Paris, Texas - Dictionary definition of Paris, Texas | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary Paris, Texas International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers COPYRIGHT 2001 The Gale Group Inc. PARIS, TEXAS West Germany-France, 1984 Director: Wim Wenders Production: Road Movies Filmproduktion (West Berlin)/Argos Films (Paris), in association with Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Channel 4, and Project Film; in color; running time: 148 minutes; length: 13,320 feet. Released 1984. Executive producer: Chris Sievernich; producers: Don Guest, Anatole Dauman; screenplay: Sam Shepard; assistant director: Claire Denis; photography: Robby Muller; assistant photographers: Agnes Godard, Pim Tjujerman; editor: Peter Pryzgodda; assistant editor: Anne Schnee; sound editor: Dominique Auvray; sound recordist: Jean-Paul Mugel; sound re-recordist: Hartmut Eichgrun; art director: Kate Altman; music: Ry Cooder. Cast: Harry Dean Stanton (Travis Anderson); Dean Stockwell (Walter R.

Anderson); Aurore Clement (Anne Anderson); Hunter Carson (Hunter Anderson); Nastassja Kinski (Jane); Bernhard Wicki (Doctor Ulmer); Sam Berry (Gas Station Attendant); Claresie Mobley (Car Rental Clerk); Viva Auder (Woman on TV); Socorro Valdez (Carmelita); Edward Fayton (Hunter's Friend); Justin Hogg (Hunter, age 3); Tom Farrell (Screaming Man); John Lurie ("Slater"); Jeni Vici ("Stretch"); Sally Norwell ("Nurse Bibs"); Sharon Menzel (Comedienne); The Mydolls (Rehearsing Band). Awards: BAFTA Award for Best Director, 1984. Palme d'Or at Cannes, 1984. Publications Shepard, Sam, Paris, Texas (in English, French and German), edited by Chris Sievernin, Berlin, 1984. Books: Devillers, Jean-Pierre, Berlin, L.A., Berlin: Wim Wenders, Paris, 1985. Boujut, Michel, Wim Wenders, third edition, Paris, 1986.

Wenders, Wim, Written in the West: Photographien aus demAmerikanischen Western, Munich, 1987. Geist, Kathe, The Cinema of Wim Wenders: From Paris, France, toParis, Texas, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1988. Kolker, Robert P., and Peter Beicken, The Films of Wim Wenders, New York, 1993. Cook, Roger F., and Gerd Gemunden, editors, The Cinema of WimWenders: Image, Narrative and the Postmodern Condition, Detroit, 1997. Wenders, Wim, The Act of Seeing: Essays and Conversations, translated by Michael Hofmann, New York, 1999. Articles: Berthelius, M., "Drömmen om Amerika: Historien om Wim Wenders," in Chaplin (Stockholm), vol. 26, no. 3, 1984. Variety (New York), 23 May 1984. Carson, Kit, in Film Comment (New York), May-June 1984.

Bergala, Alain, and others, in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), Summer 1984. Welsh, H., in Jeune Cinéma (Paris), July-August 1984. Johnston, Sheila, in Monthly Film Bulletin (London), August 1984. "Production Diary" in Cinema (West Germany), August, September, and October 1984. Bishop, R., and T. Ryan, "Wim Wenders: An American Saga," in Cinema Papers (Melbourne), August 1984. Pym, John, "The Road from Wuppertal," in Sight and Sound (London), Autumn 1984. Ranvaud, Don, "Paris, Texas, to Sydney, Australia," in Sight andSound (London), Autumn 1984. "Special Issue" of Positif (Paris), September 1984. Simsolo, Noël, and others, in Revue du Cinéma/Image et Son (Paris), September 1984.

Goldschmidt, D., in Cinématographe (Paris), September-October 1984. Baron, Saskia, in Stills (London), October 1984. Proper, R. A. F., interview with Robby Müller, in Skoop (Amsterdam), November 1984. Simons, J., "Paris, Texas: Wim Wenders' Wedergeboorte," in Skrien (Amsterdam), November-December 1984. Film (West Germany), December 1984. Kornum Larsen, J., in Kosmorama (Copenhagen), December 1984. Verstappen, W., in Skoop (Amsterdam), December 1984-January 1985. Dieckmann, F., in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Winter 1984–85. Wooton, Adrian, in Film Directions (Belfast), Winter 1984–85. Bromet, Frans, and M. J. A. Holland, in Skoop (Amsterdam), February 1985.

