Movies This Summer and the Classic Locations

First, I wanted to say if you e-mail me about anything try to mention something in the subject that makes it sound non-spam-like. I get lots of spam that automatically goes into a junk folder if it does not recognize the e-mail. I usually check all the subject lines before I delete what is in the folder. There have been a few times where I almost deleted someones messages as spam before I clicked it. Usually, I can tell just from looking at the e-mail address and subject, but I may not always do that without making mistakes. I always try to respond to whatever I am sent so if you do not hear from me within a few days or so retry.

I wanted to mention that the movies of this summer have some of the classic locations in them, but you have to look or you may miss them. I have to admit I have not seen any movies this summer. It is rare for me to go to the theater anymore. I have mentioned a few of these in the past, but I think I will do it again here. I have heard and read some of these movies aren't that good, but let's not concern ourselves with that right now.

1)Star Trek

I do not know how much of it is used in the movie, but I did see the classic Vasquez Rocks formation in some movie clip many months ago. Of course, it was used in the original tv series, but it looks like they took the rock formation and used CGI to make it look like a lot of them.

2)Up (Shoutout to John for e-mailing me on this one)

It looks like they used a CGI Garden of the Gods from the Iverson Ranch on this one. I looked at a trailer online and saw that from the distance a reversed Garden of the Gods can be seen at one point.

3)Land of the Lost

In the trailers I have seen they used a lot of the Trona Pinnacles. Although I have not done anything on this blog about this place I have relatives that live in nearby Trona and Ridgecrest. I don't think I have been to the Pinnacles in over 25 years. Some day I will go back. Sci-fi movies get made here once in a while.

4)Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
The very beginning scene has Lone Pine Peak and the Alabama Hills. I mentioned this back in October.

5)G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
They did shoot some footage from the Lone Pine/Alabama Hills area. I don't think it was a major location for the movie. Whether they use it for the movie and how much is actually in we will find out next month. They were to have shot some footage at the Los Angeles National Cemetery too. Since my recent posting on the cemetery I have been told it has shown up in the tv series Bones too.

Most of the big blockbusters tend to use all parts of the world these days, but it is nice to see some of the classic areas come up once in a while even if they are small parts.

I am going to take some time off of blogging for the next few weeks. See you then.

Tribute to John Wayne #10 (The Shootist Coat)

It is kind of fitting that I started off this tribute in Lone Pine and we are going to end there. John Wayne's career began with movies made here, and he ended here with filming a commercial for Great Western Savings in the Alabama Hills.

This is the coat John Wayne wore while filming The Shootist. It is in the Lone Pine Film Museum.
I remember they had it on display when the museum opened. For some reason I did not take pictures of it. Then when I came back, paid money to get in assuming it was there, they did not have it out for some reason. That was the whole point I went in there for, or I would not have done so. Some items are on loan so I assumed it might have been shipped out. Then during the last festival I saw in in a this display in a different area. So, this is what I took.
Naturally, it is behind a glass case making it hard to take pictures of it without reflections.
One thing to notice is you can see the "bullet holes" and "blood" in the coat in the above and the picture below. I lightened up the picture more that I normally would below so you can see what I mean.
Those holes and fake blood represent the final death of John Wayne on camera. Maybe it is more of a fitting way to remember the actor and the character that he played in The Shootist than his death in the real world.

This has been a fun month doing this tribute to this icon. It was something that I had wanted to do over the past year or two. While I do have other locations with John Wayne, the month is over and will probably show those at a later time. I hoped you enjoyed this tribute.

Tribute to John Wayne #9 (The Shootist at Washoe Lake)

(GPS: N39 14.320 W119 46.160)

As I have said before, sometimes when I go location hunting I am not always trying to find exact spots. Sometimes I just enjoy getting the general feel of the area. This is one of those that I kind of knew before going there that I was not going to find exact camera spots.

Washoe Lake State Park is not that far from Carson City, NV. After I visited the place in the last blog I continued on to this Lake which was about a 15-20 minute drive away.

In The Shootist, this is the scene where John Wayne and Lauren Bacall take a ride out to this lake.

