Page 38 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Southwest USA & National Parks

36  INTRODUCING THE SOUTHWEST A POR TR AIT OF THE SOUTHWEST  37

The Southwest: Backdrop for the Movies The Sundance Film Festival

The panoramic desert landscape of the Southwest is Actor and director Robert Redford owns the Sundance Resort,
familiar the world over thanks to the countless movies which combines an environmentally responsible mountain
that have been filmed here. As legendary actor John vacation development with an institute for the promotion of the
cinematic arts. Founded by Redford in 1981, the Sundance Film
Wayne once said: “TV you can do on the back lot; for Festival takes place annually in the second half of January. The
the real outdoor dramas, you have to do them where majority of screenings, which showcase independent film- and
God put the West.” Monument Valley (see pp168–9) is documentary-makers, are not held at the Sundance Resort (about
famous for its association with John Ford’s Westerns, 75 miles/121 km northwest of Moab), but in nearby Park City,
Salt Lake City, and Ogden Utah. The festival has become America’s
while the stark beauty of southern Utah, particularly foremost venue for innovative cinema and attracts the big
around the Moab and Kanab areas, has appeared in Old Tucson Studio was built for Hollywood names. Tickets sell out quickly, so make ticket and
several films. The popular idea of the “Wild West” (see the 1940 motion picture Arizona. lodging reservations ahead.
The studio is still a popular movie
pp58–9) has been formed more through film than by location and is now also home to
any other medium, and visitors to the Southwest may a family-oriented, Wild West theme Robert Redford at the Sundance Film Festival
find much of its scenery strangely familiar. Many TV park (see pp90–91).
series and commercials have also been shot here.
Monument Valley was favored by John Ford, who directed
nine movies using the area dubbed “Ford Country” and other
Johnson Canyon, near Kanab (see p153), southern Utah sites as backdrops. Many, like the 1956 epic
was the location of the 1962 film How the The Searchers, are considered classics.
West was Won. It is a western town set
that was built for the 1951 movie
Westward the Women.
Dead Horse Point
State Park (see p147)
has long been used
by directors who
John Ford and Monument Valley want a spectacular
John Ford was not the first director to shoot setting. It was seen
a movie using Monument Valley’s spectacular in the 1991 film
buttes as a backdrop. That honor goes to Thelma and Louise
George B. Seitz, who filmed The Vanishing and, in 2000, actor
American there in 1924. But it was John Ford’s Tom Cruise climbed
genius that captured the spectacle of the up the sheer cliff-
West as people had never seen it before. face in the thrilling
His first movie there, Stagecoach (1939), opening scene of
so enthralled audiences that it brought Mission Impossible: 2.
the Western back into vogue and made the
young John Wayne into a star. Ford set a new
standard for movies, bringing the grandeur
of the West to the big screen, and setting off
a “studio stampede” of directors wanting to Tombstone was the setting for the 1993 film of
utilize the beauty of the region. In all, over 60 the same name (see p96). Starring Val Kilmer, Sam
movies and countless TV shows, commercials, Elliott, Bill Paxton, and Kurt Russell, it is a modern
games, and videos have used Monument Moab’s snow-capped mountains, red rock interpretation of the Western genre.
Valley as a spectacular panoramic backdrop. formations, and deep river canyons (see p145) have
been the backdrop for over 100 major motion
pictures, including Thelma and Louise in 1991.

Lake Powell is the most spectacular
Robert Zemeckis used artificial lake in the US (see pp154–5). Its
Monument Valley in stark and otherworldly beauty has been
1990 as the backdrop for used as a set for such diverse movies as the
the third installment of 1967 Dean Martin Western Rough Night in
his Back to the Future Jericho, the 1965 biblical epic The Greatest
series of films, starring Story Ever Told (pictured right), with
Director John Ford on the set of Stagecoach Michael J. Fox and Charlton Heston, and the 1968 science
Christopher Lloyd. fiction classic Planet of the Apes.

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