Not A Not A Review Of “Paris, Texas”

So if you’ve been around here for a while, you might have seen that “Myth” by Beach House is one of my favorite songs.

What you may not be aware of is that, for some reason, people seem to like to take Beach House songs and make their own music videos out of them, including one that sets the song to scenes from the 1984 film Paris, Texas. (Normally I would embed the music video, but since playback is disabled on other sites, you can click here to view it on YouTube instead.)

Let’s take a little break to review the lyrics to “Myth”. It’s not an especially wordy song, so this won’t take long.

Drifting in and out
You see the road you’re on

It came rolling down your cheek
You say just what you mean
And in-between, it’s never as it seems

Help me to name it
Help me to name it

If you built yourself a myth
You’d know just what to give

What comes after this
Momentary bliss?
The consequence
Of what you do to me

Help me to name it
Help me to name it

Found yourself in a new direction
Arrows falling from the sun
Canyon calling, would they come to greet you?
Let you know you’re not the only one

Can’t keep hanging on
To what is dead and gone

If you built yourself a myth
You’d know just what to give
Materialize
Or let the ashes fly

Help me to name it
Help me to name it

Beach House, “Myth”
Written by Alex Scally & Victoria Legrand

Unlike the fan-made video for the Beach House song “Space Song”, which takes a cue from the song title and sets it to scenes from Interstellar, I didn’t really have any idea why the maker of that video had chosen Paris, Texas. However, I always thought it worked fantastically well for the video, and the movie is apparently pretty well-regarded:

So I finally decided to watch it. However, this is not a “Not a Review” post, because my wife didn’t watch it with me (although she did wander in at the end). The basic plot of the film is that … Oh, hang on a second:

The basic plot of the film is that Travis Henderson, a man who has long been missing and presumed dead by his family (well, his brother Walt, anyway, who seems to be the only family he has left) wanders out of the desert in Texas (but not Paris, Texas**). Seemingly mute and suffering from amnesia, the only thing Travis is carrying his brother Walt’s phone number. Travis’s rescuers call Walt, who flies to Texas to retrieve Travis and bring him back to Los Angeles, where Walt and his wife Anne live and have been raising Travis’s son Hunter ever since Travis and his wife Jane, Hunter’s mother, both disappeared, four years before. One thing leads to another and eventually Travis and Hunter depart on a road trip looking for Jane. Travis finds her working in a peep show in Houston, painful history is revealed to the viewer, and, ultimately, Travis reunites Jane and Hunter and goes on his way, believing (maybe correctly, maybe not) that they are better off together without him.

Now, as I mentioned, my wife didn’t watch it. She was initially interested in it, but quickly decided it would be slow and talky and that she would probably get bored with it***. And this was just based on the trailer:

So I watched it without her.**** However, she did wander in during the scene where Travis was at the peep show, in one of the booths, trying to locate Jane:

My wife asked me what was going on. That conversation went something like this:

Me: “He’s looking for his wife, and it turns out she’s working in a peep show.”
Wife: “So she’s supposed to strip or something while the guy jerks off behind the glass?”
Me: “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”
Wife: “She can’t see him?”
Me: “No, it’s a one-way glass.”
Wife: “And she can’t talk to him?”
Me: “No, they can talk. He has a phone connected to a speaker in the other room.”
Wife: “Is that the way peep shows really work?”
Me: “I have no idea, I’ve never been to one.”*****

This movie is like a time capsule of things that we are never going to see again. Walt smokes on the airplane on his way to Texas to retrieve Travis! Hunter attends an elementary school with no gates or guards, where a random guy in a cowboy hat (Travis) can show up and walk a kid (Hunter) home or, later on, pick him up and drive away with him in his pickup truck! Said kid can ride in the back of said pickup truck on the freeway while chatting on a walkie-talkie with his dad in the cab, and they don’t get pulled over immediately! Travis can drop Hunter off in the parking lot of a bank and drive away and Hunter can just kind of hang around in the lot for hours, watching cars go through the drive-up teller line, until he falls asleep! Travis can sit on the street looking at the bank through binoculars and nobody calls the cops! Travis can leave Hunter in his pickup truck while he goes into the peep show building, and Child Protective Services doesn’t show up five minutes later! You get the idea.

Help me to name it
Help me to name it

I name it … the late 70s/early 80s.

* How did 1984 become 40 years ago???
** Despite the title, none of the movie actually takes place in Paris, Texas. It’s more of a founding myth than an actual location.
*** Bear in mind that my wife is the Gen-Xer who hated The Breakfast Club because all they did for the whole movie was sit around in detention and go blah-blah-blah.
**** I liked it, of course, because, as you may remember, I like almost all movies. Sometimes I even like good ones.
***** While true, this is also The Only Correct Answer^TM.