Rolling Roadshow presents Luck Cinema, featuring Red Headed Stranger with Willie Nelson at Willie Nelson's "Luck, TX" ranch just outside of Austin, Texas on Saturday, July 6, 2019.
Rolling Roadshow and Luck Productions are joining forces to present Luck Cinema, a film screening series in Luck, TX. This summer Luck Cinema will make its mark with an unforgettable kickoff event: a starlit screening of the Red Headed Stranger held on the original film set, featuring an in-person Q&A with the movie's star, Willie Nelson and special guests from the film. The event will take place on Saturday, July 6 at Nelson's Luck, TX ranch just outside of Austin. Tickets go on sale Thursday, June 20 at 10:00 AM.
Guests will be treated to the first-ever digital presentation of the recently resurfaced classic western, showcased on Rolling Roadshow's projector screen situated in the middle of the Luck, TX property where the movie was filmed.
Prior to the screening, Austin Food & Wine Alliance will host an intimate, 50-person dinner prepared by award-winning chef Jesse Griffiths of Austin's celebrated Dai Due restaurant , a heralded culinary figure and the recipient of the 2018 Austin Food & Wine grant in participation with Luck Reunion.
Following a painstaking search for the original film, nearly 20 years after its last official screening, Luck Productions and Rolling Roadshow found the original tape, bringing in American Genre Film Archive to digitize the Red Headed Stranger for the film's first showing in digital form.
The theme of the Luck Cinema launch event is fitting as Red Headed Stranger is Luck, TX's raison d’etre. Luck was built in 1986 as the set for the film and, when the script called for the town to burn down, Nelson–the Red Headed Stranger himself – requested a change in the storyline, simply to preserve the old western town he calls his own to this day.
Based on Nelson's 1975 concept album of the same name, Red Headed Stranger the film tells the story of a scorned preacher seeking revenge on his wife and the man she left him for. Having successfully shopped the film version to Universal Studios in 1979, Nelson and the late Bill Wittliff –the movie's screenwriter and director–were later turned down when the studio's perspective star, Robert Redford, rejected the offer. Wittliff and Nelson then set out to fund the film on their own; casting Willie as the Red Headed Stranger and employing a team of friends and family to make the film happen.The Luck Cinema screening event will bring the “Stranger” himself back to the set to discuss the untold stories behind the movie, and its set which he now calls home.
Outside of the popular annual Luck Reunion festival, the first Luck Cinema event provides the unique opportunity to experience Nelson's “Luck, TX” property firsthand. In addition to the screening itself, fans will be able to view exclusive memorabilia provided by the Wittliff Collections–founded by Bill Wittliff and his wife, Sally. Archival items from Wittliff's collection will be exhibited throughout the site; providing a deeper understanding of the unique history of the film, the story of the characters involved, and a look back at the beginnings of what “Luck, TX” is today.
The team is also partnering with the Texas Film Commission who will be onsite discussing the film itself in addition to speaking about Texas' film industry. Tickets for the Red Headed Stranger screening will be available for $100. All-inclusive tickets including access to both the Austin Food & Wine dinner and film are available for $350. All tickets go on sale Thursday, June 20 at 10:00 AM at www.amplitix.com/luck.
