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The little village of Roy, in the northeast corner of the state, was known for Tommy McDonald, a Pro Football Hall of Famer and former Philadelphia Eagles running back who started his career as a Roy High School Longhorn.
Now, though, the little town can say Sarah Jessica Parker, Hugh Grant, Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen all lived there for a spell, too.
The four filmed “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” this past spring in Roy and spent a week camped out in the small town.
One of the knocks on the state’s film industry is that it’s centered around Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and the rest of the state doesn’t see any benefits from the film business.
“We were looking for a certain kind of town,” said the film’s director Marc Lawrence. “It’s supposed to be Wyoming. We were looking for a town that was charming, but not touristy. I didn’t want it to be a town where two New Yorkers would say, ‘Oh, this is cute.’ We were also looking for a town where you could see the edges, as a contrast to New York City. We drove around the state, but we saw a lot of places. As soon as we drove in, we invaded for a week.”
Roy, with a population of 268, is between Springer and Logan and is closer to Amarillo than Albuquerque.
In the film, Parker and Grant play a couple, the Morgans, with their marriage on the rocks. They witness a murder and are sent by the witness protection program to Ray, Wyo., where they’re met by the tough law enforcement duo of Steenburgen and Elliott.
The film will be released nationwide Dec. 18.
Lawrence said he scouted Wyoming for the film, but New Mexico made more sense financially because of our incentive program.
“A lot of this is a question of finances and budgets,” Lawrence said. “The people in Wyoming were just wonderful, but they don’t have a film infrastructure the way New Mexico has built. I know it’s excellent in New Mexico. They’re really good crews, and when you’re making a movie and you’re coming in with an army, the infrastructure matters enormously.
“New Mexico is very competitive and aggressive in a good way, and New York, where I live, has done the same. There was a period in New York when there was no tax breaks for movies. People would shoot exteriors here and then go anywhere else. New York has changed that and given tax breaks.”
The first several minutes of “Did you Hear About the Morgans?” take place in the city and were filmed there. The rest was all done on site in northern New Mexico, including a couple of days at the Rodeo de Santa Fe and at Val Kilmer’s ranch near Pecos.
But Roy, Lawrence said, was incredibly welcoming, even as the crew camped out in the Roy High School parking lot for a week.
“It was like summer camp,” Lawrence said. “It was, honestly, being a lifelong New Yorker, I was terrified of living in this town of 300 people an hour from a hospital.”
But it all worked out, he said.
“We played charades and basketball at Camp Roy in the gym parking lot,” he said.
Lawrence, though he’s not a household name, has written and directed several wellknown films, including the Hugh Grant film “Music and Lyrics,” several episodes of “Family Ties” and wrote the “Miss Congeniality” series of films, which starred Sandra Bullock.
He wrote “Miss Congeniality” after overhearing a TV show while working in his kitchen.
“It was really one of those rare moments where I was in no way thinking about beauty pageants. I was in L.A. We live in New York, but we have a place in L.A., and I remember Ellen DeGeneres was on TV, and I was in the kitchen doing something else, and she was going to host the Emmys. The hardest thing about hosting the Emmys was wearing the dress. For some reason, when she said, that, I thought what woman would have a hard time wearing a dress? I wasn’t thinking about a story or a movie or Miss America or the FBI or whatever. It was a lucky moment. The idea was there.”
For his latest, he’s already catching some grief. Since the film trailer started airing, one line has gotten a lot of attention. Meryl Morgan (Parker) says, “Oh, my God, it’s Sarah Palin,” when Steenburgen’s character picks up a gun. “I wasn’t trying to make her Sarah Palin, but the joke was that, to New Yorkers, if they see a woman carrying guns, that’s the image that comes to mind,” he said.
