My brother Eagle Pennell and I grew up in College Station, home to Texas A&M University, which is now also home to a vibrant liberal arts school. The department is staffed with brilliant scholars—and one of their many innovations is to help sponsor a burgeoning local film festival—Visions of Texas. I was invited to the 2025 festival for a conversation with Dan Humphrey, Professor of Film and Media Studies, and to introduce Eagle’s indie classic Last Night at the Alamo at the historic Queen Theater—great honors both. And lots of fun.
Growing up in College Station was like growing up in Mayberry, only the man next door was the absent minded professor about to make a major breakthrough in some weighty field of study. Our father, Dr. Charles Pinnell, was one of those professors. His weighty field was Civil Engineering and his big breakthrough came in developing computerized traffic control technology—in the 60’s quite a cutting edge endeavor. College Station was a small town with big ideas and big doings, and you just had this sense of unlimited horizons. An excellent place to spend one’s formative years.
Our first experiences of the magic of cinema happened at the Palace theater in nearby Bryan, directly across the street from the Queen Theater—back in the 50’s and 60’s a run down ugly step sister to the grand Palace—a place for B movies and sketchy characters and off limits to us. The Palace is now long gone but the Art Deco Queen survived and is now home to the Visions of Texas Film Festival, and has screenings and events all through the year.
I had a great conversation with Dan at the Black Box theater in Texas A&M’s brand new Liberal Arts Building; about growing up at odds with Eagle and then discovering our true bond in Independent filmmaking, about the enormous boot print he left behind with only two films, about my own evolution as an artist, and we finished with a discussion of my novel The Irish Singer. A lot of ground was covered in that conversation—altogether an intriquing and unlikely history that began in a little house not a mile from where we sat.
It was also amazing and poignant to introduce Last Night at the Alamo at the Visions of Texas festival and to field some interesting questions afterwards. A fantastic restoration of Last Night is what is available to watch now, thanks primarily to Mark Rance, Rick Linklater, and Louis Black—with kudos to the film’s Screenwriter Kim Henkel and Cinematographer Brian Huberman, and of course to Sonny and Lou and everyone else involved for giving us such an enduring cinematic treasure. My minimalistic guitar score, kind of rare then but less so now, also survived nicely and I wonder what influence it may have had. The film is 42 years old and is as relevant and enjoyable now as it was in 1983—the enthusiastic audience response at the Queen proved that once again—and Eagle, a talented and troubled soul, would’ve loved this full circle homecoming.
