USA

On a Sunday morning in L.A., Mark Escribano parks a white Dodge Challenger in front of the planet Mars. Red rocks can be seen, a blue moon suspended in space. Escribano sweeps the floor, then darkens the stage. ‘We can start as far as I’m concerned’, he says. ‘It looks amazing.’

Escribano can make almost anything look amazing. Amazingly real, amazingly beautiful, amazingly sharp. The world as a backdrop, every conceivable environment a perfect illusion. Some scenes are exaggerated, some AI-generated, some are well-tempered representations of reality. Escribano blends them all in.

His business is illusions. Escribano is the executive producer of Standard Vision, an expert in LED volumes. They’re all the rage these days on the movie-making West Coast of the U.S. Stage building and time-consuming set design have given way to giant LED screens – projection surfaces for anything at all.

Projecting the possible and the impossible has always been Hollywood’s core business and that of its satellites. Selling big dreams is what they do. The summer sun blazes down on Los Angeles outside the studio gates. California is Earth’s biggest illusion-making machine. And the gateway to the American Southwest – the greatest storyteller the world has ever seen.

Playing with illusion and reality is an age-old game. What is and what appears to be merged into one. But, hey: ‘There’s no business like show business!’

That’s something they certainly know about in the American Southwest. And why there’s so much more between the Pacific and Las Vegas, between Hollywood and the desert than sensational cinema. Nowhere is the American Dream more American than here. Nowhere is the sky wider, nor does the land stretch out more extravagantly beneath white clouds. The endless road, the rumble of engines, those supersized cheeseburgers!

Flack is a professional when it comes to set design. A master scene-shifter with a well-established reputation in the industry. The Four Aces Movie Ranch is a gem. Anyone looking for a chrome-plated version of the West will find it served up here in distilled form, complete with ice machine and ketchup bottles from the good old days.

‘A good backdrop has to be perfect’, Flack says. ‘The design, the light, the shadow. The rusty sign banging in the wind. In the end, a backdrop has to be more true than reality. And then: bingo!’

The American West has you in its thrall – literally. You’ve got a Cody James on your head and black cowboy boots on the accelerator. You can’t help yourself; the stereotype is too strong. The illusion, the desire for stories. The purr of the engine is the sound of America.

You whiz through the Valley of Fire, where the mountains appear to smoulder beneath the blazing sun. The realm of lizards and scorpions. A desert in the best sense of the word, the hottest and most unforgiving on Earth. And the place we humans chose to establish the most audacious iteration of pop culture we could imagine.

This is where chancers hustle and desperados ride, where cowboys romp and Harleys roar – in a harsh natural setting. The plot is irresistible. Take one of the planet’s most hostile environments and turn it into a playground for money-grubbers and freedom seekers addicted to petrol.

Ultimately, it’s a modern interpretation of the age-old motif of humans in nature. Out here, the story has been taken to extremes; it has become the stuff of dreams, of incredible cinema. The magic of the American West – Coca-Cola in the desert, rock ’n’ roll in no man’s land.