Of the approximately 500 films submitted to the Sundance Film Festival for
consideration in the 1996 dramatic competition, only 18 made the final cut.
This year, two of the films chosen for competition have roots in the Lone Star
state. The Whole Wide World, directed by Los Angeles native Dan Ireland,
is set in 1930s Texas and celebrates the relationship of Novalyne Price Ellis
and Robert E. Howard, author of the Conan and Red Sonja Stories.
The period piece stars Renee Zelweger (Love and a .45) and Vincent D’Onofrio
(The Player) and was shot in Austin last summer. The other entry, Julia Dyer’s
Late Bloomers, is a lesbian love story shot in Dallas.
Soundstage Skinny
In recent years, many plans of varying feasibility and quality have beenproposed for the creation of a TV and movie soundstage in our booming film
burg, but it looks like Guiltless Gourmet entrepreneur Doug Foreman is about to
make his plan a reality. The president of Taylor Foreman Productions already
has the blueprints for the conversion of the former Post Oak Ranch (the old
movie theatre in Capital Plaza on N. I-35) into a 12,000-square-foot
soundstage, and his project appears to rub the city the right way, because it
is relatively small enough to support Austin’s production industry, and he
isn’t asking for city funds to carry it out. Foreman — who was nominated for
an Emmy as the director of photography on To the Edge and Back, a PBS
documentary on the Apollo 13 space mission, and whose company produces the
popular Good Living spots on KXAN — is already getting calls wanting to
reserve stage time. With the film industry in Austin growing as it is, this
could be the next big step in enhancing local production values and meeting the
needs of larger outside projects — or a 12,000-square-foot white elephant
whose care and feeding could prove cumbersome. n
This article appears in December 8 • 1995 and December 8 • 1995 (Cover).