Texas is home to thousands of films and television shows, and throughout the state you can still see artifacts of film history left behind. Like the famed “DOM” graffiti on the rock in Big Bend from Kevin Costner’s first film, Fandango. Or the now-restored “home of Leatherface” in Kingsland (where you can actually dine). The courthouse from True Grit, the bank from Bonnie and Clyde, the water tower from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape — all iconic parts of film history and all places you can still visit.
But who’s responsible for taking these locations from ordinary to iconic?
Well, if a movie or television project set up shop in Texas between 1983 and 2005, chances are Tom Copeland had a hand in it. During that stretch, Copeland worked for the Texas Film Commission, a government agency tasked with servicing the film industry and bringing film, television and now video game projects to the state.
“I’ve been around awhile,” Copeland laughs. In fact, he came into the business 43 years ago, first as a theater major at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) in San Marcos. At the time, Copeland acted in anything and everything he could, culminating in about 25 different theater productions. Then, one day, some big trucks rolled into town, and Copeland got his first taste of Hollywood.
“I’d never seen a motion picture company work,” Copeland says. “All these people came into town with all these trucks and cameras and equipment. Some of my friends and I thought that because we were in the theater department, they’d use us as actors. Of course, that wasn’t the case.”
But the experience did pique Copeland’s curiosity and expose him to the nascent Texas Film Commission, which the state established in 1971. “I learned there was an actual state office bringing this stuff to town,” he says. The office also served as a job-finding platform for film crews. Crew members registered with the office, and when a film company called looking for people who could work, the office offered up the various registrants as options.
Copeland eventually did get a chance to act in a movie when The Great Waldo Pepper came to film in San Marcos the next year. The Robert Redford picture about a World War I veteran pilot cast Copeland as an extra, an experience that quickly redirected his aspirations from acting to behind-the-scenes work. “I learned pretty quickly,” he laughs, “that I wasn’t going to have a career as an actor.”
LANDING A ROLE Extras work in The Great Waldo Pepper, a film starring Robert Redford that filmed in San Marcos, inspired Copeland, a theater major, to pursue behind-the-scenes work instead of acting.
Copeland’s strong work ethic and natural curiosity took him a half-hour north to Austin, where he spent some time working on Austin City Limits, primarily as a makeup artist (thanks once again to his work in theater). But films kept coming to the area, and several of Copeland’s coworkers kept making money by going to work on the set. So he followed suit.
“The first film I worked on was Secrets Of the Bermuda Triangle, and they should probably stay secrets,” Copeland jokes. The film used Camp Gary in San Marcos as the Florida airport. A few months later, Copeland landed another production assistant (PA) gig on a film and quit working for Austin City Limits.
So what exactly is this glamorous world of being a PA? “Here’s the definitive answer,” Copeland says. “They do jobs nobody else wants to do. It’s the entry into the business.”
Copeland’s last PA job was 1978’s Piranha, a film that Copeland says was both a complete and total mess and a springboard for a lot of careers outside of Texas. Copeland worked on the cult horror classic by basically filling in for the differ- ent roles of people who quit during filming. He worked on the second unit, which pretty much did all the stunts. “I almost drowned,” Copeland says, “and nobody cared.”
He also got his first taste of work as a location manager, which felt like a natural fit for Copeland. That role typically involves finding the right places to set up and film different shots on set — an early harbinger of his future role in shaping big Texas film moments.
After Piranha wrapped, Copeland knew he couldn’t keep working grueling sets like that. “They worked us 17 or 18 hours a day and paid us less because Texas is a right-to-work state,” Copeland says, referring to the absence of unions protecting worker interests. “It’s really abuse.”
Copeland instead spent years doing whatever he could to keep working. He filmed commercials in Dallas and did the makeup for every major politician who rolled through the state between 1978 and 1983. “You did whatever you had to do,” Copeland says.
He went to the East Coast for a little while and also ruled out a full-time move to Los Angeles. Copeland grew up in the Lubbock area and spent a lot of time working in Central Texas, Dallas and Houston. “I’m a Texas guy,” he says.
It just so happens that years of work in the industry and a love for the Lone Star State was the perfect combination for a new position at the Texas Film Commission in 1983 — Location Scout. In short, Copeland needed to know just about every nook and cranny of the state so that when production companies called, he could help them realize the visions of their scripts.