Scharres, B., "Robby Müller and Paris, Texas," in American Cinematographer (Los Angeles), February 1985. Freitag, I., in Filmfaust (Frankfurt), February-March 1985. De Gaetano, R., and P. Lughi, in Cinema Nuovo (Bari), June 1985. Fantauzzi, S., "Wenders e il suo angelo," in Quaderni di Cinema (Florence), March-April 1989. Russell, D., "The American Trauma: Paris, Texas," in Movie, no. 34–35, Winter 1990. Saint-Ellier, A., "L'epuisement du droit au secours des pirates?" in Film Exchange (Paris), vol. 51, no. 3, 1990. Denzin, N.K., "Paris, Texas and Baudrillard on America," in Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 8, no. 2, 1991.

Van Oostrum, D., "Wim Wender's Euro-American Construction Site: Paris, Texas or Texas, Paris," in Florida State UniversityConference on Literature and Film, vol. 16, 1991. Luprecht, Mark, "Freud at Paris, Texas: Penetrating the Oedipal Sub-Text," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury), vol. 20, no. 2, 1992. Aldarondo, R., in Nosferatu (San Sebastian), no. 16, October 1994. Edwards, C., "Dean Stockwell," in Psychotronic Video (Narrowsburg), no. 21, 1995. Smith, R.C., "Open Narrative in Robbe-Grillet's Glissementsprogressifs du plaisir and Wim Wender's Paris, Texas," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury), vol. 23, no. 1, January 1995.

Reitinger, D.W., "Too Long in the Wasteland: Visions of the American West in Film, 1980–1990," in Film and History (Cleveland), vol. 26, no. 1/4, 1996. Falkowska, J., "American and European Voices in the Films of European Filmmakers Wim Wenders, Percy Adlon and Aki Kaurismaki," in the Canadian Journal of Film Studies (Ottawa), vol. 6, no. 1, 1997. Tunney, Tom, "Paris, Texas," in Sight and Sound (London), vol. 8, no. 1, January 1998. * * * It is not just the title of this film which suggests a meeting between Europe and America. Production involved collaboration between the director Wim Wenders, who caught the critical eye as part of the new German cinema of the 1970s, and the scriptwriter Sam Shepard, the American author of The Motel Chronicles, poems and prose about highway culture in the United States.

There was a deliberate policy of substantially developing the script as shooting progressed (indeed the script was completed by Kit Carson when Shepard departed for another commitment during production). Wenders has always been fascinated with Hollywood as a mode of representation. Many of his films approach the legacy of American cinema through a strategy of quotation. Yet Paris, Texas invests directly in an emotional folkloric tale of white America. At the same time the film opts for complexity: in particular, the present lives of the main characters are shown to be psychologically haunted by past events, and contained within the story is a special emphasis on the power of images in their own right. Paris, Texas knowingly reworks elements from both classical Hollywood and European art cinema. Whether it exhausts these categories or expresses a contemporary condition of nihilism is open to debate. Road movies and family melodramas are the chief genres on which Paris, Texas draws. However, the way in which mise-en-scène establishes a sharp contrast between humanity and nature, during the opening stages in particular, is highly reminiscent of the western. The startling drama of the opening sequence depends on the way Travis, the main character, is counterposed with the desert. Yet he lacks the clear cut motivation to triumph over this wilderness.

When collected by his brother Walt, Travis is incongruously dressed in a battered suit with a trucker's cap. He is silent, refusing to explain why he disappeared four years previously, and where he has been. In Paris, Texas the mythical conquest of nature involves recalling the hero himself from the wilderness. The latter is also a mental condition. Travis has regressed from social values, and in a sense the rest of the film is about his reintegration with American society. Travis's first articulated memory is Paris, Texas, a plot of land which he purchased and where he claims to have been conceived. One could say that Travis's return to civilisation is marked by his recall of land ownership and the nuclear family. But Paris, Texas is a painful memory. The land remains unoccupied because Travis's own family is broken. Family reunion becomes the narrative goal. The film renews a type of plot which theorists, notably Peter Wollen, have located within classical cinema. In this kind of plot the central protagonists search for an object of value which has disappeared in the past. The object may often be a woman. In Paris, Texas she is Jane, Travis's wife.

