“At the end of the day, it feels like a lifetime achievement. One foot in front of the other and look what we built.”
Lamar University film professor O’Brien Stanley was awarded the Beaumont Music & Film Festival lifetime achievement award, Feb. 21. Stanley helped found the festival in 2002.
At a ceremony held in the Jefferson Theatre, Stanley received the Lifetime Achievement Award Gusher trophy and was shown an appreciation video from his former colleagues and students.
Stanley, Gordon Williams, Chris Castillo and Robert Fong organized the first Spindletop Film festival in Beaumont 25 years ago. Stanley said the idea came when he saw an announcement about a film festival to be held at Angelo State University in the small Texas town of San Angelo.
“A student said, ‘Well, if Angelo State University could do a festival, we ought to do one,” Stanley said. “And there’s something that just stuck with me. I remember thinking we needed to take enough steps — kind of like you’re making a film — to where you can’t go backwards, and you’re committed to doing this thing.”
The Spindletop festival ran for seven years up until Castillo and Fong moved.
“Back in 2006, Gordon and I realized that we were the last two founders that were doing it, and you need about at least four people or so,” Stanley said. “Chris (Dombrowski) stood up and volunteered, and said, ‘I’m gonna do this festival,’ and we passed the baton. We helped him in every which way, you know, for that continuity. And it’s been fun ever since.
“He got it going, then our job is to get students here to help out — enter the festivals, work the festivities. I mean, it just took off from there.”
The festival is annually hosted in Beaumont at various locations, showcasing films from far around the world. Stanlye said the area’s film community has been able to boom from 100 people to 1,500.
Dombrowski said Stanley’s influence has crossed state lines. A film makers in Lake Charles in Louisiana was inspired by the Boomtown Film Festival.
“At the time there wasn’t one in Lake Charles either, but a guy by the name of Sean Patrick Bennett came to Boomtown, saw what we were doing and started the Lake Charles Film Festival,” Dombrowski said.
Stanley retired from LU in 2025 and moved to Oklahoma although he still works with the film community in Southeast Texas. He keeps in contact with former students and colleagues, and even does a podcast with his former students Isaac Duerksen and Cole McKristy. Stanley also hosts a sci-fi podcast with Byron Valentine, the former director of 91.3 KVLU, Lamar’s public radio station.
“To be here as the center of the fest, I did not imagine it would ever get this big,” Stanley said. “It’s just so neat to see filmmakers in Southeast Texas go, ‘We can make something.’”