Fishing for an Assassin (Part 2)

 In the last blog entry, I showed some of this location I found north of Yosemite near Sonora Pass. I noted that in the movie Out of the Past the area seems very compact, but in reality this scene was filmed over a few hundred feet of the location.

Initially we see Dickey Moore fishing, Joe stands on a cliff where he intends to kill Robert Mitchum across the river, but Dickey Moore casts his fishing hook in time to snag Joe, and then pulls him so he falls to his death in the river. The following picture has Dickey and Robert looking over the body of Joe:

Here is that exact same spot. The trick however is that this location is a few hundred feet down river from the pictures of the last blog.

Then Robert Mitchum talks to Dickey Moore about him being followed and stuff right here:

To get that I just moved to the right side of the picture I took above to get something like this:

Since the water level was not so bad at the time I was here for this trip I decided to investigate the rocky river here. Disclaimer: early in the year this could be a really bad thing to do. No matter what time of the year one is near fast moving water one should be extremely careful around slippery rocks. If one falls here they could end up like Joe in the movie.

In the picture below I was standing where Dickey Moore was and Robert Mitchum would have been standing on the rock with the partial tree trunk laying on it right in front of me.

So knock this one off my "to do list" If I am ever in the mood to reboot my OOTP video I will probably add this location to it. In the meantime, enjoy the video I did here:

F.F.A.A. (Youtube Video)

Fishing for an Assassin (Part 1)

Years ago I did a bunch of the locations for the movie Out of the Past. I knew a good portion of where the High Sierra locations were filmed at. One of the scenes that only takes about a minute or so always eluded me. Sure enough over the years it is the one many of you have asked me about. I would list it as one of the top two or three most requested locations. 

This is the scene where actor Dickey Moore has been followed by Joe (Played by Jack Valentine) to where Robert Mitchum is camping. Joe intends to murder Robert Mitchum. Dickey is fishing, Joe attempts to shoot Mitchum, but Dickey casts his fishing hook just in time to snag Joe. Dickey drops Joe to his death in the water below.

It is a good scene, but trying to find an isolated area on a stream out in the middle of nowhere is kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack. But, with that said, over I would say around the past fifteen to twenty years I have kept this scene in the back of my mind. It was a location on the "to do list". When my dad was still around, he would tell me Walker River near the marine base. In any case, I did find it using some of the techniques I have discussed on this blog and narrowed it down. It turns out my dad was basically right. It is very close to Sonora Pass. 

The interesting thing is that you see them drive to a spot off the June Lake Loop. Years ago I looked around the June Lake Loop for this picture, but what you see was actually done about an hour to the north of there near Sonora Pass. 

It is a little difficult to compare here because of the shade, but keep trying. The rocks on the left side should be helpful to see that this is it. You should see where Dickey Moore would have been on the rock next to the tree on the right side of the picture. Unfortunately, I did not get a good shot of this for the video.

So, they show Joe here looking down at where Dickey Moore is fishing. What is interesting is that the trees can be identified and are still here after all of these years. 

Normally I do not like to use trees as a reference point because rocks tend to be "more permanent" in the scope of a human lifetime, but in this case these trees work! I am actually where the camera would have been to film this scene. I show it in the video where you can see some of the rock right in front of me as Joe goes down below.

For this picture I moved to my left compared to the previous picture. You can see where Dickey Moore would have been fishing by the tree below. When I did this I assumed they had Joe move over the rocky pillar just left of center. They then show Mitchum across the stream camping with Dickey Moore below. If you saw the movie and then came here like I did you would assume it all played out right here.

I am not so sure of that now. They did some quick cuts with Joe and Dickey Moore that do not really work for this spot. I am sure they filmed those quick shots around here along the river, but I would have to go to the other side of the stream to verify what they did. 

 In any case, I did get what I wanted out of this location. The trick to this area in the movie is they make it look like it is very compact. The reality is they used a few hundred feet of the area to create this scene. I explain more in part 2.

F.F.A.A (Youtube Video)