Father and son quest for her after being reunited themselves, a development which tears Hunter away from the stable and caring guardianship of Walt and Annie. The quest provides a sense of purpose lacking from Wenders's previous films. Jane's discovery promises to reveal the past and save Travis. When they finally meet in a peepshow we learn that Travis's violent desire to own Jane was an initial cause of rupture. Travis is the voyeur looking in, while Jane is confined to the sound of his voice and her reflection in a one way mirror. Somehow on a second meeting here, they achieve a degree of mutual recognition, finding catharsis through confession to one another. The narrative winds down as the film alternates between them, finally moving to her side of the partition. Slight changes of camera angle open up the oppressed space. Quick cuts between them express the return of a bond, and at the end of the scene Travis turns off his booth light so that Jane can see him. He is resigned, distant, an illuminated image, the ghostly but overwhelming memory which has returned to Jane. Thus, in a powerful fashion, through a cinematic array of devices, we are presented with an imaginary realm within the fiction.

Throughout, a form of dominance is attributed to the image itself: Paris, Texas remains a crumpled photograph; the family is only seen united, enjoying themselves in a super 8 film. Meanwhile America itself appears to be filtered through the processes of representation. Not only is the country portrayed as the endless space of the road movie, but also through such motifs as the Statue of Liberty, which pops up in the background of one shot as a mural. This detail connotes Americana, a symbolic substitute for the nation. While, the action is strictly kept to the periphery of cities, the identity of America remains mysterious, a miragelike entity viewed from the distant perspective of Travis, the outsider. Maybe one reason why a European filmmaker can deal with American mythology in the 1980s is because Hollywood's stable representations of the nation are increasingly worked through high-tech science fiction, spectacle, and more marginal discourses than in the classical era. Paris, Texas is surely aware of this. After all, Hunter is depicted as a Star Wars fan. With the older mythologies vacated by the heavyweights of Hollywood, Paris, Texas is left free to renew a language which is more imaginary than ever.

—Daniel Williams Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA Paris, Texas (film) | Wiki | Everipedia × Want to change something on this page or create your own? Register today, it's fast and free. Paris, Texas (film) Box Office Mojo film ID paristexas Paris, Texas is a 1984 drama film directed by Wim Wenders and starring Harry Dean Stanton , Dean Stockwell , Nastassja Kinski , and Hunter Carson . The screenplay was written by L.M. Kit Carson and playwright Sam Shepard , and the distinctive musical score was composed by Ry Cooder . The cinematography was by Robby Müller . The film was a co-production between companies in France and West Germany, and was filmed in the United States. The plot focuses on an amnesiac (Stanton) who, after mysteriously wandering out of the desert, attempts to reconnect with his brother (Stockwell) and seven-year-old son (Carson). He and his son end up embarking on a voyage through the American Southwest to track down his long-missing wife (Kinski).

The film unanimously won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival from the official jury, as well as the FIPRESCI Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury . [4] The film has been released on DVD and Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection . Plot Travis Henderson ( Harry Dean Stanton ) is walking alone across a vast South Texas desert landscape. Looking for water, he enters a saloon and collapses. He is treated by a doctor ( Bernhard Wicki ), but does not speak or respond to questions. The doctor finds a phone number on Travis, calls the Los Angeles number, and reaches his brother, Walt Henderson ( Dean Stockwell ), who agrees to pick him up. When Walt arrives in Texas , he discovers that Travis is gone. When he finds him wandering alone, Walt tells his silent brother that he will take him back to Los Angeles. They stop at a motel, but Travis wanders off again. Walt finds him, and the two drive to a diner, where Walt begins to question the still silent Travis more forcefully about his disappearance. Walt and his wife, Anne ( Aurore Clément ), have not heard from Travis in four years.

