Intelligent Travel

Cinematic Road Trip: Arkansas

For the past few weeks John Ur has been heading on a course due south through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. This week he takes a sharp left turn and heads into Arkansas before turning another ninety degrees and heading back north through the remainder of the Midwestern states.

Let me be frank: The film industry in Arkansas is not exactly booming. The state’s largest city and capital, Little Rock, does not hold many famous landmarks except its capitol building. However, because of its resemblance to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington DC, the Arkansas capitol has served as the stunt double for its more famous counterpart in several films, most notably in the television movie Under Siege (1986), when a group of suicide bombers attacked. John Grisham, one of Arkansas' most famous sons, has had several of his stories converted into movies, and his first hit book, The Firm, was directed by Sydney Pollack with scenes shot in West Memphis, Arkansas (as well as Memphis, Tennessee and Washington DC).

But the state also has a few stars-of-screen natives, including Joey Lauren Adams, Wes Bentley, Mary Steenburgen and Billy Bob Thornton. Early in his career, Thornton was able to pull off an Orson Welles trifecta – to write, direct and star in a film (see Welles in Citizen Kane) using Arkansas as his setting. Thornton wrote Sling Blade, a story of a mentally handicapped man who was released from a psychiatric hospital after serving 25 years for the murder of his mother and her lover at the age of 12. This man, Karl Childers (played by Thornton), became an iconic character in popular culture – his gruff bass voice and rudimentary language oft-repeated in satire for comedic effect: Mmhmm, I reckon. Alright then. I used a Kaiser blade. Some folks call it a sling blade, I call it a Kaiser blade.

Cinematic Road Trip: Oklahoma

John Ur introduces us to the "trigger word" and challenges you not to break into song during his visit to Oklahoma.

On my mother’s side of the family, we have trigger words. It's a running joke between my grandmother, aunt, and my mother and I that has been carried down the line. At any random point in conversation, if you were to say a trigger word, the other person will launch into at least one line of song. So, if you were to say, mention the word “spoonful” around mom, she will immediately jump in with: “A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down." At that point, I usually shake my head in disappointment at myself for not seeing it coming.

I can thank Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein for writing the musical, Oklahoma! We collectively can thank former governor George Nigh for making the title tune Oklahoma’s state song. And I can thank my mother for giving me a life with the trigger word, “Oklahoma.” As soon as the state is mentioned, she will round her lips and raise her eyebrows and proceed into the song and a little two-step dance:

“OOOOOOOOooooooklahoma where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain."

The classic image of Oklahoma, besides the Broadway cowboys with gleaming teeth and bandannas around their necks, can be derived from John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath—a family of Okies in their overloaded truck driving off through the dust looking for work in California. John Ford adapted this image of Tom Joad and his family to screen back in 1940. Some scenes were shot in Sayre and McAlester, OK, but much of the rest of the film was shot in New Mexico, California, and on sets built on studio lots. (Tom Joad is also a trigger word for Bruce Springsteen’s “Ghost of Tom Joad” in my book.)

But the dustbowl depicted in the film is a bit dated. Right now Oklahoma is in the midst of promoting the geographic diversity in its ten different land regions: the Ozark Plateau, the Prairie Plains, Ouachita Mountains, Sandstone Hills, Arbuckle Mountains, Wichita Mountains, Red River Valley, Red Beds Plains, Gypsum Hills, and the High Plains. It's also working to promote it's Native American history (modern day OK was where the infamous Trail of Tears began) as well as it’s burgeoning wine industry—according to a friend who recently took a vineyard tour while visiting.

One on One: Rudy Maxa

If you watch public television, you've probably seen the popular show Smart Travels, which our own contributing editor Rudy Maxa has hosted since 2001. In May 2008, the show debuts its sixth season with a fresh title, Rudy Maxa's World, reflecting a new worldwide focus after concentrating heavily on Europe and the Pacific Rim during the program's early years. Prior to his work in television, Maxa spent over three decades as a Washington, D.C., journalist—first with the Washington Post, then Washingtonian magazine. Over the past six years, he's written several stories for National Geographic Traveler. With every job he's held, Maxa has wrangled assignments that have allowed him to travel the world. Amazingly, he still can't get enough of gallivanting about. Here Rudy is interviewed by Keith Bellows, Traveler's editor in chief. Check out the print version of his story in our upcoming July/August issue, and more of Keith's One-on-One interviews online.

