Movie Star Mountains
By Erik BurgeOver the past forty years, the moody skies, mysterious forests and dark brooding mountainscapes of the North Cascades have cast their telltale gloomy pall upon a handful of Hollywood’s most intense productions. Here’s a look at a few of the most noteworthy:
Twin Peaks (1990-91)
Scores of real-life murderers, serial killers and professional hit men had been stashing bodies in and around North Bend for decades before Laura Palmer’s cold blue corpse famously washed ashore before 30 million American television watchers. Over the following 30 episodes, the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington, played host to a murder-mystery that, even today, ranks far spookier, kookier and ultimately more cinematic than any mini-series before or since. Framed compellingly between the lofty snow-kissed summit of Mt. Si and thundering Snoqualmie Falls, avant guard director David Lynch (a native Pacific Northwesterner) incorporated the surrounding scenery and community landmarks (The Great Northern Hotel, Packard Sawmill, Big Ed’s Gas Farm, Ronnertte’s Trestle Bridge) to such a menacing and visceral extent that they frequently stole the show.
The Parallax View (1974)
In this somber post-Watergate political thriller directed by Alan J. Paluka (Klute, All the President’s Men) a long-haired, bushy-bearded Warren Beatty stars as intrepid but ultimately doomed investigative reporter, Joe Frady, who attempts to expose a murderous politically influential corporate conspiracy by foiling an assassination attempt on a presidential contender. Although the shocking, blood-splattered opening scene takes place high atop the plush, cozy confines of Seattle’s Space Needle, it isn’t long before the increasingly desperate Frady is clamoring/stumbling/cursing for his life through the ever-shifting banks of the upper Skagit River as the surrounding gorge, rushing ice-cold water and corporate henchmen close in.
This Boy’s Life (1993)
Tooling around the back roads in a big old rusty Chevy. Chugging vodka-fruit punch straight from the can. Broken hearts. Busted dreams. Spousal abuse. Child abuse. Welcome to Concrete, Washington, circa 1959! This gritty, ultra-tense family drama starring Robert “Shut your piehole!” De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio is based on the gritty, ultra-tense autobiographical novel by Tobias Wolff. Shot almost entirely on location in the upper Skagit Valley, the film vibrantly and unflinchingly captures some of the very best and very worst that life in the North Cascades and its denizens have to offer.
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Russian roulette, anyone? Inspirer of several dozen “copycat” suicides and winner of five Academy Awards (including Best Picture!), this heart-wrenching postwar drama features some of the finest individual performances in modern American film. Starring the holy triune of Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep, it provides a sprawling, in-depth character-study examining the various physio-emotional effects of the Vietnam War on a close-knit group of Russian-American steelworkers. Filmed primarily in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Thailand, the culminating, namesake deer-hunting sequence was shot at various locations in North Cascades National Park and Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest including Heather Meadows, Nooksack Falls and Glacier Creek Road.
First Blood (1982)
Decorated Vietnam war hero John J. Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) and his heavily armed pursuers blow the living shit out of Hope, BC, and nearby Golden Ears Provincial Park in a swashbuckling orgy of violence. Whilst our beefy, bandanna-clad hero heroically makes his way into and out of the dank unforgiving landscape fording icy rivers, scaling impossible cliffs and burying himself face-deep in mud, redneck Sheriff Teasle (Brian Dennehey) chases him hopelessly round and round and the mysterious Col. Trautman (Richard Crenna) pops in and out of the fray like some sort of Special-Ops Fairy Godfather.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Searching for the direct atmospheric opposite of John Ford’s sweepingly romantic Monument Valley settings, acclaimed director Robert Altman deliberately scouted out the bleakest most claustrophobic locations he could find: West Vancouver and Squamish, BC. Based on an obscure1959 novel by Edmund Naughton (a victim of McCarthy-era blacklisting), the story follows the erstwhile but ultimately tragic efforts of wily, ever-bumbling John McCabe (another long-haired, heavily bearded Warren Beatty) and his opium-addicted business partner Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) to build and operate a “proper sporting house” in the remote (and entirely fictional) mining town of Presbyterian Church, Washington. True to his counterculture roots, Altman rounded up a local contingent of American draft dodgers and rogue environmentalists who happened to be hiding out nearby, hired them as set-building extras, disguised them in period costumes and literally had them construct the town of Presbyterian Church from the ground up.
