Return to 'Giant'

When a big movie production comes to town, any town, it can be a memorable event. Even in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, old hats in the movie making business, it's still exciting to watch a scene being filmed on the streets. But when the filming location is a small isolated Texas town named Marfa, and the movie is a major Hollywood epic starring three of the biggest actors of the day, it's a whole different rodeo. Kirby Warnock, the man behind the documentary, Return to Giant (2003), was born in Mississippi but fell in love with Texas as a kid. His dad took him to Marfa in 1957, two years after Giant (1956) was made, and it made a lasting impression. Notably, the massive façade of Reata, the mansion home of Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor in the movie, made an impression, still standing, decrepit and aging badly. Years later, he visited Marfa again, this time to talk to the residents and document just how much the movie had made the town. The answer, not much. Marfa never became a huge tourist draw but when Warnock visited it, years after the film had been made, the movie's ghost still haunted every corner of town. Residents during the filming appear in the documentary, made forty years after Giant, and talk about their memories of that fateful year. The stories are both interesting and entertaining, funny and charming without reeking of sentimental desperation. It's recounted how everyone knew Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor but no one had a clue who this James Dean character was. But they would soon find out. Although none of his now famous movies had been released yet, it wasn't long before the townsfolk adopted Dean as their favorite of the entire cast. Before the filming began, Giant director George Stevens hired a local actor named Bob Hinkle, not for one of the big parts, but to teach the actors how to speak like Texans. He became close to Dean and worked with him on rope tricks as well as his accent. He and Dean spent time during the shoot hunting jackrabbits at night and drinking with the locals. Dean, despite problems on the set with some of the cast and crew (Chill Wills remarked, "These Actors' Studio kids are a weird bunch."), had no problems at all with the townspeople. They loved him. They also loved director Stevens. Many Texans weren't very enamored of Edna Ferber's novel Giant, upon which the movie was based. They felt it had too many unfair caricatures and stereotypes of Texans and feared the movie would be more of the same. As it happens, the movie was anything but and Stevens kept the set open, meaning the townspeople could watch all the filming take place. Screenwriter Ivan Moffat played down the stereotypes and played up the epic qualities instead. Return to Giant, narrated by Don Henley of The Eagles, makes some bold proclamations along the way. It claims, for instance, that what Gone with the Wind (1939) did for Atlanta, Giant did for Marfa. Of course, Atlanta was already, and still is, a massive urban and cultural center that, with or without Gone with the Wind, would have been well known. Marfa, on the other hand, was not, and still isn't, well known, but that's what makes the documentary all the more fascinating and all the more important as a cultural collective memory. And a tribute on top of that to one of the great classics of the fifties. Dir: Jim Brennan Screenplay: Kirby Warnock Cast: Don Henley (narrator), George Stevens Jr., Carroll Baker, Dennis Hopper, Earl Holliman Cinematography: Randel Bird Editing: Sandy Schwartz Producer: Kirby Warnock Sources: The New York Times Big Bend Quarterly American Legends By Media Match Advocate Oak Cliff By Greg Ferrara