Dallas native Keven McAlester may have an Oscar in his future

You won't find a lot of local talent Sunday at the Oscars, aside from a smattering of Dallas-area actors with small parts in Boyhood and Owen Wilson's turn in The Grand Budapest Hotel, but there's still one good chance of seeing a native son with statue in hand.

St. Mark's School of Texas graduate Keven McAlester, perhaps best known in these parts for hosting The Adventure Club on KDGE-FM (102.1) from 1994 to 1997, has spent the last several years plying his trade as a documentary filmmaker. Last year, he co-wrote and produced Last Days in Vietnam, directed by Rory Kennedy (Robert Kennedy's daughter). Last Days is one of five films nominated for best documentary.

That means McAlester, 44, will be among those onstage if Last Days wins the prize.

Just don’t mention that possibility to him.

“Yes, that’s correct,” he says quietly from his home in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Um, are you excited about that?

“I’m thrilled, but I don’t think about it very much,” he says. Understood. No jinx. No putting the cart before the horse, especially for the industry’s highest honor.

He's far more effusive discussing the film, which is scheduled to air April 28 on PBS as part of the stellar American Experience series. Last Days, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, zooms in on the frenzied final days of the war in 1975, marked by a desperate push by South Vietnamese citizens to escape the country as the North Vietnamese closed in.

McAlester, who directed the superb 2005 documentary You're Gonna Miss Me, about the seminal Austin psychedelic rocker Roky Erickson, never considered himself an expert on the Vietnam War. That's part of what drew him to the project.

“I love immersing myself in a subject and learning everything I can,” McAlester says. “Often, approaching it from the perspective of a nonexpert helps the filmmaking process, because most of the audience will be nonexperts as well. It was absolutely a subject of interest, but it wasn’t something I knew a lot about before I started. I was surprised by how little I knew.”

McAlester hails from a distinguished Dallas family. His stepmother, Virginia McAlester, is a major historical preservation figure and author of A Field Guide to American Houses. His stepsister, Amy Talkington, is a filmmaker and young-adult author; his stepbrother, Carty Talkington, wrote and directed the 1994 Texas indie Love and a .45(starring a young Renée Zellweger).

McAlester was a popular fixture on local radio, selecting and spinning an eclectic pop mix for The Adventure Club, but he doesn't miss radio. The man who spends countless hours researching and making nonfiction films says broadcasting was a bit of a time suck.

"I enjoy playing music, and I enjoy the idea of doing a show," he says. "But then, confronted with selecting even three hours a week, it's really time-consuming. It seems really simple, but when I was doing The Adventure Club I would spend the entire week figuring out what to play. I know it didn't sound like it very much.

“Now I prefer to listen to music.”

Come Sunday he may get to hear the sweetest music of all: the orchestra that serenades Oscar winners as they make their way to the stage.

But don’t remind him of that.