Cinematic Road Trip: Kansas

John Ur clicks his heels and takes us to Kansas for this week's issue of Cinematic Road Trip.

Think of the words "Kansas" and "movie." What's the immediate thing that comes to mind? If you're like 99.9 percent of Americans, I'd guess that The Wizard of Oz was the first film you thought of. And while the Sunflower State is more than willing to accommodate your instincts for Judy Garland memorabilia, if you’re on the road in Kansas searching for locations from the film, you’re in the wrong spot: The film was shot entirely on set in Culver City, California, and not in Kansas.

Kansas is arguably the symbol of the American Heartland. It contains the geographic center of the lower 48 states and is one of the country’s leaders in agricultural production. This is due to the large amount of flat, arable land in the western two-thirds of the state. The eastern third tends to be a bit more hilly and forested, with more of the big cities located in this trident: Topeka, Wichita, and Lawrence among others.

In Paper Moon, we get to see both areas of the state. In Peter Bogdanovich’s 1973 Great Depression Era period piece, Ryan O’Neal stars with his real-life daughter, Tatum, as Moses and Addie, an unlikely pair of con artists as entertaining to watch as Newman and Redford in The Sting. A novice actress, Tatum O’Neal became the youngest person to ever win an Academy Award when she took home the Best Supporting Actress statue.

Most of the film was shot in Hays, Kansas, a small town off of I-70 about 200 miles due west of Topeka. But the duo also take a road trip of their own. Moses intends to drive Addie to her only known kin in St. Joseph, Missouri. Along the way, Addie quickly picks up on the scams that Moses is running. Their journey takes them through the north-central plains of Kansas, picking up money and tramps and running from the law. At a certain point, they need to get rid of their car, which is now hotly pursued. They end up at a remote farm in the hilly, forested eastern section of the state where Moses has to wrestle a young Randy Quaid for his vehicle. Only in Kansas.

Sneak Peek: Everyday Explorers

Psst...National Geographic is on the verge of releasing an exciting new video site called Everyday Explorers. But first we need your help!

Everyday Explorers is a user-generated video site (sort of like YouTube, only better!) where you can upload your own videos in one of four categories:

- Wildlife and Pets (anything animal-related)
- Weather (storms, sunny days, snow, etc.)
- Favorite Places (travel destinations, or your own backyard)
- Green Tips (anything related to promoting a healthy environment)

We know you readers must have some amazing video footage out there, so see this as a chance to get your videos out to the world and share them with people interested in exploring the planet. At the moment, we are starting from scratch, which means that this is a good chance for your video to get a head start on the rest of the public. So go online to upload your video clips and help us get things rolling.

The Everyday Explorers site goes live this May, so stay tuned for more information. Thanks!

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Cinematic Road Trip: Nebraska

John Ur returns for this week's edition of Cinematic Road Trip. Today's stop: Nebraska.

Every time I begin one of these columns, I chant the name of the state that I mentally try to inhabit and see if it fits a song like “Ooooooooklahoma.” Well Nebraska does not, as far as I know, serve as the title of any popular song, but the Counting Crows once sang of, “Omaha, somewhere in middle America, get right to the heart of matters. It’s the heart that matters more.” As in: Somewhere in middle America, believe it or not, there are actual people living out their lives.

This may come as a surprise to people fixated on the East and West Coasts, but not to Alexander Payne. Over the past decade, Payne has become a prominent writer-director on the backs of some strong movies—most recently, Sideways, which won him (and his writing partner, Jim Taylor) the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Payne grew up around Omaha but is not the first famous Hollywood figure to sprout from the city among the cornfields. He follows native Omahans Henry Fonda, Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, and Nick Nolte, all of whom also made their way to Tinseltown.

Payne must maintain a fondness for his home state. He’s adapted two novels set in east coast states to be shot around Omaha. In Election, Reese Witherspoon plays an over-achieving high school student running for Student Council President of Carver High School. Payne shot the high school scenes at Papillion-La Vista High School in Papillion, Nebraska, which is in the suburbs ten miles southwest of Omaha. (The original novel by Tom Perrotta is set in New Jersey.)

Although less critically acclaimed than Election, About Schmidt provides a greater view of the rest of Nebraska. In this film, Payne relocates Louis Begley’s novel from Long Island to Omaha and casts Jack Nicholson as Warren Schmidt, a retired assistant vice president for Woodmen of the World Insurance Agency. This is an actual company located on Farnam Street in Omaha.

