Most subsequent movies and series set in North Texas (unless they were about Debbie Doing Lewd Acts) tend to have titles like Bonnie and Clyde, The Highwaymen, Candy, JFK, Jackie or Parkland. It can feel like all Dallas- and North Texas-based cinema has to offer relates to our most famous killers. However, a bevy of movies set exclusively in and around the city have demonstrated that there’s more to cinematic representation of Dallas than events involving an ax, chainsaw, vintage pistols or a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
One interesting thing about Dallas' presence in cinema is that it isn't as defined by grand, iconic landmarks of film as other big cities are. If you made a mainstream film set in New York City, you're practically obligated by contract to flaunt shots of the Empire State Building and/or the Brooklyn Bridge. Any movie set around San Francisco will inevitably feature an establishing shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Dallas has plenty of beautiful and famous locations to visit, but few (if any) of them have become visual staples of cinema with movies bending their stories to depict them.
Part of Dallas’ appeal in filmmaking is how it can easily disguise itself as other locations, like the way RoboCop utilized Dallas City Hall for a key OmniCorp building. One film in which Dallas acts as a stand-in for another location speaks to the heart of the actual city: David Byrne’s True Stories. In this 1986 movie, Dallas and nearby cities including McKinney and Allen were used to represent Virgil, Texas, with Byrne’s camera taking time to quietly examine the lives of a variety of the town's residents, such as the romantically challenged Louis Fyne, played by John Goodman.
Seeing discernible Dallas landmarks such as the NorthPark Center mall in True Stories makes it impossible to fully separate this title from the real city in which it was filmed. Through Byrne's lens, the variety of human beings explored in True Stories reflects just how excitingly varied the population of the real Dallas is. Everybody’s got a story in Virgil in True Stories, and the same can be said for the residents of Dallas.
Meanwhile, the calm, leisurely pace of True Stories makes for a fascinating counterbalance to the default intense atmosphere of Dallas movies focused on the JFK assassination. Such a grim propulsive ambiance is appropriate for such a devastating event, but it’s also not the only mode in which Dallas residents exist. Most of us weren't even around.
The intimate gaze of True Stories (though it takes place in a stand-in for the city itself) allows for more nuance in the lives of recognizably Dallas human beings and the existence they’ve carved out. And the presence of tunes from Byrne's rock band Talking Heads — most notably an extended performance of “Wild Wild Life” — against a discernibly rural backdrop further accentuates the complexities of what kind of art can exist within the confines of Dallas. It’s not all just honky-tonky ditties. Movies like True Stories reflect how all kinds of music, history and cultures exist within the borders of Dallas.
The years 1999 and 2000 gave us little mirrors to glimpse our worst parts. Office Space — filmed partially in Dallas — captured our corporate-cubicled, gray-apartment-housed, traffic-jammed lives, while Robert Altman's Dr. T and the Women nailed the old money melodrama contrived by Dallas' upper class.
On a more existential note, the quietly expansive scope of the 2017 film A Ghost Story provides interesting new wrinkles to the texture of Dallas cinema.
Director David Lowery, who calls Dallas home, shot much of A Ghost Story in Irving, and large chunks of it were captured in Dallas. The house where deceased husband C (Casey Affleck) is trapped for nearly the entirety of the film certainly looks like it could be tucked away in any foliage-covered suburb of Dallas. More importantly, the expansive scope of A Ghost Story and its choice to depict the film through the eyes of a figure who can only observe and not change the world around him becomes an apt metaphor for many existing in Dallas as the wheels of gentrification and anti-immigrant rhetoric continue to leave their mark — chipping away at the multitude of cultures that made the city.
C's gazing upon new people moving into his home and later seeing skyscrapers erected where his house once stood is already a tragic sight. The film being set in and around Dallas lends greater real-world sociopolitical weight to these devastating images. Stories about marginalized communities squeezed out of their neighborhoods make C seem like a stand-in for so many Dallas citizens who are dwarfed by the impact of capitalism.
