Paris, Texas

Although titled Paris, this post is actually about Terlingua, Texas.

Our cabin's number in Terlingua.

We watched the outstanding Wim Wenders movie, Paris, Texas a few days ago (on streaming Netflix!). This is a superb movie that is highly recommended to people interested in photography. Every shot is beautifully composed with respect to color and composition. Just great. The music (mostly haunting slide guitar melodies) in it was done by Ry Cooder and I have had it for years. One of the things I never realized is that the movie starts in Terlingua, Texas, a place we visited a few years ago. This point in the movie is also the first time you hear the Ry Cooder song. This is interesting as when we stayed the night in Terlingua, the cabin next to us was occupied by a band from Austin.

The guitar player of this band (sorry didn't take his picture and I don't remember their name) actually did a really good rendition of Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas music. I never realized how appropriate that was until I rewatched the movie. I linked the South West Texas thing with the movie of course, but had not linked Terlingua with the movie. Funny.


Rusty nails in Terlingua.



Terlingua's really nice ghost town cemetery:


EDIT: Should have done this before, but you can find the opening scenes here on youtube. The scene that shows that we are in Terlingua here comes right after this scene. The landscape you see in the beginning looks like it was filmed in Big Bend National Park. A really amazing place. Terlingua is at the west entrance to the park.