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John Hollenhorst ReportingFor people who love great movies and great scenery, it's pretty hard to top an event in Southeastern Utah this weekend.
It was a special showing of a classic film, in the classic place where it was shot.
'The Searchers' came home this weekend.
It's the 50th anniversary of a film, considered one of the greatest of all time, shot in Monument Valley by director John Ford.
The film's star, John Wayne, was there in spirit, through the eyes of his daughter.
Has there ever been a movie more in tune with it's location? "The Searchers" features John Wayne as an embittered Civil War veteran.
His angry search for his niece kidnapped by Indians is a morality tale, a struggle for civilized values in a forbidding landscape.
Today, tourists take pictures in the locations immortalized by director John Ford. Until this weekend John Wayne's daughter had never seen Monument Valley.
Marisa Wayne/ John Wayne's Daughter: "No. It's gorgeous. Takes my breath away."
She came for a special outdooor showing put on by the Internet movie company Netflix. They're using a huge inflatable movie screen. From the side it looks like a giant truck tire.
"The Searchers" is one of ten famous movies they're showing in ten famous locations.
Marisa Wayne: "It's really just so majestic and so beautiful. And to be able to see it here on the big screen, how fun is that going to be?"
Singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb emceed the event.
Lisa Loeb/ Singer-Songwriter: "They selected places where the locations were really integral to the movie. For example, here in Monument Valley you couldn't have made 'The Searchers' without this setting."
When they showed Field of Dreams in Iowa they got 6,000 people. In Colorado they got a thousand people for The Shining. But around here, where are the people?
Lisa Loeb/ Singer-Songwriter: "Well, look where we are. We're out in the middle of nature."
But when the show started, there were about 100 film fans. Some came a long way to tour Monument Valley and see a legendary movie.
Cheb Patak/ Redway, Calif. Resident: "I've not really seen it before. But I do know it was voted the fifth best film of all time in 1992."
Salt Laker Stan Covington came for John Wayne, and the scenery.
Stan Covington/ Salt Lake City Resident: "You know it's a good part of Utah. It's beautiful and you see it in so many different movies."
The Searchers is dark and disturbing, John Wayne's harsh character just barely softened in the end by love. But the film helped establish Utah scenery as an iconic image of the West.
Aaron Syrett/ Director, Utah Film Commission: "Easily considered one of the best films ever made. And it's been a great postcard for Utah and movie-making in Utah."
Marisa Wayne says her father considered it one of his greatest films, and so does she.
When she first met her future husband, he'd never seen a John Wayne movie. The first one she played for him was "The Searchers".
