In 2010, local filmmaker Cory Van Dyke set out to write a movie set in Marfa about the people living in Marfa. The small town in Far West Texas had been the backdrop for No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, both filmed outside the city limits in 2006 and were released in 2007. Larry Clark wrote and directed Marfa Girl in town with local actors after he showed films at CineMarfa in 2011.
While Marfa Girl was released in November 2012, Far Marfa was shot in September 2010, but released in 2013. The cast and crew of predominantly Marfa residents filmed the movie about a guy searching for a piece of lost art in 22 days and with a budget starting at $30,000. To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the film’s release, I interviewed 18 members of the cast and crew to share what it was like to make the low-budget indie film with friends and neighbors as well as reminisce about a Marfa that’s no longer.
Cory Van Dyke (Writer/Producer/Director): I've been knocking around Hollywood for a long time, working with people and trying to put movies together. I was in the studio system and going around with well-known actors and trying to set up movies, and I couldn't get anything off the ground, and every time I thought something was going to pop, it would fall apart. I finally got frustrated, and I didn't really like what was going on. I left, and I came out here and started a film festival, and then that fell apart in a few years.
I was still trying to write and still trying to make movies from out here and trying to set up independent movies. A lot of my heroes had done things like that and so I was like okay, I'm gonna try to do that. Then I tried to get some scripts off the ground. Tried to find financing. Tried to make movies and I just couldn't get anything off the ground. So I finally was at my wit's end and decided to use everything that I had here in Marfa, that I could have access to try to make a film where I could use all these things and make something like a shoestring budget film.
So I started working on the script, and the idea was to try to weave all of these things together into a film set here, set in that place in time, which was when Marfa was right on the cusp of this sort of blowing up in the popular consciousness. Obviously people knew about it in the art world, but in pop culture or the wider world, it had yet to be discovered in that way. It was pre-Beyonce jumping up and down at Prada. And we all knew that things were gonna change. You could tell.
Also, the films that had been made before I made Far Marfa, nothing had been shot in Marfa, and that was one of the reasons it was a fun thing to do too. I knew eventually someone would do it. And I'm like, ‘Well, why don't I do it?’
We had a really fun, small, interesting group of people that were out and about and doing things. Back then, there were only maybe 25 people in town who went out at all and did anything, so you knew everybody that was part of the scene that participated. That whole culture was something that I thought I could capture and that was worth capturing. I wanted to do something hopeful and that wasn't super cynical.
Carolyn Pfeiffer (Executive Producer): I was happy to jump into it. I come from indie cinema, so low budget films are not scary to me. You just figure out how to make them work.
Van Dyke: (Carolyn) was very important because she had been doing this for decades and knew a lot of people and knew how to make movies and knew how to produce movies and knew the vibe of how to treat people. She just did a lot for us and was really a great resource.
Carolyn Pfeiffer, Executive Producer
Pfeiffer: There's certain things that I was in charge of as executive producer. Sometimes things would fall to whoever was able to do them, and one of mine was clearing copyright for a number of things in the film. For example, artist's paintings that might have been hung on a wall. You have to get permission. You have to get a release from the artist. Not even from the owner of the painting, but from the artist, because it's the intellectual property of the artist.
Sam Griffin (Co-Producer): I'd made the decision to leave New York and move back to Australia. I knew that once I moved back to Australia, I wasn't going to be able to go back and forth from my little place in Marfa anywhere near as much. So I thought before I fully moved back to Australia, I'm going to spend six months living in Marfa.
Then as it happened, it was a coincidence that Cory and Jennie Lyn (Hamilton) were making the film at the same time. I'd never worked on a feature film before, and so I thought it'd be a really great opportunity to see feature film production as opposed to documentary or factual being made from beginning to end, but it wasn't really beginning to end. I was only involved in production, not in development and not in post.
Pfieffer: Sam was terrific as the (co-) producer. She was very knowledgeable.
Griffin: I think my credit on IMDB is co-producer, but really I was more of a production manager. There was a lot of location stuff involved. Cory wrote it knowing where he was going to shoot it. So he already knew most of the locations, but there were some locations that I had to find.
Rose Anderson-Lewis (Wardrobe): I have a background in fashion design and I had done some styling work prior to this movie. So knowing Jennie Lyn and Cory around Marfa, I became part of this project.
It was very much a community supported project, so there was no money to purchase or design and create costumes. All of the clothes were created basically by borrowing and begging from people and just going through people's personal clothes and closets and figuring out clothes that we had access to that felt like a good fit for the character and the situation.
We looked through things that (Johnny Sneed) had brought with him. He had two of the identical black button up shirts, and he wore that the majority of the movie. He wore some other shirts, but that was the shirt he wore the most. I must have washed and prepped that shirt like a dozen times. It seemed like every night I was washing that shirt and having it ready to be on set for the next morning.
