Chinchón became our American Southwest. The
site was ideal—it had the hot sun of the Spanish
desert and the great crew base of Madrid.
Design work started in two main directions. With
Turlo Griffin and Carl Sprague (both longtime
collaborators of Wes'), we started laying out
the landscape surrounding Asteroid City. The
mountains became an alphabet of rocks. We
became used to a map defined by Rock A in the
direction of the train tracks all the way over to
Rock O down the road behind the incomplete
highway ramp. Stefano Ortolani had come aboard
in the early Roman exploration. He started a team
of sculptors interpreting Turlo's pencil drawings
of each mountain into 1:10 scale maquettes. This
modelling period with Stefano was incredibly
useful. Wes was able to comment and refine the
B
C
D
