​Lights, Camera, Action! - Dar al Islam’s Connection to the New Mexico Movie Industry

By Karima Diane Alavi
 
People who’ve lived in Abiquiu for a long time will have memories of movie stars wandering Bode’s General Store or stopping for lunch at Abiquiu Inn. But you’d have to go back very far to have witnessed the first “moving image” shot in New Mexico Territory. That would be a world-known 50-second video of Isleta Pueblo school children filmed by Thomas Edison in 1898. (To view it, google Indian Day School Edison.)
 
While no movie has been shot in full at Dar al Islam, there’s a long history of movie scenes being filmed at Plaza Blanca before Dar al Islam even owned that landmark. Leading the list is the 1949 film Stampede, with Rod Cameron and Gale Storm. Other early films brought to Plaza Blanca actors as divergent as John Wayne (Cowboy) and John Belushi (Continental Divide.) The filming of Lonesome Dove brought Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones to the land that would eventually be owned by Dar al Islam.
 
The big change came in 1991 when Billy Crystal arrived to star in City Slickers, the first movie to be filmed in cooperation with Dar al Islam. Don’t look for DAI in the closing credits though. As a religious site, they were very selective about which movies they worked with. They read scripts carefully and, until recently, wrote into the contracts that they would not be included in the final credits.
 
If you look closely at City Slickers, you may recognize ten-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal’s first movie role as Billy Crystal’s son. For the calf birthing scene, a 6-day-old calf was covered in clear jelly and pulled from a fake cow. Crystal rehearsed by pulling a fake calf out of a PVC pipe. The famous stampede scene, started when city slicker Billy Crystal frightened the cattle with his battery-operated coffee grinder, was filmed at Ghost Ranch.
 
During the filming of the show Crystal spent so much time riding his horse, Beechnut, that the two became inseparable. The production’s horse wrangler couldn’t bare to part the two, so he gifted the animal to Crystal who ended up riding Beechnut for both his entrance and exit when he hosted the 1991 Academy Awards. The two rode together again in City Slickers II. 

Image: Cast of Earth 2 https://www.reddit.com/r/Xennials/comments/1hsgkoi/earth_2_1994/

​Did you know that November 8 is designated Earth 2 Day in New Mexico? That’s because the 1990s science-fiction television series with that title is credited with providing a major boost to New Mexico’s reputation as a state that offers incentives and support for the film industry. Santa Fe cinema lovers gathered at Jean Cocteau Cinema in 2014 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the film that helped secure our state’s reputation as a popular location for movie and television productions. The film, partially filmed in Plaza Blanca, kick-started the careers of several New Mexico actors, director, and producers, including J. Paul Zimmerman who was 8 years old when he held a leading role in the series. 

The 1990s also saw the filming of Wyatt Earp scenes at Dar al Islam. Along with Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid, one of the actors in that film was Gene Hackman who fell in love with New Mexico and eventually moved to Santa Fe.
 
The year 2003 brought the return of Tommy Lee Jones of Lonesome Dove fame to Dar al Islam, this time starring in The Missing, alongside Cate Blanchett. Directed by Ron Howard (Happy Days’ Richie Cunningham) The Missing cast included Santa Fe’s own Val Kilmer who played the role of Lieutenant Jim Ducharme.
 
Another television series that included scenes filmed at Dar al Islam is Into the West, a movie in which Plaza Blanca makes several cameo appearances. The 2005 miniseries follows the fates of two families, one European-American, the other Native-American as they negotiate the challenges of American expansionism from 1825-1890. The series is available for free here: ​

Image: Zahn McClarnon Source: https://castlevania.fandom.com/

A Santa Fean you may recognize in Into the West is Lakota-Sioux, Zahn McClarnon, who refers to himself as a “mutt” in a Santa Fe Magazine interview that references his other heritages: Irish, Polish, and German. After moving on to a critical role in Longmire, he now has the lead in the popular series Dark Winds, a series inspired by the novels of New Mexican author Tony Hillerman and his daughter Anne who, after the passing of her father, expanded the role of the female character, Bernadette Manuelito. 

