Harry and Dean
The late stars of Paris, Texas
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On 5 March, my social media timelines filled with posthumous birthday tributes to the late actor Dean Stockwell, who died in November last year at the age of 85. For this week’s letter, I’ve compiled two short, complementary, and previously-published pieces of mine about my favorite Stockwell-starring film, Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984), in which Stockwell played Walt, the kindly, stolid brother of drifter Travis (Harry Dean Stanton, who died in 2017.) Paris, Texas is available to stream in multiple places, including on the Criterion Channel. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s not an especially plot-heavy film—and it’s also nearly forty years old—so spoiler alerts seem a little absurd. That said, the following does include some plot description, so if you do want to go into the film completely fresh, fire up Paris, Texas and come back to this piece in 145 beautiful yet mysterious and emotionally tenebrous minutes!
A quick note on Dean Stockwell, who has died at the age of 85. Owing to my Grandma's love of Quantum Leap, Stockwell was one of the first actors I ever recognized as such. Not just a face on the telly, but a real performer, a presence. And what a face! So rich and craggy, with eyebrows that say more than most actors’ whole bodies. I didn't know then, of course—I was five or six!—just how versatile he was, how long he'd been around, or how rattled I'd be when he popped up in Blue Velvet; that wise face transformed into something so debauched and malign that I get a chill even thinking about his scenes.
But the indelible one for me is Paris, Texas, from where the accompanying still is pulled. It's the last time we see him, 82 minutes into a film that has been retroactively and understandably memed to suggest that there are only two people in it: Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski.
I've wrestled with this film a lot over the years, and tried to figure out why I keep returning to it, even though I find it so incredibly upsetting. I think the key is Stockwell’s Walt, who knows from the jump that his patient commitment to reintegrating his brother into society, if successful, necessarily spells the destruction of the loving family unit he has created for his brother's son Hunter (Hunter Carson.) There are no grand gestures for Walt and his wife Anne (Aurore Clément), just quiet love replaced by an equally hushed pain. Travis, conversely, is all grand gestures, which he mistakes for impactful fatherhood. But when he vanishes at the end, he’s left two people bereft, and withdrawn his own support for mother and child in lieu of yet another grand gesture.
It's arguable that the film romanticizes Travis by mythologizing him, and throws Anne and Walt under the bus. But it’s honest about the seductive allure of the grand gesture. Those minute gestures, though—like Walt's puff of the cheeks here, an exhalation of breath as his soul is ripped out—are what linger. Thank you Dean Stockwell for the artistry.
—First published on my Instagram in November 2021
When we first meet stricken drifter Travis, he’s in spiritual and sartorial shambles: stranded in the Texas desert clad in a dirt-spackled suit three sizes too big, a shabby red cap, and shoes so worn out they're no longer really shoes. He’s soon rescued by his brother Walt, who welcomes him into the sleek San Fernando Valley pad he shares with his wife Anne, and 8-year-old Hunter—Travis’ estranged son—who the couple have been fostering for years.
Travis’s first attempt at reconnecting with his son is a disaster. He’s rejected when he tries to collect Hunter from school, dressed in a sensible brown shirt and blue jeans. Following a heartrending scene in which the clan assemble to watch years-old 8mm footage of family frolicking—it’s the first time Hunter sees proof that this odd, fragile man was once a joyful, loving father—Travis resolves to improve his game.
Aided by maid Carmelita (Socorro Valdez), Travis raids Walt’s closet for an ensemble that’ll make him resemble a real, “rich father.” He begins with a natty light gray waistcoat. A sudden, shocking cut delivers a low-angle shot of Travis outside the school gates. The waistcoat has been joined by a soft cotton single-breasted jacket, muted pink shirt, dark brown patterned tie, and a fedora hat that Travis, after some fiddling, transforms into an amusing sombrero/bucket hat hybrid. Light years from the film’s opening scenes, Travis is now a picture of dignity and class, laced with a flash of winning humor. Hunter approves, and the pair set out for home, on opposite sides of the street, with Hunter mimicking his father’s strides. Bond sealed.
Finely balanced between affecting whimsy and stark emotional brutality, the suit scene proffers a complex spin on the old idiom "clothes maketh the man." Hunter’s real father has become his real father only by borrowing the suit of his brother Walt, who selflessly played the role of father for half the boy’s life. Minutes of screen time later, Travis and Hunter—and the film itself—abandon a distraught Walt and Anne altogether, in search of a new adventure.
—First published at SSENSE.com in September 2019 as part of the feature “Tailor-Made: 8 Writers on the Most Iconic Suits in Film.” Thanks to Durga Chew-Bose and Olivia Whittick
Before I go, I figured I’d post these images, even if the pre-earnest/Americanized Ashley—I moved Stateside from London in 2014—would have found it a bit cringe. A few years back I went to Houston for a trip to visit family, and this trip briefly turned into an unplanned Paris, Texas location pilgrimage. Robby Müller’s truly extraordinary cinematography is missing, but some of the profound emotional desolation hopefully remains!
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