Texas (pt. II)

Paris, Texas

Bernie

Howdy, readers! In these sweltering Summer days, I long for an exciting adventure that won’t make me break a sweat, and the best way to achieve this is by watching as many movies as possible. To beat the heat last week, I indulged in some Summer-set scary movies, and this week I’m visiting some more Texas movies—a subgenre that makes me feel just as conflicted as my beloved home state makes me feel. Stories and films about Texas are often heavily-mythologized, just as the history of Texas always has been. It is a bit of a mythic place—with its sprawling hills and deserts, the highest of skyscrapers to the lowest of valleys, the hottest temperatures and the coldest, the nicest people you’ll ever meet and the most bigoted group of haters you’ll ever hear about. Its these many contradictions, hypocrisies, and dichotomies that fascinate me, and inspire filmmakers to capture this harsh terrain’s simultaneous sweetness. In the case of the first film that I watched, the very idea of Texas was enough to inspire a German director named Wim Wenders to tell not just a Texas tale, but one of America, as a whole. This 1984 film is Paris, Texas: a movie that is mythologized and glamorized by nearly every film nerd I’ve ever interacted with, to the point that, like Texas, it holds its own unique and confusing legacy. Paris, Texas was written by Sam Shepard and follows a man named Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton), who, four years prior, disappeared from his friends and family out of nowhere. The film opens on Travis, wandering aimlessly through the hot West Texas desert, completely mute and seemingly unable to explain how he got there. After stumbling upon a convenience store in Terlingua, Travis passes out, and a random, German doctor (not played by the random, German director) rifles through his possessions to find the number of Travis’ brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell). Completely shocked and bewildered to be receiving a call about Travis, whom everyone presumed was now dead, Walt leaves his home in Los Angeles for Terlingua, to retrieve his long lost brother. Travis is completely silent, even upon the arrival of his brother Walt, and his insistence that he explain himself. For the last four years, Walt and his wife have been caring for the little boy that Travis left behind, not ever hearing much from the boy’s mother either, beyond her depositing money into a savings account for her son once a month. The rest of the film is a journey of self-rediscovery where Travis, his son Hunter, and the audience, travel on the I-40 to Houston, Texas to find the woman who makes their family complete. Amid all of the gorgeous shots of Texas sunsets and skylines and natural wildlife are a lot of heavy, hard-to-discern metaphors about life, love, and personal identity, as told by Walt, Travis, and even the seven year old Hunter. Paris, Texas, as I found out too late, is not really a movie about Texas. The movie largely takes place in Los Angeles, and never even takes us to the actual city of Paris, Texas, but instead just keeps alluding to an empty lot that Travis once purchased there. It’s allegedly indicative of the story of America as a whole, and how the idea of something is powerful enough to inspire action, feeling, meaningful storytelling… but I’ll be honest with you, dear reader, I wasn’t getting any of this from my viewing experience. Paris, Texas is clearly a contemplative and heady movie, where the viewer can easily project their own feelings onto it, because very little happens in this film, despite its story spanning multiple states and states of mind. For years, I’ve seen screen grabs of the stunning Nastassja Kinski in a pink, fuzzy, backless sweater and a cute bob, staring ruminatively at the camera as if she’s just been told just how much this image of her has been seen on Tumblr and Letterboxd and Pinterest. This film has somehow been so distilled down to just this sole image of her character Jane, that you’d think the whole movie took place in this one scene and setting. Honestly, I may have preferred that to be the case. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the scenery of not just Texas, but a large chunk of the American West that was featured here. In my mind, there’s not much you have to do to romanticize this setting, because so many Westerns and romances and musicals and American fables have already done this for us. The blank and barren intimidation of the desert is enough to inspire fear, and the desolation of any small town in America can fill one with mind-numbing sadness. To take on a story that mostly revolves around Texas, as a non-Texan, is a burden that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone, but the general consensus is actually positive with Texans and non-Texans alike. So I’m in the minority when I say that I didn’t feel that Paris, Texas added too much to the centuries of Texas lore that exists, and I didn’t connect with its purported emotional depth. I wish I felt anything about this movie. To say that it disappointed