Riley O’Bryan (Art Direction/Scott): I was technically an art director, but I don't really do anything. They just needed somebody to handle sets and things like that, even though most of it was places that were already dressed. I'm sure they probably wanted me to do more, but I didn't know what to do, so I didn't do anything.
Van Dyke: My wife, (Jennie Lyn) had a lot of experience in production and in acting, and I couldn't have pulled it off without her. She produced it with me and was basically there keeping the ship afloat while I was trying to make the film.
Jennie Lyn Hamilton (Producer/Hillary): There was a lot of MacGyvering. City people do not understand until you get here, and then you don't have what you need.
Jesse Bernstein, Johnny Sneed, Jennie Lyn Hamilton and Cory Van Dyke (photo courtesy of Johnny Sneed)
Van Dyke: That's a very important point. People had to basically pack it in, pack it out kind of thing. They had to have everything, and they didn't always, because they didn't know better. So Jennie was constantly scrambling to make sure we had what we needed and it was always something different.
David Beebe (Camacho): I've seen the movie four times because it is so funny to me. It makes me laugh so hard. The performances of the actors, it's just so incredibly funny. Everybody's so good. That was really fun shooting it.
JD Garcia (Ro): Cory just asked me. I was like, yeah, that sounds fun. It's always good to do weird new things. It's fun being on set, and seeing the process is pretty, pretty wild, ‘cause I love movies and stuff.
Jon “Jon C” Coleman (Martin): It just kind of happened. I don't even remember, but (Cory) used everyone, all our other friends and everything so I was into it. I've always liked doing movies. I've done stuff for just extras and acted with (Gabriel Luna, most recently known for The Last of Us) in high school. I was always into the movies and trying to make them. It was fun.
David Garcia (Gonzales): I was at Padres one night, and I was drinking. I was in the back room and Cory just came up to me. He was like, ‘Hey, you gonna be in my movie?’ I was like all right. I didn't think anything of it. Few months later, he hit me up again, told me that he had written a part and had me in mind for it, and that JD and Mark Scott were also gonna be in these scenes. And of course, since they were involved – JD and Mark, my brother and my friend respectively – I was totally excited about it.
Mark Scott (Los): When (Cory) started wrangling everybody up, he asked me if I was interested, and I said yes. But I was very nervous because I had never done anything like that before. I was almost dreading it a little bit just because I was so nervous about it.
Van Dyke: Part of the reason that I did it was because I knew all these people that you saw in the movie. They were friends of mine, and they were all interesting, funny, smart and creative. Part of the fun was trying to use all the things at my disposal. Locations, friends, anything I could because I didn't have the money to shoot a movie without it really.
Certain parts were written for certain people. A lot of times it was just like, let's figure out a way to shoehorn people that I know are interesting to look at and would be interesting to see on camera into certain roles and try to change some things.
In other ones, I knew I could find somebody to do it, like the character I named Camacho. David Beebe ended up playing it, but there were several people that might have been able to pull it off. David was just so funny in the audition that, it was like, okay, it's yours. And so that was really the genesis of it all.
Beebe: I auditioned because I wanted to be in the movie.
Van Dyke: I didn't really write the characters like anybody necessarily. Nobody played themselves, let me put it that way. It was sort of written with someone who I know could inhabit that role as an actor, even if they hadn't acted before.
Beebe: There's so many parallels to reality, but the story is completely made up.
Adam Bork (Mark Irving): I think I just kept getting asked to audition for it from multiple people. I think they just asked me enough times to audition for it. I was like ‘All right, all right.’
Nick Terry
Nick Terry (Rick): (Cory) wanted someone with an awkward, silence-inducing, psychotic glare and apparently only thought of me.
Coleman: Nick Terry is my favorite in the movie. He's such a sweet guy. I love Nick Terry, but he does such a good job. He just cracks me up in that.
Johnny Sneed (Carter): Cory's a pal of mine, and I knew it would be a fun experience, and I knew it would be a fun time. A way to spend more time in Marfa than a week or a weekend. And I love the idea of Far Marfa and the quest for truth and trying to make sense of things and sense of life. It just seemed like a fun time. And it was.
Jesse Bernstein (David): I was working on a movie down in Florida. I was training to be a boxer. It was a boxing movie where these two best friends become worst enemies. So they were training me for six weeks to become a boxer, and then literally two days before production was supposed to commence, they pulled the plug on the movie, and we didn't wound up making it. And then the producer was like, ‘I will fly you anywhere you want to go.’ My apartment in LA was being sublet, so I was like, ‘My friend in Austin is going through a divorce. I'll go to Austin.’
