You may be shocked to learn that Marfa, Texas — the small, quirky town where the Amazon series “I Love Dick” takes place — is real.
In the show’s first episode, viewers get a glimpse of the small, southwest Texas town, not too far from the Mexican border. Immediately the audience sees that it contains a multitude of seemingly contrasting qualities — a combination of blue collar desert town and folksy, artistic retreat. It seems almost too weird to be real.
But it is.
“There’s no other town like it,” “I Love Dick” co-creator Jill Soloway told TheWrap.
In the show, Chris Kraus (Kathryn Hahn) moves to said town with her husband Sylvère (Griffin Dunn), who gets a residency with a minimalist artist named Dick Jarrett (Kevin Bacon). Kraus becomes lustfully obsessed with the titular Dick and embarks on a personal journey — along with Sylvère — to discover what their relationship means and what sexual attraction truly entails.
When planning out the series, both Soloway (“Transparent”) and her collaborator Sarah Gubbins were struggling with where to set it. Early drafts had the story of a dysfunctional love triangle take place in upstate New York, but then Soloway’s partner, poet Eileen Miles, suggested looking at Marfa. It immediately clicked.
“One of the things it allowed us to do is to keep the three main characters locked in this embrace just geographically because there’s no place for them to go,” Gubbins said.
It’s a remote location in the middle of the desert, sitting at the intersection of two highways. It’s around a six-hour drive to San Antonio, the nearest major city and the closest airport is in El Paso is three hours, according to local gallery Ballroom Marfa.
The gallery offers many helpful tips for tourists. Cell phone reception is spotty, there are only two grocery stores in town and only two ATMs. When Kraus enters her new house for the first time, she notes the lack of modern amenities by saying it’s “like the f—ing Amish.” It’s a quintessential tiny town.
The Chinati Foundation/ John Cummings Wikimedia Commons
However, the town is filled with a community of artists that live nearby and who emigrated there. This was helped in part by Donald Judd, a minimalist artist of sculptures, furniture and architecture who moved to Marfa to create permanent installations, according to the Marfa website. Now the Judd Foundation does guided tours, including in an area called “The Block,” which features two large airplane hangers filled with Judd’s art.
Since then, the Marfa has become covered in gallery and art spaces. The one we mainly see in “I Love Dick” — a large brick-lined warehouse — is based on the Judd Foundation headquarters.
One of the locale’s most well-known landmarks — although not depicted in the show — is Prada Marfa, a permanent installation located around 30 miles outside town. It’s a replica of a Prada outlet store, but it’s unobtainable. It sits in the middle of the desert providing a stark contrast to the world around it while also not being open for business.
Because Marfa is such a small town, it’s a place where “everybody knows everybody’s business,” Gubbins explained. That allowed for the writers to create drama that included the town’s residents in Chris’ conflict.
“You can’t be a hermit in Marfa because you have to go into town to get supplies. You really rub up against each other,” she continued.
Plus having a setting already populated with different kinds of art allowed Gubbins and Soloway to explore the art community and a person’s relationship with creativity — a core theme of “I Love Dick.”
“We weren’t going to have to invent that,” Gubbins said. “It was just part of Marfa, and the collisions of so many different kinds of worlds in one tiny town… is what Marfa’s about.”
However, what Marfa also has is a blue collar population, who worked in oil and who had been on the land for decades, either as immigrants from Mexico or as bastions of the old American West. So on one side you have all the art installations and tourists and on the other, you have a low socioeconomic class of residents.
In order to understand all this, you have to look no further than the show’s titular character. Despite the fact that Dick is an intellectual and academic, he’s also a cowboy. He rides a horse into town and owns a sprawling ranch. He’s a culmination of Marfa’s weird contrasting qualities.
Other aspects of “I Love Dick” are based on real life. Kraus is a surrogate for the author of the “I Love Dick” novel, also named Chris Kraus, who was married to a much-older philosopher named Sylvère Lotringer. Dick himself is a combination of Judd (they both share the same initials) and Dick Hebdige, a media theorist later identified as the subject of the original letters. All these connections — from the locations to the names — are close to reality and according to Soloway, it was all done to create a closer link to Kraus’ source material.
“She did a lot of name dropping of authors and cultural references,” Soloway said of Kraus. “We wanted the series to have that same feel.”
20 Animated Classics to Stream on Netflix and Amazon (Photos)
The best thing about animation is that, more than any other genre, it has a massive range of visual possibilities. With any given movie or TV show, you'll get a story with a completely unique display of color, mood and artistry -- from worldwide hits created by major studios to lesser known indie gems and avant-garde masterpieces.
"Zootopia" (Netflix) Disney has made plenty of beautiful worlds, but none have felt as fun and lived-in as Zootopia. Combine that with top-notch characters that are a delight to look at and a socially-tinged mystery that isn't afraid to get messy, and you have a film that defies what you'd expect from a talking animal blockbuster.
Disney
"Emperor's New Groove" (Netflix) Though not as well-known as the Disney Renaissance films, "New Groove" has earned a well-deserved cult following, simply because it's the funniest movie Disney has ever made, thanks in large part to the hammy performances by Eartha Kitt and Patrick Warburton as the film's villains, Yzma and Cronk.
Disney
"Walt Disney Short Films Collection" (Netflix/Amazon) Featuring special introductions from Disney's top animators, this collection features a wide range of Disney tales, from modern spins on classic Mickey cartoons to the groundbreaking Oscar winner "Paperman."