After Travis abandoned his son Hunter ( Hunter Carson ), Walt and Anne took care of him for four years. Travis is visibly moved by the mention of his son, and tears flow from his eyes. Travis finally breaks his silence when he is looking at a map and remarks " Paris ," talking about how he'd like to go there, although Walt mistakenly thinks that he is talking about France , telling him that it is a little out of the way. When Travis refuses to fly, Walt rents a car, and the brothers begin a two-day road trip back to Los Angeles. The next day, as the two brothers continue their journey, Travis shows Walt a weathered photograph of a vacant lot. He explains that he purchased the property in Paris, Texas , a town he believes is the place where he was conceived, based on a story told by their mother. When they arrive in Los Angeles, Travis meets Anne and the son whom he abandoned four years earlier. Hunter is uncomfortable around this stranger who is his father. Walt shows some old home movies, hoping to evoke good memories and help break the ice between the father and son.

The movies show Travis with his wife, Jane ( Nastassja Kinski ), and their young son, sharing a day at the beach. In the coming days, the relationship between Travis and his son slowly grows, and a bond of trust between the two starts to develop. Anne tells Travis that although she has not heard from Hunter's mother for a long time, she still deposits money into a bank account for her son on the same day each month. She reveals the name of the bank in Houston , where the deposits are made. Travis becomes determined to find his lost wife, and when he tells his son that he plans to travel to Houston to find his mother, the boy says he will accompany him. Travis and Hunter leave for Texas without telling Walt and Anne. During their journey, Travis and Hunter grow closer, with Hunter sharing things he learned in school, and Travis sharing his memories. When they arrive in Houston on the expected day of deposit, Hunter spots his mother leaving the bank. They follow her to a parking lot of a peep show club. Telling Hunter to wait in the car, Travis enters the club, containing rooms where customers sit behind one-way mirrors and tell the strippers what they want to see via telephone.

The women cannot see the customers. Travis is shocked, but ends up in a room opposite Jane. After several minutes of awkward silence, Travis walks out, returns to the car, and drives to a bar, where he begins to drink. The next day, Travis drops Hunter off at the Méridien Hotel in downtown Houston , and heads back to the club. Travis enters a room with Jane on the other side of the one-way mirror. He picks up the phone, turns his chair away from her, and tells her a story of a man and a young girl who fell in love, married, and had a child, probably before they were ready. At first, Jane is confused by the story, but she soon realizes who is on the other side of the glass, and that the story is that of their relationship. Travis describes how the couple's love turned from being joyful to stifling, explains how the drunken man suffocated the young girl with his jealousy and control, and tells how he came to loathe himself and why he disappeared to a place "without language or streets" — never wanting to see anyone again. When Travis prepares to leave, Jane urges him to stay.

She tells how hard it was to leave him, that for years she thought of him often. Travis finally faces the glass, turns a lamp on his face so Jane can see him, and tells her where she can find Hunter, asking her to go there and reunite with her son. Jane agrees and Travis leaves the room. Later that night, Jane enters the hotel room where Hunter is waiting, and they reunite at last. Travis watches from the parking lot and then leaves Houston behind him, driving alone. Cast Mydolls as Rehearsing Band Production Wenders said the film shot in only four to five weeks, with only a small group working the last weeks, very short and fast. There was a break in shooting during which time the script was completed. [5] Filmmaker Allison Anders worked as a production assistant on the film. [5] Title The film is named for the Texas town of Paris, but no footage was shot there: filming largely took place in Fort Stockton and Marathon in the Trans-Pecos region of west Texas; and Nordheim , southeast of San Antonio. Instead, Paris is referred to as the location of a vacant lot owned by Travis that is seen in a photograph.

His obsession with the town appears to be based on the notion that his parents indicated to him that he was probably conceived there. The photograph shows a desert landscape, although in reality Paris lies on the edge of the forests in Northeast Texas and the flat to gently-rolling humid farmland of the north-central part of that state, far from any desert. Paris, Texas, is mentioned on page 123 of W.H. Davies ' cult classic The Autobiography of a Supertramp , 1908, a possible source for the title of the film. Style Paris, Texas is notable for its images of the Texas landscape and climate. The first shot is a bird's eye-view of the desert, a bleak, dry, alien landscape. Shots follow of old advertisement billboards, placards, graffiti, rusty iron carcasses, old railway lines, neon signs, motels, seemingly never-ending roads, and Los Angeles, finally culminating in some famous scenes shot outside a drive-through bank in Downtown Houston . The film's production design was by Kate Altman. The cinematography is typical of Robby Müller 's work, a long-time collaborator of Wim Wenders .

