Being, of course, a huge ‘Sergio Leone – The Man with No Name trilogy’ fan, I had to stop at Tucumcari on my first drive from Nashville to New Mexico.
Why you may ask? The clip above explains, sort of. Growing up me and my friends shared much hilarity over this scene. The dubbing contributes to the comedy of course – for some reason in this, and so many other spaghetti westerns, everyone is dubbed as if they’re comedy relief. In this scene the constant mention of Tucumcari + the sound/rhythm of tu-cum-car-ee leads towards a surrealistic feel. It wouldn’t be idle speculation to figure that Leone selected Tucumcari for just this reason – the name ‘Tucumcari’ definitely has something.
Now, of course, for ‘A Few Dollars More’ was not shot in Tucumcari, or anywhere in the States for that matter.
Which I think is wonderful.
In the sense that movies have defined so much of the world for us, (as in, folks caught up in a disaster saying “It was just like a movie”), that the imagined Tucumcari is more real and present in more people’s minds than the actual Tucumcari – which doesn’t resemble Sergio’s imagined world in the least bit.
Anyhew, I was determined to stop in Tucumcari and have someone snap a pic of me standing in from a sign that read something like: Tucumcari.
But let me tell you something. It was cold. Yesterday – very, very cold. And you know what?
Thanks to modern technology it’s easy enough to access a world’s supply of Tucumcari photos without having to get out of the car. So presented below for your amusement – a nice assortment of photos of Tucumcari uploaded to Flickr.
Enjoy.
And rent/stream For a Few Dollars More. Like ‘The Reverend’ you’ll be glad you stopped there.
I'm jealous you've been to Tucumcari – I hope you were blasting some Ennio Morricone while driving through!
I'm jealous you've been to Tucumcari – I hope you were blasting some Ennio Morricone while driving through!