{"id":41590,"date":"2026-02-26T12:01:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T20:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/locationmanagers.org\/?p=41590"},"modified":"2026-02-26T12:01:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T20:01:58","slug":"one-battle-after-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/locationmanagers.org\/es\/one-battle-after-another\/","title":{"rendered":"Una batalla tras otra"},"content":{"rendered":"

On-the-Run with SLM Michael Glaser and Team
\nin Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s Epic Saga<\/b><\/h3>\n

by Shaun O\u2019Banion<\/h4>\n

Photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures except as noted<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Locations in a Paul Thomas Anderson film (or \u201cPTA\u201d as he\u2019s known among cinephiles) aren\u2019t just a backdrop; they\u2019re a pressure system. From the porn-riddled San Fernando Valley of Boogie Nights to the scorched oil fields of There Will Be Blood, geography in his films shape behavior. It clamps down on characters and quietly reveals who they are or who they will become. One Battle After Another is no different \u2026 it just does this across more map pins than almost anything else the director has ever made.<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"

Michael Glaser\/LMGI<\/p><\/div>\n

For SLM Michael Glaser\/LMGI that meant helping to build whole worlds for a production that would cover the breadth of California, from south along the Mexico border in San Diego to Eureka in the far north, and even farther east to El Paso, Texas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Based on Thomas Pychon\u2019s 1990\u2019s novel Vineland<\/i> and stories by Anderson himself, the film follows members of a radical militant collective called the French 75. Inspired by the Weather Underground of the late \u201960s and early \u201970s, its members must disperse and go into hiding after a failed bank robbery. Sixteen years later, Leo DiCaprio\u2019s burned-out former radical, now living a quiet life as \u201cBob\u201d among the redwoods of Humboldt County, California, comes out of hiding to rescue his daughter \u201cWilla\u201d (Chase Infiniti) who has been abducted by the corrupt white nationalist, Col. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lockjaw emerges from their shared violent past to unlock secrets that involve the daughter\u2019s true paternity and a series of betrayals by her mother, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), who had disappeared into witness protection and whom she has never known.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) meets Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor)<\/p><\/div>\n

Things begin to fall apart quickly for all the characters and, before we know it, we\u2019re propelled forward into a very perilous and nonstop journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t really have a completed script in the beginning,\u201d says Glaser. \u201cI think Paul had been thinking of making this movie for something like 20 years, but when we started in 2022, we had a basic outline of what would happen in the film. Kind of a \u2018Who\u2019s Who,\u2019 and a basic idea of what worlds we\u2019d be trying to build and where we\u2019d be looking.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Geography is baked into the way Una batalla tras otra <\/i>moves. Starting in San Diego at a fictional detention center before jumping to Sacramento for the French 75\u2019s explosive downtown sequences, it then briefly slides into nondescript and safer places once Perfidia becomes pregnant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Finding the Hubs<\/b><\/p>\n

Even way back in 2019, Anderson had Eureka in mind for his next movie\u2014sending a scout to survey the area.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A subsequent exploratory scout by Anderson, production designer Florencia Martin and producer\/first AD Adam Somner in 2022 confirmed that the region would serve as an anchor for the fictious town of \u201cBaktan Cross.\u201d Glaser joined the effort, advancing the research and scouting. Martin and Glaser then expanded outward\u2014surveying locations across California and considering options in Salt Lake City, Texas and New Mexico.<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t so much going to be dropping a script onto a map as they would be letting the map reveal itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Recalls Glaser: \u201cI would get a phone call while they were at the airport or in the car on a drive, and they\u2019d tell me where they were or where they were going and then I would feverishly pick up the phone and start calling people, whether it be film commissions or trying to suss out who owns a building, tracking down management companies or people in various municipalities, and I would try to get them in the door of some places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doing this on the fly wasn\u2019t easy. The team also had to quickly and regularly pivot for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say this project \u2026 shape-shifted a lot,\u201d laughs Martin. \u201cWhen we handed off to Glaser, we just said, \u2018This is the groundwork that we\u2019ve laid, and these are some of the contacts we made along the way\u2019 because as you start to go into a city and start to talk to people, they do start opening doors for you.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPaul and Flo are pretty good about getting in the doors most of the time, to be honest, but it\u2019s also like a location manager\u2019s nightmare to have a production designer and director on their own trying to, like, kick open the door to some of these places,\u201d laughs Glaser.<\/p>\n