Cinematic Road Trip: The Dakotas

John Ur returns with another glimpse into the cinematic adventures of the 50 states. Today, he presents us with a double whammy of both Dakotas.

National Geographic’s recent feature article on North Dakota, "The Emptied Prairie," documented the ghost towns that lie in the open space between the cities of North Dakota and the farmlands where cattle, buffalo and wheat reign supreme.  In South Dakota, there is much of the same: a few mid-size cities, lots of farmland, Native American Reservations, and in every direction, horizon.

Given that North and South Dakota respectively rank 47th and 46th out of 50 in population (as of the 2000 Census), and that the majority of their land is devoted to agriculture (like much of the rest of the Great Plains), it stands to reason that there would not be many movies to choose from when reviewing homegrown cinema. Unfortunately, reason stands true in this instance. With apologies to Dakota natives, I have made the executive decision to combine North and South Dakota into one column for the purely selfish reason of giving me more material to work with.

North Dakota, though not rich in film history, holds (a small) claim to a cinematic gem. The Coen Brothers’ 1996 crime-drama, Fargo, was named after the largest city in North Dakota. But unfortunately, to further undermine the North Dakotan Tourism Industry, Fargo was largely shot in Minnesota. There is however, one distinct shot that you can look for if you’re driving through ND. There is a large statue of Paul Bunyan that sits west of the city of Bathgate on Pembina County Highway 1. Besides this minor claim to fame (and the larger fame that the film’s title brings to the small city), I can’t find another movie set or shot in North Dakota. Native Dakotans, can anyone help me out?

Up Close to the Proximity Hotel

“Travelling Without Footprints,” is a video series exploring carbon-friendly travel experiences. In this first installment, former Traveler researcher Ali Ogden takes us to the Proximity Hotel in Greensboro, North Carolina, where owner Dennis Quaintance shows us what it takes to make a hotel green as he works toward achieving LEED Platinum status. His notion is that you don’t have to sacrifice comfort for conscience. Watch as he shows Ali the hotel's solar panels (look out for hot pipes!), waterless urinals, and more...

Travelling Without Footprints is produced by Ali Ogden and Chris Keener.

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Cinematic Road Trip: Montana

John Ur returns for another round of Cinematic Road Trip. This time, he casts his line and pulls up a winner in the form of the great state of Montana.

There is a certain grace and flair necessary for driving across the United States. As I mentioned last week, if you try to muscle your machine over the hills, you might pop a cork. You have to deal with inclement weather (stay tuned for Wisconsin!) and long hours of mindlessly straight and flat land. You must stay alert for animals straying to the roadways looking for food (like the twelve-foot-tall elk I met around the bend of a dark road through Yellowstone National Park). Without the aid of a GPS, you must pay close attention to signs and landmarks in order to avoid getting lost. And if you're from New Jersey, as I am, you must acclimate yourself to the confluence of speed limits as highways meet neighborhood roads. Or else you'll find yourself, as I did, face to face with the sheriff, who waited patiently at an intersection as the limit abruptly dropped from 75 to 25 mph. But don't worry, he'll be plenty congenial as he takes your fine (in cash) on the spot.

What is there to see in Montana besides flashing lights in your rearview? That depends on which side of the Continental Divide you're on. The eastern 3/5ths of the state, like Colorado, is a part of the Great Plains, long and flat. There's a reason it's called Big Sky country. The western 2/5ths is more densely populated; the Rockies spread up from Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park (which overlaps into Montana) and eventually stretch up to Alberta and British Columbia, Canada.  This section of the state contains some of its most populous cities – Bozeman, Butte, Great Falls, the capital of Helena, and Missoula. It also contains the outdoor gem of the state – Glacier National Park.

New York City: Air Bears

As I've noted before, I'm a D.C. newbie, and while I'm loving my new home, I have to admit I always come up short when people ask me what I miss the most about New York. So, though I've been a bit quiet while editing all of our other great content about the city (don't worry, I'll add plenty in time), when Marilyn sent me this link a few moments ago I realized that this is part of what I've missed. It's the spontaneous wonders you can come across at any moment, and the knowledge that though they may seem not to care, everyone in the city is equally incredulous deep down that they're actually, physically, there. Little moments like this just help serve as a reminder. So maybe that's reading a bit more into a plastic bag polar bear that you would expect, but it's a little glimpse of my own version of Authentic New York.

