Originally Posted by MichaelMyers
i still havent watch alice doesn't live here anymore. thats awesome about the town.
It's funny how they twist things in film. We watched Alice all the way through last night, and you are given the impression that Alice and her son stop for lunch at this place on the trip from Phoenix to Tucson, where they finally end up at Mel's etc. Amado, the town the skull building resides in is actually about 30 minutes south of Tucson, off of Interstate 19, on the way to Nogales, Sonora (Mexico). The duo wouldn't have passed through this town on their little trip. This got me wondering just how in the hell this building got discovered before production. The town is ever so tiny, and is quite out of the way, although the skull horns
are visable from the Interstate. It looked like they filmed many of the highway shots on this short stretch of interstate between Tucson and Mexico actually, so maybe while on location in Tucson, they went scouting for good bleak highway landscapes and saw the little cafe.
Regardless, this is a film that I found hits a little too close to home for me, and is a bit unnerving to watch. I was raised by my single mother, in Tucson, and we had some of the same issues crop up (mean boyfriends, on the road a lot with each other as our only companions). Being an adult now, I could relate to Alice's inablility to connect with her son's mindset at times, and her frusatration with this little annoying, but smart, ball of energy in her station wagon.
BUT, I also felt a connection with the boy because, well, I was him at one point. Man, it's uncanny how similar some of the scenes were with my own life experience as a child and how genuine they felt while watching. Great performances by all involved. I felt like these people weren't filming a movie, but that somehow Scorsese had hitched a ride on the hood, somehow unnoticed, and captured the whole thing on film.
Brilliant and a bit
too real for this child of the 70s....