They flew me to Austin and I had an agent, and they started sending me out on auditions. I was really burnt out. It was one of those times in your life when I was sleeping on someone's couch. I hadn't shaved in a month. I was just having a rough time. I was going through a transitional period in my life, and I was auditioning for things and things that I wasn't getting. Then, two days before I was supposed to go back to LA, this audition for Far Marfa came up.
Jesse Bernstein, Adam Bork and Julie Mintz (photo courtesy of Julie Mintz)
Cory Van Dyke and Johnny Sneed (photo courtesy of Johnny Sneed)
Jolyn Janis and Jon Coleman (photo courtesy of Johnny Sneed)
Julie Mintz (Becka): Completely coincidentally, I actually knew Johnny and Jesse both from acting circles in Los Angeles, but that didn't really have to do with how I got the role. Johnny and I had done a showcase together years before, where you showcase for industry agents and managers.
Sneed: One of the actresses couldn't do it. I'm a drummer, and I played with some bands. I think I had just played a show, and Julie Mintz, I think we shared a gig together. She sang before us or after us. So I said, ‘I might have somebody for the movie.’
Mintz: (Johnny) contacted me the next day, and basically told me about this film that he was doing in Texas and that it was starting pretty soon. It was starting in like a week, I think. One of the actresses had to drop out because of a conflict.
Sneed: I went over to her house and we videoed (her audition) on our phone and sent it to Cory.
Mintz: Now everybody does remote auditions, but back then, every role that I'd ever gotten, I had to do an in-person audition, usually where you would audition for the casting director and then get past them and then have to meet the director. So a lot of hoops to jump through to prove yourself.
So that was interesting too just because I've never really had the opportunity to audition that way. But Johnny and I had time to go through the scenes a few times and work it out together. He came over to my house, and we made a tape of a few scenes and sent it to Cory. I think literally the next day, Cory called me and was like, ‘Could you come to Marfa in a few days and be in the movie?’
Sneed: It's funny how that worked out. She was on my mind because I had just played with her, and I thought it seemed like she would fit the role. It worked out great.
Mintz: I'm from Texas. I'm from Corpus Christi, and I'd always heard of Marfa. So I was really excited to get the opportunity to go and basically live there for a month. And I loved the script. I always thought Johnny was an amazing actor. I remembered him from when we had done that showcase together, and I knew he was an amazing actor. I think Jesse and I had done a comedy acting class together, and I knew he was great. So that was kind of fun to already get to be there with friends. It was this kismet opportunity that fell into my lap, because I was playing music first and foremost, and Johnny and I crossed paths at the right time.
Bernstein: I knew nothing about Marfa, and I even kind of turned down the role because of Marfa. I'm like, I don't want to go to this small town in Texas. Cory looked me in the eye and he grabbed my shoulder and was like, ‘Trust me, you're gonna love it.’ And I'm like, ‘Really, bro? It's a small town in Texas. I'm gonna love it?’ But he's like, ‘You're gonna love it.’ And I'm like, ‘Okay, I'll go for it.’ Then I went back to Austin and I drove with Jolyn.
Jolyn Janis (Quarry): I'd heard about Marfa and I'd heard about West Texas. I'd been to Big Bend (National Park). I love backpacking, but I hadn't spent a lot of time in the towns yet. When I booked it, I went on Google on my desktop, and I googled Marfa, Texas. It showed some houses and things, and then it was just blank everywhere on the outside. I thought that Google was just having trouble loading.
Sneed: I spent a good month or two there and spent a couple of weeks before we started shooting, hanging out in Marfa and getting to meet more people.
Janis: From the very beginning, when we're doing the table read and meeting everyone, and everyone's talking about the film, it was an immediate immersion. And I love that so much, because I don't know how you would know Marfa if you just came for the day. It'd be like eating one olive as an appetizer. And they're like, ‘Yeah, I kind of had some,’ but it's so much more. That's true for any place, but it's especially so, maybe because it's where people seem to go that also want to live by some of their own rules in a way. It's its own culture, and I really appreciate that.
Julie Mintz (photo courtesy of Julie Mintz)
Mintz: I made a plan where I looked up all the art galleries and all the restaurants in Marfa, which I guess there really weren't that many. But for the number of days that I worked and the number of days that I had off over the course of the month, it worked out perfectly that I could somehow squeeze in going to every single art gallery and every single restaurant.
Bernstein: I really immersed myself in the culture, borrowing bicycles. And at the time, no one locked their doors. No one locked their bicycles. You can just leave a bike. I would just pick up a bike. I don't know whose it was, and I would just leave it and grab another bike and just leave it.
The people were great. I just thought it was so cool that everyone was kind of hip. It was very cosmopolitan, like everyone was transplants from New York and Austin and L.A. It wasn't like this hick town. It was more like there were locals, but they were kind of cool, salt of the earth people that you want to be around.