FYI: The artist is Joshua Allen Harris, and the plastic bags are built to inflate when the subway passes under the grates. They kind of remind me of the beautiful scene in the film American Beauty, when the teen couple watch the video footage of a plastic bag floating through the air. An image of the plastic bag bear was posted on the Wooster Collective's blog last week, and people are already smitten. You can count me among them.

What do you think?

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Cinematic Road Trip: Wyoming

Pop quiz: What U.S. state has a population smaller than that of the city of Washington, DC? The answer is John Ur's latest installment of Cinematic Road Trip: Wyoming.

Let me give you a tip about driving through Wyoming. When you have a vehicle loaded up with camping equipment, clothes, and accessories for traveling across the country, it’s probably a good idea to take it easy going up through the Bighorn Mountains between Buffalo and Worland. Though you may be tempted to floor the gas so your car can creep up the mountains at 60 or 70 mph, you’re likely to overheat the transmission and cause the fluid to expand and leak out onto your engine and smoke to come out of your hood.

If this happens to you, especially in the middle of a night without a moon, where there is only endless darkness in each direction, you may have to stop at Ten Sleep. The town got its name from Native American traders who used the number of days walking between trading-post villages as a unit of measurement. There’s only one gas station and if you order pizza at the bar across the street, the bartender will tell you to walk back to the freezer next to the pool table and pick out the frozen pizza that you want her to heat up in the toaster oven.

Fortunately, once you get out of Ten Sleep, Wyoming has a few unique locations that you won't want to miss: the spooky Devils Tower National Monument, Grand Tetons National Park's regal mountains, and the granddaddy of national parks, Yellowstone, with its signature geysers and rainbow-colored hot springs. You may think that you already have an idea of what Wyoming looks like. This is cowboy country. This is the landscape made famous by Brokeback Mountain. But hold on just a moment.  Though Brokeback Mountain was set in Wyoming, it was actually shot in southern Alberta, Canada.

One on One: Rolf Potts

Author, blogger, journalist, and inveterate traveler—Rolf Potts has made a name for himself as a champion of vagabonding—spending extended time on the road, often without a hard-and-fast itinerary. His book, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term Travel, and website, www.vagabonding.net, are chock-full of tips and first-person accounts about how to journey frugally and well.

Brought up in Kansas, Potts traveled mostly in neighboring states as a youth. But the travel urge was planted, and he’s spent the past several years roaming the world, for long stretches with no fixed address. It’s a life many of us dream about but seldom undertake. Though Potts has semi-settled down on a farm back in Kansas, travel remains his abiding passion. Here he is interviewed by Keith Bellows, editor in chief of National Geographic Traveler magazine. Read more about Potts in the April 2008 issue of Traveler, and check out his list of favorite bookstores from his travels here on IT.

Learn to Shoot like a Pro

The Traveler Photography Seminar season is underway! Click on the video below, shot by resident Traveler videographer Susanne Hackett, for a sample of the Travel Photo seminar recently held in Washington, DC: 

We still have eight seminars left this spring in cities throughout the U.S. and Canada: 

• March 29, 2008 - San Francisco - Nature Photography

• March 30, 2008 - Portland, OR - Travel Photography

• April 6, 2008 - Chicago - Nature Photography

• April 20, 2008 - Boston - Adventure Photography

• April 27, 2008 - Denver - Adventure Photography

• May 18, 2008 - Seattle - Adventure Photography

• June 1, 2008 - Minneapolis - Digital Photography

• June 8, 2008 - Vancouver, BC - Digital Photography

For more details and to register, visit ngtravelerseminars.com. 

Cinematic Road Trip: Colorado

John Ur returns with the latest edition of Cinematic Road Trip. This time, he's leading us through Colorado.

If you’ll allow me for the second week in a row to journey back to my childhood memories.... I was 13 years old when I took off in an airplane for the first time and headed west of the Mississippi. I landed in Colorado and as we rode in a bus from Denver to Colorado Springs, I sat fixated at the window, thinking 'Look, there are mountains out there!' What I was seeing was the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, which includes Grays Peak and Pikes Peak, which was the inspiration for "America, the Beautiful."

Colorado has a mean elevation of about 6,800 feet—a higher average than any other state (fun fact for nerds like me—Alaska's average is only 1,900). But the eastern two-fifths of the state is mostly flat, thanks to their place on the western edge of the Great Plains, which stretch from Canada to Mexico through ten U.S. states.

