New generation of Texas filmmakers explodes Lone Star myths, clichés
Think of the iconic images of films set in Texas — the sunbaked oil fields of “Giant,” the big-sky grandeur of “The Searchers,” the dying small town of “The Last Picture Show,” the dusty desolation of “Hell or High Water” — and that’s what filmmaker David Blue Garcia hoped to avoid, like a driver swerving around an armadillo on a Panhandle highway.
The 32-year-old director from Harlingen wanted to reflect more of the reality he experienced growing up near the border. His debut feature, the South Texas-shot “Tejano,” which premieres Sunday at the Dallas International Film Festival, is a thriller about an ordinary guy who thinks the best way to raise money for his grandfather’s medical bills is to become a cross-border drug mule for a cartel.
“I was familiar with the landscape and always thought it would look really great on screen,” said Garcia, who now calls Austin home. “The easy thing would have been for me to
go to El Paso, where you have these high deserts, mountains and this really epic imagery. But I actually felt that everyone does that. I wanted to challenge myself by depicting South Texas on the screen in an interesting way.
“Of course, when you film in South Texas, you’re filming with a larger Hispanic population and kind of a different culture. I wanted to make something authentic to that region.”
Garcia isn’t alone in his desire to broaden antique perceptions of the Lone Star State, which often feel as if they are preserved in cinematic amber. A previous generation of Texas filmmakers — including Terence Malick, Robert Rodriguez and Robert Benton, as well as such outsiders as John Ford and the Coen brothers — helped put the region on the map as a heartland visual touchstone, even if some of their Texas-set films were not even filmed in the state.
True, not everything is about cowboys or wide open spaces in the Lone Star State. Richard Linklater and Wes Anderson have sketched a more contemporary, suburban vision.
More recently, Houston’s Trey Edward Shults, who released the powerful, Springshot domestic drama “Krisha” in 2015, Austin’s Greg Kwedar, whose tense, border-guard thriller “Transpecos” was one of the best films of 2016, North Texan Shane Carruth, with his brain-teasing “Primer” (2004) and “Upstream Color” (2013), and David Lowery, who made last year’s hauntingly romantic “A Ghost Story,” are proof that Texas directors don’t have to look to the past to have a future.
But a new generation of directors could expand even more on the definition of “Texan,” reflecting a state that is now nearly 85 percent urban, 39 percent Hispanic and more than 12 percent African-American.
Take Justin Petty, whose H-Town-shot “Nothing Really Happens,” about the increasingly glitchy and surreal world of a Houston mattress-store manager, is about as hardcore Houston as it gets, even featuring the voice of The Suffers’ lead singer Kam Franklin. The film debuted Wednesday at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival.
He’s being joined by a chorus of other directors — women and people of color — who are representing modern Texas through yet another distinctive prism. The National Black Film Festival, which played the AMC Houston 8 in downtown Houston last week, showcased the likes of Houston director Justin Milton, whose hometown-set “Don’t Shoot” focuses on the police killing an unarmed black man.
“I think it’s important that people have a different perception of Texas, especially Houston,” Milton said via email. “Many people think all Texas is are cowboys and oil tycoons. I want to show viewers the real inner city, suburbs and ’hoods of Houston. Houston is such a beautiful place with our parks, museums, skyline and great restaurants. …
“An African-American film told in Houston hasn’t been shown on a major platform since ‘Jason’s Lyric’ (in 1994),” Milton continued. “I want to change that. I plan to film most, if not all, of my feature films in Texas. Texas has all the backdrops you can need for a film, such as big country, big city, western, suburbs and ’hood locations. Many Houston filmmakers are trying to make Houston the next big city for filming, just like Atlanta. I definitely see myself as part of the next generation expanding Texas as a movie hub.”
Of course, turning Texas into that movie hub or Houston into the next Atlanta won’t be easy, especially since such other states as Georgia and New Mexico offer far more generous tax breaks for film production — one reason so many movies set in Texas aren’t shot here.
And it can be hard to grind against the grain, to upend stereotypes. “There are a lot of stories in Texas that we’ve not seen on screen,” said Austinbased director Ya’Ke Smith, whose last film, “The Beginning and Ending of Everything,” shot in San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth, was released as a web series. “But those directors who can tell those alternative stories of Texas are not given the opportunity to do so. I think even sometimes the Texas film industry, we pigeonhole ourselves because we want to see a certain kind of Texas landscape. We want to see a certain type of person from Texas portrayed on screen.”
Still, young filmmakers aren’t letting this get in the way of telling their stories. For one thing, technology is making it easier.
“It has to do with access … . People can get cameras and equipment, or shoot with their iPhones, a little easier, and getting information and getting stories is easier, (and) Texas is full of stories,” said James Faust, artistic director of the Dallas Film Society, which stages the annual Dallas International Film Festival. “I have a feeling we’re going to see a lot more of this, and it has a lot to do with what we’re seeing on screen anyway. When people are seeing their faces on screen, they think that ‘I can do this,’ and if they’re seeing their faces behind the screen, that adds to it as well.
“I think there’s going to be an uptick in Latino filmmaking in Texas,” continued Faust, who says he was “blown away” by Garcia’s “Tejano” and was eager to add it to his festival’s schedule. “The same thing with women filmmakers. Access has never been greater and easier.”