The main street in Telluride looking west towards the colossal mountain that will bully it forever, is one of America’s great visual overloads. That is why every year hundreds of thousands of tourists stand where I knelt to take a picture. Like the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley, it is a ground zero for selfies and maybe the location deserves a little better. It should elicit not just our phone’s attention, but a deep respect for Americana and the Final Frontier. The fact that a 150 years ago a village was built up here at 9,000 feet in Box Canyon is a telling insight into the determination of the first settlers.
I have filmed on Main Street a few times, but never with a car and I sensed that there could be potential to tell a period story. In my creative processing I built in a few key components: a classic car; an empty and snow caked street with no signs of modernity and a model whose styling played to the era of the car. If that was not greedy enough, I needed my wolf - Klondike. I wanted parody as well as glamour.
Closing down that street is not easy and I am hugely appreciative of the Mayor of Telluride - Teddy Errico - and his staff for their support on 14th December 2024. Without the film permit, the road closure and the parking restrictions, there was no picture. But the best photographs always come down to the last 1% and on this occasion the key 1% was just luck. The early morning temperature, on that one morning when we were permitted to close the street and bring in my cast, led by the beautiful Josie Canseco, turned out to be the coldest of the winter so far and that changed every visual dynamic. At dawn it was only about 10 °F and the extreme cold amplified the heavy exhaust fumes from the 1955 Austin Healey. This offered an opportunity to isolate the model from the backdrop and elevate the photograph. It was not something that I had considered in my planning, but I will most certainly take it.