Farewell, Friend
Upon Bill Wittliff ’s passing, Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones
discuss the Texas legend, who leaves behind a brilliant body of
work and the definitive repository of Southwestern culture.or all the identifi ers that obituary
writers reached for to describe
Bill Wittliff—screenwriter, pho-
tographer, book publisher, novel-
ist, sketch artist, preservationist,
champion of the arts, man of let-
ters—two things are important to
remember. First off , Wittliff him-
self, constitutionally untucked and
simple, could have shorthanded
that list with one apt word: sto-
ryteller. But as significant as his
best-known achievements are—he
wrote and co-produced the televi-
sion version of Larry McMurtry’s
Lonesome Dove, the best western
ever fi lmed; he founded and guided,
with his wife, Sally, the Wittliff Col-
lections at Texas State University,
in San Marcos, the world’s fi nest
repository of Southwestern writ-
ing, photography, music, and cul-
ture—the fi rst thing that came to
mind when folks who knew him
learned he’d died was something
else entirely. He was a great friend.
So on Monday, June 10, the day
after Wittliff died of a heart attack
in Austin at 79, I called Robert Du-
vall and Tommy Lee Jones. That’s
not to suggest that calling them
is something I do often or, actu-
ally, ever. I don’t know them. But
we were each close with Wittliff.
They got to know him when they
gave fl esh and blood to Augustus
McRae and Woodrow Call as Mc-
Murtry and Wittliff had written
them. And I became his friend
when I performed the much less-
er task of chronicling the creation
of Lonesome Dove for a 2010 TexasF
62 TEXAS MONTHLY
IN MEMORIAM by John Spong (^) • illustration by Zach Meyer
BEING
TEXAN