My Tiny Vegas: Las Vegas, New Mexico News, Stories, Photographs, and More!

Las Vegas the Real Star of No Country for Old Men

by Birdie Jaworski

A man carrying a hunting rifle squints. He stands on the rim of a bowl-shaped depression, his mustache dripping with sweat. Heat rises from sparse desert scrub, from the splay of dust-splattered pick-up trucks belching bloodied flesh. His boots barely sink into ground as he gingerly makes his way down the canyon side; there is no water, no comfort, nothing to absorb the fury of maggot and sun.

Las Vegas residents held their breath Wednesday night as Llewelyn Moss, played by Josh Brolin, hit boot against rock in the New Mexican premiere of “No Country for Old Men.” Adapted by Ethan and Joel Coen from the novel of the same name, the film closely follows Cormac McCarthy’s meditation on violence scene-by-scene with a judicious sprinkle of the directors’ trademark black wit. Tommy Lee Jones is good Texas sheriff Ed Tom Bell on an endless hunt for deadpan sociopath Anton Chigurh, played with understated intensity by Javier Bardem, but the real star of the film is Las Vegas whose historic buildings, tree-lined plaza, and residents whisk the viewer to small-town Texas thirty-years ago.

Twin spotlights bled into the crisp night air as hundreds of aspiring movie goers descended on Douglas Avenue. Lines formed on both sides of the Serf Theatre. Trinity Chenard drove from Denver to attend the premier. She wrapped her soft pink scarf tightly around her head and neck to repel the quickly dropping temperature.

“I can’t wait to see this,” Chenard said. “I have been a Coen brothers fanatic since “Blood Simple.” I’m glad they’re going back to their roots. I don’t know much about Las Vegas, so I spent an hour driving around town this afternoon so I could recognize the scenes in the film.”

Chenard didn’t hold a ticket, but she was one of the few lucky hopefuls to find an empty seat inside the mural-lined room.  The Serf quickly filled to capacity, and the disappointed and cold ticketless were told they could attend a special second screening the following night. Local filmmaker Marine Dominguez took the stage of the Serf, microphone in hand, and thanked a long list of community services and businesses, politicians, and volunteers for making “No Country for Old Men” and the evening’s premiere a success.

“We have folks here from all over,” Dominguez informed the crowd. “We have people who participated in the filmmaking process both locally and in Los Angeles. We even have someone here from the New York Times.”  The crowd erupted in cheers at the mention of each name and city.

Betsy Rogers, a photographer and writer who lives in both Santa Fe and New York stood in her isle and snapped pictures with an elaborate camera. “I’ve been fascinated with Las Vegas for many years,” Rogers explained. I’ve been working on a photo journal essay for quite some time.  I’ve gotten to know some of the families who have called Las Vegas home for twelve generations. This is a big moment for the city.”

The lights dimmed, and a nervous hush fell over the theater. Giggles and small cheers broke the tension when local residents and landmarks filled the screen. The biggest whoops were reserved for the Mexico border crossing and a night-time pan down Douglas Ave. The Serf, marquee lit against the muted blues, blacks and grays that give the film its signature desolate look, made viewers feel as if they were inside the scene itself, a film within a film.

The Coens stole the darkness from Las Vegas, captured its most forgotten spaces, its bleakest tones, cobbled them together to create a border town on the edge of death, a place tired, drugged, achingly sincere in its place on the edge of the desert. Though the town plays the character of West Texas poverty, the homes and businesses that fly by still hold incredible charm, still retain some warmth the Coens couldn’t hide.

The Hotel Plaza - called the Eagle’s Pass in the film - hosts a chase scene.  Moss waits on the edge of his rented bed, shotgun in hand, a valise filled with cash in the other. He figures out how Chigurh tracked him, knows that this hotel marks life or death. The Coens deftly capture the tension of justice. The stairs creak with deliberation. Moss watches the hallway darken as the killer approaches. The film is bleak, frightening, tightrope taut, brilliant.

Viewers murmured as they filed out the theater. The film punches you in the gut, leaves you watching over your shoulder, aware. Las Vegas resident Zane Burden, age 12, shook his head as he described his most haunting scene.

“The accident was right in front of my house. I’ll never look at my street the same way again.”

State of Confusion

When movie cameras focus on the dusty Mexican border replica spanning the University Ave bridge, they will capture the dark hours before sunrise. A man bleeding from a bullet wound will carry a battered valise filled with two million dollars cash, money found in a West Texas field littered with a dozen dead victims of a drug deal gone bad. The man will hold his wounded arm and offer five hundred dollars to a passerby for his coat. He will stagger and fall. He will pick himself up, and with what little strength he can muster, he will hoist the valise over his head and toss it over the bridge, into the no-man's land between Mexico and sleepy border town United States.

