As ’12 Mighty Orphans’ is set for its film debut, its author remains in a Texas prison

Luke Wilson was there at the Drover Hotel, with Robert Duval who was asking to talk to TCU football coach Gary Patterson, while former Texas Tech and NFL receiver Danny Amendola was visiting with his friend who was the personal trainer for Jessica Simpson.

But someone was missing from this A-list crowd.

Jim Dent should have been here.

The premiere of “12 Mighty Orphans” the movie was on Monday night at the Stockyards complete with a Hollywood after party, but the man who wrote the best-selling book on which the movie is based remains in prison.

Harry James Dent hoped to be out by now. Instead, Dent is currently housed in Hamilton pre-release facility in Bryan, which is a good indication he will be soon paroled, possibly in July.

Dent, 68, is imprisoned but he’s lucky to be alive. He has survived so many wounds, mostly self inflicted. He also contracted COVID this year that nearly killed him.

Dent hoped that at the end of his life he would merit an obit in The New York Times. While such decisions are at the whim of a selective editorial board, his life could at least be a compelling movie.

Actually, because it’s Jim Dent, it should be a book first, complete with a few exaggerations and liberties, and then made into a movie. Whether Dent’s life is a novel, or a work of non-fiction, you won’t be able to believe it, or put it down.

Dent, who for years was a local sportswriter, is more known as the best-selling author who wrote “The Junction Boys,” and other sports books.

Dent was locked up for the third time in April of 2015 for several arrests because he drove drunk. After he failed to appear in court in 2013, he fled to Mexico.

Broke, he tried to re-enter the country on the Tijuana/San Diego border, but was caught despite his efforts to bribe a border patrol officer.

I interviewed Dent when he was in Lindsey State Jail in Jacksboro in the winter of 2015-16. Outside of the front door of the prison was a prisoner in a jumpsuit raking leaves by himself. There was no prison guard nearby, and the two-lane highway was less than 30 yards away.

The interview took place not opposite glass panels through a phone like you see on TV, but inside the warden’s office, with the door open. The interview was casual. This didn’t feel like prison.

Dent is funny, and you can see why people are drawn to him. He can tell a story.

Then, at one point, he snapped at me and yelled. A prison officer walked in, looked at Dent, and she said in a monotone voice, “One more time.”

The sober warning was Jim Dent’s life. This was not Shawshank, and you can rake leaves, but this is still prison.

My impression was he was mad at himself, and for some of the relationships with some people that didn’t work out. His relationship with alcohol, and other “items,”were the worst.

Dent’s original parole date was Jan. 15, 2020.

According to his sister, Janice, who lives in Arkansas and runs his Facebook account, Dent received parole on his first sentence, and he was denied parole on his second.

“In July [of 2020], he contracted a very serious case of Covid,” Janice wrote. “He lost 30 pounds and was on a walker. Other inmates told him he was unrecognizable. He is doing much better now.”

Between his stays in Jacksboro and the Hamilton facilities, he was moved to the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in West Livingston. That’s where the state keeps death row inmates, most of whom are there for murder.

Because Dent had a string of DWIs, had been incarcerated before and fled the country, he was considered a more “hardened” criminal. If you ever met Jim Dent you’d think he is the life of every party, not a societal threat.

According to friends of Dent, he was quite content staying there as it allowed him to gather more stories for a book he is writing about his own life. The working title was, “Last Call.”

He was still there as of late January.

While in prison, he’s worked in the library and taken to writing for The Echo, a monthly newspaper for Texas prison inmates.

He wrote one on the experience of watching football with his fellow inmates titled, “FOOTBALL: PRISON’S UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.”

“The Cowboys are at once the most hated and the most loved team in the prison. In the old days, before the security cameras were installed, Cowboys games incited a few fights,” he wrote.

In another column he wrote, “Like a lot of inmates, I didn’t leave my past life in very good shape when I went off to prison for a second time in 2015. Behind me were the broken pieces of sheer chaos. My friends and family were blindsided by the tornadic wind shift of my life. I knew there would be more consequences as the years passed.”

Included in that was the process of turning his book “12 Mighty Orphans” into a movie.

As the project bounced around potential investors, and looked to be dead, one of the obstacles they soon learned was that Dent’s financial situation included several liens that had to be addressed before production could proceed.

In October of 2018, Dent received an email from SMU journalism chairman Tony Pederson, who has known Dent for decades.

“About 9 p.m. that night, the officer in my pod dropped an email on my bunk,” Dent wrote.

Pederson told Dent that Fort Worth oilman George Young had recruited some other investors and they were going to make his book into a movie.

“As I read it, I started jumping up and down on the mattress like a kid on a trampoline,” Dent wrote. “The officer looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, and then politely asked me to get down — fast.”

On Monday night, the book that he wrote became a movie with a Fort Worth premiere and a Hollywood party.

Jim Dent is where he is for a reason, but it was sad that he was unable to be there to see it in person.