But plains are just plains. Mountains are MOUNTAINS. When John Ford made The Searchers in the 1950s, he wanted mountains to serve as the backdrop for a winter scene with John Wayne and a large unit of cavalry. He chose Gunnison as his setting, a city nestled in the valley between the Sawatch and Anthracite Ranges and the Arkansas River. Some second unit filming (which normally does not involve actors, or at least none with speaking roles) took place in Aspen and southwestern Colorado. Other footage features Utah, New Mexico, and California.

Cinematic Road Trip: Utah

Hitch a ride with John Ur on his Cinematic Road Trip. Today we're taking a pit stop in Utah.

I was about ten years old when I was assigned a project to create a map of Utah. The map would include all of the major cities and many of the major landmarks. I remember marking out the cities of Ogden, Provo and Salt Lake City. I traced the outline of the Great Salt Lake. I located Kings Peak (the highest peak in the state) near the right-angle turn in the state’s northeast border.

But there was one spot on the map that drew my fascination more than any other. That was the Bonneville Salt Flats. Salt flats? My research told me this was a large area where people would go to try to set speed racing records. I couldn’t fathom this. How could anyone drive through salt? How could you get all that salt to one place to begin with? Did they have giant steamrollers out there to make the large pile of salt flat?

Check out The World’s Fastest Indian with Anthony Hopkins and you will solve every conundrum from my childhood fascination. The movie follows a New Zealand man, Bert Munro (Hopkins), as he attempts to break the world land-speed record in the Sixties.  Besides Bonneville, the film was shot in Salt Lake City and small towns like Skull Valley, Tooele, and Wendover, Utah (as well as New Mexico and New Zealand).

Cinematic Road Trip: Nevada

John Ur is back this week with a detour in Nevada...

In 1924, the AASHO (American Association of State Highway Officials) and the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Public Roads began to lay out the proposed routes of Interstate Highway System. Since that time, Americans have driven across the country for pleasure and for business, with family, friends, or solo. I remember the itch I felt in the seat of my pants reading about Sal Paradise speeding through the middle of the country headed to the promised land of California in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. America is made for road tripping.

The excitement of the road comes partially from the air rushing past the window as you fly down the asphalt and it comes partially from pulling out a large map of the country, taking a marker and drawing the first lines of what could be your future path. The United States, with our vascular structure of easily accessible roads, lends itself to an infinite number of routes for a cross-country trip. What it does not give is one convenient path to hit all of the lower 48 states.

Nevada is the first state of many that we will explore that does not fit cleanly into an itinerary. It is one of many landlocked states that does not border an ocean or another country and requires a bit of zigzagging to reach. The question for you when planning your trip becomes – when do I zig and when do I zag?

Cinematic Road Trip: Idaho

John Ur is back this week with the next stop on the Cinematic Road Trip. This time it's Idaho. Sweet!

A confession must be made. The amount of time that I’ve spent within the borders of the state of Idaho between birth and the present day total approximately ninety minutes – eighty of which were spent in the car driving between Montana and British Columbia. But cry not, native Idahoans! For I am aware of the tragedy of my limited visitations to the Gem State.

Any avid reader of adventure and backpacking magazines could rattle off a number of great locations in Idaho that deserve your outdoor attention: Snake River, Hells Canyon (the deepest canyon in the U.S.), Shoshone Falls (higher than Niagara Falls), and Borah Peak (the highest in the state, and which has a number of peaks running through the Rocky Mountain Range), to name a few. You can check out some of the great, natural areas of Idaho here, in panoramic photos no less.

Idaho's 80 recognized mountain ranges stretch across much of the north and southeastern part of the state. The majority of the cities lay in the Columbia Plateau, a region that follows the Snake River through the center of the state. This region is also the home to the farms that make the state famous for its potatoes. And potatoes are the main ingredient of Tater-Tots, a small cylindrical side dish made from deep fried, grated potatoes.

Cinematic Road Trip: Washington

Washington is stuck between a rock and a hard place in the realm of cinema. On the rock side, it is not very close to Los Angeles. The hard place is Vancouver, B.C., which in the past three decades has climbed up the ladder to become the third largest city for film and television production behind Hollywood and New York City. The growth of the industry just north of the Washington border began largely due to the strength of the U.S. dollar against the Canadian dollar. Vancouver was a perfect place to film on the cheap, with beautiful mountains and cityscapes that could double as American locations, and Washington was left out in the cold.

