Two stories landed this week, from the AP and USA Today respectively, regarding Marfa, Texas, the westerly town that played host to the productions of "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" last year.

Here's a look at Scott Bowles' piece at USA Today:

Not that many Marfans have seen either film. The closest theater is in Alpine, 26 miles east. The tiny Rangra Theater, however, does have two screens. One is showing No Country, the other Blood. Neither sells out much.

"I thought they were OK," retired rancher Bill Owens, 61, says over an enormous dill pickle, a favorite theater concession. "I hope they win (Oscars) because it'll be good for Marfa. A little artsy-fartsy, though. They weren't no Giant, I'll tell you that."

Hahahaha!  I love it.  Next up, here's a peek at the un-by-lined AP story, via Yahoo! Movies:

When Hollywood needs Western desolation, it comes to Marfa.

More than 50 years ago, famed filmmaker George Stevens also settled on this area for his epic Texas oil tale "Giant," which starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. (Stevens won a best director Oscar for "Giant" in 1957, the only win of that film's 10 nominations).

The stark, gorgeous landscape outside the town shows up in all three films, and it isn't just the wide open desert horizon that directors take advantage of. They also employ the locals.

In the depot scene from "Blood," filmed at the 59,000-acre MacGuire Ranch, it was lifelong rancher David Williams who led the group off the train. Not that he was scene-stealing.

"I wasn't trying to get in the movie or be a movie star," said Williams, 38.

When Williams first escorted location scouts here four years ago, the only structers were the long, unused railroad tracks that lead to Mexico and an old water tank that supplied steam engines of a past era. Houses, a block-long town, an oil well site and a church atop a hill were built later to represent Bakersfield, Calif., in 1910.

The New York Times, mind you, was all over this story waaaaay back in August of 2006.  Here's a look at Whitney Joiner's piece:

Until six months ago W. E. Love, also known as Chip, had not particularly intended to carry on his family’s cinematic legacy. Then Joel and Ethan Coen came to town.

Like many people raised in this isolated West Texas town near the Mexican border, Mr. Love, 49, grew up with a small connection to Hollywood: his grandmother was an extra in the 1956 film “Giant.” That Texas epic, touted at the time as the most expensive movie ever made, irrevocably changed Marfa, a drought-plagued ranching town that had long seen better days. The film’s stars — Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean — drew crowds at the Hotel Paisano on Marfa’s main street, and the movie employed hundreds of locals as extras.

Operating on a somewhat less grand scale, the Coens — the writing and directing team behind “Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” — visited Marfa last March, as they searched for ranch land on which to film their latest project, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel “No Country for Old Men.”

...The president of Marfa’s only bank, Mr. Love also owns a cattle ranch and gave the Coens a tour of his property when they scouted locations last spring. As the filmmakers and Mr. Love sat on his back porch talking, Joel Coen asked if Mr. Love would be interested in playing a small role in the movie.

“He said, ‘It’s pretty easy — it’ll just take a couple of days,’ ” Mr. Love recalled recently. “ ‘But there’s two bad things: You have to fall down, and you get killed.’ ” (The part Mr. Coen envisioned for Mr. Love was one of the hit man’s victims, who comes to a grotesquely bloody end.) Mr. Love warned the Coens that he wasn’t an actor: the only time he’d performed was in a high school production of “The Wizard of Oz.” “They said, ‘Perfect!’ ” he recalled. “I’m kind of bashful, but I thought it’d be a real goof.”

Check out the rest; it's a great read.