This production — which won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Texas Film at the 18th Dallas Film Festival — focuses on the residents of the West Texas town of Dell City, population: minimal. Big stores are scarce, and the ranchers and farmers who live there need water to make a living. That facet forever changed in the early 2000s thanks to new water board rules. These adjustments saw a large chunk of the water under Dell City siphoned off for transportation to El Paso. The deal for that maneuver stood to impact various strains of Dell City’s population. Some inevitably prospered, while other Dell City residents (including the late Laura Lynch) were hung out to dry.
Water Wars chronicles the simmering turmoil that resulted in the landmark 2007 Texas Supreme Court case Guitar Holding v. Hudspeth County. Water Wars director Mario Mattei and executive producer Philip Guitar were keenly aware of how and why this story resonated so deeply with many Texans. After all, both artists have deep roots in the Lone Star State. Though Mattei is an Arizona native, he’s spent over a decade living in Texas. Part of what brought him to this particular locale was his family history.
“My mom’s side of the family are old-school Texans, my grandfather’s from Dallas,” Mattei says.
His exploits in filmmaking made Austin’s vibrant cinema scene irresistible to Mattei. As for Guitar, he’ll proudly proclaim he’s “born and raised in Texas, grew up in Abilene.”
But being closely connected to Texas didn’t mean the real-life story behind Water Wars was on Mattei's radar. Guitar was the first of the two to know about this story. Realizing the cinematic potential of this yarn, he eventually roped in Mattei, a process that took some convincing.
“I was a little hesitant at first to do something that involved legal matters,” Mattei recalls. “It seemed like it was fun and quirky and it had good conflict and drama, but I also knew it was going to be very technical.”
However, a trip Mattei took to Ladybird Lake gave him a personal revelation.
“Now you can send me 500 pages of legal documents!” Mattei humorously remembers telling Guitar once he’d signed onto the project.
Immediately, a big issue emerged on how to realize Water Wars as a documentary. For Dell City's saga to make sense, audiences needed to understand water laws. This material is communicated through expository dialogue culled from interview segments and brief bursts of explanatory narration. Figuring out how to convey vital material without turning into a monotonous lecture always lingered on Guitar's mind as a producer.
To figure out the “proper” amount of exposition in the film, Guitar looked back on past documentaries he loved. Recalling titles such as Texas Killing Fields and The Jinx, Guitar admired documentaries that also functioned as good thrillers.
A Sad-but-True Thriller
“I wanted to make sure we had that mystery/thriller element as much as possible,” Guitar says.Keeping those creative guiding stars in mind provided a clear path forward for Guitar and the other key creative team members for Water Wars. Exposition was needed, sure. But crafting Water Wars as a propulsive thriller first and foremost kept the documentary light on its feet. It also prevented the feature from lapsing into Guitar’s nightmare scenario of “bogging down people with too much exposition.” If things got “too educational” in the editing room, that’s when Mattei and Guitar knew there was a problem.
One element that especially grabs viewers' attention is the interview segments with lawyer Brian Sledge, who represents corporations and larger entities running in opposition to Dell City residents such as Lynch. An antagonistic force to many figures Water Wars paints as sympathetic, Sledge presents a candid demeanor in his screentime. Recalling his courtroom experiences, he exhibits an amusing devil-may-care attitude contrasting with the emotional urgency of the typical Dell City anecdotes.
Mattei recalls that interviewing figures like Sledge was important for him. After all, he wanted to get all sides of this conflict and not just the points of view of Dell City denizens. Even with that mandate in mind, the filmmaker still approached his interview time with Sledge with hesitation. What would this lawyer be like in person? Would he live up to the horror stories he’d heard? Instead, he found an affable human being whom the camera loved.
“He just had a wonderful, charming personality … I could totally just go to the lake with this guy and drink beers all day,” Mattei says.
Admitting that “I don’t know him on a grand level,” Mattei found Sledge endearing while making the feature. Discovering unexpected sides of this lawyer encapsulated how documentary cinema can bring us closer to all kinds of people. Everybody has a story to impart. The genre Water Wars occupies can be potent in digging deep into those stories.
Though making this film, Mattei, Guitar, and other members of the Water Wars crew got to know many people deeply, including lawyers and corporate figures tied up in the court case. They also got close to Dell City residents like Lanny Wallace, a man financially devastated by the whole water fiasco. The expansive canvas of Mattei and Guitar’s creative vision reflects the endless array of humans inhabiting Texas. That's a quality of the state that Mattei especially loves.
“There’s a strong sense of culture and what it means to be Texan, and it’s a broad, diverse umbrella,” Mattei says. “There’s just something unique to being a Texan.”
With Water Wars, Mattei and Guitar hope to make viewers aware of just some of the lives and struggles making up that “broad, diverse umbrella” within the state’s history — oh, and to remind folks of just how deeply important water is.
Water Wars will screen at 3 p.m, Sunday, July 14, at Look Cinema 6, 10110 Technology Blvd., as part of the Best of DIFF 2024 lineup.
