Coen from p 36 Reata Pass Steakhouse 27500 North Alma School Parkway “Gimme that baby, you warthog from hell!” The now-demolished Reata Pass Steakhouse in north Scottsdale was the epicenter of the Raising Arizona production. Hoy says base camp was located there, it was within the vicinity of a few other shooting locations, and driving scenes were shot along the nearby Jomax and Dynamite roads. “They’d pull out the camera car [and] process trailer onto Jomax and then shoot up and down all day long filming,” she says. Reata Pass, which was demolished in 2015 after closing three years prior, is also where Hi and Ed squared off with biker/ bounty hunter Leonard Smalls in the movie’s climax. “We spent lots of days out there,” Field says. “The whole fight of Tex Cobb and H.I. McDunnough, the climax of the movie, that was all out at Reata Pass.” Shorr has plenty of memories of her experiences helping set up those scenes. “That was a huge thing because that involved cars. So all those cars that [Cage] crawls under, one is my VW bug, another is one of my friend’s cars,” Shorr says. “I was ecstatic because I got my best friend’s cars in the movie. So they made like $100.” She also has a prized photo of her with actor Randall “Tex” Cobb, who was Bonnie Schiffman/Circle Films/20th Century Fox The Coen Brothers in Arizona in 1987. covered in black gook for the film’s final scenes. “It’s from that day because he was totally into me and kept bugging me all the time,” she says. Cobb’s look, as well as his various tattoos and nasty teeth, were done on the film by makeup artist Katherine James, who got her start on Raising Arizona. “It was my first, but probably the most fun I’ve ever had making a movie,” says James, who has since gone on to a full-time career in Hollywood and worked as Holly Hunter’s makeup artist for years. She also helped created Cage’s various wounds from his battle with Smalls and also “dirtied everyone up.” “The funny thing about making people dirty is that it’s hard to keep them dirty. You would think if you made somebody dirty, they would stay dirty all day,” she says. “That’s the kind of makeup you chase all the time because it keeps wiping off. It doesn’t matter what you use. You’re outside. It’s 90 degrees. People sweat. It keeps coming off, so trying to keep him dirty was quite the task.” There’s not much of Reata Pass left these days, save for its giant water tower along Alma School Road, which is frequently photographed by fans of the movie reenacting Cage’s leap away from the explosion that (spoiler alert) kills Smalls. Field, who lives and works in L.A. says he visits there when he’s in the Valley. “It’s such a great location,” he says. “There will always be these memories of that whole area years ago on the film.” Denoument “I dreamt I was as light as the ether, a floating spirit visiting things to come …” James says working on Raising Arizona helped propel her in Hollywood. “In some way, I can almost connect a lot of stuff I did,” she says. “Because I did Raising Arizona, the next movie the costume designer [Richard Hornung] brought me to New York to work on a little movie there. Then I did Miller’s Crossing.” Shorr got a similar career boost from working with the Coen brothers. “It changed my whole life,” she says. “Everyone on that job was like, ‘You should come to New York.” And I got a job through somebody on [Raising Arizona] recommending me. And I flew to New York and I knew nobody or nothing. And I then worked on The Equalizer as an art department coordinator. And then I went to Saturday Night Live. “I mean, my whole career started from that movie,” Shorr says. “I learned every a lot from them and I still get jobs because of that job.” 43 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES MARCH 17TH– MARCH 23RD, 2022
