After his debut screenplay for The Black Stallion caught Hollywood’s eye in 1979, Bill Wittliff got the same advice over and over. Take to the West Coast, everyone said.
His simple response, as son Reid recalls in a new documentary: “If I can’t do it from Austin, I guess I’m not gonna do it.”
The late writer’s devotion to the place that made him comes through every frame of A Man of Vision: The Bill Wittliff Story, premiering Sunday at the State Theatre during the 33rd Austin Film Festival.
Wittliff’s Emmy-nominated writing on the 1989 TV adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove helped shape the Western genre for a generation. He penned memorable movie roles for Willie Nelson in Honeysuckle Rose, Barbarosa and Red Headed Stranger, which Wittliff also directed. Literary critics mention his name in the same breath as giants like Cormac McCarthy and J. Frank Dobie.
“Although Wittliff was highly successful, he would not leave Texas for Hollywood. He made Hollywood come to him,” said Marise McDermott, executive director of the Wittliff Collections in San Marcos. “In a way, that helped pave the way to grow the Texas film industry.”
In that sense, the film’s director, Elizabeth Mims, is part of his legacy. Her subject’s towering legacy inspired an overwhelming thought as she prepared to shoot: “Damn, better not mess this up.”
An Austin native, Mims grew up on moviemaking tales from her writer/director father, Steve. They bonded over dates to the Paramount Summer Classic Film Series, captivated by Lawrence of Arabia and The Guns of Navarone. (In a full-circle moment, her dad shot the interviews for A Man of Vision.)
As a teenager, she made a short film that got into the South by Southwest Film Festival. After graduating from Austin High School, she honed her craft at CalArts. The person-to-person element of documentary filmmaking fascinated her. Weaving different perspectives into a cohesive story seemed like a challenge worth pursuing.
“It feels like fishing to me,” she said. “You go out in the morning; you don’t know what you’re gonna catch. Then you’re like, look at this big bass.”
That curiosity led to Mims’ debut feature, Only the Young, a 2012 documentary she co-directed with Jason Tippet. It screened at Austin Film Festival, and a couple years later, Mims started working for the fest. Today, she’s an executive producer of its “On Story” series.
Wittliff had strong ties to the festival, which named an annual screenwriting honor after him in 1995. Mims never properly met him before he died in 2019, but he was a mentor to festival co-founder Barbara Morgan. A few years ago, she and Mims started kicking around an idea for a docuseries exploring the different artists represented in the Wittliff Collections.
While trying to better understand the man behind the archive, A Man of Vision took shape. Mims was particularly taken by Wittliff’s inseparable relationship to Texas. As William Broyles Jr., Wittliff’s friend and fellow screenwriter, says in the documentary: “If you didn’t want to come to Texas, that’s fine, but Bill was happy to go do something else.” For years, film industry movers and shakers made the pilgrimage to his office on Baylor Street.
Sally Wittliff, Bill’s wife, figures prominently in the documentary, depicted as an essential creative and professional partner. Tommy Lee Jones shows up to tell stories about Lonesome Dove. Wittliff’s words appear on-screen to punctuate key moments.
The documentary also explores his spiritual side. He was famously unafraid to acknowledge the unseen, hailed in some posthumous tributes as a shaman of sorts.
Fittingly, Mims felt a connection to something cosmic throughout production. She journaled to ask him for advice. On the way to one key meeting, she asked him to send her a signal. She interpreted the blinking light of her car’s console as an obliging response.
“There’s been a lot of pieces that have come together in a very magical way — in a way that I feel like Bill has helped,” she said.
When A Man of Vision premieres at the writer-focused Austin Film Festival, Mims thinks he’ll have something to say to the audience, too.
“[The film] is about the absolute grind of creating things that maybe no one will ever see,” Mims said.
Living in Wittliff’s world for so long, Mims also learned that an artistic legacy like his can be built only through hard work. This renaissance man had a ranch hand’s mentality.
“If I get up and I don’t do some of these things, you know, it’s funny,” she said. “I can feel Bill being like, ‘All right, get to work. It’s time.’”
Austin Film Festival runs Oct. 29 to Nov. 5. For more information, go to austinfilmfestival.com.