The film is accompanied by a slide-guitar score by Ry Cooder , based on Blind Willie Johnson 's " Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground ". Reception After its premiere at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival , the film went on to sweep the top prizes from all three juries at Cannes: the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) from the official jury, the FIPRESCI Prize , and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury . [4] It was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1985 and again in 2006 as part of the Sundance Collection category. [6] The film also won the BAFTA Awards for Best Director and was nominated for Best Film and other categories. Paris, Texas currently has a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes , a review aggregator , based on 28 reviews with an average rating of 8.3 out of 10. [7] Critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, particularly praising the performance of Hunter Carson .

Summarizing his review of the film, Ebert wrote "Paris, Texas is a movie with the kind of passion and willingness to experiment that was more common fifteen years ago than it is now. It has more links with films like Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy , than with the slick arcade games that are the box-office winners of the 1980s. It is true, deep, and brilliant." [8] Newsweek referred to the film as "a story of the United States, a grim portrait of a land where people like Travis and Jane cannot put down roots, a story of a sprawling, powerful, richly endowed land where people can get desperately lost." [9] The New York Times' Vincent Canby gave the film a mixed review, writing, "The film is wonderful and funny and full of real emotion as it details the means by which Travis and the boy become reconciled. Then it goes flying out the car window when father and son decide to take off for Texas in search of Jane." [10] The film has had an enduring legacy, where it has been a favorite film of critics like Guy Lodge of The Guardian .

[11] Musician/Writer Matt Selou believes there are many similarities to the film Harry and Tonto - especially with the protagonist trying to fly but for some reason having to turn back at the airport and taking a car for the long distance. There's also the similarity of the young, new person in the protagonist's life to seek out someone they hadn't seen in years. In popular culture Irish rock group U2 cite Paris, Texas as an inspiration for their album The Joshua Tree . [12] Scottish bands Travis and Texas both took their names from this film. [13] [14] Late musicians Kurt Cobain and Elliott Smith claimed this was their favorite movie of all time. [15] Defunct instrumental rock band The Six Parts Seven used samples from the film at the beginning of the song "From California to Houston, on Lightspeed". The song's title is also an homage to the film.

Jane Henderson's line "Yep, I know that feeling" is sampled on Primal Scream 's 1991 album Screamadelica , at the end of the song "I'm Comin' Down"; it is also repeated in the song "Space Angel Station" on the 1994 Drum Club album Drums Are Dangerous. Dialogue from the film is sampled during the song "O.O.B.E." on the album Live 93 by The Orb . Dialogue "Do you think he still loves her? How would I know that Hunter? I think he does." is sampled during the song "She Stands Up" on M83 by the band M83 . Travis Touchdown from the 2008 Grasshopper Manufacture video game No More Heroes is named after the main character.

Harry Dean Stanton - Biography - IMDb Harry Dean Stanton Jump to: Overview (2) | Mini Bio (1) | Trivia (14) | Personal Quotes (19) Overview (2) 5' 8" (1.73 m) Mini Bio (1) Prolific character actor Harry Dean Stanton's drooping, weather-beaten appearance and superb acting talent have been his ticket to appearing in over 100 films, and 50 TV episodes. Stanton was born in West Irvine, Kentucky, to Ersel (Moberly), a cook, and Sheridan Harry Stanton, a barber and tobacco farmer. Stanton served as a cook in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and was on board an LST during the Battle of Okinawa. He then returned to the University of Kentucky to appear in a production of "Pygmalion", before heading out to California and honing his craft at the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse. Stanton then toured around the United States with a male choir, worked in children's theater, and then headed back to California.

His first role on screen was in the tepid movie Tomahawk Trail (1957), but he was quickly noticed and appeared regularly in minor roles as cowboys and soldiers through the late 1950s and early 1960s. His star continued to rise and he received better roles in which he could showcase his laid-back style, such as in Cool Hand Luke (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather: Part II (1974), and in Alien (1979). It was around this time that Stanton came to the attention of director Wim Wenders , who cast him in his finest role yet as Travis in the moving Paris, Texas (1984). Next indie director Alex Cox gave Stanton a role that really brought him to the forefront, in the quirky cult film Repo Man (1984).

