"Children of 'Giant'" is a documentary film that unearths deeply wrought emotions in the small West Texas town of Marfa, | dG1fdXFCWVBwOElmUXc
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 This towering frame in West Texas is all that remains of a Hollywood movie set.
00:07 Weather-worn ruins are the last remnants of the Riata Mansion,
00:12 an iconic image for the film that would become a classic in American cinema.
00:17 Filmed in 1955, "Giant," based on the novel by Edna Ferber, opened to critical acclaim.
00:25 It starred Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson and was nominated for ten Academy Awards.
00:33 It would be the last movie James Dean would make.
00:37 "Giant" is the epic drama of three generations of a Texas ranching dynasty.
00:44 The press from all over the world came there every day.
00:49 There was one particular house that was just for the press.
00:52 So they would fly in, as they would fly in, another group would be coming in, passing each other en route.
00:58 To be cast for one of the biggest movies that ever Hollywood made,
01:04 after "Gun with a Wing," was a big, big movie.
01:08 I was just amazed. I couldn't believe it.
01:11 Director George Stevens would challenge the frontier myth with themes of power and greed,
01:18 the role of women and racial intolerance, daring and controversial themes for a changing America.
01:25 "Giant" is a new kind of Western.
01:28 It's about rethinking the myth of the frontier in the 20th century,
01:33 about American capitalism, about greed, about money.
01:38 I'm going to have more money than you ever thought you could have.
01:41 You and all the rest of you stinking sons of Benedicts.
01:45 The Elizabeth Taylor character was a feminist before, I think it was a subject of discussion in this country.
01:55 It focused on a different kind of racial color line in the Western.
02:01 This was about Mexican-American race prejudice.
02:04 As Mexican-Americans, we re-read it as a story, our story.
02:11 This was a story that was rarely seen anywhere in the media,
02:15 and for sure not in a big-budget, epic Hollywood movie.
02:19 My father had a very strong sense of fairness and justice.
02:24 And he saw the opportunity in this film to really address that subject
02:29 in a way that motion pictures in America had not yet done.
02:33 This is the story of the people who were there,
02:38 many of them children, who witnessed firsthand the making of Giant.
02:43 What they saw was a reflection of themselves,
02:48 not realizing that Giant would become a lasting chronicle of the very lives they were living
02:54 in the summer of 1955.
02:57 [Music]
03:11 [MUSIC]