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PART 1 |
McCanlies' debut film, Dancer, Texas Pop. 81, is a movie in this vision. It's the tale of four high school seniors who made a pact to leave their podunk town after graduation. The story centers around the relationships of the four individuals and each of their motives for leaving.
We had the opportunity to interview Tim using questions submitted by visitors to our web site. He provided some very insightful answers. See what he had to say about the rising star cast of his movie, the Texas film community and his objective of writing more of these "human dramas."
Readers supplying the selected questions will receive a theatrical poster autographed by McCanlies. Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 arrives at MyVideoStore.com on October 13 from Columbia TriStar Home Video.
Hear excerpts of the Tim McCanlies interview in RealAudio! Get the free Real player.
INTERVIEWER:
First things first, what's the correct
title of this movie? Is it Dancer, Texas or
is it Dancer, Texas Pop. 81?
TIM McCANLIES:
Well, the official title is Dancer, Texas Pop. 81. The studio and I went back and forth about calling it just Dancer, Texas but it seems like it seemed too close to Paris, Texas and all that. Actually calling it Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 kind of tells you something about the movie I think, like a lot of good titles. It was a little cumbersome, so people tend to call it just Dancer, Texas for short. A lot of marquees have it just as that.
How long had you been
developing the script?
Cory Martin
Tacoma, Washington
TIM McCANLIES:
I wrote it, gosh, almost ten years ago. It wasn't that I was writing it all that time but I wrote it that long ago when I had moved out to L.A. with everything I owned after going to film school in Texas. I was kind of homesick for Texas and equally I was tired of a lot of the Hollywood "stupid" stuff that was coming my way. I was stuck in a two year deal at Disney and they were wanting me to write these Ernest Goes To Camp movies and stuff. I wasn't seeing much that was about people. And that was the kind of movie I wanted to see that no one seems to be making.
INTERVIEWER:
R-rated movies seem to be the norm these
days. Did you set out to write a PG-rated movie?
TIM McCANLIES:
No, it just happened. In fact we were a little worried about getting a G at one point!My reality was that life in a small town was pretty PG-rated. Not that there aren't kids who lead R-rated lives and stuff, but that wasn't the reality I saw. And nor was it the reality I experienced or wanted to show. What I was trying to do was sort of a west Texas Our Town. I guess as far as what my initial objective was. When you drive through Texas, especially out in west Texas, and you're hundreds of miles in the middle of nowhere and suddenly there's this little town. You wonder, "Well, who the hell lives here?" So I kind of wanted to answer that question in a way.
And my experience with people in Texas is that they're mostly pretty good folks. And there's not a lot of car chases and stabbings and drug dealers and stuff in these small towns. It's a pretty quiet, wholesome kind of place. That was my reality. It wasn't that those other films aren't good films as well, but this was just the film I wanted to tell.
INTERVIEWER:
What scripts did you work on while at
Disney?
TIM McCANLIES:
A lot of stuff I worked on over there didn't get made, for one reason or another. One film I wrote for them got made at Universal. It was called North Shore. That was during my deal at Disney, it was like ten years ago. [It was] kind of a low budget, little movie set in Hawaii about surfing.Since then I've worked on a lot of stuff at Warner Bros. I've kind of been kind of the script doctor, you know one of those ten guys-kind of guy. It's a well paying kind of career, but ultimately sort of frustrating. I worked on things like Little Giant, My Fellow Americans. I worked on Hard Promises, I know I'm forgetting some other ones... Shoot To Kill, I worked on that at Disney during my deal.
In all the time I was writing scripts that were more heart-felt and more personal and more about something. I was ultimately getting frustrated that I wasn't getting these other kinds of movies made. And I don't have a big agenda that Hollywood should be making nothing but wholesome films, but I think they should make an occasional one. A lot of the ones they do make, that are "family" films are sort of... I don't find a lot of those very satisfying either. They're kind of dumb and for kids and stuff.
I had written the script [for Dancer, Texas] some years before and sat on it the entire time. I didn't want some guy from New York City to direct this film about a small town in Texas because I was afraid they'd turn it into Gomer Pyle or something. So I decided I would direct it myself some day. A couple of years ago I decided the time had come and set out to raise some money. And found a couple producers who knew money guys and at the end of the day we had a couple of million dollars to go out and shoot.