Martin, who had previously worked with Glaser on Anderson\u2019s Licorice Pizza<\/i>, praised him and his team.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMichael and the entire team just really blended into Paul\u2019s style of working,\u201d she says, \u201cand so I felt deep gratitude for them and, in particular, for the way they worked with locations that haven\u2019t been filmed before. We\u2019re always looking for the best location to fit the story which is not always the most logistically easy. But Glaser and his crew never got phased by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe unspoken mantra between Florencia and me was to never search for a location out of convenience,\u201d says Glaser. \u201cFlorencia reminded us that we can\u2014and eventually did\u2014find the right locations for the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Sacramento gets its close up<\/p><\/div>\n

Sacramento, the Big Bad<\/b><\/p>\n

Sacramento, with its \u201970s\/\u201980s-adjacent government core and dense concrete, quickly became a foundational piece of the puzzle with its brutalist architecture and vaguely out of time features. \u201cIt was meant to kind of symbolize the establishment government as the \u2018big bad,\u2019\u201d Glaser says.<\/p>\n

Those towers and empty plazas become the stage for some of the film\u2019s biggest early set pieces: Perfidia and her crew tearing away from the bank, police cars threading through tight turns, car wrecks and a helicopter shot looking straight down the canyon of the street as the net closes around Perfidia herself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a scale Anderson has rarely tackled in such a concentrated way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes Paul doesn\u2019t want all of the craziness that comes with scale,\u201d explains producer Sara Murphy. \u201cSometimes he wants to roll up in a van with five guys, unload and, safely, just roll camera. And so, some of that is I think where it gets tricky for Michael and the team because then there are obviously sequences in the film that we do need the infrastructure, like in Sacramento when we\u2019re doing stunts and there\u2019re explosions and where we do have to properly just take over a space.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTaking over\u201d meant closing routes onto major highways, coordinating the helicopter over government buildings, and staging a full-on stunt sequence in the middle of the downtown core. So, the job wasn\u2019t just finding the streets; it was convincing the city to let Anderson tear through them and then putting the machinery in place without suffocating the nimble, run-and-gun energy he wanted to preserve.<\/p>\n

The balancing act that exists somewhere between careful orchestration and creative spontaneity is why Murphy points to communication as the real superpower of Glaser\u2019s crew.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have so many things that they are juggling all at one time,\u201d Murphy says. \u201cAnd I admire them greatly for the way they handled everything on this shoot. I think communication is where his team flourishes.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sacramento Film Commissioner Jennifer West recalls that \u201cit was all very simple at the start, like on any project. They\u2019d just say, \u2018We\u2019re coming in to scout this area or look at this building,\u2019 and I\u2019d offer them some thoughts or connect them with someone and then, one day, something made my ears sort of perk up and I was like, \u2018I think we actually have to have a real conversation about this. This seems a lot bigger than maybe you\u2019re letting on. That\u2019s when they told me it was a Paul Thomas Anderson film, and we started talking about the scale of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGlaser and I went to a meeting that Jennifer set up with about 15 or so different people from the city and we talked about our requests, road closures and how to reroute people and traffic,\u201d says LM Michael Wesley\/LMGI. \u201cIt was just to put us on the same page and give them an idea of what we were hoping to pull off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people in those initial meetings may not have known that Glaser was going to push them as far as he was going to, but he knows how to manage that,\u201d West says. \u201cAnd I valued him as a partner on this film. He and Michael Wesley knew exactly what to do at what time, what to ask for, and more importantly, when to push and when to maybe pull back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The downtown chase in Sacramento, with cars ripping down alleyways, slamming through gridlock traffic and French 75 firebrand Perfidia sprinting across bridges and through concrete government corridors while police units and a helicopter close in, was made possible through unusually deep civic cooperation. Stunts, explosions, rolling street closures and aerial photography unfolding in the government core of a state capital is not typical. It required an open door.<\/p>\n

