One hundred great years of New Mexico filmmaking and the shootin' ain't over yet... | by Jason Silverman

Fans of the Western have had few reasons to whoop and holler during the past 20 years. Films about cowboys have become a rarity, and the epic and culturally significant Western seems to be heading into the historical sunset. However, a new film, titled The Hi-Lo Country, may help rescue the genre, thanks in part to the mountains of northern New Mexico.
Martin Scorsese's production of The Hi-Lo Country, starring Woody Harrelson, Patricia Arquette and Willie Nelson and directed by Englishman Stephen Frears, galloped into New Mexico last summer and is currently in post-production. The Hi-Lo Country is adapted from a novel by former rancher and miner Max Evans, a resident of Albuquerque, and tells the story of two post-World War II-era cowboys whose friendship is tested when they meet a beautiful woman.
Shot in and around Santa Fe's Sangre de Cristo Mountains, The Hi-Lo Country is a promising start for New Mexico's second century of cinema. The state (though itself only 86 years old) hosted its first production in 1898, when Thomas Alva Edison shot footage for Indian Day School, a film that offered many Easterners their first look at Native American culture.
Since Edison's visit, Hollywood has traveled to New Mexico in bursts, particularly when the Western has been in vogue. That trend began with one of moviedom's first big stars. Tom Mix, a great stunt rider and action hero, rode the ranges near Las Vegas, NM, in 16 short films shot in 1914 and 1915. Nearly 40 years later, another major star, Jimmy Stewart, starred in the classic pacifist Western The Man From Laramie, which made use of the glorious landscapes in and around Taos.
Sandia Crest, west of Albuquerque, served as the site of the climactic scene in Lonely Are The Brave, one of the best of the revisionist Westerns of the '60s. The film, adapted from an Edward Abbey novel, features Kirk Douglas (in his favorite role) as a New Mexico cowboy facing the rapidly changing, newly mechanized West. A similar theme – the crushing of the individua lspirit – was covered in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969), which, aided by the trains and rugged terrain of Chama, NM, was one of the last Westerns to find commercial and critical success. Since the early '70s the Western has been in steady decline, its audience dwindling. In the face of the flop after flop (including the made-in-New Mexico work Wyatt Earp), and but for a few bright spots (including, perhaps, Silverado, shot in areas around northern New Mexico), the Western is considered by many to be ready for burial. That group does not include Evans, who isn't ready yet to eulogize his favorite film genre.
"I don't think the Western is dead. A really good filmmaker could still make a good, traditional mythical Western today, although there sure are a lot who are failing," Evans said. "I think the old-time shoot-'em-ups represented America more favorably than anything else ever has, better than all of the politicians ever could. The Western was the one thing the rest of the world loved us for."
Evans hopes the Western will have a resurgence, with Robert Redford's soon-to-be-released adaptation of The Horse Whisperer and The Hi-Lo Country, scheduled to hit theaters this fall. A rise in the number of Westerns would likely mean filmgoers would see more of the stunning mountains and mesas of northern New Mexico, one of the last wild spots on the Western frontier. In addition to being perhaps the greatest living cowboy novelist, Evans has helped keep New Mexico on the cinematic map, establishing the state as a center for the Western.
One great talent lured to the Land of Enchantment by Evans was the Western director Sam Peckinpah, who made his first trip to Taos in 1961. Peckinpah read Evans' manuscript of Hi-Lo Country, decided he wanted to meet the man who wrote it, and started a long friendship with Evans. The legendary director spent the next 20 years trying to get a version of The Hi-Lo Country made, his failure due in part to his antagonistic relationship with studio executives, and in part to the waning appeal of the traditional Western. Jon Bowman, the associate editor of a new book entitled 100 Years of Filmmaking in New Mexico, believes traditional Westersn, such as Peckinpah's proposed version of Hi-Lo Country, ha been replaced over the years by stories of the West told in different voices.
"Hollywood always depicted the West as the domain of white males, but we know now about the buffalo soldiers and rich Hispanic culture of the West," Bowman said. "Films shot here, including The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, Milagro Beanfield War and Salt of the Earth, have shown a greater cultural diversity than the traditional Western."
The mountains of New Mexico have long been popular with non-traditional Westerns, including the 1942 shoot-'em-up comedy The Valley of the Sun, a Lucille Ball vehicle. According to Taos legend, Desi Arnaz, worried that Ball was being unfaithful, hung around menacingly until he was barred from the set. He spent the rest of his vacation teaching kids from the Pueblo how to play drums, Desi-style.
Rowdier stories came from the set of Easy Rider, another riff on the Western genre. Shot around Taos in 1969, this film – a nihilist, rock 'n roll and drug-induced '60s classic – grabbed much of its flavor from the hippie drop-out culture of northern New Mexico. New Mexico's free love and freewheeling days may be nearly gone, and the wilds of the Land of Enchantment much more tame than in the '60s, but Evans insists that New Mexico still has a lot to offer artists and filmmakers.
"When I bring people out to scout for locations, they'll say, 'God, it's a different world,' " he said. "I know there has been some overbuilding, but comparatively speaking, it hasn't been bad, not compared to Tucson or Phoenix. I feel New Mexico still has a decade of wildness left, and you can make a lot of great pictures in a decade."

Writer Jason Silverman was festival program director for the Taos Talking Pictures Festival.

This article appeared on page 11 of HighCountry Magazine 1998.