CLEBURNE TIMES-REVIEW

May 8, 2005

http://cleburnetimesreview.com/articles/2005/05/16/columnists/columns_by_larue/larue02.txt

by Larue Barnes

It is an old house built in1899, once next door to a dairy in early Cleburne. Today, it represents a gift bequeathed by an aunt to her nephew, Rex McGee. Since the Hollywood writer moved into the place in 1991, his creativity has been triggered by his childhood memories.

Not that his adjustment has been easy. He misses his colleagues. But going back and getting in touch with his roots has eased a mid-life crisis for McGee and motivated him to write some of his most successful work.

McGee was born at Cleburne's Memorial Hospital on Nov. 22, 1951. Throughout his childhood and teenage years he lived with his parents, Theo and Lucille McGee, first in Fort Worth and then in Burleson. Their favorite family times, however, were spent in Cleburne on Sundays and holidays to visit his Aunt "Sister" (Alice) and Uncle Harold Jones. His mother and Alice were sisters, but Alice was 12 years older, and seemed more like a grandmother.

We sat in his home office in a little cottage out back. The door was open and wind chimes tinkled in the soft breeze. Rex McGee was surrounded by technology -- an Apple computer and an electronic doodad on his desk that signaled him with world headlines. A framed "Pure Country" movie poster, picturing country music star George Strait, was hung prominently on the wall.

It's not that McGee is necessarily a country music fan. He wrote "Pure Country's" screenplay. Soon, millions of viewers will see his TV movie, "A Family of Strangers," on Hallmark Channel, based on the last years of his Aunt Alice.

McGee looked out at his back yard. "The lot used to go back much farther," he said. "My dad and I played baseball back there with the neighborhood kids. I shot marbles many times in this back yard, and climbed all these pecan trees. It was like a second home to me."

After Mrs. Jones suffered a massive stroke in 1989, McGee rushed from Los Angeles to her side. He was her nearest relative.

After her death, McGee learned that she had bequeathed her aging home to him. His world had been in Los Angeles for the last 20 years. She thought he would want to live in Cleburne?

McGee's fascination with the movies began at an early age. "My dad was a movie projectionist all over the Metroplex -- the Worth, Palace, Hollywood, the old ParkAire Drive-In in Fort Worth and the Yale in Cleburne. I went with him to work from the time I was 5. I watched movies over and over, and my dad taught me how to thread the projector and make changeovers. By the time I was 18, I worked as a projectionist myself, in Arlington and Fort Worth."

He not only learned the trade, he quickly memorized those movies from beginning to end. His Burleson High School junior English teacher, Beth Sowell Anderson, recalls that Rex and his circle of friends had fun quoting one line from a film, and then the others would pick up the rest of the scene.

She said of McGee, "Rex was a delight to have in class. I recall that we were about to choose a book to read and he came to me privately and said, 'Would you consider letting us review this one?'

"I took it home to read it for myself. I thought I owed him that much if he was that enthused about reading. I couldn't put the book down once I started it. The book he had selected was somewhat controversial, but with my principal's OK and a careful approach to the subject, we were able to explore it together."

She said she was amazed at McGee's script-writing ability even then. "We needed an idea for a class fund-raiser. So Rex and a classmate wrote a script for a series of skits, similar to the then-popular 'Laugh-In.' It was received very well."

McGee said of his education at BHS, "Beth Sowell and Wally Smith, an extraordinary history teacher, gave me so much to think about. Study with them was not merely memorizing; they brought their subjects to life and made them real."

He thinks of those master teachers often now as he substitute teaches occasionally at Cleburne High School.

In 1970, McGee was granted a scholarship to the University of Southern California, which had the "premier film school in the country."

"It was great. I was surrounded by others who loved what I loved," he said. "But I was very frightened at first, because I knew no one. I had a twangy Texas accent and didn't fit in too easily. I stayed to myself for two months and then started hanging out in the film department, where they ran great classics and new films all the time.

"I was in awe as famous writer/directors who visited us in classes. I sat at the feet of Billy Wilder, John Ford, Orson Wells, Howard Hawks, George Cukor, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock -- it was Disneyland for me! I was with my heroes."

McGee especially admired the work of Billy Wilder. During his junior year at USC, Wilder's new movie "Avanti" had its problems. McGee, on impulse, wrote a fan letter to Wilder, and it changed the course of his life and career.

McGee explained, "I just felt I needed to let Wilder know I loved the film and that I was sorry it wasn't doing well. When he received my letter, he called me at my dorm.

"'Come over to the studio and let's talk,' he said in that unique Middle European voice of his.

"I couldn't believe it. I went over to the old Samuel Goldwyn Studios to his office where he had written and directed 'Some Like It Hot' and 'The Apartment.' He was pacing back and forth in front of me.

"'I don't know what to do, Rex,' he said. 'Maybe I should just retire and just play the horses at Hollywood Park.'