David Garcia: Johnny and Jesse were super cool. They did really integrate themselves completely effortlessly. They're just such fucking cool people, and we all hung out and partied.
Bork: I really like Jesse Bernstein. That dude was really, really funny.
Bernstein: I'm usually the nice guy. I'm usually cast as the brother or the dad, the guy next door. I don't really ever play much of the bad guy, so it's nice to play against type, especially a douchebag. I wasn't sure I had that much douchebag in me, but it turns out I had quite a bit.
Mintz: I loved how (Marfa) had one stoplight, and that you still saw a lot of real cowboys. There were only a few places to eat, and you just figured out what was open that day and that's where you went. That's what I liked about it, but I did at the time think it could potentially be hard to live here. Like if you needed to go to the pharmacy. I remember thinking that would be hard.
Presidio County Sheriff Danny Dominguez and Co-Producer Sam Griffin (photo courtesy of Johnny Sneed)
Griffin: The budget was really small, and I found that really hard. People were very kind. People were very generous. It's Marfa. Everybody wants to help out. Trying to find times where we could film things at locations with people and not pay anyone was always really difficult. There were a lot of things that were really hard.
Van Dyke: I couldn't have shot it without people volunteering their locations, and also people volunteering casitas and stuff for the crew to stay in for those three to four weeks we were shooting. We couldn't have done it without those people.
Pfeiffer: We got a lot of housing for very little and some for free. I was working on that housing for the actors and the crew that came in. A lot of it was local crew. We just had a few department heads from out of Marfa.
Van Dyke: We got really lucky to be able to use Dan Keane's house over there, because it was an iconic house for a lot of us. A lot of people live there that I knew when he wasn't in town. He was always running around doing his reporting. He happened to be gone at that point, and he let us shoot there, which was very nice of him.
Hamilton: I think it might've been the first or second day of shooting, we were shooting over at that house. We shot half a day, and it was fine, and then we went to lunch. We took a lunch break, and someone thought it was a good idea to lock the door. And of course we got back, and there's no key to the house, because no one ever locked their doors. I remember having to open the bathroom window and crawl through the bathroom window.
Van Dyke: It was absolutely a point to shoot in the famous trailer, Carlos Lujan's old trailer. It's still there. We used to hang out there all the time and there were always parties.
Coleman: That was the hangout spot. For a while there were no bars, Like Ray's close down. Lounge wasn't open. It was kind of right when we were filming too. I don't think there were any bars open for a while. So there's a lot of hanging out in people's houses and we were much younger too. We were hanging out late. We all work and then get off work and like what do we do? Let's go hang out and drink beer.
JD Garcia: It was pre-Lost Horse. Padre’s was in the process of being put together so we only had the hotel bars and stuff. We'd be like ‘10 o'clock. They're closing. Ok, what are we going to do?’ It was fun. Lots of dance parties.
Sneed: We shot a bunch of stuff that day knowing that at the end of the night we were going to actually have this party scene. (Cory) wanted (Foundation for Jammable Resources) to play and he wanted whoever could be there to be there. He wanted everybody to have a good time, and we were dancing around. None of that was choreographed. So what you're seeing is us having a good time and going with it. I think that looks so great because you're capturing this real moment.
Van Dyke: Having that scene in there early in the movie was really important to set the baseline of people who are artistic and young and doing their own thing in Marfa. Especially back then, they weren't hustling to make tons of money. They were trying to make art and try to do cool stuff and have a good time. And they were able to do that a lot easier back then. And that trailer and some of these (locations) represented that in the film.
Griffin: (Cory) knew in his mind who he saw in certain scenes. It might've been certain props or something, but that didn't necessarily mean that those people were available. I mean, you're trying to fit in between people's schedules at the laundromat and Dollar General and all of that kind of thing. So it was always hard getting the extras, I remember, and for the amount of time that we needed them.
Sneed: I think it rained the night of that party scene. I have a memory of that party scene that it was raining outside, so it was tough in between shots. You couldn't really go anywhere because you couldn't go outside, because it was raining.
David Garcia: I left early because I got way too drunk. And the thing that's like a flashbulb memory was I remember stepping out into a puddle, and my socks were just drenched. If there's one thing that instantly pisses me off, it's getting my fucking socks wet. Nothing makes me angrier in a flash than getting my socks wet. It ruined my night.
JD Garcia: I revisited (Far Marfa) a couple of times since it came out and just how green everything was is pretty wild. We had a pretty good wet season that year.
Anderson-Lewis: It seems like we had really good rains before the filming started, because when I watched the movie, I was just amazed at how green the landscape is in Marfa, and that was quite beautiful to see.
Griffin: It was very rainy. I remember that because we were always having to move locations or adjust schedules or whatever because of rain.
