The key word when considering the Austin Film Society’s docket of honorees for the Texas Film Hall of Fame is “balance.” As Evan Smith, editor of Texas Monthly magazine and co-founder of this 8-year-old event, explains, “Every year we try to find balance, and balance comes in different forms.”
This year’s lineup of honorees balances the extremes of class experience as represented in Texas film by Texas-associated actors, from the gritty working-class nightlife at Gilley’s to the glamour of Morgan Fairchild.
Back in the Eighties, when Bud and Sissy were looking for love in all the wrong places, Texas enjoyed an oil boom that thrust big bank accounts, big shoulder pads, and even bigger hair into the public consciousness. Urban Cowboy is a remarkable juxtaposition of the big-city urban glamour that defined Reagan-era Houston alongside blue-collar realities. Debra Winger’s lovelorn Sissy is subservient and strong-willed, impetuous and vulnerable; she is the film’s tender, trashy heart, and Winger is the perfect representative to accept the film’s admission into the Texas Film Hall of Fame.
The primary rubric of selecting individual honorees is how well each person represents Texas film. According to Smith, these qualifications include “incredible hard work, a creative spirit that is second to none, an independent way of thinking about film, not just following the pack but going their own way, a larger than life personality.”
“In some cases people are still in the middle of their careers, and they think: ‘Wait a minute; shouldn’t this be the ‘one foot in the grave award’? Don’t I need to be almost dead before you give me this?” he continues. “This is more an award that takes the full measure of the work you’ve done so far, and if you’ve passed that threshold of having represented Texas film in every possible way, we want to honor you for that and celebrate you.”
And what better ambassadors than ZZ Top? The bandmates, known for their facial hair and love of long-legged ladies, will be honored with the AMD Live! Soundtrack Award for their contributions to Texas film, most notably to the soundtrack for the Texas-filmed From Dusk Till Dawn but also to Dazed and Confused and An Officer and a Gentleman.
Two impossibly beautiful and iconic Texas ladies will be admitted into the Hall of Fame this year: Morgan Fairchild and Jayne Mansfield. Born Patsy Ann McClenny in Dallas, Fairchild made her name in 1981, when she took on the role of the vixen, Constance Weldon Semple Carlyle, on the short-lived soap Flamingo Road. No stranger to big ol’ Texas-style hair, Fairchild has come to epitomize Texas glamour over the course of her 25-year stage and screen career.
Even though she died more than 40 years ago at age 34, bootstrapper Jayne Mansfield (née Vera Jayne Palmer) remains a beloved pinup to this day. Mansfield was a Playboy Bunny, a brainiac who spoke five languages, and a television and film star; her most famous attributes were, however, her bazooms – she practically invented the wardrobe malfunction. Mansfield’s daughter, actress Mariska Hargitay, accepts the honor on her mother’s behalf.
Finally, on the docket for the Ann Richards Award, which honors those who forge new creative directions in film, is Austin resident Mike Judge, the mastermind behind the Nineties animated cultural zeitgeist of Beavis and Butt-Head. He followed that up with the equally brilliant and poignant Fox animated series King of the Hill and the beacon of hope for worker bees everywhere, Office Space, a feature film that felt the cube-dweller’s pain.
In many ways, Urban Cowboy and the work of Mike Judge are cut from the same cloth: They’re both concerned with the plight of the little guy. In fact, this year’s honorees cohere precisely in that they all represent, in one way or another, various iterations of class mobility in Texas, from the ambitious young woman who juggled motherhood and college in the Fifties to the white-collar death of hope in the age of the cubicle farm. They are stories as big as Texas but still only hint at the diversity of experiences contained within the Lone Star.
The 2008 Texas Film Hall of Fame takes place Friday, March 7, at Austin Studios. CBS news legend Dan Rather will emcee, with Tess Harper and Luke Wilson presenting awards. To find out more, visit www.austinfilm.org/tfhof.
This article appears in March 7 • 2008.