Bill Wittliff speaks with a twang. The canonical Texas filmmaker welcomes me into his office with a “Hello” as colorful and as thick as the Hill Country’s rolling greenery, and the space immediately feels like home. My own comfort takes me by surprise — you wouldn’t expect such a relaxed, down-to-earth air to surround some- one as accomplished and as busy as Wittliff.
Wittliff’s best known for his screenwriting in classic Texas films and television shows like Lonesome Dove, Honeysuckle Rose and Legends of the Fall, Wittliff’s name first appeared on big screens in the ’70s. His career is decorated with Emmy-winning productions, beloved children’s movies and Hollywood pictures.
Despite the impressive big-screen chops, Wittliff’s seeds of creativity were sown in the small Texas towns of Taft and Blanco, where he spent his youth. He switched between five differ- ent schools during his first year of college before settling on the University of Texas and heading back to the Hill Country for good. He graduated with a degree in journalism, worked in publish- ing houses and soon started his own, Encino Press, the name of which is still displayed on the office’s front door.
In the years following his success in film, Wittliff has published multiple photography collections and two illustrated novels in addition to founding a Texas, Southwestern and Mexican archive — the Wittliff Collection — housed at Texas State University in San Marcos. Wittliff’s creativity doesn’t hesitate to cross art- form boundaries. If you’re looking for a jack-of- all-trades storyteller who captures the essence of Texas, he’s your man.
TIME OF THE PREACHER Wittliff (at left) was both writer and director for Red Headed Stranger, which starred Willie Nelson (at right). The film, based on Nelson’s 1975 album of the same name, was pro- duced independently and at home in Texas. It marked Wittliff’s directorial debut.
In his Austin office, Wittliff volleys me steady-paced casual conversation, and his full-bodied Texas accent continues easing the scene’s grandeur. And there’s a lot of it, to be sure. He reaches out over his workspace, piled with books and papers, to point out the paddle John Graves rowed the Brazos with, hanging by the windows. He motions to the picture of Frank Dobie above his head and mentions that he’s got the dear friend’s old writing desk upstairs. I imagine Wittliff surrounded by these Texas relics, hard at work, crafting a timeless Western or sprucing up his latest fiction. But right now, we’re just chatting.
You were interested in the written word and publishing before you focused on film. What was it about film that attracted you?
If you have a good story, you can make it move with film. You get sight, sound, all the senses except smell. I’m a pretty visual artist, so film was a good vehicle for me. It’s just another wonderful way to tell stories, and that’s always been my ultimate interest.
I had no training, hadn’t even seen a film script when I wrote my first one. I was lucky enough to get attention from Francis Coppola after one of my scripts made its way to his desk. They called me in to do Black Stallion, and they saw my potential. My stuff always went to the producers, directors, decision makers. If you write something they don’t think they can make money off, you can be sitting in their lap and you’re not gonna get a deal. But if you write something they think can make money, you can’t hide from them. I wrote stuff that fell into the latter category.
As an artist, how did you grow or change as you took on additional screenwriting projects?
I was blessed to have a relationship with Irvin Kershner, who directed the second Star Wars. He was interested in the first screenplay I wrote, for Thaddeus Rose and Eddie, which got picked up by someone else. But I still went out to California and met him. He recognized two things about me: one, I might have a little talent, and two, I didn’t have the foggiest notion what I was doing. So he took it upon himself to give me an education on how you write a script for film.
At that time, Kersh was on the outs with his wife, so we’d show up at this really fancy house on Mulholland Drive that a mafia guy was living in. We’d get there in the morning, and this guy would walk out wearing a silk suit and
alligator shoes, drive away in his Bentley, and we’d have the whole place free. We just sat at this huge banquet table and talked script — all day long. But he also educated me on the business of trying to make movies. He’d read some of my scenes and break it to me that they wouldn’t translate onto the screen. Kersh taught me how to compromise with restrictions. He taught me the reality of screenwriting.
Was your literary background something that influenced how people saw you? Did it surprise or throw people off?
If they thought of me strangely, it was because I was from Texas. Texas guys were exotic. I’d go to Hollywood meetings wearing my jeans, my boots. Executives would show up to the meeting with boots and a big buckle they’d bought at a department store. And then the next day, I’d purposefully wear slacks and loafers. They never quite knew who I was, which was important, because they can use you up quickly if they do.
Did you ever feel out of place in Hollywood?
There was a lot to take in. I was staying at some kind of showbiz hotel during my time in California. When I got up every morning, musicians would be coming in from their late-night gigs, and the prostitutes would be heading out with their overnight bags. I’d be there with Chief Dan George, the Indian who was in a lot of Clint Eastwood movies. He and I would just sit in the lobby and have coffee, watching the scene in its own mysticism.
The first film of yours I saw was Black Stallion, when I was 8 or 9. Watching it now as an adult, I enjoy the film just as much — or maybe even more since I can appreciate the visual aspects.