The dollar has softened but Vancouver’s filmmaking base of indoor studios and talented crew members has kept the business flowing. The state of Washington has over the past few years tried to increase its production with tax-based credits for filmmakers along with other incentives. But unfortunately for them, these incentives are similar to those offered in other states and cities including those in British Columbia. So what’s a poor state to do?

Play to your strengths, that’s what. Washington has some breath-taking scenery. From Puget Sound to the Cascade Mountains, Mount Rainier (pictured, above), Mount St. Helens, the Snake River, the Columbia River, the San Juan Islands and Olympia National Park, Washington has the unobstructed exteriors needed for many movies. So it should be easy to pick out some movies with sweeping vistas right? Right?

Well, let’s see. There was Dancer in the Dark, by Lars von Trier, that was entirely set in Washington State circa 1964. But a movie “set” in a location does not always mean it was shot there. Dancer in the Dark was actually filmed in Sweden with the exception of the Washington State Penitentiary scenes. If you have an interest in seeing the penitentiary, it’s located in Walla Walla, not far from the northern border of Oregon.

There was WarGames with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. This '80s hit built the most expensive set ever at the time, constructing the NORAD HQ in the Cascade Mountains.  There is also a scene of Broderick and Sheedy taking a ferry to “Goose Island.” The real location they ferry to is Anderson Island – the southernmost island in the Puget Sound.  Other locations for the film include Everett, Seattle, and Lake Chelan National Recreation area as well as locations in California.

But if you want the quintessential Washington State experience, you have to go to the quintessential Washington State city—Seattle. And there's a slew of all-time classics shot in Seattle including The Last Mimzy, Firewall, The Ring Two, Life or Something Like It.  OK, you probably guessed that I’m just pulling your leg. Though these movies were shot in Seattle and they surely have redeeming qualities, we all know that when we think of Seattle, we think of one movie.

Cinematic Road Trip: Oregon

John Ur is back with another stop on the Cinematic Road Trip. This time, he sets his sights on Oregon.

During my cross-country drive, I remember looking south across the Oregon coastline and shuddering. Cannon Beach's fog was rolling in over, and the rhythmic waves from the Pacific Ocean had me thinking, 'This place is creepy. It’d be a great place for a Stephen King movie.' The beach was soggy from rain and the rocky coast exposed a land that had been beaten for ages and was tired of being picked on. Trees arched permanently away from the wind. I half-expected zombies to dig their way out of their sandy graves and creep inward from the shore, infecting the entire population in an apocalyptic battle for the future of mankind.

Fortunately, no zombies were to be found. But driving through the fog along the coastline was like seeing things in black and white. The fog and gray skies desaturated the landscape. Trees became dark gray. Lighthouses were a dingy white. Nothing remained a clean, pure color. Everything was (dis)colored by the mist.

Cinematic Road Trip: California

Let’s play a game. Name a movie made in the United States. Go ahead name one. The odds that the movie you just named was filmed in California is one in three. And of those movies shot in California, two-thirds are shot in and around Hollywood, according to an August 2005 study by the California Film Commission.

Now, name a country. How about Bulgaria? Or Costa Rica? The film industry of California brings in an estimated $34 billion dollars a year into the California economy (at least as of 2002, according to the L.A. County Economic Development Corp.) which is more than the GDP of 100 countries, according to the IMF, including those of Bulgaria and Costa Rica. In fact, it's as much money as the bottom 38 countries combined.

So to say California produces a lot of film would be to say that Iowa grows a lot of corn. The state is large and the landscape assorted with deserts, mountains, forests and an ocean all within close proximity to Hollywood. This, and reliable sunshine, makes it an ideal location for the center of the film industry.

If southern California is your thing, and for many people it is, you might want to check out these movies to get a feel for the major cities on the West Coast: For San Diego, though it may not stand up as an all-time classic, Anchorman, Will Ferrell’s comedy, was shot all around the city. For Los Angeles on film: LA Confidential or Mulholland Drive will give you an idea of the vastness of the city sprawl.

Driving north of Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, you’ll come to Santa Ynez Valley. This area has experienced a tourist boom in the years following the success of Sideways, the story of two middle-aged men on a road trip through one of the lesser-known wine regions in California.