The Tree of Life Has Dallas Roots
True Stories offered up Dallas cinema that lent insight into the multitude of souls living in Dallas, but the abstract nature of A Ghost Story functions as a darker metaphor for those same souls being brushed aside by gentrification. Intriguingly, the canon of Dallas cinema includes a pair of 2010s motion pictures with a broad gaze that spans widely across time. The expansive scope of A Ghost Story harkens back to The Tree of Life, another title shot heavily in Dallas (though the primary plotline of the film took place in Waco). This suggests that the key to making an enduring Dallas classic is crafting art that’s — in some way or another — conscious of its lengthy history.Dallas has, like everywhere, eons of history we hardly consider, long before it was colonized and named Dallas. The staggeringly wide gaze of A Ghost Story and The Tree of Life provides visually evocative ways of capturing the gargantuan legacy of Dallas long before we knew it as such.
Of course, great Dallas movies can also be most satisfying when they’re incredibly intimate. Miss Juneteenth, a 2020 Channing Godfrey Peoples movie set near Fort Worth, is one fine example of filmmakers who can canvass a broad portion of North Texas life by taking a narrower focus. This incredibly engaging feature concerns Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie), a former beauty queen, as she tries to prepare daughter Kai (Alexis Chikaeze) for the Miss Juneteenth pageant.
The general impression of Dallas in pop culture was forever shaped by the bourgeois protagonists of the TV show Dallas living in their lavish ranch with amenities to spare. Miss Juneteenth subverts that legacy by depicting leads who are discernibly working-class people who sometimes struggle to keep the lights on. Even with this class-consciousness, Turquoise Jones and Kai are not defined by their financial woes in Miss Juneteenth. It’s just one of many elements of the duo of which Godfrey People’s screenplay is conscious.
Another great thing about Miss Juneteenth is its effectiveness in capturing modern DFW life as a distinct blend of rural and city existence. It’s a nuance that keeps the story in touch with reality, but also happily subverts the typical cinematic language of “rural = uneducated” or just presumes everyone in Texas rides around on horses. We see Turquoise and her daughter at a hoedown — complete with dancing participants in cowboy boots — while the former character works at a bar with the kind of honkey-tonk vibes informing so many taverns across DFW. Meanwhile, Kai's big presentation for the Miss Juneteenth pageant eventually involves a performance of Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman," a poem that resonates deeply with her mom.
Much like the underlying importance of “Wild Wild Life” showing up in the distinctly Texas saga of True Stories, or the Dark Rooms song "I Get Overwhelmed" threading through the melancholy of A Ghost Story, cowboy boot dances and a great poet coexist peacefully within Miss Juneteenth. North Texas is home to both ranches and skyscrapers, to indie bands and honky-tonk, to Highland Park and Southfork Ranch. Chronicling its inhabitants should be as richly detailed and nuanced as the real thing, a task Miss Juneteenth accomplishes in style.
A great Dallas movie doesn’t need to be set entirely in this city or surrounding area to get added to the cinematic canon of great Texas films. Something like The Unknown Country can focus on Dallas for just a little bit and still capture the unique energy of this locale. Wandering protagonist Tana (played by the legendary Lily Gladstone) eventually makes her way to Dallas in her travels, with writer/director Morrisa Maltz capturing this figure navigating spots that would be familiar to Dallas denizens but have rarely made it into major films. The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, for instance, is the backdrop for one of Tana's most memorable Dallas excursions, and the character is initially placed in Dallas by a scene showing her riding a DART train before exiting into Cityplace/Uptown station. She even uses one of the station's elevators rather than taking all the stairs that populate that underground train station.
It’s exciting to see everyday Dallas locales make it into a major movie like The Unknown Country. It’s even more enthralling to see Tana briefly make a connection with another human being during her Dallas stay, a reflection of how you can truly meet anyone in this city, even if you’re an emotionally scarred human being adrift in the world.
Watching The Unknown Country, it’s difficult to imagine this could be the same city that appeared in A Ghost Story, True Stories or Miss Juneteenth. Within this film, the city belongs to Tana, and doesn’t Dallas mean something different to everyone who calls it home?
Whatever makes Dallas seem like home to you — whether it’s the Wild Detectives bookstore in Bishop Arts, the thriving sports scene or the gayborhood in Oak Lawn — can feel like it was made expressly for you, like they were always waiting for you to come along. That’s what defines the best Dallas movies, above all else: They’re not carbon copies of each other, much like no two Dallas lives are exactly alike.
