July 1, 1980
Mayor Tom Westfall said Monday he is ready for the glitter and fame of movie stardom.
Westfall will make his acting debut this summer with jack Nicholson and Valerie Perrine in a locally filmed movie titles “The Border”
Alderman Polly Harris, a movie veteran (she played a waitress in the El Paso-filmed “Hamster of Happiness,” an unreleased feature), also will be in the movie.
It’s a small part, the mayor said, but it could be the budding of a third career. Before entering the limelight of politics, Westfall was an FBI agent, a profession that, if Efrem Zimbalist Jr. is to be believed, is fraught with the human drama of cinema magic.
The mayor’s show biz break comes in a film with a storyline that has strong El Paso ties. The plot follows a Los Angeles couple who move to this area to escape the smog. The husband (Nicholson) becomes a border patrolman, befriending and falling in love with a young woman fleeing devastation of a Guatemalan earthquake.
Westfall, Mrs. Harris and other community leaders, including a bank president, will test their thespian talents in what the film people describe as an “upper-class summer party” scene.
Casting director Rick Barr asked for people who can play local “big wigs.” El Paso’s hostess for film crews, Norma Mayo, called community leaders she knew and arranged a get-together Thursday night at the Chamber of Commerce.
Barr attended the party and decided the persons there fit the bill.
When the party scene is filmed in mid-July at an Upper Valley ranch, all participants are to bring two different colored outfits.
Mrs. Harris, determined to be just what the director ordered, said she still has to do some checking to find out if long or short gowns are in order.
Although advance personnel from “The Boarder” joked that they hoped there will be some nudity in the movie, the party scene as described at the chamber gathering contained no hint of drugs or sex that might be embarrassing to the mayor, an anti-pornography crusader.
The mayor said he is taking the career plunge because “we need to encourage motion pictures to come her and shoot films.”
In a bid to attract tinsel-town dollars, local leaders plan to apply for a federal grant to build and Old El Paso movie set on the east side of the Franklin Mountains, perhaps in the Wilderness Park Area.
There also is some talk about construction of a Tarzan village in El Paso, said Dale Lockett of the El Paso Film Liaison Office of the Visitors and Convention Bureau.
Lockett said he told an interested film company there is plenty of land available in El Paso for a jungle set. But, Lockett said, he hasn’t heard from the producers since he sent them a letter describing the desert.
Members of “The Border” film crew have been in town about three weeks preparing for shooting. About 3,000 persons have been interviewed for walk-on parts. Casting is closed but may be reopened later, Barr said.
Barr said he can’t be swayed by singing telegrams, roses or bottles of champagne, all of which he has received already from one local aspirant.
The film people made a big hit with county commissioners Monday when they tentatively promised the county a credit line in return for use of Lower Valley roads.
“The Border” promoters did not mention to commissioners that the mayor and Mrs. Harris will have faces, not just a credit line in the movie.
Lower valley commissioner Rogelio Sanchez said later he did not care that Westfall had a shot at stardom and Sanchez didn’t. Apparently not everyone has gone Hollywood.
that was a great movie. its funny how in the movie, the "statue of liberty" for the main mexican woman was the "asarco furnace tower" as she came up from the mountains from the interior of mexico.
now that tower stands smokeless with our mayor spending tax money to keep it from ever being used again.
you also see "joes meat market" and "ruidoso market" on stanton street where nicholson gets a coke during the movie.
ruidoso market is still there, but joes meat market is not. i ate many a fried "colita de pavo" from there as a kid and that was with or without the flies.
Posted by: hellraizer | October 29, 2008 at 10:23 AM