But I would like to drive you up the coast from Tinseltown to the City by the Bay where I was lucky enough to stay for a few months during my college years.

Cinematic Road Trip: Arizona

John Ur makes a pitstop on his Cinematic Road Trip to give us a taste of Arizona.

Back when I was just a wee lad, my mental map of Arizona included nothing but orange sand. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could live there. To me, any desert must be like the Sahara I’d seen on TV. I had no perception that different types of deserts could exist in different climates.

Fast forward some twenty years and my perception of Arizona hadn’t much changed. I expected to see a flat, dry and sandy land sprinkled with a town here and there. Much to my pleasant surprise, Arizona is much more diverse in landscape than I pictured. True, in the south, the land is largely dominated by saguaro cacti and the rugged landscape of the Chihuahuan Desert (as can also be seen in southern New Mexico and West Texas), but as you move north from Phoenix toward Sedona and Flagstaff, the elevation gains about 5,000 - 7,000 feet, with Humphreys Peak topping the state at 12,633 feet above sea level.

Heading north through the state, you will see the landscape shift from the flat desert land in the south to the wonderful red rocks of the central region. Sedona boasts an impressive amount of rock formations, each with their own particular name (based roughly on their shape: Coffee Pot, Bell, Cathedral Rock, etc.). Flagstaff and areas further north are surprisingly green and maintain a moderate climate throughout most of the year due to their elevation. And then, of course, there is the Grand Canyon, which sits in the middle of an enormous canyon country that stretches north into Utah and Colorado and south into Mexico’s famed Copper Canyon. Did you know you could ski in Arizona? Me neither. 

Belizean Musician Andy Palacio: A Remembrance

World music enthusiasts around the globe are mourning the unexpected death of Andy Palacio, Belizean musician and leader of the international movement to preserve Garifuna language and culture.  Palacio’s latest album Wátina (“I called out”), released in 2007, propelled him onto the international stage and sparked a cultural revival in his home nation of Belize. 

In November 2007, Traveler’s Susanne Hackett had the fortune to meet “Andy P,” as he is affectionately known in Belize, and travel the country’s Garifuna coast with him and his band, camcorder in hand.  The trip was a homecoming for Andy, who had just finished a whirlwind international tour, during which he won the prestigious world music WOMEX award and the UNESCO Artist for Peace award. His arrival also happened to coincide with the annual Garifuna Settlement Day celebrations, where Andy was the headliner and received a hometown hero’s welcome. 

The video below is a compilation of the footage gathered on this trip.

Cinematic Road Trip: New Mexico

John Ur is back this week with the latest edition of his new column about films that capture the 50 states.

New Mexico is like a dream to me. Adobe houses with curved corners seem to climb out of the mud like giant ant hills. The Native Americans and Latin American immigrants who populate much of the state seem an extension of the earth and trees. Dry, red rocks that litter the landscape in the northwest, abandoned ruins of ancient American pueblos in Bandelier National Monument that are just an hour from Santa Fe, and the blanket of gypsum at White Sands National Monument all help to create the psychedelic landscape you'll find throughout the state. It’s no wonder Roswell is famous for UFO sightings. The residents were probably just dizzy from all the gorgeous abnormalities of the far-reaching horizons.   

New Mexico has a surprisingly long history of filmmaking. Many famous old Westerns have been shot in the state (Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Man from Laramie among others). If you’re a Western type of moviegoer, and looking for a modern take on the genre, 3:10 to Yuma would be my recommendation. The original 3:10 to Yuma starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin was shot on movie sets in Burbank, California, and locations in Arizona. But the 2007 remake, with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, was filmed in and around Santa Fe, Abiquiu, and Galisteo, New Mexico. Many of the film’s sets were built and designed to match the period (Civil War era) so the New Mexico that you see will be partially created. But you might get a feel of the wide open space with unforgiving, thirsty terrain in every direction. (Side note: A portion of the movie’s set built on Cerro Pelon Ranch in Galisteo has been saved. Cerro Pelon is the largest Western set in the United States and includes some of the original Silverado buildings.)

New York Without Tourists...Or People

I went to the movies over the weekend to see Warner Brothers' latest thriller, I Am Legend, based on Richard Matheson’s 1950s sci-fi novel of the same name.

