movie in 1997 that it was in 1956, dialogue, they had previously adapted two Texas myths. Douglas clash over turning their cattle In 1956, scenes of cattle grazing amid oil Faulkner titles [The I <mg Hot Summer Red Rwer (1948) is Howard Hawks's range into oil leases. Douglas: "What can derricks might base seemed ironic, and The Sound and the Pun) as well as mythic retelling of the first cattle drive I do with a bunch of rotten oil wells? . whereas in 1997 they arc, as McMurtry Texas writer William Humphrey's Home to Abilene. In the film's early scenes, 1 can't breed 'em or tend 'em or rope has suggested, "an elegy not merely for Prom the Hill. Rill, Newman, and an extended montage chronicles John 'em." Newman: "There's money in it." the cattlemen but for the wildcatters Ravetch/Frank later collaborated on Hud. 4 Wayne's trek across Texas: crossing the A 19th-century cattleman to the end, too." In 1974, The Sugariunl Express I lowever, the movie was never made. Red River south through the Panhandle Douglas says, "You can get the oil after procession might have seemed In a letter to the author, Larry McMurtry and past the I'ecos, finally finding good I'm under there with it." A 20th-century Gapraesque. Today, in light of O.J., recalled: " I remt mber being in Austin cattle range near the Rio Grande. It mat man without tradition, Newman rides the same landscape seems definitely when Martin Ritt tried to make The Gay ters not that none of these "Texas" land- not a horse but a pink Gaddy through more somber. Place from a script by the Ravetches. scapes are actually Texas. The logistical the film's black and white Panhandle It's a short 2.1 years from the montage That was in 1962. Rumor has it Lyndon problem of moving 1,500 head of cattle landscape. Of this landscape, McMurtry of cowboys yahooing the cattle in Red Johnson had it squelched with a few calls." from location to location forced I lawks has written: "The camera was completely Rwer to Ghill Wills yahooing the guests It's our loss that a great, visionary ID shoot the entire film in Arizona. And l.lithlul to the beauts and pitilessness of down the corridor of the Shamrock-like lilmaker never made (lie tilin: Orson though the Arizona mountains seem too the Panhandle. It showed what is there, a hotel in Giant, and back full circle to Welles, who had tangled with William big, at least Hawks give us lots of Texas- land so powerful that it is all but impos- the scene ol cowboys yahooing the cattle Randolph Hearst over Citizen Kane, lilcc big skies and wide-open spaces. sible to live on it pleasantly."- in Red Rirer that flickers the Royal might not have been so easily intimidated John Ford's The Searchers (1956) If Brewster McCloud (1970) is any Theater to a close in The last Picture by l.BJ. Or, given the novel's multi-charac- begins with "Texas, 1868" superimposed indication, Robert Altman wasn't enam- Show. In 1997, as I gaze at the landscape ter narratives, Robert Altman might on a black screen. A cabin door opens ored of the Texas landscape — nor did with the shuttered movie theater that fills have made a companion film to stand revealing a color landscape that looks he buy the Astrodome's Fighth-Wonder- Bogdanovich's last frames, I'm suddenly alongside Nashville. nothing like Texas and in fact is unmis- of-rhe-World hype. An image of aware that something else besides small- "Billy Lee Brammer's death at 48 in takably Monument Valley, director Ford's I louston's smoggy downtown skyline town Anient..i has died. Perhaps movies 1978," writes William Broyles in his for- favorite location. Ford poetically places gives way to bird crap splattering on a as an art form have also died. Little ward to The Gay Place, "extinguished a John Wayne's stou searcher ot the title Houston Chronicle front page lining a did I realize in 1971 that the poetry ol sensibility and talent that could have |us( amid the majestic rock formations of bird cage, and this is just the opening post World W.n II cinema would --non possibly made Texas a universal landscape Monument Valley in an epic quest to find credits.