Tender Mercies.

I entered the Texas Monthly blogging contest, where the Alamo Drafthouse and TM magazine put on a rolling roadshow of Texan movies...I wanted it so bad. I didn't get it. So here is my failed entry.


There are some films that hit you in your gut. There are some that hit you in your heart. And, there’s the occasional one that comes out of nowhere to hit you right smack in the nose, making you fall to the floor weeping like a two-year-old child. Tender Mercies did such a thing to me. I was blissfully unaware of the cathartic emotional breakdown I would go through in the 100 minutes of watching the 1983 Texan drama starring Robert Duvall and Tess Harper. It had popped up on my “suggested movies” list on Netflix, and being the good Texan and classic country music fan that I am, I willingly obliged.

Now, as a 26-year-old, I realize I haven’t had time yet for any real heartbreak and troubled past and drinking problems. But that’s how I realized what an honest and unflinching and true performance Robert Duvall gave--because I felt like a middle-aged, recovering alcoholic country singer after watching him as the faded Mac Sledge.

This film couldn’t have been shot on a sound stage in Los Angeles or a generic small town with good tax incentives in New Mexico. No sir, this kind of tangible magic could only happen in Waxahachie, Texas. The little town you glance over on your way to Dallas or Fort Worth, it’s a testament to big blue skies and waves of dead grass shimmering in the summer heat.

What I’m most drawn to watching Tender Mercies again is the sound--or lack of it. The scuff of a boot scraping mud against a door frame, the wind ruffling Sonny’s hair, Duvall’s sun-weathered hands delicately stroking the strings of his guitar--each sound is so pure and piercing that it further contributes to the movie’s stark, simplistic feel.

Not one note is overdone or false or pretentious. The acting, the weathered Mariposa Motel, the Slater Mill Boys band...it takes me back to a place I hope still exists. And Wilford Brimley. MY GOD Wilford Brimley. Is there a better character actor out there? (My apologies to Karl Malden.)

Though I wasn’t alive when Tender Mercies came out, I hope to sit on the steps of the Waxahachie courthouse this June and feel its emotional honesty in my gut, my heart, and my nose once more.

I just hope I can keep the crying to a minimum.