SXSW Review: America's Parking Lot

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America's Parking Lot

"How 'bout them Cowboys?"
-- Dallas Cowboys fan Stan "Tiger" Shults

Yeah, how 'bout them? Meh -- I'm not a sports fan, much less a fan of America's Team. Dallas Cowboys football culture -- with its mindless hero worship, distorted sense of importance and blatant displays of greed -- is one of a thousand reasons why I left Dallas 20 years ago and never will go back.

That said, I still found Austin actor and filmmaker Jonny Mars's new documentary America's Parking Lot to be a terrific examination of one of America's most passionate subcultures, the raucous tailgaters at Cowboys home games.

America's Parking Lot focuses on Stan "Tiger" Shults and Cy Ditmore, two longtime members of the Gate 6 Tailgaters, so named because they parked near Gate 6 of Texas Stadium, the Cowboys' former home dome. It is impossible to overstate Shults and Ditmore's enthusiasm for their team or the importance of its role in their lives. How devoted are they? Ditmore has invested more than $10,000 in his grilling trailer, which he dutifully tows to every Cowboys home game -- he hasn't missed one since 1988 -- and uses to cook upwards of a thousand dollars' worth of meat for hundreds of his fellow Gate 6 revelers.

Shults has gone to even greater lengths to demonstrate his team loyalty: He and his wife, Barrie, named their daughter Meredith Landry after Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith and legendary Cowboys coach Tom Landry -- and Barrie's labor was induced early so Tiger wouldn't miss the last game of the 2004 season. (I swear I'm not making up a word of this stuff.)

Mars and his crew filmed Shults, Ditmore and their fellow tailgaters at many games over several years, capturing the strong sense of community and seemingly limitless passion of a group that had been gathering in the Texas Stadium parking lot for decades. But all the revelry happened in the shadow of news that threatened to end the Gate 6 tradition: Cowboys owner Jerry Jones announced plans to move the team to the grandiose new Cowboys Stadium, to be built 20 miles away in Arlington. As spirited as the group was, the news cast something of a pall over the festivities. Not only would the tailgaters lose their sacred gathering spot, but most of them would be unable to afford season tickets at the new stadium.

And therein lies the somewhat bitter point of America's Parking Lot: The changing economics of pro football (in other words, the owners' reprehensible greed) is turning what was once a sport of the working class into a pastime for the wealthy. Cowboys Stadium -- where season ticket buyers must also buy "personal seat licenses" costing up to $150,000 -- is emblematic of today's world of pro football, a world in which a single game ticket can cost hundreds of dollars and luxury box-laden new stadiums cater to the 1 percent.

America's Parking Lot explains this unfortunate trend with plenty of facts, figures and interviews, but its greatest impact is at the human level. Football fanatics may beg for mockery, but it's easy to empathize with Shults, Ditmore and their friends: Thanks to Jones and his fellow team owners, their pastime is no longer affordable for most of the group. Their tailgating tradition might survive a move to a new stadium in logistical terms, but it can't survive the greed that's forever changing the game. (The tradition does survive the move in some ways. But to avoid spoilers I won't discuss what happened to the Gate 6 Tailgaters when the new stadium opened in 2009.)

Mars's film is mostly sympathetic toward its subjects, although it doesn't try to hide the arguably absurd extremes of their passion. Nor does it ignore the obvious question of why Cowboys fans don't abandon the team to spite Jones, who obviously doesn't value their loyalty or need their money. (If you don't know the answer to this question, you're not a Cowboys fan. Hint: In Texas, football is a religion.)

America's Parking Lot is a polished and very solid example of documentary filmmaking, and Mars's first directorial effort is commendable. If an adamant non-fan like me found the film slickly edited, captivating and surprisingly poignant, it's obviously required viewing for any Cowboys fan or student of Texas culture.

Austin/Texas connections: America's Parking Lot was filmed in Irving, Arlington and other parts of the Dallas area, with an Austin crew. Mars has been part of the Austin film scene since the 1990s, appearing in Wuss, The Happy Poet, and more than a dozen other features and short films.

If you missed the SXSW premiere of America's Parking Lot, you can catch it at three additional screenings.