Says Wesley, \u201cWe ended up doing things in Sacramento that would be impossible in Los Angeles. Sacramento had never really had that scale of production before, so there was a little bit of a learning curve with them, but they absolutely bent over backward to get us everything we needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glaser put it simply: \u201cJennifer West is part of the reason the car chase in Sacramento looks so good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Bob and Willa\u2019s (Chase Infiniti) \u201cBaktan Cross\u201d sanctuary in Eureka, CA<\/p><\/div>\n

Humboldt, Refuge in the Redwoods<\/b><\/p>\n

Production pushed five to six hours north of Sacramento to find the refuge where Bob and Willa would hide out for 16 years. The lush forests of Humboldt County offered cover, and the town of Eureka delivered the mood and geography for the fictional town of Baktan Cross.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to say a chunk of the Pynchon book actually takes place up in Eureka,\u201d says Glaser. \u201cAnd the area just had some great, really rich locations\u2014most of which hadn\u2019t been seen on film before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had done a lot of reading about the lives of revolutionaries and, sort of, this counterculture existence,\u201d says Martin, \u201cand so we knew that Eureka was a point of interest. So, we drove by the high school there and it has this impressive architecture. And then you start to see the pieces fitting, you know, driving around and seeing these houses that are enclosed in the woods, and you can\u2019t access them \u2019cause everybody has signs that say \u2018No trespassing! Violators will be shot!\u2019 And you\u2019re like, \u2018I think we\u2019re onto something. Let\u2019s come back here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Bob & Willa\u2019s \u201cBaktan Cross\u201d house, Eureka, CA<\/p><\/div>\n

Bob\u2019s house needed to be tucked away, private, yet plausible, as a long-term hideout, but also cinematically expressive enough to reveal the paranoia brewing inside him. The house represented the emotional bunker where a man tries to outrun the world by disappearing inside of it. Here he would idle his days by getting high, watching The Battle of Algiers<\/i> on repeat, and raising his now teenaged daughter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The search narrowed to two houses, and when one emerged as the right spot, contracts were signed, neighbors were canvassed, and the residents were ready to move out. But Anderson decided to take one last scouting trip to show Leonardo and Chase \u201ctheir house.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were basically ready to go with that first house,\u201d Glaser says. \u201cAnd then I get a text asking if the owner of the second house, Melissa, was home and I\u2019m like, \u2018Why?\u2019 And they said, \u2018We\u2019re headed over there now. Leo and Chase didn\u2019t feel like the first place worked.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

What followed has already become unofficial folklore among the crew.<\/p>\n

\u201cI called Melissa immediately and I go, \u2018Hey, do you mind if I come over?\u2019 And she\u2019s like, \u2018Uh, sure, I guess.\u2019 So I race over there and walk into her house,\u201d says Glaser, \u201cand it\u2019s completely decked out for Christmas. She\u2019s got music on, she\u2019s been cooking for what looks like three days and she\u2019s like, \u2018So, what\u2019s up?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Sensei Sergio (Benicio Del Toro) and Bob (Leo DiCaprio) \u201cBaktan Cross\u201d dojo, El Paso Texas<\/p><\/div>\n