Hamilton: We did an interior at Padre’s one day because of the rain, but we finished just in the nick of time because then it rained and rained and rained that end of September and then it never rained again. And the Rock House Fire was the next year.
Anderson-Lewis: There's a scene in the kitchen of Padre’s, and even though it doesn't show the bar area, it felt familiar just to even see the kitchen and people playing roles that are representative of real people in the community. But you would only know that if you really know Marfa and know the community at that time.
David Beebe (photo courtesy of Johnny Sneed)
Sneed: Let's talk about David Beebe. He's hilarious. I can't remember if I had met him before Marfa, but I knew of him. I had heard his name a lot, and that was a treat hanging out with him too. David was hilarious.
Van Dyke: Of course it's hilarious in retrospect to think that David Beebe was a cocaine dealer (in the film). That was part of the fun too to think David as a coke dealer, because now he's a county commissioner.
Beebe: I think Cory described it to me like a low level drug dealer who wants to be a high level drug dealer. So he's got the machismo, and he struts around and he talks a bunch of BS. I actually modeled it on a guy – I won't name his name – partially on a dude who was at the time here dealing drugs. I was like, yeah, that guy's kind of a jerk, and he's always nervous, but he's also not a terrible person. He's not an awful guy. He's just sort of an idiot. That's what I remember I modeled it on. And then Jon C as my sidekick is just hilarious. That was totally ad libbed. We didn't ever get together and talk about how we were gonna do any of that stuff.
Scott: Beebe did great. Him and Jon C as a duo, so so good. When he's got the gun and he's like screaming ‘Google it? Google it!?’ So good. Jon C gets shot in the neck, his camouflage pants. God, I love it.
Coleman: That was fun. (Dorothy Moore, makeup artist) was laying down below and she'd squeezed the little tube and (the blood) squirted out. Special effects.
Beebe: That was so funny that I had to leave the premises and go down the block, because I was making so much noise laughing so hard.
Anderson-Lewis: We put (David Beebe) in a shirt where I believe it was like buttoned up to the collar. I remember feeling like I had transformed the David Beebe that we all knew into this other character, and that felt like a real achievement.
Bork: The gun that Johnny Sneed accidentally shot Jon C in the neck with was just a BB gun that I had. Then there was Camacho's car and Johnny Sneed's car. There was only one of those. They didn't have two. I think that was actually Cory Van Dyke's car at the time.
Beebe: The car that I drive in there was Cory's Nissan Maxima that was on its last legs, and I don't know what the story is, but basically I think that car had to last since it was a beat up car. It had to last until the end of the filming, and it almost didn’t. It was really touch and go, which is pretty funny. That just tells you when you're on a shoestring budget, there's a risk at every corner.
JD Garcia: I made the mistake of smoking a cigarette in one of (the scenes). I was like, ‘Yeah, sure. I'll smoke a cigarette. Oh, this will be a little quick thing’. I think I smoked like two packs of cigarettes for that. I was dying.
Scott: It turned out the character (Cory) had me play was very easy to play, and it was at the house I was living at. The scene we shot (with JD and David Garicia) was at the house I was living at at the moment. It turned out to be easier than I thought.
David Garcia, Mark Scott and JD Garcia
JD Garcia: We just acted like a bunch of coked out kids. Wasn't really much acting.
Scott: (Jolyn) was super great. She was like, ‘You guys got this. This is great. That was a great take. You guys are doing great,’ which I thought was fantastic, but doing my scene with the Garcia brothers was very serious and not serious at the same time. They were all inspiring and they gave us lots of pointers and taught us how to be a little calm and not so nervous and staring directly at the camera the whole time.
Mintz: It was a great cast of characters. I was just lucky to be a part of it.
Sneed: That's just a credit to all those people that played in the movie. They just brought something so special that you couldn't recreate that. You couldn't hire an actor to do that. That's something that's in them already, that something special.
Hamilton: There were so many shots in the film that called for a train, but when you have a crew of 23 people and actors, everything moves so slow when you're making a film. Then when you're ready, you're ready and you can't cue the train to roll. So I would call The Train Lady. She was the wife of a train engineer, and she always had the train schedule because she knew her husband was going to be on one of those trains. She was always able to give me the train times for trains headed west and trains headed east.
Pfeiffer: I guess probably if it was an out of town production, that they would have discovered it, but because we all lived here, there's certain advantages to doing a hometown movie.
Sneed: Maybe I'm projecting that onto the place, but I always felt like everyone is collaborating because you're so far removed from everything. And visually you're on this plateau. The sky is different. You see all the stars. You feel like you're on this remote planet. And restaurants aren't open all the time. You're in it together. I just felt like everyone did different jobs, but also helped out each other in whatever way they needed.
