Happy Texas

Has anybody seen this? It was one of my favorite little-known movies of last year. I just got it on DVD. It is really funny.

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Jim Lewis
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It had:

Steve Zahn
Jeremy Northam
William H. Macy
Ally Walker
Illeana Douglas
M.C. Gainey
Ron Perlman

Steve Zahn has been in a lot of movies, some even good:

Hamlet (2000)
Forces of Nature (1999)
Happy, Texas (1999)
Stuart Little (1999)
Object of My Affection, The (1998)
Out of Sight (1998)
Safe Men (1998)
You've Got Mail (1998)
Suburbia (1997)
Race the Sun (1996)
That Thing You Do! (1996)
Crimson Tide (1995)
Reality Bites (1994)

I really liked Out of Sight also.

I saw this at the theatre when it first came out. It was entertaining enough, but didn't become the word-of-mouth hit the studio expected. Steve Zahn IS consistently amusing, though!

I have a stepbrother who only likes this movie because of some line he mentioned about midgets (yes, he's that kind of teenager) - I saw parts of it, and it was a bit interesting. Not something I'd go out of my way to see, but still looked a bit funny.

It is funny because yesterday we were talking about this at the Thanksgiving table. It good reviews by our family friends. They said it was hilarious. I am going to rent it soon for DVD.

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Paul Goodman
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I couldn't get through this movie. I think the problem is that I grew up just down the road from Happy, Texas and know that the town is nothing like the town protrayed in the movie. When reality gets skewed that much, it's tough to make it through the film.

Interesting...I've seen a bit of the movie - what kind of things is it like? Not questioning you - just curious really. I can definitely see how that would make the movie a pain to sit through, unless it was very well done.

The real Happy, Texas is just a wide spot in the road. There are no gay bars (there are no bars at all), no banks, nothing much to speak of at all. There would certainly not be any openly gay people in the real Happy, Texas. The Swisher County Sheriff is most certainly not gay. There are no quirky people to speak of in Happy. There's hardly anyone in Happy at all (the population is about 500 in total). The town is essentially just a bunch of farmers. I don't think they even have their own school. Happy is barely a town at all. There are more people listed in the credits of the film that there are living in the actual town.

It's just hard to see a place portrayed so differently from reality (when you know what the reality is. I doubt too many people have actually been to Happy, Texas). I'm sure there are more things that would bother me if I watched the whole movie.

Oh, and the look of the town is just all wrong. They had trees and nice historic downtown-like place. The real Happy is nothing like that (there are no trees in the Texas Panhandle, for one thing.) So the Movie Happy just didn't look right. And that bothered me. You think they'd at least make an effort to have the place look right.

But that seems to happen everytime a movie is set somewhere in the Panhandle. I've watched movies that were supposed to be in Amarillo (which is where I grew up), and they'd portray Amarillo as a very small town (Amarillo is not huge, but it's got 200,000 people) or with bunches of trees (there are very few trees in Amarillo, and none that weren't planted) or even surrounded by mountains (Amarillo is very flat).

And when they actually shoot a movie in or around Amarillo, the town is almost always supposed to be somewhere else. I always wonder why filmmakers don't just film in the place where the movie takes place. (If that makes any sense).

But things like that bother me all the time. Other people can probably get past those things without complaining.

If you liked Happy Texas there was another fun indie called the "Tao of Steve" that made limited release in the fall. It's a comedy about a fat, unattractive man that lives in the desert and uses the rules called the "Tao of Steve" tp pick up women. It stars the guy from the MTV greasy Taxi Driver commercial series a few years ago.

Yes, indieking, I liked "The Tao of Steve" a lot!

I just rented Happy Texas from Netflicks. It's in the mail on the way here. But then I read through this post more carefully and it sounds like it's about gays.

Have you ever been watching a movie in your room about gays and your mom walked in and looked at you funny? Lol. I saw this movie with gays in it(I forget what it's called) and that happened, then a couple of days later I saw a movie with Robert DeNiro and a big transvestite and she walked in again. Lol! She got this sad worried look on her face for the next week. Lol!! It was funny.

I know the feeling. Reminds me of sitting in a room with my mom when a Victoria's Secret commerical comes on, or with my Grandma when a borderline scene in a PG-13 flick comes on. The feeling of wanting to possibly dissapear.

Yours, however, sounds a lot funnier.

I just saw Happy Texas.
It made me happy. It was pretty dang funny.
I kept thinking about the trees.

It's not really a movie about gays. The two main guys are mistaken for gays and go along with it because they are hiding out from the police.

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Beep Beep!

Just a small correction about Happy, Texas: The gay bar that William H. Macy goes to isn't IN Happy, Texas. He purposely points out that it isn't around their town at all.

Minor point, but hey....

By the way, I usually like Wm. H. Macy in anything he's in. There's something funny about him all the time.

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I didn't watch far enough into the movie to get that minor point. I saw a scene from the bar on one of those talk shows or preview shows.

The dvd says the town they filmed in is called Pyree? Or something that sounds like pie. I forget. They had shot something by a bridge in the real Happy but cut it out of the film. It's supposed to be the next town over from Happy.

Oh yeah, in the movie they said they had to drive 3 miles out of town to get to the gay bar.

William H Macy is great!

This is my drunken "raise an old thread" post. Just for you Aus'

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

Well, let's just give you a big thumbs-up for that, then. Makin' me laugh late at night when I'm all alone in the house (which makes me look psycho or something).