El Paso, Texas has dreamy vistas, historic downtown buildings, and storied history along the border it shares with Mexico. With the acclaim for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which uses the city as one of its main locations, it may also be ready to step up as a film destination.
Thanks to praise for the film and a new Texas film incentive that gives TV and film productions rebates of up to 31% of their qualified in-state spending, the sprawling, largely Latino city of about 880,000 is having a moment, and aims to seize on it.
At the recent El Paso Film Festival, which coincided with the September 26 release of One Battle After Another, local filmmakers reveled in their moment in the spotlight — and shared stories of watching Anderson and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro mixing it up with locals.
Usually film commissions across the world frantically compete to host a DiCaprio movie. So how did Drew Mayer-Oakes, El Paso’s film and creative industries commissioner, lure One Battle After Another?
“They came to us,” he laughs.
Anderson is no stranger to West Texas, having shot his 2007 classic There Will Be Blood in and around Marfa, about 200 miles from El Paso. In 2022, Mayer-Oakes recalled, Anderson and one of the film’s producers, Sara Murphy, traveled parts of the country looking for locations and inspiration.
Murphy contacted Mayer-Oakes that summer, without mentioning Anderson’s name. But soon after Mayer-Oakes made clear that El Paso would welcome the production — “that’s what we do,” he notes — others got involved, including location manager Michael Glaser.
Mayer-Oakes, a veteran of the Texas film scene who has also led San Antonio’s film commission, remembers a key phone call with Glaser: “He just confirmed what he thought was the case — ‘You guys are open to filming? Can we do stuff in your downtown? It might get a little crazy.’
“And we were like, ‘bring it on.'”
The craziness includes a spectacular riot and chase sequence in which DiCaprio’s character, Bob, flees from authorities as he tries to find his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti). Bob enlists the help of del Toro’s Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, as they race around downtown El Paso locations that included the sensei’s dojo and El Paso’s character-rich, atmospheric downtown buildings.
One of the most beautiful shots in the film comes as a band of skateboarders — played by real-life El Paso skaters — try to lead Bob across the rooftops to safety.
Mayer-Oakes notes that Anderson seemed to take inspiration from going up on those rooftops, camera in hand. Looking south from a high story in El Paso, you can see border crossings and deep into neighboring Ciudad Juarez.
“He had a specific idea of what he wanted, but he was looking at everything. And I think with filmmakers like him, the location continued to inspire him and help him focus on how he wanted to tell the story,” Mayer-Oakes says.
The One Battle After Another production had a crew of about 300, mostly from out of town. but hired local production assistants and traffic control, among others. It also went to local vendors for wood, supplies, and other materials used to build three sets.
“Obviously it’s important to to hire people that know the local community when you have to do things quickly,” Mayer-Oakes adds.
He estimates that the local economic impact in El Paso was about $4 million over about 16 days of shooting. The film also shot in California locations including the Sacramento rail yards and the Anza-Borrego desert.
How to Get Hired on a Paul Thomas Anderson Film
Some in the El Paso film community wondered if their moviemaking dreams might be hampered by living at the far end of West Texas. But One Battle After Another gave them hope that they might be able to stay in the city they love while still getting jobs on major productions.
El Paso native Celine Dipp was attending Brown University in Rhode Island, with hopes of becoming a filmmaker, when she found out last year that Anderson was shooting in her hometown. She learned of the production when someone working on it mentioned it to her sister.
“And I was like, wait, go back: PTA is shooting in El Paso?” Dipp recalls.
She had considered quitting filmmaking, because she really wanted to live in El Paso and didn’t think she could have a viable film career there. But when she came home from college in June 2024, and realized the production was shooting at the same time, she was determined to get hired.
Much of the film centers on Bob trying to remember a series of codes in order to reconnect with his team of rebels, the French 75. Dipp similarly had to solve a few mysteries to become a One Battle After Another production assistant.
She contacted filmmakers she knew in town, repeatedly expressing her interest, until the production learned of her, she says.
“And then I got a text that was like, a bunch of code words, and then, ‘Can you hop on the phone tomorrow?’ And then we got on the phone and it went really well,” she recounts.
The code words included calling the film “the BC project,” since at one point it was known as The Battle of Baktan Cross, the name of the fictional community where much of it takes place.
Even after her initial call, the production still maintained an aura of secrecy. She had a confusing follow-up call a week later with “a different sounding production,” she says, called either “Desert Path or Desert Way,” which was another way of keeping things on the downlow.