Riley O’Bryan
Van Dyke: When you're running and gunning and using people and friends, you get a lot of friction, and it's difficult to pull off, but at the same time, you also have moments of serendipity where everything's just runs smoothly or better than you might expect, and it just happens. You don't even have to do anything. You just make sure you press record.
One of those moments was when we had Riley O'Bryan out on the corner of the deck out of (Ranch 2810) when we had a party out there. I'd written this little monologue about this stoned guy working out there, slinging burgers, working at the party, just like all of our friends. Everybody was scraping up work.
So Riley had never done that but he's a creative, bright guy, and I knew that he could make something of it, because it wasn't like a period piece or we weren't trying to represent some other place. We were representing Marfa, and Riley certainly knew Marfa. It was this kid that was taking a break and had some information for the main character, and they were going to interview him. Riley just started talking and started doing it, and every time he did it, it was perfect and hilarious. There were all different takes I could use, and it's all just hilarious. It just was the easiest thing.
O’Bryan: I was really proud of that shirt that I have on. I still have it but it's like in tatters. I bought it in Alpine.
Sneed: It was hard not to laugh because Adam just always cracks me up. Just how he is. And then in the movie, he was wearing some great costumes that I think he provided, like that great green suit that he's wearing at one of the party scenes. I think that was from his closet.
Adam Bork
Bork: I was wearing that funny green suit when I showed up for the audition and then they said I should wear that suit, so I provided my own outfits. I bought that suit at a garage sale in Austin in 1992. That lime green suit, I still have it.
Anderson-Lewis: It was just so perfect. They were trying to create these interesting, eccentric characters that are so natural to Marfa and to see Adam Bork in that green, tight polyester jumpsuit and he's talking so serious about art was just really a delight.
Bork: I hadn't seen (the movie) in a while, mainly because I'm embarrassed of my physical appearance, but I did enjoy the movie.
Janis: I do remember going into my room where I was staying, and I looked in a magazine. And I saw the most beautiful vista of the desert. It was this very modern architecture and this window that shows the vista. The desert vista became this picture in the window as a frame, and it was gorgeous. Then two to three weeks later, we get to a set at the house where the party was, and the same window was there. That was the place that was in the magazine, and I was so excited. I think we spent several days in there, and whenever possible, I would just sit in that room and just look out the window.
Van Dyke: I tried as much as I could to get the landscape and a long view of the countryside in some of these shots, because that's one of the great things about being here, about Marfa, is that you can pretty much be anywhere in town, and at least one direction, you can see for miles and miles outside of town.
Sneed: When Quarry and I go out and it's nighttime. We're dancing on the bed and we have that nice night together, and then we wake up. I think we shot that at the end of the day. I think the sun was actually going down. We pretended it was the morning.
Timing was important because of course the light was changing and I remember that scene was really special. Everything was leading up to this quiet moment with her, but we had to make sure we got it within a few minutes because this light was gonna change. I remember being really happy with that. I felt like it looked really nice and was a nice, quiet moment between us.
Tyler Spurgin and Harry Hudson
Van Dyke: I was going to do everything I could to figure out a way to get Tyler (Spurgin) in the movie. There wasn't a perfect character until (Tough Guy) came along, and he was great. We were lucky to have him do it because he didn't have a lot of lines or a bunch of this and that, but it was important for him to be a real deal and authentic. And he was.
Sneed: We didn't know how that was going to play out. And Tyler is so big and strong. I really did fall to the ground. He tossed me around like a rag doll.
Van Dyke: There's a funny story actually. I think he just got off of work, and we were shooting (that) scene. Tyler was having a beer, like a tall boy, whatever he did when he got off work back then. He was having a big tall boy right there on set and about to do his scene and our big city Assistant Director was like ‘You can't drink that. You can't be drinking on set.’
And Tyler was like, ‘I'm gonna do what I want to do.’ And it got to me. I had to pull her aside. I was like this is not a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) sort of situation. If Tyler wants to have a freaking beer, he can do whatever he wants.
Tyler Spurgin (Tough Guy): Yeah, I'm never gonna help anyone make a movie again. A friend or a loved one or a family member. I'm done with that. That shit is for lame people with too much time on their hands, and I am not that, so no movies for me. Thank you very much. I was there for eight hours. It killed an entire evening, and they wouldn't let me drink. So fuck that.
Sneed: There was always good food. We would set up and have these delicious lunches and dinners prepared for us. I still remember. It was always a treat to have that food while we were shooting. It made it seem like the movie was a big budget movie because the food was so good.
Pfeiffer: Bridget (Weiss of Marfa Table) did a great job catering.
Griffin: We were feeding people breakfast on something like $2 a day. There's only one thing you can get for $2 a day, which is Stripes. That's where we were getting our breakfast burritos from. Thankfully we had Bridget's food for lunch every day, so that was always really good.
