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Story Builder
Over the years the variety of films shot in Taos reflects the range of terrain in the region, in addition to other New Mexico filmmaking incentives. These include investment, professional crews, sound stages, post production facilities/professionals, ease of access, value for the location dollar, and the attractiveness of the state for everyone when they're not filming.
Following is a list from the New Mexico Film Office of movies shot in Taos listed by release date. This link to the New Mexico Film Office goes to an expanded roster of movies made in New Mexico, and other movie related resource information.
2009 Terminator 4
2007 No Country for Old Men
2006 Wild Hogs
2005 Seraphim Falls (Ski Valley)
2003 Off the Map
Big Things
The Rovers
Taos The Movie (Ski Valley)
2000 All the Pretty Horses
1996 Fools Rush In
1994 Natural Born Killers
1993 Road Scholar
1992 White Sands
1990 Backtrack
1989 Artists of New Mexico/TV
1988 Twins
1986 Blue de Ville/TV
1978 Every Which Way But Loose
1977 Estampa Flamenca/TV
1976 The Missouri Breaks
1975 Bite the Bullet
Search for the Gods/TV
Sweet Hostage/TV
1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Easy Rider
1956 Hollywood or Bust
1955 The Man From Laramie
1954 Make Haste To Live
1942 Valley of the Sun
Where:
Taos Pueblo has featured in many productions, the most well-known being the anti-establishment statement of the sixties, Easy Rider, (1969). Director Dennis Hopper, who made his name through the movie, became so enamored of Taos he lived here for almost ten years after the movie was completed.
Diane Reyna, a Taos Pueblo native, used the pueblo extensively in her documentary Surviving Columbus (1992).
Parts of Hollywood or Bust (1956) were shot at Taos Pueblo and even Lucille Ball spent time in the old village while filming Valley of the Sun in 1942. Her husband, Desi Arnaz is said to have whiled away the days teaching the pueblo children to play the congas.
In the fall of 2002 Taos hosted the independent feature film “Off the Map”. Directed by Campbell Scott (son of George C.) and starring Sam Elliot and Joan Allen playing the parents of a dysfunctional family living ‘off the grid’ in the early seventies it was, according to Scott, ‘the perfect fit for Taos’. Scott was looking for a ‘forever view’ and found it in the high meadows above San Cristobal.
1999 saw the first complete feature to be shot in the Taos region when Tortilla Heaven Productions arrived to film a charming comedy. An ensemble cast and a New Mexican crew spent two months shooting in the village of Dixon. The film is to be released in 2003.
Also in 1999 “All the Pretty Horses”, the romance starring Penelope Cruz and Matt Damon, was based in Santa Fe but came to Taos for a ‘more dramatic landscape’ according to director Billy Bob Thornton.
Dennis Hopper returned to Taos in 1990 to direct an action picture starring himself, of course, and a star studded cast which included Jodie Foster, John Turturro, Joe Pesci, Charlie Sheen, Dean Stockwell, Vincent Price and Bob Dylan. In classic film-making style Hopper moved the ‘Burning of Zozobra’ from its usual setting in Santa Fe to the San Francisco de Asis church.
Many Taos landmarks are recognizable in Backtrack including a bar on the ski valley road (scene of a dramatic shootout) and the high gorge bridge. The spectacular bridge, which spans the Rio Grande gorge from a dizzying 650 feet above the river, also provided a location for Arnold Scwarzenegger and Danny de Vito in Twins (1988), for Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994) and for the launching of new SUV for Acura in 2000.
When:
1960s through 2008, Taos has been featured in a variety of films as a shooting location.
