If Texas Has a Soul, It Lives in Matthew McConaughey
We’ve been learning from the man from Uvalde’s shirtlessly Zen approach to life for decades.
Sean O’Neal has been a contributor to Texas Monthly since 2019, covering film, music, and Texas culture, with the occasional foray into politics. Sean grew up in Arlington before moving to Austin to attend UT. After graduating, he became comfortably ensconced within the city’s fabled “velvet rut” while vaguely pursuing a music career. Those dreams never quite panned out, although Sean soon forged another path in the equally lucrative and stable field of journalism. Prior to joining Texas Monthly, Sean spent twelve years at the A.V. Club, where he also served as its editor in chief. His writing has appeared in various publications, such as GQ, Vulture, and Men’s Health, although Texas Monthly is far and away the only one that his in-laws have ever mentioned.
We’ve been learning from the man from Uvalde’s shirtlessly Zen approach to life for decades.
By Sean O'Neal
Turns out the most powerfully restrained actor of his generation is an open book. He and his wife, Kirsten (Dunst—you may have heard of her), welcomed us into their L.A. home and then had us down to Mart, Texas (population 1,748), to meet his folks, who thought he had promise,
By Sean O'Neal
Martin Scorsese, Kirsten Dunst, and other collaborators on what makes the Texas-born actor so in demand.
By Sean O'Neal
Christmastime in Texas has inspired countless songs, but when it comes to classic holiday movies, we’ve long been left in the cold.
By Sean O'Neal
The film portrayal of the Dallas wrestling titans delivers an emotional suplex, but it could have used more moves.
By Sean O'Neal
Tobe Hooper’s ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’ satirizes yuppie greed by painting the entire state with a broad and bloody brush.
By Sean O'Neal
After his murder in Dallas, our perception of what happened has been shaped by the pop culture—and subculture—it inspired.
By Sean O'Neal
‘North Dallas Forty’ revealed the ugly truths behind America’s Team. But nearly 45 years later, it inspires more nostalgia than outrage.
By Sean O'Neal
David Gordon Green’s decades-late and beyond-unnecessary sequel, ‘The Exorcist: Believer,’ commits various forms of cinematic sacrilege.
By Sean O'Neal
Texas quadrupled its annual film incentives. Hollywood’s favorite Texas small town, Smithville, shows the opportunities—and hazards—ahead.
By Sean O'Neal
From her West Texas home, veteran film producer Carolyn Pfeiffer reflects on her coming of age in the world of celebrity and discusses her memoir.
By Sean O'Neal
Richard Linklater didn’t set out to make a Texas film, but Matthew McConaughey’s iconic character feels like somebody every Texan knows.
By Sean O'Neal
A deep dive into a track from the guitarist’s latest album, ‘The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored.’
By Sean O'Neal
Connie Britton’s tough yet compassionate Friday Night Lights character remains one of our most inspirational depictions of Texas womanhood.
By Sean O'Neal
Frank Kozik, the Austin-based designer, who died this week, captured a generation with his posters for groups like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Beastie Boys.
By Sean O'Neal
What makes the Texas woman unique? What makes her distinct from the demure Southern belle or the rugged, rifle-toting frontierswoman of the American West? As the novelist and Texas Monthly contributor Sarah Bird suggests in her 2016 essay collection, A Love Letter to Texas Women, maybe
By Sean O'Neal
HBO Max turned my house into that of Candy Montgomery, played by Elizabeth Olsen. Then things got hyperreal.
By Sean O'Neal
Paul Newman plays a brutish, morally repugnant monster in the classic anti-western. So why do Texans admire him anyway?
By Sean O'Neal
Netflix’s new docuseries revisits the 1993 standoff between David Koresh and the federal government without any agenda—or real purpose.
By Sean O'Neal
Forty years ago, a crop of films led by ‘Terms of Endearment’ and ‘Tender Mercies’ reimagined the way we see Texas.
By Sean O'Neal
With ‘The Baroness From Kaufman County,’ two Austin filmmakers help the East Texas philanthropist tell her story the way she sees it.
By Sean O'Neal
Jonathan Majors and Tommy Lee Jones don’t just have their home state in common.