Van Dyke: We didn't have any money, and so poor Jennie. I'm telling her like ‘Jen, we don't have the money. We can't buy all the craft service and food everybody wants.’ And bless her heart, she took that to heart, so the next day there was a mutiny on the set because Jennie had told all the grips and electric that they could only have half a breakfast burrito.
Pfeiffer: Here's the secret with low budget films: Don't take advantage of people, feed them well, and don't try to screw them. Just respect them, and they'll work as hard as they can.
Van Dyke: It was important for us, or for me anyway, who had been out in Hollywood and working on all kinds of movies, small or big, to pay people. That was one thing that we absolutely were determined to do, but it was, of course, the absolute minimum.
Hamilton: We didn't pay the extras.
The final scene with Johnny Sneed and Alice Stevens at Chinati Foundation
Van Dyke: I ended up reshooting (the ending) with getting Johnny back out here and shooting at Chinati, this moment where Johnny goes out there after his big scene. It ended up being the end of the film that's there now. I was really lucky to be able to get permission from Chinati to do that. I'm so glad that we did and I'm grateful that we were able to because it worked out as a really nice image in the film, but that wasn't how I originally written it.
(The original ending) was basically all the characters in that scene in front of the art studio, and after (Carter had) gone on the whole movie, trying to find the painting, the guy basically steals it back, says too bad. It's mine. I'll give you a finder's fee. And it worked okay, but it didn't have a lot of depth, and it just didn't have the aesthetic quality that would really put a bookend on the film.
The idea that I wanted people to go away with was if you have a good attitude, you can get by. You can do all right. And that's what the movie ends on is him having the opportunity to achieve or follow his dreams if he's gonna work for it, which is the best kind of way.
Hamilton: I was so exhausted during that whole shoot. I felt like I was on a boat. Have you ever been so tired where you just feel like you're on a boat?
Van Dyke: It took me a couple of years to edit (the film) because I had to raise some more money and get the polishing touches on it which are very expensive.
Scott: I was nervous to see the final product to kind of be like, how's this going to work? How am I going to look? How are we all gonna look? How was the town gonna look? But it was all great, super enjoyable. It was so much fun to watch it in the theater and in Austin with a good crowd of locals and strangers and a good time to party in the city.
Van Dyke: We had a little screening here in Marfa, before I took it on this festival run and that was it. The most fun we had at a screening, other than at the festivals, was we got invited to headline this or be, I guess, the opening movie in this new series that was put on by the Austin Film Society.
The day before Louis Black, who was a reviewer and the founder of The Austin Chronicle, had seen the movie at a press screening we did and he wrote this wonderful rave in The Austin Chronicle that everybody reads. So we had two big sold out screenings. Everybody was there and all the cast, or most people, came up to be there and to come up on stage and to see it with a big, wild crowd in Austin and to have an after party and all that. We had a ball. So that was everybody's moment to feel like we were having a typical premiere.
JD Garcia: I went to the premiere in Austin, which was a trip. It was like hanging out with Boyd and all those dudes.
Coleman: My parents went. They live in Austin. That was cool.
Bernstein: I invited all my friends. It was a full house. It was great. Everybody loved it.
Sneed: Some friends of mine from school came for the Austin screening and friends of Cory. Both of ours came from Texas and from UT, and we just had a great time, but I had too much of a great time.
Beebe: I screened it over at (Marfa) Airstream Land. I think I screened it at Padre’s. I was still running Padre’s when it came out, but I also was on my way out and it was a really hectic time.
Anderson-Lewis: I do recall seeing it at Padre’s when they had a public screening, which was super fun because it's like people that are in the movie, people that are part of the movie, people that just happen to be there and like, ‘Oh, there's a movie being shown of all these people that are in the room with me.’ That was pretty cool.
Van Dyke: We played for a week or two at the Rangra (Theater in Alpine) in Rangravision.
Scott: We tried to go to Alpine when they played it at the Rangra. Kaki, Jon C, I and Adam, we all hopped in Adam's convertible. Made it a little past the Marfa Lights and then spent the afternoon pushing the car down the highway.
Bork: I think the fuel filter was clogged, and I didn't have enough power so not enough fuel. We just had to abandon it and then get a ride back. We didn't get to see it because I wanted us to go in an old car and it would be cool. So no one made it at all because of me.
Pfeiffer: I felt that the film deserved a bigger journey into the outside world than it got. And I was sorry for that, and I'm sorry that a good small distributor didn't pick it up and didn't see that.
Bernstein: The movie never became a cult classic or anything. Maybe it'll catch on now.
Bork: Someone that I knew from 20 or 25 years ago sent me a text during the pandemic and said, ‘Through a series of searches and events, I ended up seeing Far Marfa on Amazon’ and they enjoyed it. Someone who I haven't seen since the year 2000. So that was funny, I guess. One can somehow end up on that film without intending to.
