When a mysterious production known only as the “BC Project” descended on Downtown El Paso in the summer of 2024, locals were buzzing. Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro had been spotted at an El Paso Chihuahuas game. Film crews were taking over Stanton Street. Something big was happening and El Pasoans knew it. On Sunday night, the world found out just how big.
One Battle After Another, director Paul Thomas Anderson‘s sprawling, Pynchon-inspired action thriller, took home six awards at the 98th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. The city that lent the film its soul had every reason to celebrate.
Courtesy: Iris Lopez
Courtesy: Iris LopezJacob Cena: The Man Who Made El Paso Impossible to Ignore
Before a single camera rolled on One Battle After Another, before Paul Thomas Anderson ever fell in love with the Chihuahuas or the fluorescent green walls of a perfume shop on El Paso Street, there was Jacob Cena.
Born and raised in El Paso, Cena is a Location Manager and Picture Car Coordinator who has spent decades doing everything in his power to bring Hollywood to the Borderland. At the cast and crew screening of the film, PTA himself called Cena the real mayor of El Paso. It is a title Cena has more than earned.
Cena has been in the motion pictures industry for over 25 years, working as a picture car coordinator on Glory Road, as a location scout and dignitary VIP protection on Sicario, and most recently as film location manager on One Battle After Another. Film after film, production after production, Cena has been the man on the ground ensuring that Hollywood keeps coming back to the Sun City.
For the BC Project alone, Cena worked closely with Anderson and his crew for over a year, scouting locations, building relationships, and ensuring an unforgettable experience for Warner Bros. and everyone involved locally. He scouted 130 properties in Downtown El Paso alone. It was Cena who first walked Anderson through the city’s rooftops and storefronts. It was Cena who helped the director discover the neighborhood’s authentic beauty, its safety, and most importantly, its people.
Cena also manages Indian Cliffs Ranch, a storied filming location that has hosted productions including Courage Under Fire starring Denzel Washington, further cementing his role as El Paso’s indispensable bridge to the film industry.
Anderson sent Cena a personal letter following the shoot, a rare gesture from one of Hollywood’s most celebrated directors. Cena put the entire experience in perspective with characteristic humility: “It was hard because we’ve never had such a big production here in El Paso. He had to convince and tug Warner Brothers to come film down here. But what won him over was the people, and that’s how we overcame this. It was a group effort.”
Cena has also been one the most fervent supporters of a higher film incentive here in the city, hoping to make El Paso a more competitive prospect for big productions to shoot here in El Paso!
Downtown El Paso as a Hollywood Set: The Locations You Recognize
El Paso wasn’t just a backdrop in One Battle After Another. It was a co-star. Though much of the film was shot across California, El Paso provided an irreplaceable setting with its historic architecture and authentic Latino businesses.
One of the film’s most gripping sequences opens with a character navigating Downtown El Paso and boarding a historic El Paso Streetcar, before cutting to a tense home scene in Sunset Heights and then a dramatic vehicle chase racing through a Franklin Avenue underpass with the Union Depot train station visible behind it.
Sensei Sergio St. Carlos’ karate dojo was filmed in a vacant storefront at 604 South Stanton Street in Downtown El Paso, and the riot and rooftop escape scenes were shot in and around Stanton Street between Overland Avenue and Paisano Drive. These were not manufactured sets. They were El Paso’s actual streets, filled with El Paso’s actual people.
Production designer Florencia Martin described how a chance discovery of Genesis Perfumeria on El Paso Street, with its striking fluorescent green interior and thousands of perfume bottles, helped give Benicio del Toro’s character his entire story arc.
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What the Stars Said About El Paso on the World Stage
The love was mutual, and it showed. Del Toro reflected that going to see the Chihuahuas and soaking in Downtown El Paso gave the film a whole new texture. DiCaprio gave a personal shoutout to the local store owners who opened their doors to the production, noting that the real people behind those counters genuinely shaped the course of the movie.
Producer Sara Murphy described the El Paso shoot as “a sort of family affair,” noting that as del Toro began absorbing the community around him, the storyline started to develop in ways the team hadn’t anticipated.
Cinematographer Michael Bauman praised El Paso’s generosity in granting access to downtown, calling it critical for both the car chase and the riot scene.
Gilberto Martinez Jr., an El Paso native, plays the skateboarder BeeGee in the film’s central set piece, one of many local residents who brought authenticity and urgency to Anderson’s story of rebellion and parenthood.
Why Paul Thomas Anderson Chose El Paso to Tell This Story
It is no accident that Anderson chose El Paso. The film’s fictional city of Baktan Cross is conceived as a blend of Eureka and El Paso, a border community that captures the political tension and human complexity at the heart of the story. The Borderland’s immigrant neighborhoods, bilingual streets, and layered history gave the film something no studio set could manufacture: truth.
El Paso Film Commission director Chris Mayer-Oakes noted that Anderson seemed to take inspiration from going up on those rooftops, camera in hand, looking south across the border crossings deep into neighboring Ciudad Juarez. The location continued to inspire him and help him focus on how he wanted to tell the story.
And none of it would have happened without a kid from El Paso who spent 25 years convincing Hollywood that his city was worth the trip. As Cena has said plainly, every filmmaker who has ever come to El Paso has loved it, and he intends to keep bringing them here.
Every Oscar One Battle After Another Won at the 98th Academy Awards
One Battle After Another led all films with six wins on Sunday night out of 13 nominations. Here is the complete list of the film’s Oscar victories:
Best PictureBest Director — Paul Thomas AndersonBest Supporting Actor — Sean Penn as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Penn’s third Oscar, making him only the fourth male actor in history to achieve that milestone)Best Adapted Screenplay — Paul Thomas AndersonBest Film Editing — Andy JurgensenBest Casting — Cassandra Kulukundis (the first-ever Oscar awarded in this category)
Anderson, who had been nominated 14 times previously without a win, accepted his Best Director award with a wry sense of humor: “You make a guy work hard for one of these. I really appreciate it.”
Six Oscars and a City That Earned Every One of Them
Six Oscars. Best Picture. Best Director. For El Paso, a city that watched DiCaprio and del Toro roam its downtown streets just over a year ago, it is a moment of genuine, hard-earned pride.
The city showed up for the film. Jacob Cena made sure the film showed up for the city. And now the whole world knows what El Pasoans have always known.
Look at that view, indeed.
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