Glaser knew the clock was ticking. Anderson and his cast were already on the way. \u201cI just said I was in the neighborhood and wanted to drop by to say hello,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She offered him some tea and before he had a chance to say another word, there was a knock at the door. Glaser thought he was out of time, but it was actually one of Melissa\u2019s guests.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now, she\u2019s there with her friend, I\u2019m sitting there with my cup of tea and she\u2019s like, \u2018I heard that Leo is in town. And I was like, \u2018where\u2019d you hear that?\u2019 and she goes, \u2018it\u2019s all over the internet!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So, Glaser was sitting there, chatting nonchalantly, trying to get a \u201cvibe check\u201d on how Melissa and her friends might react when one of the biggest stars in the world would walk in the door. Meanwhile, Martin was texting him updates from the car. \u201c10 min out.\u201d \u201c5 min out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Sisters of the Brave Beaver compound- La Purisima Mission, Lompoc<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cSo I\u2019m talking to her and her friend, and then another one of her friends shows up, and I go, \u2018do you think Paul could come by one last time?\u2019\u201d says Glaser, \u201cand there\u2019s just a flash \u2026 a moment \u2026 and she goes, \u2018Leonardo\u2019s coming here isn\u2019t he?\u2019 \u2018I took half a beat and I look at her and her friends and I go yes.\u2019\u00a0 <\/span>And as soon as I said that, literally that second, I hear the car door slam outside and it\u2019s Adam walking up to the door with Paul and Leo.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we all look toward the door and then she and her friends look back at me and I\u2019m like, \u2018just be cool. Just be cool, guys.\u2019 And that was the time that I crashed a Christmas party with Leonardo DiCaprio.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with Fandango, DiCaprio recounts that when he went to that house he immediately \u201cknew who this character was: massively paranoid, protecting his child, everything is a danger, everyone is not to be trusted. And when that template is there, you go, \u2018OK, what if his past came back to haunt him and he\u2019s in the middle of his living room getting stoned like The Big Lebowski<\/i> and Lockjaw comes back? What skills does he have that he remembers or does not remember?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The house became a months-long anchor, rented from Melissa, who was relocated for the duration. She had also agreed to one pivotal change to the structure: \u201cWe ended up blowing out one of the walls and adding Willa\u2019s room on the front of the house,\u201d Glaser says. Anderson wanted the house to feel like a place someone lived in for protection, not comfort. A place where the world stayed outside while Bob stayed inside.<\/p>\n

Key ALM Tristan Daoussis\/LMGI ran point in Humboldt, managing the house construction during torrents of rain and bringing neighbors on board for production support. \u201cPaul didn\u2019t want to know about basecamp,\u201d says Daoussis, \u201cso we had to find a place to put it and, as luck would have it, there was a guy right next door named Dave who actually ended up being our medic\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe called him our medic and savior,\u201d adds Wesley.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always say everybody needs a \u2018Dave\u2019 at their location,\u201d says Daoussis, \u201cbecause he was unbelievably helpful in so many ways \u2026 I mean, we ended up building a road on his property in the middle of all this weather and he even had the equipment to do it!\u201d<\/p>\n

Another nearby property provided the reveal at the end of Bob\u2019s escape tunnel\u2014which emerges into an old redwood stump that features, of all things, a toilet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a guy who works with those giant redwood stumps in town,\u201d Glaser says. \u201cThey had basically asked him to fabricate a real stump into that set and we placed it on a piece of property up the road. Dug a hole, put a trench plate, put a toilet on it and then put the stump down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to the filming, Glaser had hosted a dinner with local liaisons to share production\u2019s vision for the movie. \u201cThis film pushed the boundaries of filming in this area,\u201d admits Humbolt-Del Norte Commissioner Cassandra Hesseltine. \u201cUsually, productions are hidden in the woods. These guys were at a popular grocery store, a main high school, a well-known park, the on-ramp in front of the university and more\u2014and all while very visible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely out of our norm, but I knew the community would rise to the occasion. And we did, we got buy-in from everyone and then were able to properly inform the local community while keeping the integrity of the film.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One night, when DiCaprio was being filmed in a bathrobe on an Arcata on-ramp, crowds gathered. Instead of treating them as a disruption, the crew folded them in\u2014extras in their own community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hesseltine praises Glaser and the team for how they handled it all. \u201cThey\u2019re all just absolutely stellar,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"\"

\u201cBaktan Cross\u201d under siege- El Paso, Texas by Jacob Cena\/LMGI<\/p><\/div>\n

Trapped in El Paso Playing as Downtown Baktan Cross<\/b><\/p>\n

When Lockjaw and his team of heavily armed soldiers show up to abduct Willa, the world behind that lush, redwood curtain shatters\u2014and Bob flees to another part of town, seeking refuge with Willa\u2019s karate teacher, Sergio (Benicio del Toro).<\/p>\n