​One of the most unusual films shot on Dar al Islam property was the 2011 Cowboys and Aliens. The hybrid Science Fiction/Western movie brought Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford to Abiquiu where they unite with outlaws and Apache warriors to battle an extra-terrestrial force determined to wipe out humans.

Image: Recognize the background? Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409847/mediaindex/https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409847/mediaindex/

The legend of the Lone Ranger’s quest for justice has captivated readers and film buffs for decades. According to the IMDb.com website, at least ten movies have told the story of the Lone Ranger and Tonto, starting as far back as 1938 when the part of Tonto was played by Victor Daniels, a man whom Hollywood executives renamed “Chief Thundercloud,” a publicity move they justified by pointing out that he was born, in 1899, in Muskogee Indian Territory, now part of Oklahoma.

Plaza Blanca’s ties with the legend of the masked lawman took place before Dar al Islam owned the site. To this day, if you wander the right parts of Dar al Islam property, you’ll see a remnant of a 1981 movie, The Legend of the Lone Ranger, in the form of several stone grave-markers that serve as the “burial sites” of the murdered Texas Rangers. Dotted at one time with wooden crosses that have long since disappeared beneath New Mexico’s rain, wind, and sun, you can spot the site in the movie trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSwWziJYoss
When film producers approached Dar al Islam about filming the 2023 version of the same film, their request was denied. Walter Declerck was Dar al Islam’s film liaison at the time. Dar al Islam has always maintained the right to deny or accept a movie proposal only after reading the complete script, a stipulation the producers didn’t like. Dar al Islam’s contract negotiations also state that the land on which movies are filmed must be surveyed and documented first so that any damage done to the natural surrounding would be restored with native plants. Contract negotiations eventually ended, which may be a blessing in disguise.

Further controversy arose when Johnny Depp was selected to play the 2013 role of Tonto in The Lone Ranger. Though he has a small bit of Cherokee in him, the production team contracted tribal leaders as advisors and kept them onboard throughout the entire filming. According to a ScreenCrush article, Depp was eventually adopted into the Comanche Nation in a ceremony lead by tribal chairman Johnny Wauqua. Comanche social and political activist LaDonna Harris also spent time on the set.
​
And who did Depp turn to for inspiration for the award-winning make-up? One look at Kirby Sattler’s painting, I Am Crow will answer that question. 

Image: https://screencrush.com/johnny-depp-tonto-inspiration/

​Subsequent movies at Dar al Islam developed ties with a series of well-known actors including Denzel Washington, Adam Beach (who acted in three movies shot at Dar al Islam, including Cowboys and Aliens), and Wes Studi, a Santa Fe resident for the last 25 years. 

Not all films shot at Dar al Islam succeeded. In fact, some were major duds, including the ill-fated Scalped, a modern-day TV crime story set on a Native American reservation. Lily Gladstone of Blackfeet, Nez Perce, and European heritage was a relatively little-known actress in 2017 when she played the role of Carol Red Crow in the pilot that never aired.
​
Gladstone’s big break would come in the TV series Reservation Dogs. From there she would move on to a starring role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Though she didn’t meet with success in Scalped after it was partially filmed in Abiquiu, she became the first Native American to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, and to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. 

Image: Alliance of Women Film Journalists https://awfj.org/blog/2024/03/31/spotlight-april-2024-lily-gladstone-actor-and-activist/

​Other movies filmed at Dar al Islam include a 2019 Netflix thriller, Rattlesnake, and the post-Civil War western, Surrounded. Last year saw the filming of a scene for the final season of the series Stranger Things, staring Wynona Ryder and Millie Bobby Brown.

The ending of this series has been kept so secret that when Rafaat Ludin, Executive Director of Dar al Islam, read the script, a representative of the film’s producers literally sat across from Rafaat’s desk the entire time he read the 600 + page document. (Dar al Islam maintains the right to deny or accept a movie proposal only after reading the complete script.) Ludin has a daughter who is such an ardent Stranger Things fan, that he stopped reading just short of the much-guarded surprise ending. That way he can say with all honesty that even he doesn’t know what secrets will be revealed when the movie is “dropped” in three stages at the end of this year with the final three episodes becoming available on New Year’s Eve.

