I was listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross on the ride home from work tonight and happened to catch her fascinating interview with Christopher Frayling, author of a new book about spaghetti westerns entitled, Once Upon A Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone. He was an engaging speaker, and had quite a few interesting stories to share with Terry regarding Leone's film oeuvre.

During the course of the interview, Frayling mentioned that one of Leone's sets, the town of El Paso from For A Few Dollars More, had been turned into a tourist attraction in southern Spain called Mini Hollywood. Funny thing is, I knew that already because we'd stopped there back in 1991 while we were vacationing in Almeria. I loved those movies, so it was pretty cool seeing the actual sets that Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef had worked on back in the day.

And, in a bit of oddly serendipitious timing, when I got home and took a gander at fwak!, I saw that they'd posted this cool site for a Leone exhibit at the Autry Center. Click on the search links to view a small sampling of the posters and lobby cards currently on display.

You can read a lot more about Leone's westerns at A Fistful-of-Leone.