‘Old West’ becomes ‘new Afghanistan’ with location search for ‘Iron Man’ Before filming begins, director Jon Favreau meets with the “Iron Man” crew at the Alabama Hills site of the movie’s convoy attack scenes. Photo by Chris Langley By Chris Langley
Inyo County Film Commissioner 5-8-2008
Growing up I never got to read comic books. My mother saw them as the start of the decline of the West, or worse still, a nefarious plan to undo the morals of the children of America. At least, buying them was a waste of money.
So when the location scout contacted me to say she was working on a Marvel film called “Iron Man,” I was pretty clueless about whom the main character actually might be. We spoke a few times on the phone and then she came up to spend time looking for locations.
I liked her from the second I met her. She was personable, young and energetic, and focused on her work. Basically, we were going to be looking for Middle Eastern and Mongolian locations. I assured her that I was familiar with Afghanistan and Iran, having lived in Iran for two years in the Peace Corps, traveling extensively in Afghanistan. The Motorola cell phone commercial had already filmed with four camels and 25 Iraqi and Afghani extras. I knew dressed with some props and costumes, the landscape, particularly at the north end of the Alabama Hills, was indistinguishable from the Asian countryside.
The company had been attracted to the area because of some shots they had found on a locations site that showed the steep hill on Movie Road popular with automobile commercials. This was different from what we call “Mother Hill,” which is longer and more majestic than what the company first wanted. They would eventually end up there for the convoy attack scenes that start the film with a bang.
As we drove around to look at some sites, we spoke a lot about the film business. She had a boyfriend and he had worked on “Troy” on oversees locations and she had worked on “Gates of Heaven,” the Ridley Scott film starring Orlando Bloom, also being made on foreign locations. The problem was that they were in different locations. They could rendezvous occasionally in Morocco, I think she said, but they had promised not to take more movie jobs so far away from each other.
She said that “Iron Man” would be perfect for her because even working full-time in Lone Pine, she would be able to get back to L.A. for the weekend. We looked at several locations in the Alabama Hills, and the Reward Mine to play the villain’s lair, which was a cave. There was talk at that point about an oil refinery in Mongolia and I thought, as did the scout, that the Crowley Lake area presented possibilities. She also wanted to the look at the Gorge area, and the Buttermilks. I had also pushed her to look at Cerro Gordo because this area really reminded me of those remote areas between Iran and Afghanistan, where Osama Bin Laden once hid out, and still might.
She was ready to photograph the area when she began to have car trouble and wanted to get back to L.A. I went up and shot the whole area of Cerro Gordo, particularly where the canyon narrows about half way up. I prepared a CD and sent them to her.
The scout who would stay with the production until completion, becoming assistant location manager, seemed pretty sure they would be filming in the area. I was excited because after doing some research I realized that this would be the first big movie to work in the area in quite awhile. I wanted to make sure we were ready and did a great job on this end of the pre-production.
I studied up on the character and the comic series. I also learned that this would be Marvel’s first venture into film production, becoming Marvel Studios, and thus sharing more of the risks and financial benefits from a successful movie. The Internet claimed it would have a budget of $80 million. (Now since the opening, the budget is estimated to have been between $140 and $180 million.)
One of the things I didn’t realize at the time was that the script had not been finalized. Two sets of writers had been working on the script, separately, at different times. A person connected with “Dark Sky,” another comic book-generated film from a different company, told me that big films often had complete treatments but not finished scripts when they started filming.
From a Lone Pine historic point of view, “Gunga Din” was that way. There was a script but each night the cast and director would sit around planning the shots for the next day. That had created great financial anxiety for RKO which had $1 million invested at the time. Time will tell what artistic process Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau used in the creation and adaptation of “Iron Man” dialogue and scenes for the final cut.
A second thing I didn’t understand was how sensitive Marvel was about controlling information regarding the shoot. They were nervous because it was their first full production of a comic book character film. A lot of money was riding on it, and perhaps even more important to “Iron Man” creator Stan Lee, was getting the comic book “right” on the screen. I had not fully appreciated how much the fans felt ownership of the character, creating Web sites and trying to seek out any information about the movie for enjoyment or malicious intentions.
I began to sense it as I read Internet fan comments about Robert Downey Jr. when he was signed to play the lead and when Terrence Howard was signed to play Rhodey, Tony Stark’s sidekick. Many could not hold back about their negative feelings and doubts about the whole endeavor.
As the fall passed, I was about to run afoul of several of these factors and be taught an important lesson.
Next time, four members of the production team, including the production designer and art director, fresh from the reshoots for “Spider Man 3,” return to Lone Pine to firm up decisions about the film locations.
(Langley can be reached by phone at 760-937-1189 or by e-mail at
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