42
•
LMGI COMPASS
|
Fall 2026
The Patch and the Places of Power:
From Discovery to Design
Downtown's Sundance Square, with its bustling shopping district and
glass high-rises, the Petroleum Club of Fort Worth and the Fort Worth
Stockyards show the industry's wealth in real Texas locales, while The
Patch Cafe, a raucous local gathering place frequented by the workers,
was carved out of a former auto body shop. The drab vacant structure on
Camp Bowie West Boulevard was turned into not just a practical shooting
location—its taps, sinks and refrigerators all function, allowing actors to
truly inhabit the space—but into a local area icon. In fact, the set is so
beloved, the property owners are now scrambling to turn it into a real
Texas diner! And, of course, hoping to be granted use of the name.
A remote ranch dotted with decommissioned oil infrastructure was
found to play a tank battery site with a deadly leak for an episode in
Season 2 that, along with exploding pumps, faulty gears and runaway oil
tankers, amplifies the ever-present hazards of working in "the patch."
The collaboration between the Location Department and the art
departments is always visible, from Cardenas' augmenting the oil
field with additional functioning rigs to designing The Patch Cafe. In a
complex sequence in the Season 1 finale, Tommy Norris is taken into the
'Scorpion Club' through a concealed stairway and tunnels, then into an
interrogation room, then through another passage to a tire shop escape.
The geography was assembled in pieces: first the club, then an old
tunnel under Fort Worth and finally, other compatible spaces leading to
the escape. The connective tissue that made the sequence read as one
continuous underground world was a build. The audience experiences
a single pathway, but the production created it from a dialogue between
discovery and design.
Photo by Dustin Daniels/LMGI