me feels a little harsh, but to say that I enjoyed it would definitely be a stretch. I do think, aesthetically, this film’s popularity makes sense, but it’s not hard to romanticize a Texas sunset. I didn’t mind the slower pace, or the dissonant music by Ry Cooder, and I think that everyone, but especially Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski gave dynamic, interesting performances. My issue is with the vaguely then specifically depressing story. The final third of this movie felt oddly rushed to me, and some of the best most clarifying moments were forced into a frustratingly frenetic final act. Paris, Texas was best when it was showcasing the formidably rough terrains of Texas and how lonely it can seem, but again, it’s not hard to capture a feeling of loneliness in the desert of the Lone Star State. Not to sound like a backwards hillbilly, but maybe its best when Texans make movies about Texas, because I really enjoyed the next film that I watched: Richard Linklater’s 2011 biographical dark comedy Bernie. Based on Skip Hollandsworth’s article in Texas Monthly called “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas”, Bernie follows the true story of a mortician in Carthage, Texas named Bernhardt “Bernie” Tiede (Jack Black), and the murder of his 81 year old millionaire companion Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine). Bernie is one of the most beloved citizens of this small town—not only is he a talented mortician and respectful assistant funeral director, he leads the choir at church, directs and stars in the local theatre shows, organizes and designs the Christmas lights every year, and often gives gifts to everyone in his community. Even when Bernie begins to spend time with the most hated woman in their town, Marjorie, he is considered to be a charitable, patient, and inherently generous person by everyone, except for local district attorney Danny Buck Davidson (Matthew McConaughey) who is suspicious of Bernie’s effeminate off-ness—especially when Marjorie turns up dead. Bernie’s community never turns on him, though, and given how despised Marjorie was, no one seems to mind her sudden disappearance. Bernie is a truly wild, truly Texas movie, full of a small cast of actors and a large cast of real Carthage, Texans. Its brilliant use of real people as talking heads gave this movie the essence of a surrealist documentary, where scripted dialogue would be interspersed with candid conversations with people who actually knew this mythic man. Each townsperson brought a hilarious, Christopher Guest character-level charisma to their scenes, and one particular old East Texan man perfectly embodied one flavor of Texas sensibilities when he said: “It could be five different places. You’ve got West Texas and that’s just flat ranches, up North you’ve got Dallas snobs, then you’ve got Houston or the Carcinogenic Coast as I call it, San Antonio where the Tex meets the Mex, then Central Texas has Austin with its hairy-legged women and fruitcakes, and we’ll leave out the Panhandle, like most people do. But East Texas is where the South begins.” I really, really enjoyed this morbidly quirky film, and the fact that it’s taken me this long to see this movie is shameful, not just because it’s such a fun time, but because Jack Black and Richard Linklater actually came to my high school and filmed a scene (the very opening scene, specifically) there my freshman year. I’ll never forget Jack Black’s instantly-recognizable and booming voice mis-pronouncing our mascot’s name over the intercom that day, and I’ll never forget how jealous I was of the people who were at the Austin premiere of this movie at the air-conditioned Paramount Theatre, as I spent my evening sweating at my first and only ACL. Bernie was simultaneously sweet, satirical, and suspenseful, and though I’ve always been a fan of Jack Black, his performance here felt transformative and star-making. His star quality was only strengthened by this film’s Greek chorus of small-town characters, and weirdly enough, McConaughey was the only person here who felt like an actor (but maybe that was because of his not-so-great wig [still hot though, somehow.]) Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that “…it’s hard to think of many other celebrations of small-town American life that are quite as rich, as warm, and as complexly layered, at least within recent years” and I couldn’t agree more. While Paris, Texas captured the obvious loneliness of Texas, Bernie managed to capture something a little trickier, which is a likable group of Texans. I’m not surprised that tonight’s movies gave me such strong feelings because I have many strong feelings about the state of Texas. I’ll never be able to defend this hypocritical and stifling place, but I’ll also never escape my connection to it. I have just as many happy memories in Texas as I do sad ones, and even though my own (once small) hometown is harder to recognize now, I’ll always feel somewhat at home here. You can take the girl out of the South but you can’t get the girl to shut up! Talk to y’all next week! 🤠