When she was hired as a production assistant, she laughs, “even the production office had a fake facade so you didn’t even know what was inside. It was so bizarre.”
One of her favorites memories of the production was bringing almonds to an actor, and entering through the wrong door — and into an apartment set where DiCaprio, as Bob, was having a meltdown.
“It was that scene where DiCaprio is on the phone getting angry because they won’t give him the password in the funky apartment. So I ended up holding this packet of almonds, terrified to walk up to them, because I was totally not supposed to be there in that moment,” she recalls.
A gaffer pulled her into a doorway, so it was just “me, him, one other woman, the script supervisor and PTA, sitting on a bed, looking at the monitor, and they ran the scene.”
She recalls watching Anderson laughing delightedly as he watched DiCaprio work.
“It was such a massive production… but it kind of distilled into this really artistic and honest moment,” Dipp recalls. “And I think getting to witness that — it just reminds you why you’re there. You’re witnessing the creation of cultural zeitgeist, and it was just a really cool thing to be a part of.”
She’s now working on four films of her own — two shorts and two features. And feels very optimistic about the El Paso film scene.
El Paso is just 45 minutes from Las Cruces, which has benefitted for years from outstanding New Mexico film incentives that have helped lure productions like the Best Picture winner Oppenheimer. Now El Pasoans have a serious Oscar contender of their own.
“I think a lot of people underestimate how dynamic this area is, because we are the middle point between New Mexico and Texas. New Mexico is such a big film hub, and West Texas is an emerging film hub, and so we’re already at a really great position, but it’s a newer scene.
“I mean, it’s beautiful,” Dipp adds. “A lot of people say it’s how Austin was years ago. And so it’s a really nascent scene. Everyone knows each other. And getting to work on this, and getting the exposure that we got, it was really cool to watch what we can do.”
‘I Love It Here’
Wally Lozano, an El Paso native, spent years in Los Angeles working on productions including Dragged Across Concrete and Crank. Lozano has acted, produced, directed and much more, but his experience with precision driving got him hired on One Battle After Another.
He delighted in getting to witness crew members like Colin Anderson as work – “Colin Anderson is like the Jimi Hendrix of camera operators,” notes Lozano — and he took a moment to thank the other Anderson, PTA, for shooting in El Paso.
He says the director looked at him and said, earnestly: “I love it here.”
Lozano had moved back to El Paso from Los Angeles during Covid lockdowns, and decided at the time, “I’ll sell insurance. My career’s over.”
But working on One Battle After Another inspired him, he says: “I cried tears of joy, because I left Hollywood thinking my career was over, and I got here, and my backyard was a Hollywood backlot.”
Lozano hopes El Paso will draw a television series next. Just as Breaking Bad helped build up New Mexico, an El Paso-set series could provide steady work for locals.
It could, like One Battle After Another, also capture the zeitgeist: ICE raids have made it impossible for anyone in America to forget the debate over immigration and due process, or lack of it. But in El Paso, where you can see Mexico from the rooftops, living side by side with another culture has never been far from anyone’s mind.
A TV show is one of Mayer-Oakes’ top priority, he notes. He’s seen the work and money that the Taylor Sheridan shows Landman and Lioness have brought to Fort Worth, about 600 miles east.
“One of my primary goals is to get a television show, because that’s a game changer. Even if you’re doing a streaming show that shoots 10 or 12 episodes a year per season, and it’s a drama, even cheaper ones are $4 million per episode,” he says. “Multiply that by 10.”
Mayer-Oakes is also quick to explain the benefits of the new incentive, which took effect in September. When Kevin Smith attended the El Paso Film Festival, for example, Mayer-Oakes elegantly made it known that El Paso should very much be in play for his future films.
But in the meantime, El Pasoans are just enjoying their moment in the sun. At the end of an El Paso screening of One Battle After Another, on the night it premiered, the skaters in the film — including Gilberto Martinez Jr.and Luis Trejo — posed outside the theater with moviegoers who had just become fans.
This week, Trejo posted a thank you on Instagram to Anderson, DiCaprio, del Toro and casting director Cassandra Kulukundis.
“When art comes to you, don’t let it go,” he wrote. “Thank you @paulthomasanderson and Cassandra K. for believing in us. Thank you @leonardodicaprio and @benicio_del_toro1 for leading us through this journey. It was an honor to work with everyone on set and do what we love on the big screen.”
Main image: Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro in an El Paso-shot scene in One Battle After Another. Warner Bros.