Disney
"Fantasia"/"Fantasia 2000" (Netflix) To this day, Walt Disney's 1940 experiment with classical music remains one of the most audacious projects in animation history. Both the original and its 2000 sequel can now be seen in all their glory, from the classic "Sorcerer's Apprentice" to the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence that has given kids nightmares for decades.
Disney
"Animaniacs" (Netflix) During the 90s, Steven Spielberg and cartoon mastermind Tom Ruegger created a series of Saturday morning cartoon series. "Animaniacs" was the crown jewel, earning crossover appeal by combining kid-friendly slapstick with risqué humor.
WB
"Batman: The Animated Series" (Amazon) For an entire generation of comic book lovers, this is the definitive Dark Knight. The four-time Emmy winner stunned audiences and critics with its visual blend of noir and art deco. Mark Hamill plays the Joker, while Arleen Sorkin debuts as Harley Quinn.
WB
"South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut" (Netflix) In 1999, "South Park" declared war on its haters, the MPAA, the Parents Television Council, and of course, Canada. The result is the franchise's most scathing satire ever.
Comedy Central
"Beavis and Butt-head Do America" (Amazon) It takes a smart man to make idiotic characters compelling, and Mike Judge is a master of such art. In a feature version of his hit MTV series, Judge sends Beavis and Butt-head off on a journey to find a missing TV, resulting in an adventure that includes military crises, Vegas hookers, Bill Clinton and a peyote hallucination.
MTV
"Bojack Horseman" (Netflix) The story of a self-destructive, anthropomorphic Hollywood has-been has become one of the best reasons to get Netflix, but Season 3's "Fish Out Of Water" is a must-see even if you don't watch the rest of the series. This largely silent episode sees BoJack go to an underwater film festival where no one can speak English, embarking on a heartbreaking and surreal odyssey.
Netflix
"Avatar: The Last Airbender" (Amazon) With a blend of anime and western styles, Nickelodeon's series pushed the boundaries of long form storytelling in kids' TV. It also balances its action and drama with some great humor, something that the infamous live-action adaptation ignored.
Nickelodeon
"The Legend of Korra" (Amazon) "Avatar's" takes the world into more mature territory, dealing with themes like personal growth and handling trauma. It's also famous for the final episode, which showed two of its main female characters getting a romantic ending.
Nickelodeon
"Wallace & Gromit" (Amazon) The complete collection of stop-motion classics featuring the English inventor and his dog are available to watch. Whether its a trip in a homemade spaceship or a mission to thwart a jewel thief, Wallace and Gromit charm audiences.
Aardman
"The Little Prince" (Netflix) This gorgeous, tender adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's legendary children's book got a simultaneous theatrical and Netflix release in the U.S. Blending CGI and stop-motion technology together, "The Little Prince" captures its source material's balance of childhood wonder and adult observations.
Netflix
"The Last Unicorn" (Netflix) Produced by Christmas movie mavens Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass, "The Last Unicorn" is an elegant and criminally underrated fairy tale with a heavyweight cast. Alan Arkin, Mia Farrow, Jeff Bridges and Christopher Lee lend their voices to this tale about a unicorn who is turned into a human to escape a fiery bull.
Rankin/Bass
"Death Note" (Netflix) A bleak anime morality tale, "Death Note" tells the story of Light Yagami, a high school prodigy who discovers a notebook that allows him to kill anyone he wants just by writing their name down. As Light becomes corrupted by the notebook's power, he engages in a battle of wits with mastermind detectives trying to track him down.
Madhouse
"The Secret of Kells" (Amazon) From Irish studio Cartoon Saloon comes one of the great indie animation films of the 21st century. This Oscar nominee is inspired by the Book of Kells, an Irish illustrated manuscript that blended Christian and Celtic traditions.
Cartoon Saloon
"Song of the Sea" (Amazon) Five years after "Kells," Cartoon Saloon made their return with the tale of a mute girl who turns out to be a be a selkie, a creature who can shapeshift from a human to a seal. Much like "Kells," "Song of the Sea" borrows from Irish culture to tell a story of children facing a world of fantasy.
Cartoon Saloon
"A Cat In Paris" (Netflix) In the same vein as Cartoon Saloon is this French kid-friendly noir about a Parisian feline who is a little girl's best friend by day and a jewel thief's accomplice by night. Both worlds collide when the girl and thief uncover a plan by a vicious gang to steal a rare statue.
Gebeka
"World of Tomorrow" (Netflix) Finally, we have two works from arguably the finest indie animator of this century, Don Hertzfeldt. First is his Oscar-nominated short about a little girl (voiced by Hertzfeldt's four-year-old niece) who is transported to the future by a third-generation clone of herself.
Bitter FIlms
"It's Such A Beautiful Day" (Netflix) This is Hertzfeldt's magnum opus, a trilogy of short films about a man named Bill who explores his past while slowly dying from a degenerative disease. What starts as an absurdist comedy quite suddenly transforms into a heartbreaking and deeply moving meditation on the beauty of living and the struggle of coming to terms with death.
Bitter FIlms
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Start with Disney, move on to some classic kids cartoons, and then jump into animated depictions of our shared mortality
The best thing about animation is that, more than any other genre, it has a massive range of visual possibilities. With any given movie or TV show, you'll get a story with a completely unique display of color, mood and artistry -- from worldwide hits created by major studios to lesser known indie gems and avant-garde masterpieces.