"He's asking me what to do? I was only 21 years old. I didn't know what he should do! I had only just found my navel at that point."

McGee figures that Wilder had needed to talk to someone, and something clicked between the two. He invited McGee to come and work for him on "The Front Page," which starred Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

McGee said, "I was amazed. I took a year off of my schooling and served as Wilder's prot/g/ and personal assistant on his films 'The Front Page' and 'Fedora.' One of my oldest friends now, Henry Bumstead, was the art director. (Bumstead, 90, recently designed 'Million Dollar Baby' for Clint Eastwood.) I also got a firsthand look at Hitchcock's last movie, 'Family Plot.' That year of experience could never be repeated by any school."

The filming of 'Fedora' involved McGee's travel to Greece, Germany and Paris. McGee was overwhelmed when he was offered a bit part in a scene with star Henry Fonda.

"I was really excited to get to stand before the camera on this Greek island with this film legend. Unfortunately, I missed my mark, where I was to stand, and Billy yelled at me. Very embarrassing."

All this time McGee had been writing. One of his first screenplays, "The Life of the Party," told of a comedian in Russia who told anti-Soviet jokes and the persecution that followed.

"That was the script that got me rolling," he said. "I got an agent and work, although that script never quite made it. But I haven't turned it loose. Now 20 years later, I've rewritten it. It's set in Cuba now, and I changed its title to 'Tiny Revolution.' We'll see what happens with it. When you become that attached to something you've written, you see it as a child that needs to grow up a little bit more."

In Los Angeles, McGee began to write for magazines, profiles of celebrities for TV Guide among them. He was offered a job as a story analyst for United Artists, which meant he was a script reader, weeding out and selecting the best of tons of scripts submitted.

In 1985, McGee was hired by 20th Century Fox to rewrite a script called "The Honeymoon." This gave him health insurance, membership in Writer's Guild and a good steady income. Then, actress Darryl Hannah asked him to write a script for her at Paramount. He wrote one, but like the majority of those written in the craft, it was never made. Once those screenplays were written for hire, they became the studios', while those he has written on his own remain his.

McGee said, "The volume of screenplays written is unbelievable. Everybody thinks they can write scripts, but it's just not that easy. You can't just pick up a pen and dash off a million-dollar screenplay. With no agent, the writer must first beg someone to read it. They learn, painfully, that the first two or three that they write will probably not be very good. That's why it is called a craft -- you learn with experience. If a studio buys from a beginner, it is principally for their idea. Then they hire someone that they trust from Hollywood to rewrite it. But there can be a nice paycheck just for the idea."

In 1989, McGee was called to Cleburne, where his aunt Alice Jones lay dying at Walls Regional Hospital.

"That was a difficult year," he recalled. "I had just broken up with a longtime girlfriend, and three weeks later, my dad died in Waco. Another stroke. Now I had this old house that she left me that needed a lot of work. As I sat down at the old Formica table where I had eaten so many family meals, I felt pretty shell-shocked. I cleaned out my aunt's house, and looked through box after box of photographs that my aunt had left behind -- all carefully labeled with names on the back. I had decisions to make."

In July 1991, Rex McGee moved to Cleburne. By Halloween, things were taking shape.

"I was invited to a costume Halloween party in Fort Worth and I met my future wife, Sandy Pace, that night," he said. "I couldn't have missed her: she was dressed as a cave woman. She was an interior designer, and I was redoing my house, so I used that as a fake reason to call her, and we began dating. A little over a year later, we were married in the dining room of my old house she had redone. I thought how appropriate that room was, for I had a framed photograph of my mother, pregnant with me, at a baby shower in that same room."

Rex and Sandy McGee have one daughter, Anna "Annie" Lucille, born in 2000 and named for both their mothers. Sandy owns Right At Home, an interior design shop at 204 E. Chambers St. in the historic Cleburne Opera House. She specializes in bedroom designs for teenage girls and has dress-up tea parties for preschool girls in her Dream Castle Party Room there.

McGee always liked to write about things he understood. When still in Los Angeles, he was asked to write a movie for George Strait.

"The suggestion came from Col. Tom Parker, who told producers that Strait could be a movie star like Elvis," he said. "When I was offered the job, I had no idea who George Strait was. Living in Los Angeles for 21 years, I hadn't been exposed to country music. So, a meeting was arranged, and Strait came in with his wife and son, wearing jeans, a baseball cap and tennis shoes. He was very quiet and polite. After the meeting, I started hanging out at his concerts and spent time with him back stage. I found out who he was very quickly.

"The director quit and the project died. I moved back to Texas. Three weeks after I got here, the project was back on again. I was flown to Los Angeles first class and put up in a great hotel. I knew I should have left California years ago! I didn't know what to write for Strait, who had never acted before, but I knew he could sing.

