Photo: Rachel Parker
Willie Nelson and T Bone Burnett perform at a Lone Star International Film Festival gala Thursday night
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by: Preston Jones
Music legend Willie Nelson has visited Fort Worth countless times and is usually lauded for his music. On Thursday night, the Lone Star International Film Festival took a different tack, honoring Nelson for his contributions to cinema.
At a sold-out gala at McDavid Studio in Fort Worth, the singer and sometimes actor received the festival’s Stephen Bruton Award, which recognizes musicians who have successfully crossed over to the movies. Named after the late Fort Worth musician who co-wrote the score for Crazy Heart, the award has been given to T Bone Burnett, a Fort Worth native, and Kris Kristofferson.
Burnett, who presented the award, credited three concerts he attended in his youth, including a Nelson gig at Panther Hall, as giving him all “the sustenance” he needed to pursue a life in music.
“If there was a Mount Rushmore of music, Willie would be one of the faces,” Burnett said.
The tribute got off to a less-than-propitious start. Nelson was scheduled to attend a screening of the 1980 Michael Mann film Thief, in which he co-stars as the mentor to James Caan’s master safecracker. But Nelson didn’t make it to the theater in time.
Meanwhile, the 35 mm print of the film arrived with serious water damage, forcing festival organizers to scramble and show a DVD copy of the film. Unfortunately, the DVD transfer wasn’t especially good and when projected onto a large screen, the image turned dark and grainy, and the sound was a muddy, borderline-inaudible mess.
Fortunately, things were on much firmer footing at the gala dinner, which doubles as the festival’s largest annual fundraising event.
Nelson reflected fondly on the award’s namesake — “Stephen was a great friend and a great musician” — before launching into a self-deprecating assessment of his acting career, which spans more than two dozen films and three decades.
“I did quite a few movies not to be able to act,” joked Nelson, saying he’d taken only roles where he played himself: “It’s hard to screw that up.”
The evening’s highlight was an acoustic, four-song set by Nelson and Burnett, mixing brand-new tunes such as Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die, from Nelson’s forthcoming album (due out next year), with classics such as Whiskey River, which brought the crowd to its feet, cheering and whooping as though they were across town at one of Nelson’s favorite haunts, Billy Bob’s Texas.
Preston Jones is the Star-Telegram’s pop music critic.
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