Caleb Deschanel, the film’s cinematographer … he was the genius behind that film. I wrote the scene where the boy learns to ride the horse in the water, which is an old cowboy trick. I knew that from my own background and wrote it in. What I didn’t consider, and which I didn’t write, was to shoot from underwater, which Caleb thought to do. I saw Black Stallion first in New York, and I’m just telling you … when that sequence came on, with the underwater shots and the wonderful music, I wept. I thought it was so beautiful. So that’s where I got one-upped. That’s where Caleb did something special with my writing.
You also wrote Country, which is about farming communities and the financial stress they faced in the ’80s. Ronald Reagan, when he was President, actually called the film propaganda. Did you intend for the movie to be especially political? Or did you happen to touch on political themes in the process of telling the story?
The best stories make many points and cover a lot of ground about a lot of things. Country was about family, it was about loyalty, it was about betrayal. And, of course, Country was, in part, a rail against the government for what they were doing to family farmers. And I was proud of that. What writers do is they say, “Hey, I’m gonna tell you a story.” What they don’t tell you is, “I’m gonna lie a little bit, I’m gonna bend facts a little bit, I’m gonna do whatever I can to tell the best story, but also to get a few points across that matter to me as an individual.” That was an important story and an important project. And, in part, it influenced Willie [Nelson] and John Mellencamp and others to put together Farm Aid, the [annual] concert that benefits farmers. That’s the power of film.
So in this divisive American political climate, what role do you think film should play in shedding light on issues?
That potential is in all artists. Sometimes writers do it, sometimes singers do it, sometimes poets do it, sometimes painters do it. In my view, that’s why art is important. It’s to say, “Wait a minute — pay attention to this. Do you want to live this way?” And I think now is especially a time when artists should be saying wait a minute. I have no understanding of how we wound up with our current president. Artists are important in helping us figure it all out, and helping us to decide what our next moves should be.
Is that why you founded the Wittliff Collection?
The collection exists because everyone we asked to donate to the collection got it. They understood it was a good thing, a real Texas thing. And in a sense, it was a patriotic thing. We wanted to collect on our own piece of
ground — trying to see where we came from in order to know where we’re going. We wanted to have a collection that was authentic Texas. We were when we started — and we are now — a regional collection.
The collection is home to Frank Dobie manuscripts, Sam Shepard manuscripts, Texas Monthly clips, the latest Mexican photography. Do you feel like having such diverse archives in one place helps uniform or condense Texas art?
There’s absolutely nothing uniform about Texas art. The collection presents a multifaceted image of Texas. If you have a variety of folk in the culture who are doing important artistic things, then you want to pay attention to the diversity. I don’t think there’s one definition of Texas or one definition of Texas culture, and that’s what makes it the great jewel it is. That’s why we decided to include photography after we’d started the writers’ collection. Because we value diversity in storytelling. Because we want to tell the Texas story with world-class art.
WRITE STUFF Wittliff enjoyed acclaim for his Lonesome Dove screenplay — no easy task. “Westerns were absolutely dead,” he says, “and the only thing deader were miniseries.”
Did you spend time or gather inspiration from the Harry Ransom Center when you were a student at UT?
Sure — I’d go look through the cases and see incredible manuscripts. It just completely undid me. But now, [the Wittliff Collection] does the same thing. Within the last two or three weeks, we got the first original, handwritten manuscript of True West, the first draft of Fool for Love, the first draft of Paris, Texas.
How did growing up in the Hill Country influence your work, and what does that influence mean now that the area is undergoing such rapid change and development?
What had a huge influence on me were the people — friends, family, everyone you saw at the dance hall in Fredericksburg, which is all part of the environment and culture. Everything that suited me and gave my life meaning … that’s what influenced my stories. Are those things changing? Yeah. Should they change? Yeah. Is there any way to keep them from changing? No. La vida brinca. Life jumps. No life stays the same. At different times, different people take different things with them from the culture as they go. Things are gonna come and go. Places I love are gonna come and go. I’m gonna go. But that’s just it. Something else will come in that will have more meaning for someone else than it would for me. All of which is all right. It’s different for every generation, every turn. Things might be heading in different ways, in scary or disturbing ways, but la vida brinca.
Many found that what suited you in your culture also suited them. How were you able to translate your experiences into art that resonates with so many?
Everything is within us already when we get here. So somebody like Willie Nelson shows up, and we say, “Oh, that’s our Willie! We knew he was coming, but we just didn’t recognize him until all of sudden he pops up and there he is. That guy’s gonna sing our songs, tell our stories through music and song.” Or like John Graves writing Goodbye to a River, taking his dog and floating the Brazos on a canoe. The Brazos was getting dammed up, and the river as he had known it would disappear. So he floated the river and he wrote a book, which is an astonishing piece of work. And all of a sudden everybody says, “Oh, there’s our writer!” And it’s like they knew it, but they didn’t recognize it until he popped up. Maybe it’s a funny way to look at it, but we all already know everything before we get here. We’re all in the same canoe, paddling down the same stream.
