by Telly Davidson
AFI FEST Daily News

When people think of English-speaking film capitals, they think of Hollywood, Manhattan, London, maybe Toronto and Vancouver.

But Dallas?

Yes, Dallas, explains documentary filmmaker Michael Cain, the Artistic Director of AFI Dallas International Film Festival presented by Target. The first edition debuts March 22 to April 1, 2007.

Cain was also invited by the American Film Institute to screen his new film, TV JUNKIE, at AFI FEST 2006 presented by Audi.

Cain points out that Texas has been for years a Ground Zero for future movie stars.

Tommy Lee Jones, Farrah Fawcett, Matthew McConaughey, Renee Zellweger, Jaclyn Smith and Faye Dunaway all hail from the Lone Star State. Not to mention filmmakers like Mike Judge, L.M.Carson, Robert Rodriguez, Shane Carruth and Richark Linklater.

"Dallas has had 13 film festivals, starting with the USA Film Festival 30 years ago," Cain explains. "There was a niche that wasn't quite being filled yet. There was a need for intelligent film programmers.

"Dallas is actually the third-largest film market in the US."

Cain credits longtime film-industry veterans Leiner Temerlin and Todd Wagner, a Trustee on the AFI Board of Trustees, as most responsible for spearheading Dallas' thriving cinema scene.

"Since 1999, when there was only one art house in the city (the locally legendary Inwood Theatre), the Magnolia and Angelica theatre chains have opened up, making a total of over 13 art house screens in the city.

"And that's just the tip of the iceberg," Cain proudly notes.

"AFI had been looking to expand their film festival components and education. Bringing them in immediately validated the equation. Now, there's currently half a billion dollars being spent - all privately funded - on the Arts District in Dallas."

Cain adds, "The great thing about running a film fest is a lot of the young people who are up and coming, who are really making amazing, unique films."

When asked who some of his favorite young lions of documentary cinema are, he names Alex Gibney (ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM), Jeffrey Blitz (SPELLBOUND), Dana Adam Shapiro and Henry-Alex Rubin (MURDERBALL), and Rob Bindler (HANDS ON A HARDBODY).

He also gives Errol Morris top props in the veteran documentarian category.

Cain also enthused how the Super Bowl-success of films like FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and SUPERSIZE ME - combined with Generation X and Y's love affair with non-scripted, "reality TV" hits - plus new cost-cutting technology, have all totally rebooted reality cinema.

He feels confident that the future of the documentary film, in the hands of fearless filmmakers in their 20s and 30s, has only just begun.

But despite his own love for non-fiction filmmaking, Cain says that the moviemakers he most admires are fiction film legends like Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson, Hitchcock, Spielberg, Pedro Almod—var and David Lynch - moviemakers who "create with unique voices."

His next project Is actually a fiction screenplay in development called STARCK, about the Dallas drug scene in the late 1980s, set in counterpoint to the city's red-state conservatism and the Reagan/Bush era's "Just Say No" war on drugs.

Cain's own current film, TV JUNKIE (co-directed with Matt Radecki), tells the story of news correspondent Rick Kirkham, who started his "journalism" career making video diaries of his life at age 14, after being given his first film camera as a present.

Now age 47, Rick turned over 3,000 hours of footage to Cain for him to condense down to feature-length size.

"We had so much story to tell, the hardest part was deciding what to leave out, not what to put in," Cain reveals. "Drugs were brought into Rick's life really early. He was beaten and abused as a child, and later on he was regularly and severely physically assaulted in his days as a crime reporter."

Cain laughed that on Rick's first big assignment - a multiple robbery/homicide - Rick's own cameraman fled the grisly scene fearing that the perpetrators might still be there, leaving an unprotected Rick alone to set up and do the job himself.

And all the while, what kept Rick going was his unmovable "dream of being bigger than he was," of becoming the next Cronkite or Chancellor, the next Reasoner or Brinkley.

"Rick believed that was his gift and why he was important," and despite all the obstacles, he would not be stopped from "following his dream in his own personal way. The tapes were his [only] confessors."

It's hard for Cain to pinpoint a "favorite" or most moving scene in this cinematic labor of love. But if pressed, Cain says that the scenes with the now-adult Rick and his own kids were the most simultaneously funny and heartbreaking.

Despite his sad background and the 24-7 pressure of his then-career as a correspondent for INSIDE EDITION, Cain reveals that the role Rick is proudest of is "Daddy" and that Rick "always dreamed of having his own family," to make up for what he himself lacked.

The moral of TV JUNKIE'S story may be more timely that ever in today's blogosphere of DailyKos, Ain't it Cool News, Television Without Pity, Matt Drudge and YouTube.

Cain tells that his relationship with AFI went back to when he was 26 years old, after buckling down to pursue his deferred dreams of filmmaking.

Two years after applying with a letter of recommendation from Southern Methodist University's Don Pasquala, he had his Master of Fine Arts degree from AFI and was commencement speaker.

"Most of what I learned about filmmaking was spent late at night watching TV, or in dark theaters or the drive-in. AFI allowed me to interact with filmmakers and understand that all great stories begin and end with passion, whether in the story or in the team that makes the film."

True to form, Cain's own definition of "independent film" is equal parts punk rock, beatnik and spiritual.

"Independent film is not restricted by what will be accepted, but by what must be felt."