Movies

AUSTIN – If he wasn't already the most famous Thomas Jefferson High School dropout, Michael Nesmith's induction into the Texas Film Hall of Fame cemented his status.

The former member of made-for-television band the Monkees joined Lukas Haas (Witness, Mars Attacks), Bruce McGill (Animal House), the Lockhart-shot film Waiting for Guffman and Quentin Tarantino – who was named an honorary Texan – as inductees at the Austin Film Society fundraiser Thursday night. The event unofficially kicked off the South by Southwest Film Festival.

"I was much more interested in the arts than what they were teaching me," said Nesmith, who went on to become a pioneer in music videos. He created the Paper Clips television program that morphed into MTV, and he won the first Grammy for a music video in 1981. He was also executive producer for films that include Repo Man and Tapeheads.

Nesmith said his Dallas youth was "a crucible for me. It was rough-and-tumble back then and made you stick to your guns." It was also a place where his mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, invented Liquid Paper.

"She did a lot better in Dallas than I did," he said.

Nesmith joined the Air Force and ended up at San Antonio College, where he formed a band that won the school's talent show and propelled him creatively.

He says he's now working on the second Internet wave, which he sees as involving live programs in a virtual environment. "Things like the music video will be relics of another era," Nesmith said.

McGill tapped out the William Tell Overture on his neck just as he had in Animal House. Holding a microphone in close was cast mate Tim Matheson, who has been in Dallas directing a pilot of the show formerly known as Code 58. The show, also once titled Jack and Dan, now will be known as The Good Guys.

Matheson recounted a fraternity party research trip at the University of Oregon during the filming of Animal House that ended with some cast members being physically ejected. "It was the big jock house – the best of the best," Matheson said. "The tone of things started to change quickly."

Fists were flying when McGill came to Matheson's rescue. "He's real, he's honest and he's fearless," Matheson said of McGill, who later served as the best man at Matheson's wedding.

Tarantino told of exiting a California screening of Nashville at 3 a.m. in 1993 and bumping into fellow moviegoer and Austin director Richard Linklater. That resulted in a benefit Austin premiere of Pulp Fiction in 1994, all-night QT festivals in Austin where Tarantino screens his personal film prints, and the Texas shooting of the Grindhouse double feature with Robert Rodriguez.

Linklater called Tarantino, who has made a career of celebrating the B-movie, "a kind of professor of film" who is "truly on a cinematic vision."