I pictured this scene from Cormac McCarthy's disturbing novel, No Country For Old Men, as I walked along Grand Avenue last week. The movie construction crew welded heavy steel supports to their convincing border station as the occasional vehicle exited Interstate 25 and crawled across the bridge into Las Vegas. I paused for a moment after I crossed the intersection. A scruffy man in oil-stained overalls reached into the bed of a pick-up truck and pulled out a piece of flat gray metal. He set it against the newly manufactured gateshack. A red Ford Escort with New Jersey plates gingerly crossed the bridge and turned North. The driver pulled alongside me and a woman in the passenger seat rolled down her window.

"Excuse me! You speak English?"

I turned around to make sure she was speaking to me. A man's thick Jersey accent cut across her shoulder.

"Of course she doesn't speak English! We crossed the friggen border!"

I lowered my head and stared inside their car. The woman sported lethal red fingernails and curled hair sprayed to six times its natural size. Her breasts were barely contained by a gold lamé halter-top, and I worried as she unfolded a AAA map that one might escape. She turned to her companion and hit the map with the back of her hand.

"How can we be in Mexico? We just left Colorado two hours ago!"

My mouth hung open as they consulted the map. The man lit an unfiltered cigarette and flicked ashes into a styrofoam cup half-filled with old coffee. He shrugged his slim shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak but the woman smacked him in the arm.

"You be quiet! You got us into this!"

She turned to me.

"We're supposed to be going to Las Vegas. That's why we took the exit."

She spoke slowly, as if I might not understand. I laughed and pointed to the fake border station.

"Oh! You are in Las Vegas! There's a movie being filmed here, and that's just part of the set."

The couple stared at the bridge, at the signs welcoming them to Mexico. They turned and looked around them, toward the tree-lined streets pointing toward town.

"Movie set, huh? This is Vegas? Wow, that was quicker than I thought."

She grabbed the man's cigarette and took a long drag. She blew smoke into the air between us, and it hung for a moment like a murky cloud.

"So. Where's the friggen Strip?"

Too Cute for the Coens

I stood in front of my open closet the morning of the Coen Brothers' casting call, recalling the cryptic notice taped to store windows around my wild west town.

"Casting Call for No Country for Old Men. Looking for bikers, Native Americans, Latinos, and pre-1980 cars."

I pulled out a black tank-top imprinted with red flames and the tiered mini-skirt I wore the year Rod Stewart sang "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy." I had to suck in my 40-year-old stomach to fit my old clothes. I braided my hair with leather biker wraps and figured my quarter-Cherokee heritage gave me an edge.

Two hours later I opened the door to the University Student Center and took my place in line behind several hundred wanna-be film stars. A movie man in khaki adventure pants handed out yellow cards with spaces for us to fill out our name, address, physical description, and willingness to spend hours under hot film lights. I fudged my weight by five pounds and handed my card to a young woman with tiny blonde pigtails that stuck straight out of her head.

"Hmm. You would make a good West Texan." She notated my card and pointed to another line of locals waiting to have their head shot taken. "We'll be calling you. Don't cut your hair!"

I spent my weeks before the shoot reading Cormac McCarthy's disturbing novel, "No Country for Old Men," watching the Coens' old films like Fargo and Raising Arizona, and telling all my friends that I was going to be a real live movie star! But no phone call came. One neighbor got called. Then another. There must be some mistake, I reasoned. I hitched a ride with my friend, Carlos, to the Santa Fe production offices for his costume fitting.

"Birdie, I'm sure they'll call you. They've called everyone else I know." Carlos shifted his weight as we crossed the Pecos River. "This is a huge movie. They need a lot of extras."

The costumer gave Carlos a rancher's Stetson, button-down shirt, scuffed farm boots, and a pair of vintage Levi's. He disappeared behind a screen and I moved in for the kill.

"So, hey! Why haven't I been called? Are you still looking for women? I can be a biker! A Native American! Just stick me anywhere! I love the Coen Brothers!" I flashed my biggest grin and pulled my hair out of its ponytail. "Plus I didn't cut my hair."

The woman leaned toward an open ivory file cabinet and asked my name. She pulled out my photograph.

"Ma'am, I'll go ahead and put you in the same scene as your friend." She handed me a dowdy flowered dress, sandals, and a scarf for my head. "Be on site at 7 a.m. sharp!"

7:30 found me in line for makeup, the dress hanging like a tent from my breasts. A man with wire glasses and a short beard walked past us, looked at us one at a time.

"That's Joel Coen!" An extra dressed nearly identical to Carlos whispered sotto voce.

Joel pulled a production assistant aside, spoke in her ear with a voice to quiet to hear. He pointed to me. He walked outside.

"You!" The assistant motioned for me to leave the line. "I'm sorry, but you're too cute."

I sat on the Grand Avenue curb and watched Carlos walk back and forth a hundred times in front of the State Street Cafe, as the cameras inside caught his moving shadow against the drawn blinds. His shirt turned to a limp rag as the sun moved toward Hermit's Peak. I didn't catch a glimpse of Tommy Lee Jones, just handfuls of faded extras repeating gestures like a wind-up Wild West music box.

"So what's it like being a movie star?" I tried not to let Carlos hear my disappointment as he walked home, shirt stuck to body.

"Movie star? All anyone's going to see is the shadow from my big nose. Just be thankful you're too cute."