Location Managers Guild International

LMGI COMPASS | Summer 2021 • 15 Stevie: ARE YOU AN ARIZONA NATIVE? HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING IN LOCATIONS? HOW DID YOU START AND WHAT DO YOU PRIMARILY WORK ON? JIM COLLETTE: My family moved to Arizona from Indiana when I was 6, with the old post-'50s exuberance of "let's drive west until the highway gives out." I grew up in and around Phoenix, had a stint in Los Angeles for a few years, went to college in Flagstaff and lived there for 35 years, and now live in Tucson. I've worked all over the state. If you are a Mandalorian fan, consider me the Grogu of location managers. I am 65 years old but a baby at the craft, having begun earnestly only as I hurtled toward retirement. But if, as Jack Palance reminded us in City Slickers, you focus on doing one thing well, it can lead to other opportunities. For me, it was writing. I picked up a degree in journalism from Northern Arizona University, which led to sports writing, which veered into copywriting, and then backslid into a career in archaeology. I did that for 30 years and I loved it. The highlight had to be a cultural resources inventory we did for an early incarnation of Speed Racer that you never saw, where in pre-CGI fashion, they were going to launch a four-wheeled Mach-something into Piute Canyon and have it crash perilously close to a Navajo hogan. Since I worked for the Navajo Nation at the time, it was my job to ask the resident, "Any Anasazi ruins, burials, sacred plants we should know about around here?" In fact, I was standing on top of such a plant, and when we relayed the no-go signal to the fancy Hollywood location bigwig, he screamed and yelled and never paid the survey tab! But you can only dally about like Ralph Fiennes in The Dig for so long, and when my wife took a job at the University of Arizona in Tucson, I traded in my trowel for a Panasonic GH5. Knowing which was the mossy side of a barrel cactus (hint: there is no such side) qualified me to volunteer at the Tucson Film Office, and through the generosity of former director Shelli Hall and the graciousness of Nancy Haecker/LMGI, I snuck aboard the LMGI much like Audrey Hepburn said she graduated from Bryn Mawr— "by the skin of her teeth." I now do the occasional piece for LMGI's Compass magazine, so the whole journalism thing has swung around like the Queen Mary. On the ground, I focus on location work for independent films, specifically sub-200K genre fare where somebody is getting shot out of a saddle or eaten by a vengeful mountain spirit. Preferably both. Since this is a non-union state, where the living is easy, I'm often enlisted to do still photography and Behind the Scenes video. Stevie: WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE PRIMARY DRAW FOR FILMING IN AND AROUND TUCSON? WHAT KIND OF "LOOKS" ARE THERE? JC: Saguaros! In the States, they are nearly exclusive to Arizona, but the grandest, tallest, most dense specimens bookend Tucson at Saguaro National Park and Tucson Mountain Park. They truly are emblematic of the "look" of Tucson, that uniquely American panorama that Howard Hawks channeled in Red River, and now serves as a backdrop that screams "we are Out West!" The most famous example is San Xavier del Bac, a Spanish Colonial mission featured in everything from fashion catalogs to The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold. They often—but not always—say no to filming, in which case, a spectacular alternative is San José de Tumacácori in Tubac, a short drive south, and if they say 'no,' there is the lovely 1930s San Pedro Chapel right here in Tucson. One of the most common location requests is for authentic Old West ranches. There are more than 25 film-ready ranches in the greater Tucson area—dude ranches, working cattle ranches and wide-open rangeland. The line in Oklahoma!—"And the land we belong to is grand!" That Cinemascope terra firma was actually the San Rafael Valley, a short hop south of Tucson. Tucson has nearly 30 designated historic neighborhoods, ranging from 19th-century adobe homes in the brightly colored neighborhoods of Barrio Viejo and El Presidio, to more than 100 architecturally significant mid-century Moderns scattered throughout The Old Pueblo. Take a look at the 1958 version of A Kiss Before Dying with Robert Wagner pushing people off tall buildings. Filmed throughout Tucson by director Gerd Oswald, many of those locations remain intact and recognizable 60 years later. As we used to say in archaeology, Tucson has also managed to save the past for the future. Tank Girl and The Postman with Kevin Costner both utilized otherworldly open pit mines in the area, and the ICBM silo at the Titan Missile Museum, featured in Star Trek: First Contact, is just a short drive down I-19. If you Photos by Jim Collete/LMGI, except as noted Photo courtesy of Jim Collette/LMGI Member Jim Collee gives Stevie Nelson an inside look at "The Old Pueblo"— a sun-drenched city of saguaros and murals.

• Cover
• 24-35 Cover-Story_Babylon Berlin
• 36-49 MANK
• 52-59 NEXT GEN
• 62-63 Martini shot