“They’d give you a script and you’d read it, then come up with multiple locations that might work,” Copeland says. “You try to interpret what the director wants. Some people are good at it, and some people just suck. I’m a visual and a naturally curious person. So I’d call different people around the state and tell them what I was looking for, then I’d go out there and sometimes where they sent me was just so wrong. It’s like, ‘I know I described it better than that.’ But I’d always come up with lots of locations, and they’d usually leave happy. About 90 percent of the time we got it right.”
Copeland says Texas is an easy product to sell thanks to its range of filming options. But its greatest asset can also sometimes be its trickiest variable. “Things change, so will it be the same as when you saw it years ago?” he says. “Buildings burn down, people renovate downtowns. And it’s not just locations. Companies want crew information and climato- logical information. You have to be an expert on Texas in general.”
Copeland excelled, and, 22 years later, retired from the Texas Film Commission as the director who, from 1995 to 2005, oversaw the creation of more than 600 films and television shows with cumulative budgets of more than $3 billion.
Now, that’s not to say every project brought to life was a riveting work of art. There was a stretch of time where the office worked a lot of TV movies they not-so-lovingly called the “disease of the week.” You know, those movies that are “ripped from the headlines.” But even in those instances, Copeland knew it was about getting jobs and opportunities for the state.
And it’s a competitive market. Texas is bat- tling against states like New Mexico and Louisiana for big projects. One of Copeland’s fondest wins? Lonesome Dove, the four-episode miniseries based on Larry McMurtry’s novel with a script by Bill Wittliff and starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones and Danny Glover. It remains one of the most critically and commercially successful projects of its kind.
“That was a big one for me,” Copeland says. He and his team went “pedal to the metal” on securing the miniseries, because they knew they were competing with New Mexico. And even though they knew they couldn’t provide the snowcapped mountain scenes, Copeland was positive they could win the production with areas along the Rio Grande and in Austin. At the end of the day, Copeland estimates they filmed about 70 percent of the project in Texas.
For those who want to visit their favorite filming locations in the state, the Texas Film Commission provides great resources. Those include their “Texas Film Trails” feature on the website, which highlights different routes that cover historic locations for projects like Giant, Logan’s Run, Terms Of Endearment, Dallas and Urban Cowboy. Copeland says it never ceases to amaze him the number of people who are superfans of certain movies and want to visit every filming location possible.
But for his part, Copeland transitioned back to education in 2005. He returned to Texas State to work in the theater department, creating a one-of-a-kind program that helps theater students prepare for careers in the film industry.
“It never made sense to me that the theater department and the film school never worked together,” Copeland says. So he created a program that helped talented and hungry theater students understand and work in film. “I started by teaching them how the business actually works and how to get and keep a job,” Copeland laughs. “And I told my network that I’m the Southern distributor of production assistants. Every kid who walks out of this class is prepared to be the best PA they can be. And because of that, my network and connections call me asking for interns and assistants.”
Copeland thinks the school is probably a year or so away from creating a proper major. But with the staff he’s brought in — educators who are also still fully engrossed in the filmmaking scene — “It’s a full service sort of program,” he says, “and I don’t think there are many places in the country with something like it.”
With any luck, the influx of talented and trained students will inspire the state to incentivize more filmmaking in Texas. In the early 2000s, Canada started giving big tax incentives for companies to film there. Other states like New Mexico and Louisiana followed suit, and suddenly tons of big-budget films and television shows chose Texas’ neighbors over the Lone Star State.
But everything that made Texas such a desirable location from the 1970s through early 2000s is still there. Lawmakers just need to understand how beneficial incentivizing the industry is. “It’s an education issue,” Copeland says. “A lot of politicians don’t get it, because they don’t see the jobs created as permanent jobs. But every time a movie or show comes to film, it’s like a moving factory. Every day they go to different areas and counties and spend a ton of money, hiring a lot of local crew.”
Take, for instance, the HBO show The Leftovers, which created a $1.7 million economic impact on the town of Lockhart alone. Or look at Atlanta, Georgia, which embraced heavy film incentives years ago. As a result, the Georgia film industry brought $8.9 billion to the state, $3 billion of which stayed behind last year alone.
“This past year, Texas was $8 billion in the hole,” Copeland says. “The industry can really help with that. We just have to figure it out.”