Okay, in my picture they were not exactly here, but at least I got the horizon correct if you compare the mountains/hills in the background. One thing to note is the water level was probably down a lot than usual mainly because of the dry year(s) we have been having.
I have not looked to see what this mountain is. Most of the high mountains in Nevada are not as high as the ones in the Eastern Sierra. Still, it was one I am curious in.
My picture looking across the lake.
Zoom in. There are some antennas up there.
This is when they were leaving.

You can see where the ridgeline goes down.

So, I was close by, but it looks like so much has changed in the last 30 years that this is the closest I was able to get.

It was warm so once I got some pictures taken I took off. I was content with what I got, but I probably will not come back here. There was an interesting looking trail on behind me from this lake on the otherside of the road, but it is a low priority on my list of hikes right now.

Tribute to John Wayne #8 (The Shootist at the Krebs-Peterson House)

One of the rules I have on here is, under normal circumstances, I do not like to share areas that are privately owned. There are bunch of places I know of or been to that I would love to share, but I do not blog about them for this reason. Most of the fun I really have on my adventures is being out in the middle of nowhere with no worries of the sensativities of the big city.

This is an exception. The reason I am allowing this one is that it is a well known historic place in Carson City, Nevada. It is on part of an official tour of mansions known as the "Kit Carson Trail" which is a tribute to the towns namesake. I am not going to list GPS coordinates for it, but there is a map on the official site that leads you right to it. Still, please be respectful when you go there. They have a radio broadcast you can listen to as you drive by. In fact, a John Wayne impersonator talks about the history of the house. Let me link the podcast here (right click and open in your browser) and you can listen to it as you look at my pictures.

The Shootist is probably my favorite John Wayne movie. In someways I feel like I am watching a tv movie they way it was done, but I like the story. Some of the inspiration for the original book was based on the end of the life of John Wesley Hardin, and if you have read this blog in the past you know he is the old west personality that I have spent the most time reading about. The importance of this movie is that it is the last movie John Wayne did. His character, J.B. Books, is dying of cancer like Wayne was. It was a nice movie to end his career on.

Here John Wayne is meeting up with Ron Howard in front of the Kreb-Peterson House.
Normally, I do not like to show really bad shady pictures like your going to get here. Trees are not the best things to reference compared to rock formations. Usually, trees die and are replaced over short periods of time. It turns out the three trees out in front are the same trees from the movie. The area is not as open, but the way the trees branch out from the base is the same.
Seeing how there is more tree coverage in the area there is a lot of shade. Since my time was limited the morning I did this I had to settle for less than ideal lighting conditions.

In the story, Wayne lives at this place and Lauren Bacall plays the owner and the mother of Ron Howard.

Most of it is the same now. The extended patio area looks like it was taken down. OH! See that little tree in the first picture that Wayne is riding towards? It looks like it has grown up!

One final thing is I do believe they did use the insides of this place to film the movie. What is odd is while facing the front here all you have to do is turn to your right and move a couple of homes down and you find the Nevada Govenor's Mansion. Here its podcast (right click and open in your browser).

I wanted to list one more of these mansions here. This is on the official register of Nevada's historical places. This is the Rinckel Mansion. You can listen to its podcast here.

There are a bunch of really nice places here. It is quite impressive to drive by them and check them out if you are not gambling your money away.

Tribute to John Wayne #7 (TG at HC Continued)

As I have been saying over and over in the past few blogs, there is enough to know you are in the right area here, but when you really examine things a lot has changed. From the last blog, I walked up a little higher to see if I could see how the small home could have been climbed onto.
Okay.

So, just movie to right a bit should get us to where he climbed up on the top of the small home.

This is what I got out doing that.

A lot appears to be going on here. Erosion and other geological issues are probably an issue here. I kind of think there has been some man made work done here too. You can see there is a sign at the bottom that fell over. From what I can tell that dark looking rock on the far left does seem to be one that was here from the filming, but all the rest do not seem right. You can compare the other side of the river with the movie picture if you want.

