From the Vaults: Nominees on Rewind

Christine Vachon during the Austin shoot of Infamous

Every year, the Texas Film Hall of Fame honors legends in the entertainment industry at an annual awards show. On the three Mondays leading up to the event on Thursday, March 8, the Austin Film Society is hosting a three-night film series that showcases the work of each of the three new inductees: Douglas McGrath, Barry Corbin, and Meat Loaf.

Douglas McGrath is the Midland-raised director and screenwriter of Infamous, which was filmed in Austin in 2005. Based on George Plimpton's book, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career, Infamous tells of the close relationship Truman Capote developed with the murderers when he was working on his groundbreaking book In Cold Blood. Previously, McGrath also scripted Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, as well as writing the screen adaptations of Emma and Nicholas Nickleby, along with directing the latter two. Infamous had the working title, Every Word Is True, while it was filming in South Austin. During that shoot, producer Christine Vachon (a legend in her own right) took the time to speak with me for a cover story, "The Movies That Matter." Infamous screen on Monday, January 20, 7pm, at the Alamo Drafthouse Lamar.

Since 1980 and Urban Cowboy through Lonesome Dove and No Country for Old Men, Barry Corbin has been cast as the ultimate movie Texan. This Texas native comes by his typecasting naturally, and it's hardly happenstance that he plays the sheriff's uncle in No Country for Old Men in a sequence near the end of the movie that possibly alters our entire understanding of has just occurred. No Country for Old Men was the Chronicle's film reviewers' No. 1 pick for the best film of 2007, and you can sample some of our justifications here. No Country for Old Men screens on Monday, February 27, 7pm at the Alamo Drafthouse Lamar.

Meat Loaf, you ask? Well apart from being born in Texas, Meat Loaf was the star of the 1980 film Roadie, which was primarily filmed in and around Austin. Meat Loaf plays the title character, Travis W. Redfish, a roadie for a traveling rock & roll show. The film was co-written by Chronicle columnist Michael Ventura and fellow Austin Sun writer Big Boy Medlin, who created the Redfish character in his regular column for the Sun. The story idea had been suggested by director Alan Rudolph and producer Zalman King (who died just a couple weeks ago). Although Ventura has some issues with the finished film, he wrote movingly about the movie in a "Letters at 3AM" column a couple of years ago, "Roadie: 30 Years Later." The screening is on Monday, March 5, 7pm, at the Alamo Drafthouse Lamar. The screening will be hosted by the Chronicle and former Sun writer Margaret Moser and longtime Austin actor Sonny Carl Davis, both of whom appear in Roadie.