\u201cEl Paso offered the back half of our fictional city Baktan Cross,\u201d says Glaser. \u201cAt night it was a complete ghost town, like having a pre-World War II industrial brick city to yourself with all the rooftops and lighting positions you could ever ask for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson had stopped in El Paso while shooting in Marfa for There Will Be Blood<\/i>, and he knew he wanted to get back there one day. The rooftops. The empty streets. The humid sense of danger that sits just below street level. For the narrative, this is where Bob finds the first real thread leading toward Willa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the production, it\u2019s where precision and improvisation had to co-exist, with Texas location assistant Jacob Cena\/LMGI leading the way from the initial scout throughout the filming.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a handful of critical locations for the shoot that had been identified as scenes that could be shot in El Paso,\u201d says Cena, \u201cbut in the beginning, I didn\u2019t really know what they were because not everyone was allowed a copy of the script. Glaser actually loaned me his, and he\u2019s like, \u2018you got two hours\u2019 or maybe it was an hour. I can\u2019t remember. So, I sat in my car, and I skimmed it as fast as I could, and that\u2019s all the information I had.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was calling people left and right! Cops, property owners, real estate agents that I know, architects, doctors, lawyers, I mean, you name it! I was calling people\u2019s mothers just to get doors unlocked, you know what I mean? Because after I read the script, I realized how big this project was, and I also wanted to show Glaser that I wouldn\u2019t fail and that I could keep up with these guys, because Glaser, Wesley\u2026 I mean, they\u2019re the best!\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the primary locations in El Paso were the Sergio\u2019s Ninja Academy, the Perfumeria above which is a migrant hideout, Sergio\u2019s apartment and a key rooftop scene where Bob tries\u2014and fails\u2014to keep up with some young skateboarders who are meant to lead him to safe passage.<\/p>\n

The Academy \u201cwas a decrepit old space that we brought back to life,\u201d says Glaser. \u201cIt had jail bars across the whole front. Some glass was broken. It was in bad shape. So, we took the bars off, redid the windows. There are some numbering and lettering on there that\u2019s original from the late sixties, early seventies, but Florencia and her team made it feel old and new at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cena knew it would work the first time he saw it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how I knew, but I was sitting with one of our other KALMs and I just said, \u2018they\u2019re gonna do it here\u2019 \u2026 and he wasn\u2019t sure. He was like, \u2018Man, this would take a ton of work,\u2019 but it already had some benefits to it even in its rundown state \u2026 it had the big windows onto the street so you could see the cop cars whooshing by, there was parking in the back \u2026 but yeah, they did choose that location and it needed a lot of work,\u201d says Cena. \u201cBut look how cool it looks on screen!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sergio\u2019s refuge and the hidden migrant haven didn\u2019t really exist either.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see them go upstairs and open the door in the hallway, that door is actually across the alley. Florencia\u2019s crew built almost 90 percent of that,\u201d says Cena. \u201cThe room with the mats where the families and the kids were hiding exists above the Perfumeria. The rest is a build.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin and her art department team even found ways to incorporate elements throughout the film that they\u2019d seen during scouts, like when she noticed that children in an actual migrant shelter had drawn pictures on the walls, or when her team recreated an entire mural from a building they\u2019d seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlorencia and I were in a foxhole together almost from the beginning,\u201d says Glaser. \u201cShe helped us keep the train on the tracks. And because Paul likes to keep things looking real and authentic, it made the pivots and U-turns easier for our departments as we had to be in lock-step throughout the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

That ability to believably drift between real space and invented space came from a location department\/art department machine that was able to turn around huge asks quickly.<\/p>\n

Some of that was infrastructure. Most of it was relationships.<\/p>\n

That was precisely the reason Glaser wanted Cena in the mix. \u201cJacob knew every inch of that place,\u201d Glaser says. \u201cEvery owner, every rooftop, every alley. He got us into places I never thought we\u2019d get into. The guy was just a complete superstar in El Paso.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGlaser built the best location team I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d Cena says. \u201cEveryone knew their lane, and the communication was constant.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2014many of whom didn\u2019t speak English.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t a road; it was a pinball machine.<\/p>\n