"I spent days at Cleburne's West End Grill, watching people, taking notes and having panic attacks. What was I to write? And then I began to see that Strait and I were both 40 years old -- each in mid-life crises. I began to think of my own story; how I had been in L.A. so long that I had lost touch with my own creative urges and original spark. So I made George's character Dusty the same way. The guy can't feel his music anymore. He has become a musical robot. So he goes back to his Texas roots and visits his Grandma Ivy (my granny's name, too) -- all that sparked him in the first place. I had the idea for the movie! Rebirth, reinvention, resurrection. He gets his authentic self back."

McGee was writing what he knew: the basic advice to all writers.

"They loved it. They made 'Pure Country' very quickly," he said. "Then there was a perk that I didn't expect: They actually filmed it in Fort Worth, Maypearl, Midlothian and Cresson. George hated wearing the fake ponytail the character needed, and he balked at the beard, too, but grew one anyway. The Texas girl he meets was based on my wife, and his manager, on my old L.A. girlfriend."

Although the movie is still shown on TV regularly and the video sales have been tremendous, McGee says he sees what is not in the movie. "There are gaps in the film that I actually wrote, but scenes were cut because Strait couldn't act them well. But there are enough of the bones left for it to work. Some of the meat, the depth, is missing, but the story resonates to people on the mid-life crisis level that I was going through."

He paused and added emotionally, "The most touching thing to me is when Strait is at the cemetery by the tombstones of his parents, filmed at the cemetery at Cresson. There were their names: Theo and Lucille. The names of my own parents. I cried when I saw that. To me, that was a thank-you note to my mother and dad. I am more proud of that than anything else in the movie."

McGee's ordeal of writing an IMAX film for the Bob Bullock History Museum in Austin is a story in itself.

"An IMAX film is approximately 40 minutes long," he said. "There are no talking heads; it's supposed to put the viewer directly into the action. I got the job to tell the entire story of Texas in 40 minutes, but there are seven regions in the state, and each wanted equal time. It was an impossible job. The State Preservation Board was full of wealthy, prominent Texans with strong ideas, but they had never seen an IMAX film. I thought bureaucracy in Hollywood was bad, but it's nothing compared to the state of Texas!"

The project stalled and the director was fired. Two years later, McGee received a call from GSD&M Advertising Agency, then producing the movie, and they hired him to take over the writing and pull it together. His approach involved the great diversity of the state. "Texas: The Big Picture" is still playing at the state museum.

McGee's new movie about his Aunt Alice Jones of Cleburne, "A Family of Strangers," is soon to be televised on Hallmark.

"She was so screwy," he said. "I've written down the funny things she said and did for years. Towards the end of her life, I sat with her while she had cataract surgery. Later, she was amazed at how much better she could see everything. We walked into her garage together and she said, 'My car is so shiny! You know, I've suspected for sometime now that two men are breaking in here and waxing my car!'"

McGee grinned, "I just nodded my head in agreement and said, 'Those @#&*!' She was not amused."

"A Family of Strangers" is rooted in truth, but some of it, inevitably, is fictional. The actor playing McGee, for instance, is a con man from Los Angeles out to steal his relative's money.

"I was so impressed with Marion Ross, of TV's 'Happy Days,' who played my aunt. She told me she wanted to know everything about my Aunt Alice, and she listened to every detail. I gave her a photograph I found of my aunt sitting by the tombstones of her parents. So Marion put that picture in the pocket of her apron as she acted. When I saw the film -- they are finishing the editing now -- I cried and laughed, even though I knew what was coming. It was another case of writing what I knew."

McGee currently teaches creativity at SMU through his workshop based on Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way."

"It is similar to group therapy," he said. "My 18 students are doctors, lawyers, businessmen and insurance agents -- all in mid-life -- who have never had the opportunity to express their creativity. They are photographers and writers who are overcoming their fear of rejection. I tell them no art is perfect and I dare them to be bad while they polish their crafts. It is really rewarding to see them open up and share their dreams. I am relearning what I need to know, too."

McGee is working on a comedy about the Chicago Cubs, and a story set in a high school. He has just finished a musical stage adaptation of "Pure Country" that he hopes to have up and running next year with a big country music star.

But there is another play that haunts his mind, begging to be written.

McGee explained, "When Elvis was in the Army, he disappeared for a week in Paris after his mother died. Nobody knows where he went or what he did. I want to research that week and portray what it was like for him -- to be free to be who he really was. I've often wondered -- if Elvis had returned to his home in Memphis and touched base again with his roots, would he still be alive? Not being authentic finally killed him. As in 'Pure Country,' Elvis could have reinvented himself."

We walked back to the house together. Stepping stones caught my attention.

McGee stopped for a moment and said with amusement, "You know, I find all sorts of strange things in the soil here. And I have no idea what they are. Many years ago the Wiseman Dairy was on this land."

With a boyish grin he added, "And every now and then the marbles that I used to play with as a kid resurface."

Memories and creative ideas have a way of doing that, too.

This story was suggested by Tom Dodge

Larue Barnes may be reached at laruebarnes@yahoo.com

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