LMGI COMPASS
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Winter 2026
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that was able to turn around huge asks quickly.
Some of that was infrastructure. Most of it was relationships.
That was precisely the reason Glaser wanted Cena in the mix.
"Jacob knew every inch of that place," Glaser says. "Every owner,
every rooftop, every alley. He got us into places I never thought
we'd get into. The guy was just a complete superstar in El Paso."
"Glaser built the best location team I've ever seen," Cena says.
"Everyone knew their lane, and the communication was constant."
El Paso was rooftop coordination with stunt teams, night
exteriors surrounded by glass, vehicles threading through tight
downtown grids just blocks from the border, scenes staged across
multiple streets with no time to reset and with massive numbers of
background actors—many of whom didn't speak English.
The company held nearly every set for the entirety of its El Paso
block so that the film could jump unpredictably between locations
without striking or re-staging. A chase could suddenly become a
quiet dialogue scene. The rooftop escape could suddenly return to
street level. The schedule wasn't a road; it was a pinball machine.
Glaser began running late-night meetings with Anderson,
producer/1st AD Somner and line producer Will Weiske charting
every possible move for the next day.
"We would have lunch meetings at 2 am," Glaser says. "We'd ask,
'what do we want to accomplish tomorrow?' And it was already
tomorrow, but I would piece it all together on paper and hand it to
Michael Wesley to see if he could make it happen. Then I'd take a
nap for three or four hours and come back and ask: 'what can we