Glaser began running late-night meetings with Anderson,\u00a0 <\/span>producer\/1st AD Somner and line producer Will Weiske charting every possible move for the next day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe would have lunch meetings at 2 am,\u201d Glaser says. \u201cWe\u2019d ask, \u2018what do we want to accomplish tomorrow?\u2019 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\u2019d take a nap for three or four hours and come back and ask: \u2018what can we do and what can\u2019t we do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Wesley\u2019s answer, more often than not, was that they could do it all. Throughout the entire shoot, from California to Texas, this was a hybrid of precision-permitting and opportunistic shooting that only works when a city and a Location Department share trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly,\u201d says Glaser, \u201cI would have slept more if I had known how accommodating El Paso was going to be with our eleventh hour requests.\u201d<\/p>\n

Downtown Baktan Cross begins to feel like a trap: a maze of brick, blinking neon, and bad decisions where Bob is always inches behind or ahead of the people trying to destroy his family. The scale never overwhelms the tension because the locations never feel like movie sets. They feel lived-in, messy, improvised.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time Bob narrowly escapes town, the film has shifted yet again. El Paso has played a portal, a waystation on the road to reckoning. And that road is where the company headed next.<\/p>\n

\"\"

the Lockjaw meet up- Ocotillo Wells, greater Anza-Borrego Desert region<\/p><\/div>\n

On-the-Run in the \u2018River of Hills\u2019 and the California Desert<\/b><\/p>\n

After the refuge of the redwoods collapses, the film drops into the California desert, where the story\u2019s emotional and physical distances finally converge.<\/p>\n

The desert unit spanned the stretch from Anza-Borrego to the Arizona border, a region where paved roads dissolve into scrubland and where distance goes from metaphorical to punishingly literal. The extreme heat becomes its own form of pressure, the horizon a trap. It\u2019s not a place designed for people, much less a full shooting company.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the most elusive location,\u201d Glaser says. \u201cWe were trying to find the rebel basecamp where Perfidia is pregnant and shooting the machine gun. And then, also, this one scene where a handoff happens between two characters, as well as the end of the movie, and we didn\u2019t know exactly what that was yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

What eventually became the film\u2019s defining location, the \u201cRiver of Hills,\u201d wasn\u2019t even on a scout list. It was a detour. A happy accident.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cWe were scouting and we popped out onto that road,\u201d Glaser says, describing a strip of desert highway that undulates like an endless series of blind crests, and Paul was like, \u201cWhat is this road?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Anderson whipped out his cellphone and started shooting through the windshield, the phone perched on the dashboard. He asked Florencia to shoot out the back windows, and then he asked DP Michael Bauman to film Glaser, who was driving, through the rear-view mirror. A tight close-up on his eyes. And, suddenly, it all fell into place\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like you could see the lightbulb go on for Paul,\u201d says Glaser. That moment effectively wrote the ending Anderson had been searching for.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cWe knew that all of our participants were headed into the desert,\u201d said Anderson following a DGA screening, \u201cand we knew that Bob was going to have to save the day in some way, but exactly how that would go down was still unclear to us. But you realized it\u2019s very scary to drive those hills because you\u2019re going 65 MPH, 75 MPH and you think there\u2019s no one around, but you\u2019re just blind coming up over these ridges.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs you hit the crest of each hill, you\u2019re absolutely at risk. An animal \u2026 a stalled car in the road and you\u2019re done for.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Finally, having reached the end of the \u201criver\u201d run, the team eventually discovered what is known, coincidentally enough, as the \u201cTexas dip,\u201d about one hour and 45 minutes away. And, with that, Anderson had his ending.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of those lucky moments,\u201d said Anderson, \u201cwhere you\u2019re sitting in a car for four hours and going, \u2018God, I\u2019ll never go on a location scout again,\u2019\u00a0 <\/span>but then you come across this and you go, \u2018forget what I just said, this is why you get in the van to location scout, because the discoveries are there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul wrote the sequence, then designed it; the team mapped it all out and started creating the scenario that leads to the end of the film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the desert was the biggest logistical nightmare,\u201d Glaser says. \u201cSome of the driving sequence or Bob driving around searching for Willa is actually made up of pieces of a lot of different places. And we would try to have everything available at once. But if we wanted to turn around and go the other direction or move locations within the road system that we had permitted\u2014to take that down and set another one up can be an hour. And we\u2019d of course, need it done in, like, 15 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Communication was complicated by the fact that cellphone service didn\u2019t exist on most of the route. The team resorted to satellite phones and runners. Even California Highway Patrol (CHP) could only support one traffic closure at a time. Temperatures surged into triple digits and crew hydration protocols became as critical as camera movement. The smallest delay threatened safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy\u2014at all,\u201d Glaser says. \u201cI mean there is an expectation that the closure can just happen, and it doesn\u2019t work like that. Some of these re-routes we were doing were like 20 miles, so imagine you\u2019re on your way to work in the morning and I\u2019m like, \u2018sorry, you\u2019re gonna have to drive an extra 20 miles\u2026\u2019 You\u2019re probably not gonna be happy about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEarly on, I had asked to close down Highway 78 on a weekend, and CalTrans basically laughed and said, \u2018doing that will require a 150-mile detour,\u201d Glaser says. \u201cInterestingly, they didn\u2019t say no, they just said it\u2019s a 150-mile detour. I was like, \u2018noted.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The same geography that isolates the characters also forces them into choices they can\u2019t undo. The people who have been running for 16 years run out of road. Without spoiling what takes place, the desert becomes the place where Bob\u2019s story and Willa\u2019s story stop being separate and where the sins of the father and mother are finally visited on their child.<\/p>\n