Tribute to John Wayne #6 (True Grit at Hot Creek)

(GPS: 37 39.750 W18 49.650)

Some years back I was reading an exchange back and forth on an e-mail list about various movies filmed in California. At one point a person had mentioned True Grit, along with others, being filmed in California. One of the next messages was something like, "Oh no! True Grit was filmed in Colorado. I lived there. I have been all around California and nothing there looks like Colorado!" When I had read that I thought, "He is for a shock. The best scene in the movie takes place in California!" Well, maybe best scene is debatable, but it does take place at Hot Creek. Certainly Colorado is a beautiful place and most of True Grit was filmed there, but for some reason they chose this place to film this scene.

This area of Hot Creek was the one I was after this particular morning. I had driven up HWY 395 almost six hours that morning. I had about another hour I had to drive before I could get to the summer home. I had been at another nearby location I may show at another time. Even though I adjust to high elevations pretty quickly, driving long periods and then walking around areas starts to get me tired. I was starting to fatigue, but I told myself that it was important I get this area then I would be done.

True Grit was what got John Wayne his Best Actor Academy Award for his potrayal of Rooster Cogburn. This scene is the one where he confronts the men in this small house. He has them "smoked out" by having the top of the chimney covered so the smoke stays inside.

In the last blog I was down below on the other side of this picture. I knew I had to do some climbing which usually is not that big of deal, but considering that I had been up since around 3am and had driven a few hundred miles the fatigue was starting to kick in.

I felt pretty good about this picture. What I call the "island barge" in the middle is the my main point of reference with the movie picture. It looks like the land next to where the house was has broken off over the years. A few rocks are the same, but like I mentioned in the last few blogs this is an area where the geological features have changed due to its environment.

In the previous blog about Nevada Smith I mentioned that Brian Keith was camping down here. This is essentially the same area used in that movie. If you watch that movie all the rock formations in the distance they show are the same. Here is John Wayne near the "island barge" confronting the men in the house.
This is the main picture I was after that day and probably my favorite.
It looks like they filmed this scene sometime around October to get that orange look. Mine has the August green look. Almost anytime of the year, except during the late summer time on a dry year, you will see snow on the mountains in the background. Usually, sometime during September or October the first snow fall will leave snow on some of the mountains.
I wanted to show the rocky cliff formations on the other side of the creek.
You can see how they have the trail that keeps one out the areas below. Look for the moon between the goal posts. ;)
What you do not see in the above pictures is there was a lot of steam coming out of the creek near where the small home was in this movie. I will show that next time.

Tribute to John Wayne #5 (North to Alaska at Hot Creek)

(GPS: N37 39.640 W118 49.720)

North to Alaska was another film that used this location. And, surprise, it was not filmed in Alaska. Once in a while, online, I will see this movie get the complaint it was not filmed in Alaska. Well, duh...most movies are not filmed where the story claims there are at. There are lots of reasons for this, but the bottom line is that it does not matter.

The following captures are from a television recording I took of the movie some years back. I have not watched the movie in quite some time, but if my memory is correct John Wayne and his partners had two places they were living at in Alaska. One was on one side of the river and the other was on the other with bridge between them. You can see one of the homes on the other side of the river.

From the last blog, I moved down the trail a bit below and took this picture. I added the white circle to show where it looks like the house in the above capture would have been.
This is from the movie showing the bridge and the house from close by.
The frustrating thing about Hot Creek is the fences and gated off areas around it. Had I been able to go over the roped off areas I could have gotten almost the same picture as above. The following picture should get the job done showing the above area as it is now.
The rock formation you see above in the middle of the two pictures is shown below. I just kept walking until I was parallel with it.
I kept walking past it. The fences you see were a common problem in trying to get around this area. Some areas were blocked off. I cannot remember if there was a sign further up telling me not to go any further. The area I was really after this time was behind me anyways. So, I went back.
Although you cannot see too much of it here, there was steam coming out from the other side. The sign there tells you to stay out.
So, what I got that morning for this movie's location was okay. I was satisfied. I could probably watch the movie again and figure out a little more if I really wanted to. What I was really after was the True Grit location that was filmed here. I headed back to where I came from for that. It will be what I show next time.