William D. Wittliff Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018
Bill Wittliff was born in Taft, a small town in south Texas, in 1940. After his parents divorced, he and his brother Jim moved with their mother to Gregory, Texas, where Mrs. Wittliff ran a small telephone office during World War II (these experiences provided the basis for "Raggedy Man," Wittliff's feature film). Later, when his mother remarried,...
If there was a secret to my success, it was that I was so ignorant. Really, there is something to be said for the phrase 'Ignorance is bliss.' If I had known everything I was supposed to have known about book publishing or photography, I sure as hell would have been too afraid to try it.
2
When I hear younger writers say that Texas has run out of good stories, I tell them to think again. There are still so many stories out there to tell.
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Fact
1
Bill Wittliff wrote the screenplay for Lonesome Dove and suddenly found himself on Hollywood's rarefied A-list, being offered eyeball-popping amounts of money to move to Los Angeles and work on movies or television series. Yet he refused to leave Texas.
2
Using poker winnings as seed money, Wittliff and Sally ran the Encino Press out of their Austin home. Although the company barely got by, its books, almost all of them about Texas, were well received. Wittliff used Encino as his calling card to meet the region's best writers, including Larry McMurtry, who agreed to let Encino publish a collection of his essays that became the highly praised In a Narrow Grave.
3
When he was fifteen, he tried to sneak into a sold-out Elvis Presley concert in San Antonio by climbing a tree and attempting to get into the auditorium through a second-floor window. It turned out to be a window in Presley's dressing room. Presley, who was then at the dawn of his career, was so charmed by Wittliff that he wrote a note on a napkin telling the security guards to let Wittliff and his buddies into the auditorium.
4
Wittliff spent his high school years in the Central Texas town of Blanco, where the family had moved when his mother married a rancher. He was the quarterback of the high school football team, a starter on the basketball team, and the class cutup who always had a funny story or a joke to tell.
5
Wittliff submitted an article for its column My Most Unforgettable Character. The story, entirely invented by Wittliff, was about his close relationship with Lyndon Johnson, then a U.S. senator, who had a ranch near Blanco. When that article was rejected, he sent several made-up quotes-which he claimed he had heard LBJ say-to the Quotable Quotes section. Reader's Digest turned him down again.
6
Bill Wittliff wrote one movie based on his mother's life as a telephone operator ( Raggedy Man, starring Sissy Spacek), another about the life of country musicians on the road ( Honeysuckle Rose, again starring Willie Nelson), and a third about a family nearly losing its farm ( Country, starring Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard).
7
Perhaps his biggest claim to fame during his university days was the horseshoe-shaped bar he built in his room at the Kappa Sigma fraternity house. At night, he and his roommate would turn the room into a gambling den, where Wittliff won most of the poker games and sold cheap Scotch that he had poured into empty Chivas Regal bottles. Among the regular visitors to his gambling den, he says, was Frank Erwin, who was the fraternity's legal adviser and later became the chairman of UT's board of regents.
8
One Christmas when he was in high school, Wittliff received a present from his aunt who lived in Houston. It was J. Frank Dobie's Tales of Old-Time Texas, a folklore collection. In the book was a story titled "The Wild Woman of the Navidad," about a runaway slave whose footprints were often seen in the settlements along the river. Wittliff realized that this was the same story he had heard the hardware store owner tell years before. "The book absolutely set me on fire," he says.
9
Bill Wittliff had never seen a screenplay when he sat down in the early seventies to start writing a movie based on a story his grandfather had told him years before. He didn't use an outline; he simply wrote down whatever came to him next. Within a month he had a screenplay. Bud Shrake saw it sitting on Wittliff's desk, read it, and asked if he could show it to his agent. The script eventually was given to the producers of The French Connection, who loved it, and a few years later it appeared as Barbarosa. Starring Willie Nelson as a onetime outlaw hunted down by a vengeful family, it was highly praised.
10
Wittliff started sending ideas to the best television dramas of that era- Kraft Television Theatre, Playhouse 90, Robert Montgomery Presents.
Writer
Title
Year
Status
Character
A Night in Old Mexico
2013
writer
The Perfect Storm
2000
screenplay - as Bill Wittliff
Lone Justice 2
1995
Legends of the Fall
1994
screenplay - as Bill Wittliff
The Cowboy Way
1994
screenplay - as Bill Wittliff / story - as Bill Wittliff
Ned Blessing: The Story of My Life and Times
1993
TV Series writer - 1 episode
Ned Blessing: The True Story of My Life
1992
TV Movie
Lonesome Dove
1989
TV Mini-Series teleplay - 4 episodes
Red Headed Stranger
1986
screenplay - as Bill Wittliff
Country
1984
Barbarosa
1982
Raggedy Man
1981
written by
Honeysuckle Rose
1980
The Black Stallion
1979
screenplay
Thaddeus Rose and Eddie
1978
TV Movie
Producer
Title
Year
Status
Character
A Night in Old Mexico
2013
producer - as Bill Wittliff
Lone Justice 2
1995
executive producer - as Bill Wittliff
Legends of the Fall
1994
producer - as Bill Wittliff
The Cowboy Way
1994
executive producer - as Bill Wittliff
Ned Blessing: The Story of My Life and Times
1993
TV Series producer - 1 episode
Ned Blessing: The True Story of My Life
1992
TV Movie executive producer
Lonesome Dove
1989
TV Mini-Series executive producer - 4 episodes
Red Headed Stranger
1986
producer - as Bill Wittliff
Country
1984
producer
Barbarosa
1982
co-producer
Raggedy Man
1981
producer
Actor
Title
Year
Status
Character
Ned Blessing: The Story of My Life and Times
1993
TV Series
Resurrection
1980
Man in Bar
Director
Title
Year
Status
Character
Red Headed Stranger
1986
as Bill Wittliff
Assistant Director
Title
Year
Status
Character
Raggedy Man
1981
second unit director
Self
Title
Year
Status
Character
On Story
2011
TV Series
Himself
Won Awards
Year
Award
Ceremony
Nomination
Movie
1995
Bronze Wrangler
Western Heritage Awards
Theatrical Motion Picture
Legends of the Fall (1994)
1994
Bronze Wrangler
Western Heritage Awards
Western Documentary
Ned Blessing: The Story of My Life and Times (1993)
$1 Million
