Utah In Pop Culture Salty Edition

I live in Salt Lake City.  No duh, right?  A fairly metropolitan area that homes about a million and a half people.  It is hard to think that about an hours drive would bring you to what would be a wasteland by any definition.

Welcome to the Salt Flats.

Not pictured: Slugs, Pepper.

The Bonneville Salt Flats is a geological formation that is left over from the recession of Lake Bonneville.  Due to the hard pack nature of the salt and our altitude (lower air pressure) it makes it a wonderful place to go really fast and not die for the most part.

The Salt Flats has seen speed records set as far back as 1935 with the last major land speed record set back in 1970 and a car topping out at 622 mph, not quite the sound barrier.  

It's also been featured in a few movies, one of the most notable being Independence Day.  

 Salt for your popcorn flick.

An interesting (to ME anyway) thing is he wrecks his plane in the Grand Canyon and is able to walk, alien in tow to this place.  Now, measuring from about the highest place on the GC to the lowest on the SF we come up with 224 miles.  Will Smith, to cover that distance in a few hours walking?  That is a land speed record.

Monument Valley, or "Oh Yeah, that place!"

You've seen more of my humble berg than you know, you sly dog.  Tonight we go to Monument Valley, seen in every western ever.

You do recognize it right?  NO?  Well how about this?

Hrm, you are stubborn.  How about this?

Wait, that one is a video game.

Thanks to our relative closeness to LA thanks to the grand I-15, a handful of other major roads and the fact that it is an absolutely spectacular natural location.  Monument Valley has appeared in at least 30 different films.  It is a solid icon of western America.

It is five square miles.

That's it.  That little plot of land on a Navajo reservation has defined Westerns and cowboy culture for getting close to ninety years.  That is pretty good by any metric.  It should be said that Utah does not hold it entirely.  Arizona holds some of it as well in their borders.  However the park is strictly Native American held.  The Navajo name for it is Tse'Bii'Ndzisgaii or Valley of the Rocks.  Rather apt, no?

Films that have been shot here include Easy Rider, Forrest Gump (see above), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (see the beginning of the movie) and Back To The Future pt III.  The drive in movie theater that Marty drives through was constructed specifically for that scene and torn down after.  Apparently no movies were shown and that is a shame.  That would've been a wonderful backdrop for an old west film.

TV has been no slouch when it comes to the Valley either.  Recently a few episodes of Doctor Who were shot in part at Monument Valley and we now hold the coveted "the Doctor kindof almost died here, for realsies" trophy.

It is a place that should be seen if you are on the great American road trip as there is little else that can humble you in quite the same way.  The natural beauty of the place is certainly something to marvel, or in my case gawk at.  (I gawk with the best.  Mouth agape, slight drooling, the whole thing.)

Additional fun note: In writing this I found that Wikipedia has Navajo as one of their languages

The next Utah in Pop Culture will deal with music I think. Yeah. Perhaps SLC Punk, perhaps just songs.  We'll see.

Utah in Pop Culture

I think I will start a new feature here on this site where I will provide an example of Utah through the lens of pop culture.  I will provide clips or descriptions or links to things you may or may not have seen that my home state played some kind of a role in.

With that in mind I bring you DAMNATION ALLEY.

I'm sure that one of the first things you think of after an apocalypse is a road trip through America, am I right?  D.A. follows some of the people responsible for BILLIONS of deaths on their jaunt through the country on their way to New York.  Along the way they come to SLC and fulfill the unfortunate trope of The Black Guy Always Dies.  Clip below:

Judging by that clip I can see that it was filmed either on State Street or Main however it looks like it is either a composite shot or the statue that is visible at the beginning of the clip was moved at some point in time.  I would lean heavily towards composite as that statue is not that big.  

Damnation Alley, well, it didn't do well and as you can see the special effects were sad.  The swarms of cockroaches being pulled towards our heroes via piled sheet are vying for a top spot in my "least menacing ways to approach something menacingly" award.  Right up there with slow unicycle or juggling mime.

If you decide to watch the whole thing the SLC part comes up at about 47 minutes in.  As you would expect with a movie they play a bit with the geography so other than the piles of rubble and vicious bugs it is not an accurate representation of my current city.

Truthfully it is a little amusing to think that everyone in Salt Lake was devoured by radioactive flesh eating cockroaches.  There are some people here that fit that mold quite nicely.  I don't mean to say that all of my neighbors are radioactive horrors.  Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of nice people here but it is one of those "if  you've lived here, you understand" sort of things.

Next week I think we'll go south to Monument Valley.