“Arizona does not have incentives and so larger productions can get more tax breaks in other states,” said Heather Ainardi, marketing and public relations manager for the Flagstaff Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“We get more commercials or documentaries than we do large, major film productions,” she said. “There is a growth in that because more and more people are increasing their budgets again.”
“It’s great for Flagstaff because we get an economic impact for a week to a month at a time without the physical impact of large productions being in town for a month or half a year,” she said.
Because of its unique diversity — Southern Arizona is notable for the Sonoran desert and Northern Arizona is known for its greenery and snowfall — both westerns and other genres have been filmed in the state.
Similar to Monument Valley, Southern Arizona has been the backdrop of many notable westerns including “Tombstone,” “Rio Bravo,” which featured John Wayne, and many others.
P.J. Lawton, a pyro technician at Old Tucson Studios, said it was constructed in 1939 for the movie Arizona, which featured John Wayne.
“It’s been a struggle since then, but we’ve slowly seen it come back to life as a movie set,” he said.
“It’s coming back to life, and I don’t expect it to be too much longer before they got back to the way it was,” Lawton said.
Chris Real is a reporter for Arizona Sonora News Service. This article originally came from the Arizona Sonora News Service website.