A big piece of Texas music and film history was damaged by last week's severe weather.
Portions of Luck, TX, Willie Nelson’s storied western town in Spicewood, were damaged by the high winds on Thursday night. Luck, TX, which is modeled after an old western town, was originally built in 1986 as the set for Red Headed Stranger, a western film starring Nelson that was inspired by his 1975 album of the same name.
Photos of the storm’s damage were posted to Nelson's official Facebook page on Monday night. "Our beautiful Luck wasn’t so lucky recently," says the post. "Last week’s tornado force winds ripped several buildings apart, including the bank, the post office and left World Headquarters holding on by a splinter."
While Luck isn’t normally open to the public, the iconic town is occasionally used for events, such as Heartbreaker Banquet, a one-day music festival held during SXSW. The town was most recently seen in the music video of "You Don’t Think I’m Funny Anymore," which featured Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Jessica Simpson and Woody Harrelson along with the Red Headed Stranger himself.
Luck also serves as the home for Nelson's rescue horses that can be adopted through Habitat for Horses. There are no reports of any horses being injured during the storm.
Regarding the future of Luck, the Nelson camp remains positive. "Some towns got it a lot worse, so we aren't complaining," reads a Facebook post. "Luck is a tough town. It can be rebuilt."
The World Headquarters of Luck, Texas, was left barely standing after severe weather.
Willie Nelson Facebook
The World Headquarters of Luck, Texas, was left barely standing after severe weather.
The story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is now over 200 years old, with Mary Shelley’s book having been adapted or referenced in close to 500 films. Less common is the character of The Bride of Frankenstein, which existed in the original text but has more often than not been excised in adaptations. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has tried to rectify that by giving the character a big showcase in her new film, The Bride!.
Gyllenhaal has reimagined the story as one in which a woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) becomes possessed by the spirit of Shelley (also Buckley). At the same time, the already-existing Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) approaches Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), who specializes in reanimation, with the request to make him a wife. When Ida falls to her death in an “accident” involving her boyfriend (John Magaro), the ideal corpse becomes available.
After Ida’s resurrection, she and the monster become restless being studied by Dr. Euphronius and decide to break out to experience the world. The world, naturally, is not exactly welcoming to them, and soon the couple are on the run for causing mayhem, including a few murders. In hot pursuit are detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), as well as other authorities.
It’s clear that Gyllenhaal wanted to merge the Frankenstein story with Bonnie & Clyde, especially since she sets the film in the mid-1930s. And that wouldn’t have been a bad idea if having the monster and The Bride going on a crime spree was truly the focus of the movie. But most of the time there’s less intentionality in their misdeeds and more confusion, leading to a muddled plot with no clear direction or end goal in mind.
One of the biggest problems is that Gyllenhaal starts the energy of the film at an 11, giving her and everyone else nowhere to go but down. She dabbles in multiple different tones, at times going the straight drama route and other times making what seems like full-on camp. At one point, she even has the monster and the Bride in a dance sequence set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which would be hilarious as an homage to Young Frankenstein if the film weren’t so disjointed.
Most baffling of all is what Gyllenhaal wants from The Bride character. She morphs multiple times over the course of the film, from close to unintelligible at the beginning to rough-and-tumble at the end. There are hints at the lack of control she has over her autonomy, including Shelley’s possession of her and the monster lying to her about her past, but any commentary that Gyllenhaal might be trying to make gets lost amid the oddity of the film as a whole.
Both Buckley and Bale are all-in for their performances, which definitely fall in the “love it or hate it” dichotomy. Each scene is pitched so high that there’s little nuance to either of them, and neither is on par with their previous Oscar-caliber roles. The high-powered supporting cast of Bening, Sarsgaard, Cruz, and Jake Gyllenhaal is watchable based on previous roles, but none of them elevate this particular movie.
Whatever intentions Maggie Gyllenhaal had in making The Bride! are only halfway legible in a film that can never find its tonal footing. There has rarely been subtlety in movies featuring Frankenstein’s monster and related characters, but this one makes all the others seem like stuffy dramas in comparison.