The End of the Road<\/b><\/p>\n

Among the other major California locations used were the La Purisima Mission in Lompoc for a compound of sympathetic nuns\u2014which took ages to find due to the majority of the missions in California being under the control of the Catholic diocese\u2014courthouse interiors filmed in Stockton, and various exteriors in Lancaster, Tracey and Folsom.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All in all, the film shot roughly more than 100 locations with only seven of them on stage. Glaser began the project full time in April of 2023 and wrapped in July of 2024.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOutside of LA, there is a willingness and an eagerness to make things happen,\u201d Glaser says. \u201cSo whether it was Jen West in Sacramento or Cassandra Hesseltine in Eureka or Jacob in El Paso just putting us in the right rooms with the right people, you feel like you\u2019re working with people who want it all to succeed and to work safely and smoothly\u2014and all of them prove that to you again and again, every day.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thinking over the entirety of the experience, Glaser is quick to shower praise on his team.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, you can\u2019t do better than the group of people we had on this film. Just across the board. Having guys like Wesley and Daoussis and Cena means you can relax a bit because you know things are going to be handled and handled in the right way. Nothing on this shoot was easy, but it was all easier than it should\u2019ve been, and that is a testament to the entire team. I couldn\u2019t be prouder of what we were able to pull off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"

Clockwise: Leon Henderson, Tristan Daoussis, Michael Wesley, Ron Haynes, Colleen Coviello, Celia Fogel, Will O\u2019Brien, Mario Hernandez, Michael Glaser, Kyle Cox, Teo Kim<\/p><\/div>\n

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

LOCATION DEPARTMENT
\nSLM Michael Glaser\/LMGI
\n<\/b>LM Michael Wesley\/LMGI<\/b><\/p>\n

KALM\/Location Coordinators
\n<\/span>Alyssa DiMare\/LMGI \u2022 Keomanee Vilaythong\/LMGI<\/b><\/p>\n

KALMs
\n<\/span>Mike Reft\/LMGI \u2022<\/b> Tristan Daoussis\/LMGI
\n<\/span><\/b>Golden Swenson\/LMGI \u2022 Eric Crocombe\/LMGI
\n\u2022Colleen Coviello\/LMGI \u2022 Ron Haynes
\n<\/b>Tyler Brock \u2022 Kevin Danchisko \u2022 William O\u2019Brien
\n<\/b>Rich Heichel \u2022 Kris Kreeger \u2022 Celia Fogel<\/b><\/p>\n

ALMs
\n<\/span>Susan Hennessy \u2022 Leon Henderon Jr.\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Location Assistants
\n<\/span>Jacob Cena\/LMGI \u2022 Kyle Cox \u2022 Teo Kim
\n<\/span><\/b>Derek Bond \u2022 Jonathan Angel \u2022<\/b> Tyler Semons<\/b><\/p>\n

Unit Assistants
\n<\/span>Owen Legendre\/LMGI \u2022 Levi Lokey<\/b><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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