Todd Christensen On Location
EAT MY DUST Todd Christensen On Location
Marfa, Texas: 26 miles west of Alpine, 21 miles southwest of Fort Davis, 159 miles southwest of Odessa, 74 miles southeast of Van Horn, in other words: out in the middle of Nowhere Ville. Location Manager Todd Christensen spent his summer in the heat and dust while filming the Paramount feature, THERE WILL BE BLOOD.
Todd Christensen says, "The Marfa portion of the production was shot on the 59,000 acre MacGuire Ranch. We had over 14 location areas on the ranch including vistas, canyons, sets, railroad tracks. The vast open untouched landscape fit the bill as this movie plays for 1911 Bakersfield, California."
The big challenges on this immense ranch were not only the huge expanses of land, but the extreme elements: unrelenting wind, intense heat, dust and more dust, and to top it off -- rattlesnakes. Support services were anywhere from 12 to 400 miles away while our base camp was 3 miles from set. The air conditioned 40 X 120 foot tent with hardwood floors helped keep the extras and crew as comfortable as they could be given the circumstances."
Christensen concludes, "For me, this project was a great experience. Not only from a production angle, but living in a small Texas town with a population 2121. An experience I will never forget."
P.S. Die-hard film fans will remember that Marfa was also the town that director George
Stevens chose as the primary location for the 1956 blockbuster “Giant.”