Original subtitles

Since I was 14 years old, I always wore cowboy boots.

Maybe because my little boy role

models were always the men in the black hats.

Richard Boone, Robert Vaughn in

"the magnificent seven."

Silent killers.

Men with pasts.

Men from somewhere else who

found themselves in the great American west.

A place where reinvention, a new

life was always possible.

As long as you were willing to kill for it.

♪

♪

The western myth has pretty much captured the American

imagination.

None of us can escape it.

For ages, we identified

ourselves with the image of the

lone cowboy, the perception of frontier values,

self-sufficiency, rugged individualism, the freedom of

wide open spaces.

Few places in America still

manage to embody that mythic

landscape of the imagination

like the state of new Mexico.

What does freedom mean?

It's different things to everybody, it seems, but

something about this place

manages to capture the overlap

between a whole hell of a lot of

very different cultures.

Old route 66 runs through new

Mexico like a collapsed vein,

right through Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

It must have seemed like magic once.

Families loaded in a massive

chrome and steel char yachts

with powerful v8 engines and

took off down that highway.

They swept in bungalows, swam in kidney-shaped pools.

Then it all went redundant.

It was chopped up, largely

forgotten, except by desperate

and lazy travel show hosts.

Does anyone else do this, drive

around at like 10:15 at night looking for tacos?

Probably.

I'll say this.

The strip takes on a much more

interesting look at night.

You can imagine Dennis hopper

huffing nitrous and dismembering

somebody over an unrolled tarp in any one of those

sinister-looking motel rooms.

Cool.

Hopefully the tacos first,

because after you do the meth

you really aren't going to want to eat.

In ancient times, drivers would

hang the testicles of their enemies on their rear-view

mirror mirrors.

Best case scenario around here,

in my humble opinion, taco

truck, of which there are quite a few.

Parking lot, the smell of

mystery parts on a griddle, yes.

Knowing what I love of all

things Mexican, you might expect

me to be eating tacos for the next hour.

Without the wide stance.

Damn you, tacos village.

Come for the vistas, stay for the tacos.

30 rounds per magazine of

steel jacketed destruction as

fast as your finger can pull the trigger.

You might well ask yourself, why

the hell would anybody need a weapon like this?

The Ar-15 is one of the weapons

most reviled by gun opponents.

It's also America's favorite rifle.

I never thought I'd say a guy

from New York is a natural when

it comes to shooting an Ar-15 in

new Mexico, but I'm impressed.

As a nation, we love them.

There are about four million in circulation.

Those are the facts.

Basically, Ar-15 is a semiautomatic civilian version

of an m-16.

The funny thing is that in

relation, this gun is almost

identical to this gun, but this

is the one that's evil.

Shoots the same caliber, the

same magazine capacity, just looks a little different.

I'm an east coast guy.

I'm a new yorker.

But I come from a place where a

glimpse of a weapon on somebody

at a bar is reason for panic.

Here, in much of America in

between New York and L.A., you

walk into a bar, you see somebody with a weapon, it's

like that's my neighbor, maybe he's going hunting.

Who knows?

Most of the people you know own guns?

Everybody I know.

I had a rifle before I had a baseball bat.

Meet Jesse, bill, Bo, and Daniel.

Pretty much who we are talking

about when we see the latest stats on gun purchases in

America and shake our heads uncomprehendingly.

That cultural divide, much more

than policy, is what's kept the

issue of gun control so polarized and so, frankly,

hopeless.

He had a gun before he had a baseball bat.

I'm in the same situation.

I was shooting a BB gun when I

was 5 years old and I knew at

that time it wasn't a toy, it

was a weapon, and I was very

well-educated by my father on

the responsible use of that piece of equipment.

And that's what's critical to me.

I shoot all the time and I'm

always trying to shoot better than I did last week.

It's relaxing.

You're out with friends.

It's fun.

There's a dark little genie

in all of us, I think, that

wants to pick up a gun, point it

at something, and blast away.

This is a new Springfield arm

nine millimeter with 19 round clip.

I like guns.

I don't own a gun, but I like holding them.

I like shooting them.

A Glock .22.

It's cheaper than a 40 caliber.

There is something compelling

compelling, an eerie rush, a

sense of empowerment feeling the

warm glow of these heavy iconic shapes in your hands.

Get off my lawn, you kids.

That's a 357 Magnum.

Bigger kick on this guy.

A little bit.

You just can't help silently mouthing "make my day" or

"feeling lucky, punk."

You could do this all day.

Whatever your opinion on the

subject, fact is, gun culture

runs deep in this country.

This is what I grew up with, yeah.

I shot my very first Turkey with

this gun at 12 years old, actually.

That's a 22 rim fire cartridge.

That is probably the type of

firearm that most kids start off with.

These guys, I'm guessing, are

not people I should be worried about.

They are nice.

And exceedingly patient with a

city boy who wants to play with their guns.

That there is a 338 Winchester Magnum.

That's a big cartridge, heavy

bullet for very large game like elk.

There's a target up on that hillside.

Can you see it?

Now watch Mr. New York City

liberal shoot that target out

there from 244 wind-swept yards.

Oh, wow.

Now, am I accounting for windage

dropping with distance?

Yeah, you want to aim 13 millimeters to the left, four

millimeters high and you'll hit dead-center.

Left?

No, hold it right on.

I'm just making a joke.

Taking advantage of the city boy.

That wind's got to be 20 miles an hour.

Holding the rifle in this

wind without a brace is tough.

All eyes are on you, no pressure.

Pretty close, huh?

May have been a hair left.

A little high that time, I think.

A little right.

Shooting real good, though, Tony.

You're not missing it by much.

Exhale.

Squeeze.

The biggest thing is just let it surprise you.

As you're pulling the trigger, squeeze it slow.

Every time it goes off, it

should surprise you, that way you don't flinch.

That looked right on.

That looked right on to me.

I'm proud of myself.

I was somewhere in the neighborhood.

He's a natural.

You think people that don't

like the idea of guns, if they

had a day out here shooting

targets, I suspect a fair number

of them would at least temper their views somewhat.

A thousand percent.

Absolutely.

You definitely get a respect

for the power of it, for sure.

Generally speaking, me and

these guys I think should feel

free to buy all the guns we want.

It's the rest of you I'm not so sure about.

Know how to shoot beer cans.

If the zombie apocalypse comes, I'll be ready.

As long as they're holding beers.

So, when I grew up, when I

was a kid, I played cowboys and Indians.

The cowboy myth had such a grip

on Americans' self-identity.

I remember.

Playing cowboys and Indians, it

was just part of the culture.

You looked up to John Wayne, Steve McQueen.

My kid, 12 years old, wouldn't

even think about cowboys.

This is David.

His family has lived here for

generations, tracing their roots

all the way back to the Spanish conquistador.

Those cliff walls out there,

Tony, are 160 million years old.

The ones at the bottom, about 220.

They're all the way back to the Triasic area.

And this is ghost ranch, next door to David's spread.

This is the area where Georgia

O’Keeffe spent the last and most

productive decades of her life.

Now you've walked through her painting.

This is what she called my country.

Wasn't until my early 20s that I

even knew who Georgia O’Keeffe was.

Grew up with her being like a grandmother.

It took me going into a gallery

out there, I saw all these paintings.

I said why have you got pictures of my house?

She said please, take a step back.

That's Georgia O'Keefe's.

It's just going to get prettier.

It's just going to get prettier.

One of O'Keefe's biographers infamously described this

landscape as garish, vulgar, and

in poor taste, which if you look

around is pretty hard to comprehend.

This is such the other side of

the universe for somebody who lives like I do.

Live in cities, for whom a backyard this big is

inconceivable.

The idea that there's a certain

type of personality who's drawn

towards open spaces like this.

You know, this country, it

either embraces you or within a year it spits you out.

We reached the end of our

trail at a place called valley

of thieves, once said to be a

haven for infamous cattle wrestlers, of course.

They call it the rabbit.

Ladies, you know what I'm talking about.

Jesus, I'm in my 50s.

Find a distinguished segue into

adulthood one of these days.

Three generations are here with me this evening.

Herman, David, and Max.

We'll do our best to put together a little meal.

Anybody want some coffee?

Who am I kidding?

I'm a city boy.

Going to get all Jack Palance here.

We're also joined by Dan Flores,

author of the book "horizontal

yellow: Nature and history in the southwest."

How powerful are the echoes from Spain?

Spain was in control of new Mexico for far longer than

Mexico was.

I think a lot of these new Mexican families are ten

generation and 11 generation.

When they look back on themselves, they think of

themselves as Spanish.

Those traditions, they've continued to thrive in these

little pockets.

We're cut off from Spain.

I once worked with people from

Spain and they kept cutting up, snickering at me.

What they told me was okay, you

can knock it off with the Don Quixote phraseology.

The equivalent of me today,

would be top of the morning to you, sir.

They're like stop making fun of us.

I said you know what?

I'm not making fun of you.

That's the way we speak.

We go see grandpa, that's all he

knows is 500 year ago Spanish.

Maybe if we're lucky enough,

we'll have grandpa play his

harmonica the way he used to on the cattle drives.

But I have a plan here on this meat.

All right, the meat is yours.

All right, good.

Just call me cooky.

Some local beef, glowing hot coals, cast iron can.

Want to puree the green chilies here?

Yes.

Beautiful.

I'm going to throw those chilies

in, stew it for a few minutes, it will be good.

I just need a few splashes of an open beer.

Beautiful.

Check it off the Chuck wagon

greatest hits, we've got some

beans, potatoes, corn bread.

We do our best.

This is just about ready.

Let's eat.

Dig in.

We done good, gentlemen.

No kidding.

Thank you, Tony.

This is excellent.

I'm wondering, you guys have

been here for so long, your

family, could you live anywhere else?

Not me.

No, not me.

This is home.

I always get called back here.

I visited Paris and lived in L.A. for a while.

Paris is pretty great.

It's pretty great.

But it's not here.

I'm curious to know why you chose... why you came here

initially?

Open space.

Because I had grown up in a

circumstance where you couldn't see 50 feet.

I mean, the forest was so dense.

I used to climb up into the top

of the tree on the highest hill

just to be able to see over the forest.

So it was something about the

idea of being able to see the

landscape that really compelled me.

The big empty makes a real

deep, deep sense to a certain type of person.

♪

♪

♪

Since before 1598, grizzled

frontiersmen and hearty pioneers

have come to this unforgiving

landscape to eke out a difficult existence.

Welcome to Santa Fe today.

Where we can all live the western dream and even buy a

little piece of it to take home.

You gotta love it.

We pretty much eradicate the

native American culture, and now

in newer, more politically

correct times, we decide we love

Indians and all things native American.

And we're kind of, but not really sorry.

But that's not all.

The new west is inclusive.

Welcome to Santa Fe.

You've got a whole spectrum

of new age crystal types seeking

spiritual purity and intensity

in the harsh, yet beautiful landscape.

It's the last place in the U.S.

You can wear buckskin and fringe without irony.

While holding a Buddhist blanket.

There is, very deep inside this

ordinary-looking five and dime,

something truly authentic.

Frito pie and a soda, please?

This is the Frito pie.

As American as apple pie or the

American project and nearly as deadly.

His or her Mel chili and cheese-like substance dropped

like a deuce, another roller in

the night, right into a bag of fritos.

It feels like you're holding warm crap in a bag.

If you closed your eyes and I

put this in your hand, you'd be very worried.

Yet, it is also delicious.

Neither the Frito nor the Frito

pie were indigenous to new Mexico.

They were actually Texan.

New Mexico, you have many wonderful things.

Let Texas have this one.

Self-loathing that usually takes

a night of drinking to achieve.

Tequila drinking and a strip club.

A warm, spreading glow fills my

belly as I set out once more in my mighty Ford galaxy.

Yet I am also depressed.

Frito pie.

I smell metaphor.

Speaking of explosive diarrhea... did you know that

the first ever atomic bomb was

exploded in 1945 in the desert of new Mexico?

Sushi bars, galleries, massage studios.

Crystals?

We got 'em.

I think I need to adjust my vent or something.

I just see dark portents in all of this.

Well, there are a lot of dark portents.

This food will lighten you up, I guarantee you.

Horseman's haven cafe sits

next to a gas station that is

about as far away if the Plaza

as you can get without leaving

the Santa Fe city limits.

It has a special feel of

chilies grown specifically for

this restaurant and nowhere else.

I meet back up with Dan Flores for historical

perspective over Santa Fe’s most

beloved new Mexican fare.

I know people who have journeyed 300 or 400 miles to

eat here.

Enchilada with carne.

Pork in reddened Mexican chili

sauce with beans and rice.

Got to have that.

Some pasole, a stew made from soaked hominy and pork.

And sopapilla.

Early cattle, railroad men, the

people on their way to making

this America, were they romantic

about this part of the world?

They thought of it as a hard place.

For one thing, it was exceedingly remote.

When you were here, this seemed

like one of the farthest reaches of the globe.

Initially, Americans began coming here because they

perceived that Santa Fe was so

remote from the rest of the Spanish empire that it was

possible for the United States to pluck it.

I don't think anybody becomes a

romantic about it probably until the painters arrive.

Starting a long-running tradition of artistic

pilgrimages to catch the

spiritual groove, every kind of

utopian dreamer, eccentric, new

ager, they all came here in search of whatever.

Mmm, chilies.

That's level three.

All right.

We will be careful.

New Mexican chilies come in

two varieties... red or green.

That's the state question in new Mexico, red or green.

Ordinarily, I like green.

It's like Yankees or Mets.

You've got to pick one.

This green, however, is not ordinary green.

My face is burning off.

This ain't normal.

Oh, god.

This hurts.

I'm going to join you.

Def-con one, two, three.

It's a slow roll.

First you think it's going to be okay.

Then it's not.

There's nothing you can do but wait it out.

I believe they use the same peppers in pepper spray.

Or repelling grizzly bears.

A shot glass of that will put you in the hospital.

No kidding.

Everybody in the restaurant seems so calm.

Maybe they're not eating this.

They're muffling their screams.

History, they say, belongs to the Victors.

And here, where the myth of the

American west took root, where

so much romantic lore began,

history was being rewritten

almost as soon as it happened.

This was never the big empty.

As Dan Flores writes the idea of

a wilderness is itself a cultural construct.

As early as 1539 when a Franciscan friar reported

sighting from a distance what he

called the seven cities of

cibola, these were interpreted

as outposts of wealth, possible cities of gold.

Coronado, the famous Spanish

conquistador, quickly dispatched

an expedition and there were indeed cities.

Thank you for having us.

The home of community leader Ivan Pino.

I'm here to join him and his

nephew Robert and family in a traditional hunt.

So we'll be carrying our shotguns.

It's harder.

It's always good to get a

prayer going so that the animals

can be willing to take their life.

The pueblo who lived here

continuously since around 1250

a.d. Had long before the Spanish

or anyone else arrived a highly organized society.

They built multi-level adobe apartment blocks.

They farmed the land.

Irrigated crops using intricate

water diversion systems.

All this in what sure as hell looked like a harsh, and

unforgiving land.

This is good weather, though,

for hunting because it's a nice breeze, overcast.

The breeze is beautiful.

Not too hot.

Pueblo long ago learned to adapt to hard times, dry

seasons, war, incursion.

There were years where there was nothing.

And they had to deal.

We found a pack rat.

Our first pack rat.

In preparation for the summer

solstice ceremony, game like rabbits and pack rats are

collected for the medicine man

as a payment for his services.

How you notice is there's

some droppings, fresh droppings.

You see the droppings, you know there's one around.

This time of the day, they're

going to be inside their homes.

There's too many predators around.

It's not easy.

Once you find a nest, you got to

dig after the little burrowing bastards.

You hack, you dig.

You dig some more.

A lot of work for a small rodent.

I was just thinking that.

That's what our ancestors had to do sometimes.

Right now there's this drought going on.

If we didn't have the grocery stores... right.

Then hopefully when you flush one cleanly...

Got it right here.

Right.

And give him a good whack on the head.

The ratio of work to protein.

It's whiskers.

To ensure a generation of

this once vital source of food,

tradition and ritual requires

returning a part of the animal back to the nest.

I will never go hungry.

Going for pack rats is really

an homage, an acknowledgement of

an important earlier time when that was all there was.

The 25-year great drought.

As a city boy, I am greatly

relieved these little critters

are for the medicine man and we

won't actually be eating any of them.

Instead, Linda, Ivan's wife, is

preparing a pretty traditional menu.

Nothing is wasted when our game is brought home.

We dry up and dehydrate the bone.

Deer bone stew, red chili

bone cooked with dried elk and

potatoes, roasted dried corn, and tortillas.

And of course, more chilies.

We call this disturb pusharound chili.

You push around until you see the one you want.

The chilies are a state of magical.

The seed has been passed on

from generation to generation.

They stay within the families.

What percentage of young people leave and don't come

back?

Not too many people will leave.

Really?

There are people who leave,

but eventually there's this

yearning inside you that you

want to go home, you want to

learn your culture, you want to

be a part of everything.

It would be an understatement

to say the first Europeans who

came into contact with Indians

was destructive to the culture.

And given that history, how American do you feel?

This village is unique in

that we can easily just ignore

everything that happens out

there and just keep to ourselves

here, and we do that sometimes.

We close the road and we take

care of our own business here.

But it really varies by individual.

Maybe even by generation.

We have a veteran, a veteran, a

veteran that all served in our armed forces.

A big tradition of serving in the military.

Yes.

We continue to be outdoorsmen.

And we are survivors.

I've dealt with the elements of

the dust, the rain, the hail.

But it made a better person out of me.

We are who we are.

We're still going to be here.

UFO activity.

I don't need to be looking out

my window to understand they're behaving strangely.

Injuries from the crash.

Taken out into the desert and they were buried.

Look up in the dark, the

night sky, uncontaminated by the

light of any nearby cities, you can see things.

And of course, you've got a rich

tradition of actual, real life

spooky science fiction stuff.

The Manhattan project in Los

Alamos, nuclear missile silos

hidden deep beneath the desert floor.

It's out there.

So, where are we?

Ground zero of where everything seems to have

started.

Submitted for your approval.

Norio and his friend James, two

men associated with the new

Mexico UFO and paranormal forum.

This is where America's rocketry actually started.

At the end of world war ii,

classified units of the CIA and

army intelligence were busy

sandbagging and sneaking away

from probable prosecution,

cadres of the world's rocket scientists.

Did I mention they were Nazis?

Oh yeah, many of them were sent around here.

Other very mysterious things

even took place, allegedly, in 1947.

1947, Roswell incident.

That's right.

That's still a mystery.

Some say.

You notice how they always say

that in those dubious cheaply reenacted doc shows.

Back then they were working on some pretty cool stuff.

For instance, a Mylar-like weather balloon.

They would pancake out like a flying saucer.

Might that explain the excessive

zeal and mysterious behaviors?

If one of these things crashed in the desert, you can

understand a whole bunch of

sinister-looking bodies would show up.

It's hard to say, but any

military could create a cover story for anything.

Any pocket of, like, cyborgs or aliens?

I heard that there is and then I've heard there isn't.

We're taking you to a place,

an undisclosed location, what's

known as Albuquerque's own area 51.

There will be no probing involved.

Every time there's, like, alien

stuff, there's always probing.

Always with the probing.

I don't understand.

If they've been coming here for

years, haven't they done enough probing?

If you were like on ghost adventures, you'd be really

playing this up.

Some say this area was used for sinister experiments,

German-speaking cyborgs.

Crack pot science.

This is even better than area 51.

This is like area 61.

Area 61 turns out to be a fenced

off view of essentially Kirkland air force base.

The leading edge military research development and

testing.

At night, there's a lot of lights.

It's a huge complex.

Fact is, there was and still

is some pretty cool stuff being

tested out there in the desert.

Maybe for DARPA or NSA or the air force.

Who knows?

Do you think there are other

life forms among us who visited this planet?

Yes, I do.

What do you think?

Well, personally, I have a different opinion.

It's a whole cover story in

order to conceal certain kinds

of projects, but I could be wrong.

I try to be a realist but I'm open to anything.

What is for certain and has

been documented on film is that

somewhere out there among the

silos, underground cities,

supposed nuclear waste dumps and

alien burial ground, there is a

large animal and a hole in the ground.

What strange beast even now is

being loaded into a grave size

pit in the desert for me?

Well, I think one of the

first things any society learns

to do is dig a hole, throw an animal in it, cook it.

They call it around here a matanza.

One, two, three, up, up, up.

It's pretty much an old-school version of a barbecue

in the sense that it involves

burying a pig and the imbibing of much alcohol.

About 20 minutes from the

nearest paved road is dead horse ranch.

People who made it has no

shortage gathered to partake in the festivities.

There is beer here.

Plenty of it, loelg and delicious.

And abundant.

Did I say that?

Have a drink.

There are very tasty and lethal

as it turns out margaritas and I

believe to the best of my

recollection anyway that I soon

made the classic error of moving

from margaritas of straight

shots of Tequila and makes it

easier to meet new people.

Why is it that any time an alien

visits like America, there's always anal penetration

involved.

I never heard it before.

Really?

Ever.

Am I into that?

But the pig, the pig.

What about that body in the desert?

For the last 17 hours.

It looks delicious.

Frank here he knows.

He runs poncho's barbecue.

Time to get slicing.

I step in, help frank break my

piggy friend down into his constituent parts.

Beautiful.

First off go the legs, what you call your fresh ham.

Then your four quarter, your

shoulders and what happen not.

The loyal and rib section, the pork belly.

Nothing goes to waste.

All that pig parts sent down the

line to Harold who's been using

them for new Mexico specialties.

Now our 300-pound friend, none

will go to waste, picked up with

pisole, going into chili.

Oh, yeah, that's going to be beautiful.

The tenderloin I set aside for a

little time on the grill.

Everyone here has put in a lot of work.

Time to eat.

I didn't know the show was about

this but I've been thinking about it a lot.

This sort of cowboys, Mexican, Indian, romantic idea.

A lot of easterners fell in love

with this romantic notion of the

west and wanted to come out here

and sort of create their own version of the west.

Was that a good thing?

That's what helps us as a people, a native culture.

We invite you to come and enjoy what we partake in.

I mean the Indians have the

beans and the chili and corn and

Spanish people brought the pork

and brought that together and have this meal here.

People love the native culture, they love the Hispanic

culture here.

It wasn't always that way when I was younger.

You played cowboys and Indians as a kid.

If there is one iconic hero it is the lone cowboy.

Any resonance.

Mexican, Spanish, pueblo,

reservation, white, we all are cowboys here.

A am a native new Mexican.

I have gone through strange

phases of my ownership of this

place, weird mixed bag and that is the identity.

I don't know.

It allows a certain freedom.

My desire to wear cowboy boots and wear a hat, you're

okay with that.

I would like to put my curse

word kicking boots and a hat.

Very kind of.

You I got a question for you.

What do you think of new Mexico?

Kind of what are your thoughts?

I'll try to boil it down to a simple statement.

If you come out to new Mexico

you see metaphors in everything

but actually if you were to

stretch a little bit you could

say that new Mexico is a perfect metaphor for America.

♪

It is a total mutation.

It's got Spanish, Mexican, original American and add a

tinge of radioactivity.

This is what America is.

An immigrant culture, we are a gun culture.

The expression of American power

and identity has always been the

lone cowboy with a gun.

That goes deep.

This is the heart of the

American dream, love it or hate it, this is it.