Hollywood's Southwest: Alec Baldwin, Taylor Sheridan, and the Landscapes of New Mexico

with Dr. Jeff Menne

May 22, 2026 4 PM CT

 

In this talk Jeff Menne will discuss the long history of location shooting in New Mexico (and the Four Corners region generally), but I will frame it in terms of the contemporary events marking Hollywood production in the state: namely, the infamous production of Alec Baldwin’s RUST at the Bonanza

Creek Ranch, a ranch that has routinely been rented out as a film set, and the emergence of Taylor Sheridan’s television universe rooted in the popular show YELLOWSTONE. These contemporary events let us consider the volatile political value assigned to the landscapes of the Southwest, and New Mexico in particular, thanks in better part to Hollywood filmmaking.

 

Jeff Menne is Professor of Screen Studies at Oklahoma State University. His research is focused on the history of American cinema, specifically in the postwar era--roughly the 1950s through the 1970s. He has published two books, Francis Ford Coppola and Post-Fordist Cinema: Hollywood Auteurs and the Corporate Counterculture. He has taught both a credit course and a leisure learning class at the Doel Reed Center in Taos.