Documentary.
Here's the Trailer for 'A Show Down at Lone Pine.
It's a little taste of the story of this town, its relationship with great western movies and its film festival. The rest of the documentary will be filmed in October during the festival.
Lone Pine California,
ever heard of it? It’s just a little speck on the map that sits about half way between Reno and San Bernardino on highway 395, but remarkably it’s been the location for scores of movies . All the big Hollywood film makers would come here to use the nearby Alabama Hills, and its unique 85 million year old rock formations, as a backdrop for many famous films, mostly westerns. Watch a John Wayne or a Randolph Scott film, or any other cowboy hero come to that, and the unique rock shapes will appear again and again. Each year, to celebrate these celluloid shoot-em-ups, the town holds a film festival, and fans of the ‘Western’ genre gather here to watch movies, share stories, meet old western stars (the ones that are still alive anyway) and visit the locations of some of the movies that were made there .
The idea
is to create a charming, funny but reverential documentary about this little desert town set around the time of the Film Festival, and 2014 sees the 25th anniversary of this event.
We’ll talk to the delegates and the locals and find out how and why these three days in October have such a profound effect on the place, making it spring to life like a desert flower.
We’ll seek interviews with people who not only are affected by the festival, but were actually involved in helping the movie makers and their stars.
We’ll talk to the delegates and find out what is it about this place and the event that has them coming back year after year.
We’ll set it against a backdrop of this weird and wonderful place, and of course we’ll involve scenes from some of the movies filmed on location here.
Finished Film.
The completed film was shown at the Lone Pine Film Festival in 2015.
It is still being developed to comply with copyright demands on the footage used.
Copyright John Jessup 2014
