Flipping through Entertainment Weekly not too long ago, I came
across a profile on Richard Linklater. The piece included an
overview of his work as a director, adored by hip college kids
everywhere, from “Dazed and Confused” to “Waking
Life” and “Before Sunrise.” Richard Linklater is
a hipster’s wet dream: He’s both cool and artsy, his
oeuvre covers rock music and philosophy, slackers and love in
Vienna. I couldn’t help but notice that in the story’s
lead photo, Linklater was sporting a Texas Longhorns baseball cap.
Yes! He’s also, boys and girls, from Texas and likes
sports.
Having spent 10 formative years in the great city of Austin,
Texas, I couldn’t help but feel overcome by a wave of pride.
The state of Texas has always, admittedly, been easy to make fun
of. It is for the most part a very conservative place, with lots of
hicks, churches and unpopular presidential history (JFK’s
death, LBJ’s birth) in the mix. The last few years have been
particularly tough for the state’s image. Texas has gone from
quaintly conservative ““ a mostly harmless place where
rednecks can enjoy their executions and their football ““ to
Red State Central, the headquarters of a dangerously backward way
of thinking endorsed by our current president.
Nowadays, people ““ especially here at UCLA ““
can’t mention Texas without cracking some kind of joke. When
people learn I used to live there, they’re often visibly
taken aback. “But you don’t have an accent,” they
keenly observe. I’ve been asked if I ever owned a horse
(answer: never saw one until coming to California). Who’s
ignorant now? This cooler-than-thou attitude needs to be dropped,
especially by those who hold dear the films or music of many a
Texan without knowing it. The example of just one city, my hometown
of Austin, makes my point.
Back to EW, the guilty pleasure of entertainment journalism.
Just a few pages after the Linklater story was one on Ciara,
who’s dominated the pop charts for about a year now because
she’s awesome. She’s rightly associated with the
Atlanta music scene, and grew up an army brat, but a bit of trivia:
Ciara was born in Austin. America hasn’t been so in love with
a female solo artist since Beyonce, who, by the way, was also born
and raised in Texas.
If you’re too cool for the pop charts, consider that indie
bands Okkervil River and friggin’ Spoon, who have each
released one of the best records of the year, also hail from
Austin. The capital of Texas is, moreover, the self-proclaimed
live-music capital of the world (a somewhat outlandish claim, I
know), and host to SXSW (South by Southwest), which is both a
better film and music festival than any film or music festival seen
in Los Angeles.
Even more impressive, perhaps, is the list of people involved in
film who have come through Austin. If Linklater alone doesn’t
convince you, consider the story of two University of Texas
students who successfully turned a short-film project into a
feature-length. The movie was called “Bottle Rocket,”
and the two students were Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson (who went on
to direct “Rushmore,” “The Royal
Tenenbaums,” and “The Life Aquatic”).
To everyone who geeked out over “Sin City,” the
flat-out coolest movie of the year, you were watching the work of
Robert Rodriguez, an Austinite. The list of other actors and
actresses from Austin is extensive: Ethan Hawke, Renée
Zellweger, Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey, and current
“O.C.” star Benjamin McKenzie.
So the next time you encounter yet another oh-so-clever and
obvious comment about Texas (and, let me guess, MTV sucks, and the
Internet is for losers), remember Austin is the real deal, and we
all owe it a lot. And that’s just one city. Owning a few
Criterions and listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on an iPod
does not make a naysayer hip, nor does it give license to be
dismissive of others. Especially because I bet
“Tenenbaums” is one of those Criterions, and
“Kill the Moonlight” is on that iPod.
One final fact: In Playboy’s ranking of campuses with the
best-looking females, UT-Austin came out on top. If anything, the
girls are really hot, so why not lay off?
E-mail Lee at alee2@media.ucla.edu.