When deciding whether to allow scenes to be filmed on the grounds, Dar al Islam’s primary commitment is to protect Plaza Blanca’s fragile sandstone formations. That’s why, in the end, the Stranger Things option was denied. Sort of. Due to the probability of causing damage to the site, a compromise was struck: the producers of the movie sent a crew of photographers to Plaza Blanca who shot hundreds of photos during different parts of the day, under different natural lighting. What you’ll see, if you view the movie, is an extremely accurate studio mock-up of Plaza Blanca. 

Image: https://parade.com/1338183/jessicasager/stranger-things-season-5/

​Music Videos:
Movies aren’t the only thing filmed at Dar al Islam. Two music videos were filmed inside the mosque complex and on the nearby grounds. 
After a mercurial rise to fame, rapper and actor Tupac Shakur was killed at the age of 25 in a 1996 drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada.
 
Both of Tupac’s parents were active members of the Black Panther Party. Raised in a home riddled with drug abuse, Tupac’s life changed when he attended the Baltimore School for the Arts. In his teens he studied acting, poetry, jazz, and dance, an interest that led him to play the role of the Mouse King in The Nutcracker ballet. Shakur had been invited to audition for the role of a Jedi Master in one of George Lucas’s Star Wars movies when his sudden death ended that dream and Samuel Jackson got the part.  
 
Tupac’s mother eventually recovered from drug addiction and focused on political activism and helping other women overcome addiction. Thanks to her, much of Tupac’s music was released posthumously. Though his song, Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto, was released in 1993, a video was filmed after Tupac’s death, using that song as the soundtrack. The site of the 1997 music video, where his mother was onsite for the filming, was Dar al Islam where scenes were filmed in the dormitory and hallways.
 
The video opens with a medevac helicopter landing at Dar al Islam. Behind the sound of the copter blades is a voice stating that they’re arriving with Tupac Shakur, a multiple gunshot victim from a drive-by shooting. The video, which looks like a very “official” medevac recording, identifies the landing location as “Rukahs, New Mexico.” You may have noticed that Rukahs is a backward spelling of Shakur. Though filmed in Abiquiu in 1997, the video’s opening image identifies the date of the medevac arrival as September 14, 1996—the day after Tupac’s death. Why does this matter? Because the world is filled with people who believe in a conspiracy theory that Tupac Shakur is alive and well, still hiding out in that strange New Mexico place called Rukahs. Further confusing the issue is that the nurses treating Tupac are portrayed as nuns in a setting that looks, of course, very similar to a monastery. There was also a rumor circulating before his death that Tupac had expressed interest in learning about Islam. 

Movie still: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fCoK2OVJAc

The year 2017 saw another music video produced at Dar al Islam, this one starring the rapper Brother Ali along with twin sisters, Iman and Khadija Griffin, from Minneapolis.
While his music is primarily about his faith, much of Brother Ali’s songs draw upon the themes of social justice, racial prejudice, and slavery. Though Caucasian, he claims to have been far more accepted by black classmates than white ones, something he attributes to the fact that he’s a person with albinism. With his complete lack of pigmentation, Ali felt that black students related to him because he was different and had been bullied and excluded due to his skin color.

The soundtrack to the video filmed at Dar al Islam is Never Learn, a track from his album All the Beauty in This Whole Life. Beneath the current of Ali’s religious references are calls for ending suppression and assisting those who are suffering. Due to his open support for Palestinian rights, the Department of Homeland Security at one time seized his performance funds, and Verizon pulled their support for his concert tour.   

He’s back to packing stadiums now to promote his forthcoming album, Satisfied Soul while offering lyrics that promote faith, caring for others, and finding hope:
​
Listen, we love to fight 'cause we fight for love
The poor righteous sons where the diamonds from
Libraries are transcribing us
And our ancestors are more alive than us
Put down everything you're trying to clutch
An undying lust to see the climate just
Baby we ride 'til our time is up
That's just The Divine in us

Lyrics source: https://genius.com/Brother-ali-never-learn-lyrics

You can watch Brother Ali’s 2017 Abiquiu video