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| Plus: 10 Top Can't-Miss, Made-In-New Mexico Movies |
Every generation has an identity, but perhaps none is so distinctive as that of the Baby Boomers. These are the people who lived through war, sexual revolution, mind-altering drugs, rejection of the Establishment, feminism, self-help, and spiritual exploration—and transformed American society along the way. Boomer Judith Fein says it’s not surprising that many such groundbreaking films were shot in New Mexico, because the state was—and still is—a magnet for folks who dare to buck the mainstream.
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City Slickers (1991)
“Ever reach a point in your life where you say to yourself, ‘This is the best I’m ever gonna look, the best I’m ever gonna feel, the best I’m ever gonna do—and it ain’t that great?’” Mitch Robbins (Billy Crystal) is a middle-aged urban guy in a midlife crisis who heads West with his buddies, Phil Berquist (Daniel Stern) and Ed Furillo (Bruno Kirby), to live the cowboy life on a full-fledged cattle drive in this blockbuster by director Ron
Underwood. It’s male bonding in the saddle, and nothing in their city lives has prepared them for the challenges of the range or the likes of the trail boss, Curly (Oscar-winner Jack Palance)—or the broad vistas of New Mexico, which encourage reflection, introspection, and the new perspectives they take home with them. Like Georgia O’Keeffe, these city slickers head north of Santa Fe and find inspiration and beauty in Abiquiú (Plaza Blanca), Ghost Ranch, and Nambe Pueblo. Much like the characters on Seinfeld, the urban cowboys deal with their childhoods, fathers, triumphs, traumas, strengths, and weaknesses, doing their fair share of navel-gazing without letting go the reins or falling off their horses. Boomers, moved by the film, went to dude ranches to get distance from and insight about their citified lives. City Slickers was especially important to me because it inspired a public-radio producer of The Savvy Traveler to send me on a cattle drive as Ms. City Slicker. I’d never been on a horse, and on my first day I spent eight hours in the saddle. Then, I spent an achey-breaky night dousing myself in arnica.
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Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar in this three-time Oscar winner by director Ang Lee. This heartbreaking—and groundbreaking—story of two men’s love for each other had Boomers weeping in the dark. Many of them have gay friends, lost gay friends to AIDS, relived their own coming out or inability to do so, or were able, for the first time, to empathize with same-sex love. Onscreen, the couple’s decades-long relationship struggles to survive societal confines and taboos—something Boomers can relate to, whatever their sexual orientation. Screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) adapted the short story by Annie Proulx, and in the process reinterpreted the Western. The beauty of the landscape is the backdrop for the passionate relationship, and La Mesilla inspires viewers to fall in love with these two men, and with the West.
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Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973)
This tale of a seagull who dares to leave the flock and live life on his own terms was the story many Boomers were living themselves when Richard Bach’s book was published in 1970. Jonathan, the Little Gull Who Could, flew off to discover the boundless beauty of the Blue Marble we live on, and the story’s messages of self-actualization, desire for freedom, reverence for nature, and spirituality (“You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, and nothing can stand in your way”) resonated with readers and viewers. Although Hall Bartlett’s film is a sort of Siddhartha lite, it’s gorgeously shot: Jonathan flies above Carlsbad, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and the skies over Santa Fe, all to soaring music by Neil Diamond.
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Easy Rider (1969)
In this countercultural tale directed by Dennis Hopper, two cool biker dudes, played by Peter Fonda and Hopper, toss their watches, smoke weed, drop acid, do the nasty, discuss UFOs, court danger, pick up a boozing lawyer (Jack Nicholson), and spawn a long-hair, open-highway trend that continues today. With Old Glory as a motif, the bikers search for the real America and speculate that perhaps the freedom they seek exists only on the road itself. “This used to be a helluva good country,” one of them muses. “I don’t understand what’s going on.” The answer: “Everybody got chicken.” Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” is still a freedom anthem, and sites like Corral de Piedra (near Española), Farmington, La Cienega, Las Vegas, Santa Fe, Taos, and Taos Pueblo made a whole generation ache to come to New Mexico.
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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Westerns were on their way out and then along came George Roy Hill’s film, partly shot in Chama and Taos, about two outlaws, a posse chase, an escape to Bolivia, and a final shoot-out. Boomers flocked to see hunks-du-jour Paul Newman (Butch) and Robert Redford (Sundance), as well as Katharine Ross (Etta Place), who’d wowed them as Elaine Robinson in The Graduate only two years before. For a Western, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has ample humor and little graphic violence—fine for a generation watching the debacle of Vietnam on the nightly news. Add to that a musical score by Burt Bacharach, a pop breakout hit (“Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”),
and the fact that the film is (very loosely) based on real bandits from the 1890s who hid out near Silver City, and you have an entertaining, escapist Boomer hit.
For 12 years, Judith Fein was a Hollywood writer who took more pitch meetings than you can shake a Mercedes at. Now she makes indie films with her husband, Paul Ross.
Visit her Web site: www.globaladventure.us