By Sean O'Neal
From ‘Stranger Things’ to the Sex Pistols, from the Houston suburbs to the outskirts of Texas City, these were the actors who got our attention.
By Sean O'Neal
The track from Abilene-based Old Fire’s new album, ‘Voids,’ evokes the bleakness of war and of the West Texas landscape.
By Sean O'Neal
Texas’s elite police force has long played the hero in film and television, although the reality is far more complex.
By Sean O'Neal
David Gordon Green’s rebooted horror trilogy concludes with another search for meaning, yet again, in senseless murder.
By Sean O'Neal
The CW drama is set in nineteenth-century Texas but strives for twenty-first-century relevance.
By Sean O'Neal
The Austin-based film festival returned for another round of horror and fantasy, now tinged with some distinctly real-world anxieties.
By Sean O'Neal
A Larry McMurtry adaptation directed by Sidney Lumet and filmed entirely in Bastrop—what could go wrong? For ‘Lovin’ Molly,’ it began with the boots.
By Sean O'Neal
Fantastic Fest returns with another selection of out-there curios, but with some familiar local faces to keep you grounded.
By Sean O'Neal
Martha Kelly, the former “Funniest Person in Austin,” is nominated for her deadly serious role in HBO’s ‘Euphoria.’
By Sean O'Neal
The Austin-based nonprofit has become a social media star with clips of vintage local newscasts, bizarre industrial films, and one-of-a-kind celebrity encounters.
By Sean O'Neal
Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head return for a new movie and series that find them older but far from wiser. Is Texas finally ready to claim them as our own?
By Sean O'Neal
Tom Cruise returns, with Austin’s Glen Powell in tow, for a crowd-pleasing sequel that just may pull embattled theaters out of the danger zone.
By Sean O'Neal
The pistol-packing cartoon villain represents every ugly stereotype about our state, but there’s a strange power in embracing him.
By Sean O'Neal
The storied actor and Fort Worth native always wanted to direct. His gripping debut, released twenty years ago, showed us why.
By Sean O'Neal
For every toddler who loved Barney, there was an adult who wanted to punch him. Now the purple dinosaur is back to torment a new generation.
By Sean O'Neal
Eagle Pennell’s ‘The Whole Shootin’ Match’ sets the standard for showing Texans who they are instead of who they’re supposed to be.
By Sean O'Neal
Trail of Dead was “the band that trashes everything.” But on its eleventh album, ‘XI: Bleed Here Now,’ it’s finally grown into the classic rock group it always wanted to be.
By Sean O'Neal
The sequel to Tobe Hooper’s slasher sucks all the fun out of psychotic cannibal killers—but it does have a message for Californians headed to Texas.
By Sean O'Neal
Richard Linklater’s ‘SubUrbia’ is ‘The Last Picture Show’ of the nineties.
By Sean O'Neal
The Austin-set firefighter show devotes four episodes to the 2021 freeze while ignoring all of the real-life drama.
By Sean O'Neal
The Austin filmmaker’s episodes of ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ embody an existential crisis over the future of Star Wars.
By Sean O'Neal
How a simple, two-chord song written by an Iowan became (clap clap clap clap) our unofficial state anthem.
By Sean O'Neal
The Texas City native and star of the hit HBO comedy series talks Judy Gemstone, ham slices, and why there’s nothing worse than someone trying to be funny.
By Sean O'Neal
From newcomers to reliable veterans to a pop star remaking her TV career, these were the actors worth watching this year.
By Sean O'Neal
Texas actor Tye Sheridan stars alongside Ben Affleck in the sentimental yet skippable story of an aspiring writer, directed by George Clooney.
By Sean O'Neal
The unnerving feature debut from Red Oak native Lauren Hadaway plumbs the gloomy depths beneath a college rower’s quest for greatness.
By Sean O'Neal
Twenty-five years later, Mike Judge’s ‘King of the Hill’ still captures something essential about Texans and Texas life. But are there any Hank Hills left?
By Sean O'Neal
The streaming phenomenon, produced just outside of Dallas, is winning converts with its ‘Friday Night Lights’ spin on faith.
By Sean O'Neal