In early autumn, 1994, I called my friend Maggie Renzi to suggest that, instead
of our planned road trip to Vermont and then, maybe, to Toronto, she come down
to Austin and we drive over to Acu�a, Mexico — where Robert Rodriguez
was shooting Desperado. If you had asked me directly, I would have
vaguely remembered one late night sitting around a friend’s pool, drinking wine
and shivering with Maggie as we talked to John Sayles, her companion of the
last 20-plus years, about future film projects he was considering. Among other
projects, he briefly discussed a border movie set in Texas. I wasn’t thinking about that movie when I called. I was thinking it would be
fun to watch Rodriguez work and to cruise West Texas with Maggie and our friend
Fred, a reporter who would be joining us if there weren’t any major national or
international calamities.
Renzi, of course, thought of the movie; that was her job. Producer of eight of
Sayles’ 10 films, she had — as with all his projects — heard this border
story more than once. She soon called back, and not only was she coming but so
were Sayles and R. Paul Miller, her producing partner. The trip was, though I’m
not sure anyone exactly realized it, turning into a scout.
When Sayles is on vacation, however, his idea of a good time is not visiting
other directors’ film sets. It would sort of be like a butcher on vacation
visiting meat, Maggie pointed out. Knowing I needed to do a bit more planning,
I phoned Texas Monthly senior editor and expert on all things Texas, Joe
Nick Patoski, who gave me the first in a series of phone numbers which led to
my renting a houseboat on Lake Amistad for three nights.
Shortly before our start date, U.S. troops went into Haiti, so we correctly
figured Fred was not going to come on this road trip. Miller, Sayles, Renzi,
and I drove to Del Rio, spending the night on the way in San Antonio. Driving
across the border, we visited the Desperado set in Ciudad Acu�a,
Mexico. Hanging out with Elizabeth Avellon, Rodriguez’s wife and co-producer,
we watched him work, the set exploding with action, both in front of and behind
the camera. Rodriguez is an athletic presence, a physical, hands-on-the-camera
director. No leisurely shot set-ups here. When we arrived, Rodriguez was
kneeling in the dirt and dust, running a camera mounted at ground level. The
set was in Acu�a’s Boystown, and though the movie crew had converted
much of this little town for the movie, come sundown it was still functioning
as a place of business. At first women, and then customers began arriving, the
men wandering outside with drinks to watch the movie being shot; we left.
The houseboat was ideal; designed for six, it slept four quite comfortably.
Paul had extensive sailing experience — not that the houseboat needed much,
but it helped. We traveled up the Devil’s River. We hiked, swam, read, ate,
napped, talked, ate, and docked the boat in a cove overnight. The next day we
took the boat in, docked, and drove up to Langtry.
As a youthful enthusiast of Edgar Buchanan’s TV show, Judge Roy Bean, The
Only Law West of the Pecos, as well as a devoted student, if not exactly
fan, of John Huston’s uneasy near-masterpiece, near-disaster The Life and
Times of Judge Roy Bean (with a script by the always problematic John
Milius), I found myself oddly moved by the tiny little shack that once housed
Bean’s bar and court. The trip to Langtry is all empty West Texas desert with
the occasional train track running parallel with the road. There is nothing
there except the sky, the desert, and the road cutting through it. Racing down
the highway, just before Langtry, we spotted an old abandoned highway bridge
off to the side of the road and found, just a little further, the cracked old
highway which we followed back to the bridge. The bridge crossed a classic
arroyo, all rocks and angles, a rip in the earth. We stood there on the
bridge in the quiet of the desert for a long time.
Instead of driving further north as we had planned, we headed back to the
houseboat, where we spent our last night, camped on the far side of Lake
Amistad, watching the stars.
Not two weeks after we got back, Maggie called to say they were coming back to
Texas to make a movie, and they would be back in town soon to begin serious
scouting. Early in 1995, they moved to Eagle Pass to set up an office, do
pre-production, and then shoot Lone Star.
A few months after that, Fred and I stood on the same abandoned bridge outside
of Langtry, Texas but, now, rather than the emptiness, the still and quiet of
the desert, 50-plus people were making a movie in the middle of a blistering
afternoon. We had just driven up from Austin, bringing, at Maggie’s
instructions, two portable ice chests full of dry ice and H�agen Daz bars.
On the bridge, Kris Kristofferson and Matthew McConaughey drove up in a vintage
1950s police car to a truck that had broken down. They repeated this action
several times, after which they shot a few more scenes at the truck. Then
Kristofferson graciously took his leave of the company, as his last day of
shooting was finished, and he headed for the airport.
Sayles, Renzi, Miller, and company were making this movie, the crew and cast
were working hard under the broiling West Texas sun, performing the strange
rituals and actions of filmmaking. Standing on the same bridge where we had
taken tourist pictures not a year before, Fred and I watched. We watched as the
movie was being shot and as those cherished ice cream bars spread slowly
amongst the cast and crew.
Lone Star has opened to mostly rave reviews. Tonight, Annie and I will
finally see the finished film (it was too crazy during the South by Southwest
Film Festival, which offered one of its very first public screenings at the
Paramount). This certainly isn’t an end to this story, probably because this
isn’t really a story, just a rambling talk on the braiding of journeys, of
where things start, where things stop, and how they keep on going.
n
John Sayles is everywhere these days but this issue of the Chronicle offers an interview with Maggie Renzi by Margaret Moser, a review of Lone
Star by Robert Faires, and a review of the Lone Star soundtrack by
Christopher Gray. In the first issue of the Chronicle, in September,
1981, there was an interview with John Sayles. In September, 1996, the
Chronicle will celebrate our 15th anniversary, but I don’t want to harp
on that just yet.
n
Talking about film, the first week in August, Quentin Tarantino will present a
week of his favorite films at the Dobie as a benefit for the Austin Film
Society’s Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund. The ever-more busy Austin Film
Society will also present a screening of the legendary Sam Fuller’s I Shot
Jesse James to be introduced by Chronicle Film Editor Marjorie
Baumgarten. For more information about either or both of these see Jen
Scoville’s “Short Cuts” column on p. 34.
n
The Chronicle staff offer their sincere congratulations to our much
loved senior account executive Jerald Corder for being named Best Newspaper
Sales Representative by The Ad Society, Austin Advertising Federation.
n
This article appears in June 28 • 1996 and June 28 • 1996 (Cover).