Lewis Minor 'Kit' Carson, co-wrote 'Paris, Texas,' dies at 73

DALLAS -- Lewis Minor "Kit" Carson, the Irving, Texas-raised filmmaker who invented the mockumentary, wrote and starred in acclaimed films, co-founded the USA Film Festival and helped launch director Wes Anderson's directorial career, has died at the age of 73.

He had been ill for some time -- "suffering," in the words of son Hunter Carson. He died at Baylor University Medical Center Monday night.

As South by Southwest and Texas Hall of Fame co-founder Louis Black put it in an email sent to friends Tuesday, "One of the greats has left us."

In 1967, Carson teamed up with young filmmaker Jim McBride for "David Holzman's Diary," his movie about a man obsessed with himself. The film, which he wrote and starred in, only looked like a documentary. It's preserved in the National Film Registry among films considered "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

Acclaimed independent filmmaker Joe Swanberg said the film resembles "a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account," calling it "the sharpest critique of, and deepest investigation into, those media that I know of."

In 1970, Carson and SMU film Professor Bill Jones co-founded the USA Film Festival -- in part, Carson once said, so he could find a place to play "David Holzman's Diary."

To some, Carson is best known as the co-writer, with Sam Shepard, of Wim Wenders' "Paris, Texas," which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, the film co-starred Carson's son, Hunter.

More recently, he was noted as the man who introduced Wes Anderson and the brothers Wilson (Owen, Luke and Andrew) to the world of filmmaking. The brothers' family was close to Carson, and he and his second wife, producer Cynthia Hargrave, took the Wilson boys to the Sundance Film Festival in 1992, where they planned what became the "Bottle Rocket" short film.

He married actress Karen Black, Hunter's mother, in the 1970s.

Carson is survived by Hargrave and his son.