The plot is simple if superficial: The at-times arrogant Western biomedical establishment asserts it’s found a viral cure for cancer. As you guessed, KV, the “cure” backfires into a relentless biological plague that creates a race of night-seeking blood-sucking vampire-esque humans. All those who haven’t succumbed to the virus have been attacked and eaten by these shrieking monsters, except for Will Smith.

Smith plays Robert Neville, a former military scientist who survives alone, but for his German shepherd Sam, in New York City, bunkered down in his now-deceased family’s Washington Square Park row house.

While the themes of human isolation and social deprivation are eternal, and cinematic thrills of vampirism and some great special effects are nothing necessarily new, the movie prompted me to recall award-winning journalist Alan Weisman’s relatively new book, The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007).

Released this past summer, Weisman’s nonfiction thought experiment probes what will happen to our planet when humans no longer exist. He details how certain infrastructural elements in New York City, in particular, would unravel without humans, post-human scenarios that come to life on the big screen in the scary and stressful I Am Legend.

Cinematic Road Trip: West Texas

Welcome to Intelligent Travel's latest column, written by John Ur, which will map out some of the best movie sites across the 50 states. Every week, we’ll look at a state (or portion of a large state) and find the best landscape cinema for you to experience before embarking on a trip of your own.

West Texas stretches on for miles and miles...and miles.

Driving from El Paso southeast towards Big Bend National Park, I imagined at least 15 different pastimes I would enjoy more than driving through western Texas. The most drastic visual picture on that landscape was the gas station where we stopped in Alpine. Beyond the asphalt lies plains and rolling hills, and more plains and more rolling hills.

To understand the vastness of Texas, you must realize that is the largest state in the lower 48, about 100,000 square miles larger than California. For an East Coast boy raised in New Jersey, a state about 1/30th the size of Texas, the idea that I would drive for 6, 8, 10, 12 hours and not pass through at least four other states was daunting. Even more daunting would be to try to identify the landscape and feel of the entire state in one post. For this reason, I’ll just focus on West Texas here. More specifically, Big Bend Country.

Recently, there were two films based in West Texas that I believe hit the nail on the deserted region’s head. The Coen brothers' current masterpiece, No Country for Old Men, though gripping and gruesome in its drama, opens with some of the best lonesome shots of this area that is largely dominated by the Chihuahuan Desert. The hills in the opening sequence are poked with cacti and low-growing shrubs. The sun, unfiltered by trees or clouds, batters the dry soil and any who dare to roam below.  According to a recent interview with the Coen brothers, the only Texas locations were shot around Marfa. The rest of the film was shot in Las Vegas (New Mexico) and Mexico. Paul Thomas Anderson's recently released period epic, There Will Be Blood, was also shot around Marfa.

Capitals Segway Tour

There's nothing quite like being a tourist in your own city. Or simultaneously being a tourist attraction and a tourist in your own city, for that matter. Late last month, Washington Post Sports Blog writer Dan Steinberg followed several of the D.C. Capitals hockey players as they took a Segway tour of the city—and proved that the jocks can be just as tough on their sidewalk-scooters as they are on the ice. 

Got your own way of exploring your city? Let us know in the comments below.

Into the Wild: Tourist Attraction?

Photo: Marc Paterson

Chris McCandless, the 24-year-old vagabond who hiked into the Alaskan wilderness alone with a ten-pound bag of rice in 1992, never made it out of the wild, but the abandoned bus where he died of starvation just might—that is, if some Alaskans have their way.

The Toronto Star has the scoop: Alaskans are now bracing themselves for an influx of “McCandless pilgrims" (such as Marc Paterson, pictured) inspired by the release of the Sean Penn-directed film, Into the Wild, to trek the Stampede Trail, seeking out the infamous city bus where McCandless perished. Local residents in Healy, Alaska, are brainstorming ways to deal with the “unwanted tourist attraction.”

Among the suggestions is airlifting the bus from its site, either to the start of the trail where it would be more accessible or nearby to a park in Fairbanks. The Star explains:

About 100 visitors, mostly young men, make the trip to Healy (population 1,000) each year. Many making it into the bus shoot videos for posting on YouTube and snap photos for Facebook, often imitating the iconic pose of the skeleton-like McCandless in Krakauer's book, which showed the young man grinning as he leaned against the bus, days before his death.

The McCandless pilgrims carve their names into the rusted sides of the bus. Paterson signed his just beside the door. And they leave messages in aged notebooks; [Jon] Krakauer, McCandless' mother and Penn have all left notes.