Stanton was now heavily in demand, and his unique look got him cast as everything from a suburban father in the mainstream Pretty in Pink (1986) to a soft-hearted, but ill-fated, private investigator in Wild at Heart (1990) and a crazy yet cunning scientist in Escape from New York (1981). Apart from his film performances, Stanton is also an accomplished musician, and "The Harry Dean Stanton Band" and their unique spin on mariachi music have been playing together for well over a decade. They have toured internationally to rave reviews. Stanton became a cult figure of cinema and music and when Debbie Harry sang the lyric "I want to dance with Harry Dean..." in her 1990s hit "I Want That Man", she was talking about him. As he moved into the time in his life when most other people would be calling it a day, Harry Dean Stanton has remained consistently active on screen, most recently appearing in films including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), The Green Mile (1999) and The Man Who Cried (2000).

A true gem amongst character actors, and with an on screen presence capable of adding that something extra to any production. - IMDb Mini Biography By: firehouse44 Trivia (14) He fronts a band called "The Harry Dean Stanton Band" which regularly performs in the Los Angeles area. He sings and plays guitar. The band plays a mix of jazz, pop, and tex-mex styles. The band often plays in Hollywood at 'Jack's Sugar Shack'. Prior to 1971, he was credited in films and on TV as Dean Stanton so as to avoid any confusion with character actor Harry Stanton , both of whom would appear together in a 1969 episode of Petticoat Junction (1963). Harry Dean Stanton later co-starred in The Green Mile (1999), which has a character named Dean Stanton. The name of his musical group was originally "Harry Dean Stanton and the Repo Men". Was tied up and pistol-whipped at his home in L.A. after a robbery. The thieves then took off in the actor's car, but were soon apprehended after the car was traced by a tracking device. Stanton suffered only minor injuries.

[January 1996] Lived in Lexington, Kentucky and graduated from Lafayette Senior High School with the class of 1944. Was Best Man at the wedding of Jack Nicholson and Sandra Knight . After their divorce, Nicholson lived for a time with Stanton. Had a small role as a jail guard in the 1978 Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong film Up in Smoke (1978), but his scenes were cut. Critic Roger Ebert so admires him that he created the "Stanton-Walsh Rule," which states that "no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad." Ebert later admitted that Dream a Little Dream (1989), in which Stanton appeared, was a "clear violation" of this rule. 1988: Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival. Was drafted into the Navy in World War II. He was in the Battle of Okinawa. Stanton has been named as a favorite actor by characters in novels by Elmore Leonard . Skip Gibbs, a serial bomber in the novel Freaky Deaky, watches Straight Time (1978) because Stanton is his favorite actor.

Two characters in Leonard's novel Maximum Bob chat about how much the novel's title character resembles Stanton, an actor they both admire. Stanton did not appear in the Maximum Bob (1998) TV series, but did have a role in The Big Bounce (2004), also based on an Elmore Leonard novel. As of 2014, has appeared in three films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: How the West Was Won (1962), The Godfather: Part II (1974) and The Green Mile (1999). Of those, only The Godfather: Part II (1974) won in the category. In an interview with Marc Maron on his WTF Podcast in 2013, Stanton mentioned that he was offered the lead in an unnamed series as a private investigator for director John Carpenter , but turned it down as he didn't want so much work (it wasn't said when this was that the offer or series took place, and it doesn't seem like the series ever got made). Was in a relationship with Rebecca De Mornay from 1981-83.

Personal Quotes (19) I've been rather like a cat. I'm finicky and I've done a lot of things, and made career choices, missed meetings and so forth that would have made me a much bigger actor, I think. But, by the same token, that would have demanded more of my time, too. [on his role in Paris, Texas (1984)] The whole film evolved on a very organic level. It almost had a documentary feel to it. It wasn't odd to be in the lead, I took the same approach as I would to any other part. I play myself as totally as I possibly can. My own Harry Dean Stanton act . . . I don't know whatever happened to Travis. I'd say . . . it's me. Still searching for liberation, or enlightenment, for lack of a better way to put it, and realizing that it might happen, it might not. I've always been a singer; it's not new to me. I've been singing since I was a child. I've always had a guitar and a harmonica and I played drums in high school -- in a marching band, anyway.

