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McMurtry in Marfa
Securing star power at a film festival that’s still in its nascent stages — and is a three-hour drive from the nearest airport — is an accomplishment. When the star is Larry McMurtry, who’ll be participating this weekend in the second annual Marfa Film Festival, it’s an accomplishment that raises the question: Are you sure he said yes?
The Pulitzer Prize winner has a long-standing reputation for being less than enthusiastic about interviews and public speaking. But when the festival, in association with the Texas Association of Film Commissions, presents McMurtry with the first Texas Screen Legend Award at a fundraising dinner on Saturday, he’ll be there to accept it. And that’s not the end of it.
Later the same evening, McMurtry will introduce an outdoor screening of “The Last Picture Show,” the 1971 Oscar-winning movie adapted from McMurtry’s semi-autobiographical 1966 novel about a dying West Texas town and its lonesome inhabitants and for which he wrote the screenplay.
After the movie, festivalgoers might find McMurtry at Padre’s, a local bar and dance hall, where his son, singer-songwriter James McMurtry, will be performing. Then, on Sunday morning, McMurtry will be on hand for a Q&A session.
If last year is any indication, the Marfa Film Festival, which began Wednesday, will be magical and surreal. The lineup includes an eclectic array of events and screenings, many of which will be outdoors and projected by the Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow.
“We got lucky,” says Cory van Dyke, the festival’s co-founder and programmer, referring to the McMurtry appearance. McMurtry says he last visited Marfa more than a decade ago while working on the television adaptations of his novels “Streets of Laredo” and “Dead Man’s Walk.”
“Marfa’s an odd town in that you can buy an expensive picture, but you can’t get a prescription filed,” he says over the phone from Arizona. (He splits his time between Archer City in North Texas and Arizona, where he works with his writing partner, Diana Ossana.)
McMurtry makes it clear that he’s not attending the festival for adulation. When asked about his thoughts on the award he’ll be receiving, he says, “I forgot it was involved.” He also usually avoids revisiting his ouevre, literary or otherwise. “I’m not one who looks backward at my work unless I’m asked to talk about it, as I am now,” he says. As for his Saturday night introduction of “The Last Picture Show,” he’ll likely be gone before the opening credits. “I will never watch it again, ever,” he says. “About 20 years ago, I went on a tour … (with the film). ‘The Last Picture Show’ was shown 32 times on this tour. I didn’t watch it 32 times, but even being close to it in a hotel nearby felt oppressive.”
While he may be Texas’ most famous bibliophile, in part because of his bookstore in Archer City, McMurtry is not a cinephile. “I used to be passionate about movies, but once you start working on them, and I’ve written at least 70, that kills it,” he says. “Now I don’t go to the movies at all.” The only reason he watches them now, he explains, is to look for actors or directors. He also doesn’t consider himself a filmmaker. “I’m a film provoker, but not a filmmaker,” he says.
So why is he going to the festival?
Along with it being a prime opportunity to visit with his son and grandson, “It’s a chance to do a little informal (location) scouting,” says McMurtry, who’ll be accompanied by Ossana. “We might develop something that involves being in that part of the country. I don’t want to visit it as a place to live.”
At 72, McMurtry is candid about his priorities. “At my age, the professional dominates. There’s only so much time. I don’t travel as well as I used to, and travel itself isn’t as nice as it used to be, so that’s the way it is. I’ve got to conserve the energies I have left.” He knows exactly where that energy should be directed.
“I’m very engaged in the rare book business, which is dying, and I want to see that my bookshop doesn’t die in my lifetime. Movies will come and go, and I don’t know if I’ll write any more novels. What I really want to do is run my bookshop, and if screenwriting comes along that’s fine.”
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