Eagle Pennell may be the most important independent filmmaker you’ve probably never heard of. His movies aren’t easy to see; search Amazon.com for his 1984 feature Last Night at the Alamo and you’ll find one used VHS copy available for $44.99. You won’t find his last film, Doc’s Full Service, at all. His first feature, 1979’s The Whole Shootin’ Match, has recently been restored, however, and a DVD should be available soon. And while Shootin’ Match may not be his best effort (I’d vote for Alamo), it is his most important in the grand scheme of things because of who saw it when.
The “who” was Robert Redford and the “when” was 1978, the year Shootin’ Match played what was then called the U.S. Film Festival in Park City, Utah. At the time, Redford had no involvement with the festival, but Pennell’s film got him thinking about independent, regional filmmakers and how best to support them. The result was the Sundance Film Festival and the Institute that shares its name.
But being a seminal figure in independent filmmaking didn’t pay the bills or keep Pennell on the straight and narrow. “The last time I saw Eagle Pennell was on a weekend, around midnight, on Market Square in downtown Houston,” writes Steve McVicker in the Texas Observer. “I remember it was cold, at least for Houston, so it must have been January or February of 2001, maybe 2002. Pennell looked like hell—pretty much the way you’d expect of someone who, for the last couple of years, had been living on and off the streets. He was still tall, but the way he stooped made him look smaller—not the larger-than-life, low-budget independent filmmaker he’d once been. By our last meeting, his powers—and his friends—had deserted him.”
The story of how that happened is told in the documentary The King of Texas, which premiered at this year’s SXSW and will be included on the Shootin’ Match DVD. “The sad, funny, and solemnly shot documentary is the collaborative effort of Pennell’s brother, Chuck Pinnell, and Chuck’s son—Eagle’s nephew—René Pinnell, along with Claire Huie,” McVicker writes. Their movie takes its title from a western Pennell never lived to make. No date has been announced for the release of the DVD, but watch this space for further details.