L.M. Kit Carson, the Irving-raised filmmaker who invented the mockumentary, wrote and starred in acclaimed films, co-founded the USA Film Festival and helped launch Wes Anderson’s directorial career, has died at the age of 73.
He had been ill for a long while — “suffering,” in the words of son Hunter Carson. That ended in a room at Baylor University Medical Center at 11:34 Monday night.
As South by Southwest and Texas Hall of Fame co-founder Louis Black put it in an email sent to close friends Tuesday morning, “One of the greats has left us.”
Carson was born Aug. 12, 1941, the son of the vice president of Atlas Metal Works in West Dallas. When he was 7, the family moved from University Park to Irving, which, back then, was the country. He spoke often of growing up on a farm, where he’d wake up in the morning and milk cows with his dad. He shared a name with his grandfather Lewis Minor Carson, a Texas Ranger.
He graduated from Irving High School in 1959 and initially thought he’d spend his life on the stage. As a student at the University of Dallas, he was struck with the idea for a movie about a man obsessed with his favorite subject — himself. And so was born David Holzman.
In 1967, he teamed up with young filmmaker Jim McBride for David Holzman’s Diary, which only looked like a documentary. It’s preserved in the National Film Registry among films considered “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Acclaimed independent filmmaker Joe Swanberg said the film resembles “a blog … a Facebook page … a Twitter account,” calling it “the sharpest critique of, and deepest investigation into, those media that I know of.”
In 1970, he and SMU film professor Bill Jones co-founded the USA Film Festival — in part, Carson once said, so he could find a place to play David Holzman’s Diary. In time, his would become an eclectic, almost surreal filmography.
To some, Carson is best known as the co-writer, with Sam Shepard, of Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The winner of the Palme D’Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, the film co-starred none other than Carson’s son, Hunter.
More recently, he was noted as the man who introduced Wes Anderson and the Dallas’ Wilson brothers (Owen, Luke and Andrew) to the world of filmmaking. The brothers’ family was close to Carson, and he and his second wife, producer Cynthia Hargrave, took the Wilsons to the Sundance Film Festival in 1992, where they more or less planned what became the Bottle Rocket short film.
As an actor, Carson appeared alongside River Phoenix in Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty, co-starred in an episode of Miami Vice and even revisited David Holzman in actor Griffin Dunne’s film Famous. He co-wrote the 1983 remake of Breathless starring Richard Gere, then penned The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II three years later.
With Lawrence Schiller, Carson directed just one movie: 1971’s The American Dreamer, a documentary about how his friend Dennis Hopper lost his mind shooting The Last Movie. He also wrote for Rolling Stone and Esquire, and in the latter he famously published a piece about rising filmmakers not yet icons.
For a time in the 1970s, he was also the kind of guy who merited mention in People magazine, especially when he married actress Karen Black, Hunter’s mother.
In a farewell note to his father posted on Facebook Monday, Hunter Carson wrote: “You did everything the way you wanted and never let anyone else do less than they were capable of doing. You mentored, taught, learned, fought, excelled as both athlete and student. I loved and loved and will love every moment we spent together. Thanks for everything. See you in the movies.”
Carson is survived by his son and his wife, Cynthia Hargrave. Plans for a funeral and memorial are pending.