Beebe: I really honestly think the movie's underrated. I think the movie's really fun to watch, but I'm biased, you know?
Hamilton: One thing that is so poignant and sad and beautiful about Far Marfa now is the people who are no longer with us who are in the film: Steve Holzer, Boyd Elder and Alice Stevens. Having them live on in this small film, at least for the people that knew them, I think it's a sweet tribute. So when I think of Far Marfa now, I think of those people first actually.
JD Garcia: I need to watch it again just because we've lost a couple of the people who are in it.
Bork: It was great to see Steve Holzer being classic Steve Holzer.
Sneed: Steve was a lot of fun to work with. He’s kind of like that character in Far Marfa, quick to laugh, had great stories and loved making music and loved art. He just had this great personality, bigger than life personality.
Steve Holzer
Boyd Elder and Will Nelson
Bernstein: Boyd had never acted before, and I told him I would coach him for his scenes since I had all that time off. Boyd would come over to my room in Building 98, and we'd work on a scene for days. That was a lot of fun that I was able to coach Boyd Elder, a legend. Whenever he’d come out to LA, he'd always call me and we'd always go out for drinks and stuff. Boyd became like my brother.
Scott: I'm surprised he didn't have flip flops on in his sheriff's outfit. That'd be classic him.
Van Dyke: The other cop was my friend William Nelson, from college, one of my best friends who always wanted to act. He is a very outgoing, charismatic, funny, dramatic guy, and a very authentic kind of guy. That was one of those parts that I knew he could do.
Beebe: That was basically a snapshot of Marfa from 2009 to 2010. There were a lot fewer people here, like far, far fewer visitors. We didn't have Airbnb, so we didn't have nearly as many people coming in and out like tourists. That's not a good or a bad thing. In fact, it's a bad thing. We needed them. We needed more tourists, but the place was just slower and it was a little more tight knit just because there were less people.
David Garcia: It really did capture the zeitgeist right before Marfa completely lost its soul. Everybody that was involved, we're all friends and we laughed so hard during a lot of these scenes.
JD Garcia: I think it was really cool because everyone got along. There wasn't much division. It wasn't as clicky as it is now. Like everyone would hang out. You go to a party and it would be the entire spectrum of the local population.
Pfeiffer: It was like a home movie because most of us knew each other. It was almost like family working together in that respect, but was very professionally treated. We really worked as professionals.
Griffin: I have stayed strictly in the documentary and factual space ever since then. I think that low budget documentary is a much better world to live in than low budget feature filmmaking. But it was all good, and I'm proud of what we made and glad that we did it, because it is something that will live forever and always be a lovely reminder of that particular time in Marfa, which is now long gone.
Sneed: It's one of my favorite times in my life. And then in my acting jobs, it's just a special time for me. I really, really appreciated the opportunity.
Hamilton: I know we could not make the same movie again here. Well there's a lot more people, the whole Airbnb thing. We had a 21-day shoot, and the majority of our cast and crew – well our four main principals – were from out of town, and then a lot of the crew was out of town. We had to find housing for a lot of people, and I don't think we paid for any housing. There's no way you could do that now.
Bork: Yeah, I wonder. People would probably be more into getting location fees and stuff like that. I think the town has probably changed enough to where it might be a little more difficult, but it probably could be done if you just asked enough.
O’Bryan: Not with the same people. Nobody would have time. Now I'm too old. I don't do anything unless I'm getting paid.
Pfeiffer: The answer is yes. I don't know if we could get the housing. That would be the issue, because I don't think they would give us free Airbnbs. But maybe. You never say never. People still make low budget movies. That's gonna go on forever as long as they are kids that want to make films or even older people. Somehow they'll get it done.
Van Dyke: Every now and again, I'll fire it up or watch the trailer. I'll watch a little bit of it. I haven't done it in a couple of years, but every time I do it, it's such a warm sensation to see all my friends and remember all those times. It's great and gratifying to think that whatever we did with the movie, we did capture that place in time. And when you look back on it, it has value just for that.
Scott: The whole thing I think about often is just how lucky we are to have this great time capsule at this little moment in so many people's lives. I can't believe it's already 10 years, but I think about it in that way of how I look forward to watching it in 20 years and in 30 years.
Van Dyke: I keep threatening to have a reunion, but I've been in Oregon so much, and I'm just too lazy, I think. I almost want somebody else to do it basically. This would be the time, of course, of 10 years but I have not pulled it together. So maybe we'll have a 12-year reunion.
Coleman: I think there should be part two. Farther Marfa.
Scott: I'd do it again. Far Marfa Two. Let's go. I'm ready.
Far Marfa is available to view online through its website, Amazon and Apple TV. It’s also available to check out on Blu-Ray and DVD at Marfa Public Library.
