Kinda trippin'

A couple of years ago, our music writer at the paper asked my husband if he'd cover a Toby Keith concert for him. I'm not a big country fan, but we got a couple of tickets and headed down. And, frankly, if I'm going to listen to country, Toby Keith is all right. I also ended up liking Montgomery Gentry, the opening act. The show was at Journal Pavilion in Albuquerque (now called "The Hard Rock Casino Albuquerque Presents The Pavilion," which I still just call Journal Pavilion because I'm so sure I'm going to say all of that).

OK, so at some point they had a break early on and someone else took the stage. We were told they were filming something, but I didn't really pay attention to what. It was just a little annoying because the area in which we were seated was blocked off in the aisles and we couldn't come or go. We were close to the front.

Colin Farrell and Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart." 

Fast forward a few years and we finally got around to seeing "Crazy Heart," the Oscar-winning film starring Jeff Bridges, Colin Farrell and Maggie Gyllenhall. We were aware that it was filmed in New Mexico. And there was a concert scene where we said, "Oh, that must be Journal Pavilion!" Later, it had a thank you in the credits for Toby Keith and Montgomery Gentry and it dawned on me that this must have been what they were filming during the concert we were at. And since we were pretty close to the front, I thought that maybe we could be seen in the footage, but upon closer inspection, we could not.

Somehow I missed the announcement that that was Colin Farrell on stage (Mark remembers it, but didn't understand what was going on). If only I'd known, I swear I would have thrown my underwear at him or something. Phooey! Oh, yeah, and Jeff Bridges is pretty cool, too.

I thought I should post a little bit about this film, because it's a really good one. And I've written in the past about how movies always make New Mexico look really bad. I wouldn't say this one made us look like anything dagnab special, but it doesn't make us look like inbred cannibals either. Bonus!

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P.S. More "Nuevo Mexico: It's not what you think" posts can be found here.