The Alien State

Page 1 2 3 4 They came from outer space . . . and landed in New Mexico.

Whatever motives drive real extraterrestrials, Hollywood filmmakers think the state is a prime candidate for first contact or, at least, a good place to build alien worlds. Dry and wind-blown planets can be replicated at White Sands National Monument. A place of wide horizons, deep skies and little civilization can be plopped down on the Llano Estacado. Mountainous worlds with rugged vistas await in the Sangre de Cristos, Jémez and Organ mountains, plus the Sandías are just a step away from the state's largest city. The raw and exotic geology of the Bisti Badlands looks like something stolen from another world. And aliens living in the underworld likely would be right at home among the awe-inspiring formations in Carlsbad Caverns.

And the best part, from a Hollywood producer's point of view, is you don't have to travel very far to find these varied backdrops.

A prime spot seems to be the Very Large Array (VLA) radiotelescope on the San Agustin Plains. The real purpose for the 27 dish antennas, each nearly 100 feet tall and aligned on a Y-shaped track, is to allow astronomers to study radio waves emitted by distant objects such as galaxies, planets and stars. To Hollywood, though, the sight of those dishes scattered across the plains is too good to ignore.

So the VLA received a starring role in Contact (1997), when astronomer Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) first hears the signals of other intelligent beings in the universe.

"The VLA site is in the high desert with wide-open skies and flat terrain," said Steve Starkey, one of the film's producers. "You come across these dishes in the middle of the expanse and it's very surreal."

Filmmakers had to contend with one of the state's most capricious features - the weather.

"Yes, it was most unusual weather," Starkey said, with rain, wind and "an insane ground fog one morning that covered everything. Despite all that, we got all the shots we wanted and on schedule. People at the site were very cooperative. They even gave some extra dish time we weren't scheduled for."

"Dish time" is at a premium, said Dave Finley, public affairs spokesman for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, operators of the VLA. The filmmakers had to finish shooting during a maintenance period between scheduled observations, he said.