I like different kinds of music and I'm exploring them: ballads, blues, blues-rock, country rock, whatever. I'm just focusing on singing a lot so I can get good at it. But don't say I play "country music." It's just another label, like "character actor." One term simply can't say it all. I'm a late bloomer. It's just a matter of how you evolve; of what your pace is. Hopefully, the older you get the more you grow. So, that has been my speed, the beat of my drum. I march to the beat of a different drum -- you'll pardon me for using this expression. Early on the whole point of acting was mostly getting a job and then the experience of doing it. But when I did Ride in the Whirlwind (1966) with Jack Nicholson in 1965 I discovered there was more to it than that. It was a key film for me because of that. Jack told me not to do anything, just let the wardrobe do the acting. It was a great revelation that became an acting principle. To be rather than to do. You have to behave on screen as much as you do in real life.

You don't kill anyone in life, but you understand the anger that may bring it about. I felt very much at home on the stage, more so than off it because I could express everything that I couldn't express elsewhere -- yes, anger, but also tenderness. It's not always easy to be as gentle as you wish to be. As a child, I felt rage against adults who didn't treat me as a person, adults that were brutalized themselves by having an angry, vindictive God watching them all the time. I come from a broken home and I realize it's the rule rather than the exception. Hopefully it's a life positive thing that I've been been blessed to be balled into for a lack of a better way to put it. I find younger people less conditioned and therefore more alive. I don't take a paternal or authority position with them; I don't play mentor. I try to relate to them on a peer level. I'm trying to function totally in the moment. It's certainly not an ideal situation. I don't want to be whipping myself to the point where I have no joy in doing it, you know? But that has been a problem with too many artists -- too much pain and not enough joy.

I want to be able to work and enjoy it more and it takes a lifetime to learn that. I'm enjoying it more and more; I'm learning that. Someone printed on a Thai temple, "How joyous I am now that I've learned there's no such thing as happiness." Pretty good, huh? Acting is my connection to the community, with the world at large. I hope what I do benefits the community without being moralizing. I've always felt as an outsider. I've been rebellious against any iconoclastic thing. It's true about the industry, but also about society as a whole. I don't blame anyone, but I think that society is negative in that people are terrified to be free. I was born on the edge of the mountains in Kentucky and now although I live in Hollywood I still feel more related to nature. It's an attitude. I have a pool, but it's to do laps in, not a status symbol. Usually, I just play myself. Whatever psychological traumas or conflicts I'm going through at the time I try to put into the role. Sometimes it's quite a feat to pull off, but sometimes it works.

If it doesn't correspond to the dilemmas of the character, then I don't do the film. [on his disdain for labels] When you label something, you dismiss it. Ultimately the atomic physicists--[ Albert Einstein , Niels Bohr , [ Martin Heisenberg ]--all agreed that science couldn't answer the mystery of the universe. So I was impressed with all that. Once it gets organized--even if it's Buddhism or Taoism or Kabbalah--I'm not a member. Einstein said Buddhism was the only religion that could cope with modern scientific needs. So they arrived at the same place the Buddhists did 2,500 years ago. There's no answer to any of it. That's liberating. It's an enlightening concept. I learn about myself. There is no self. You learn you're not a self. You learn you're nothing. Ultimately. Hopefully. When you're deep asleep and not dreaming, where the fuck are you? There's total blackness, it's nothing, right? So I'm hoping that's what death is, that it's all gonna go. I don't want to deal with any consciousness afterward. [asked to describe himself] As nothing.

There is no self...I'm big into Eastern concepts. The horror of life, the love of children, the whole phantasmagoria--it's all meaningless. Be still and see what happens. All of this unfolds perfectly, You've got to get beyond consciousness. You get older. In the end, you end up accepting everything in your life -- suffering, horror, love, loss, hate -- all of it. It's all a movie anyway, the whole phantasmagoria -- it's all meaningless. There is no answer to any of it ultimately. It's just what is. There is only the moment. Be still and see what happens. All of this unfolds perfectly. You've got to get beyond consciousness. If I like the role, I'll just do it. I don't care how small it is. There are no small parts. You know that old saying, right? There are only small actors. See also

Question: In music, which group named themselves after the main character in the 1984 film Paris, Texas?
Answer: Travis