NYT: Hollywood Stampedes Marfa, Texas, Tranquillity Rides into the Sunset

[DeepModem Mom]

Hollywood Stampedes a Texas Town, and Tranquillity Rides Into the Sunset
By WHITNEY JOINER
Published: August 27, 2006


(Richard Foreman/Paramount Pictures)
Josh Brolin plays an antelope hunter in “No Country for Old Men,” a modern-day western from the Coen brothers.

....Like many people raised in this isolated West Texas town near the Mexican border, (W.E.) Love, 49, grew up with a small connection to Hollywood: his grandmother was an extra in the 1956 film “Giant.” That Texas epic, touted at the time as the most expensive movie ever made, irrevocably changed Marfa, a drought-plagued ranching town that had long seen better days. The film’s stars — Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean — drew crowds at the Hotel Paisano on Marfa’s main street, and the movie employed hundreds of locals as extras.

Operating on a somewhat less grand scale, (Joel and Ethan Coen) — the writing and directing team behind “Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” — visited Marfa last March, as they searched for ranch land on which to film their latest project, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel “No Country for Old Men.”...The president of Marfa’s only bank, Mr. Love also owns a cattle ranch and gave the Coens a tour of his property when they scouted locations last spring. As the filmmakers and Mr. Love sat on his back porch talking, Joel Coen asked if Mr. Love would be interested in playing a small role in the movie....

***

By now Marfans have come to take a certain amount of celebrity presence for granted, thanks to their town’s reputation as an international art destination. Marfa is home to both the Chinati Foundation, a sprawling outdoor art space founded in 1979 by the minimalist artist Donald Judd, and the Lannan Foundation’s writers residency program.

But it is still three hours away from a commercial airport or a shopping mall and has just 2,400 residents, making the arrival this year of not one, but two Hollywood productions something of an event. Even as the Coens were shooting in Marfa, another well-known writer-director, Paul Thomas Anderson (“Magnolia,” “Punch-Drunk Love”), was preparing to shoot his first movie in four years on a 500-acre set south of town....While the landscape was the main draw for both productions, the town of Marfa was a factor too. An eccentric, fiercely independent place that’s become a haven for artists and art tourists, Marfa has seen an upsurge in galleries, boutique hotels and print coverage in the last 10 years. The Coens became enamored with Marfa, “as a lot of people are,” (Robert Graf, producer of "No Country for Old Men) said. “There are a lot of really interesting and fun people in Marfa.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/movies/27join.html

[Sooner75]

1. Marfa's natural defense

I don't think Marfa's likely to become the next Santa Fe or Aspen -- although stranger things have happened.

Luckily for Marfa, it's far, far away from anything of any size, and the locals aren't going to sell you any land (1) until they've known you for a few years and (2) they won't sell you less than several hundred acres to keep out the low bidders.

God bless the relatively untainted remote communities like Marfa, TX, and Madrid, NM. We need them just as much as the places at the other end of the spectrum like midtown Manhattan. You can actually get away from it all, because there ain't any of it out there!

[Horse with no Name]

2. They actually dyed the grass when they filmed Giant

:wow: