Talk of the Town

What impact will the shutdown of producer-director Larry Cohen’s “The Heavy” have on Las Vegas, N.M. (pop. 15,000)? The production was canceled earlier this month after only one day of shooting there because of “creative differences” between Cohen and star David Carradine.

“It was bad for this town,” laments Ashwini Sinha, manager of the Palomino Motel, where the production crew of the low-budgeter was housed. “And it’s too bad for me. They were supposed to stay three or four weeks.”

Differences between Cohen and Carradine came to a head during an arm-waving and shouting match on Halloween evening, according to an eyewitness account in the local newspaper, the Optic. The film was almost immediately canceled.

“I saw lots of crew members who were gloomy and crying,” Sinha says.

Mary Beth King, managing editor of the Optic, says that Las Vegas will rebound--Turner Broadcasting’s “A Miracle in the Wilderness,” starring Kris Kristofferson, starts filming there this week.

“It’s a movie capital of sorts in New Mexico,” King says of the little town, situated 60 miles northeast of Santa Fe. “ ‘The Heavy’ would have been the 12th film shot here in 20 years.”

Kristofferson was here once before, to shoot “Convoy” (1978). The last production to complete filming in Las Vegas, N.M., was “Fool for Love” in 1984.