Did San Juan Bautista land on the ‘One Battle After Another’ cutting room floor?

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In February 2024, after two weeks of meticulous setup by his vast film crew and as part of a seven-month production, director and 11-time Oscar nominee Paul Thomas Anderson oversaw a three-night shoot at San Juan Bautista State Historic Park for his then-titled “DL Project.” 

Released on Sept. 26 to critical acclaim as “One Battle After Another,” the finished product will challenge anyone trying to find San Juan in this two-hour and 41-minute film, as they will need something akin to high-level “Where’s Waldo” skills and more than a little wishful thinking. 

Is San Juan in it at all? After sitting through the film twice, taking notes, and speaking with Wes Gray, the acting sector manager who oversees the park and the two buildings used in the production, the answer is, “Err… umm…maybe?” 

“As far as San Juan Bautista,” Gray said, “there’s nothing easily identifiable that I could tell that made it into the movie. But there might have been one scene.”

(In narrative terms, that is known as a “cliffhanger.”)

“One Battle After Another,” which boasts a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score, is based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel, “Vineland.” It is a relentless chase film that jumps between two decades and a dozen locations which follows Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfida (Teyana Taylor), who, along with Deandra (Regina Hall), who are members of a radical political cell known as the French 75 which is fighting ICE-like government forces in detention centers and city streets with prescient echoes of current events. 

The group is being pursued by immigration enforcement officers lead by Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) and, when circumstances cause the couple to be parted, Bob is left to care for their daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti, making her screen debut). Cutting to 16 years later, Bob and Willa are suddenly separated as well, and the rest of the film follows his and Lockjaw’s search for her.

The production in San Juan was limited to three locations: the State Park Plaza, the Zanetta House and the Plaza Hotel Saloon. After the shoot was announced, rumors immediately spread about which cast members would be working on the sets. The setup crew wouldn’t offer any details, but the director and three of the principal cast members were seen in San Juan for the filming.

Their presence was celebrated online in a mix of friendly and intrusive ways, through posts by locals on Facebook and Instagram, including these sightings:

• DiCaprio was seen by a local who slipped onto the set pretending to be a member of the crew. She stood next to him outside the Plaza Hotel Saloon until she was discovered and ejected from the set.
• Penn was caught on the security camera at Windmill Market making a purchase and was also seen being shuttled from the film’s base camp at Second and San Jose Streets to the shoot at the state park. 
• Hall was not shy about visiting the town, as proven by her congenial visits to Daisy’s Bar which were captured and shared on social media by several people.
• Anderson was seen dining in the city and was spotted ordering a beverage on Third Street just before the first evening’s shoot.

Without giving anything away, the cast information and the presence of military vehicles suggest that any scenes shot in San Juan would have been in the first part of the film, before Bob and Perfida’s separation. Otherwise, most of the plot in that part of the film takes place in immigrant detention centers or large cities, ruling out San Juan as a setting for any of those scenes.

The easiest online rumor to dispel is that Mission San Juan Bautista is the location of the scenes that occur a little over halfway through the movie, which feature a convent with a corridor of brick arches, several adobe-walled rooms, and a large chapel.

The location for those scenes is actually La Purísima Mission State Historic Park, from a shoot that Gray said shut that park down for five weeks. As one of three California Missions owned by the state park system, La Purisima does not have an active church, which he said may have made it easier to use as a location. 

The Plaza, the only outdoor location used in the State Park shoot, was set up with tables and decorations for an evening scene that featured a fiesta or celebration. No footage like that appears in the film. 

This brings us back to Gray’s speculation about the one scene he thought might have survived the editing process. It is pictured in the lead photo in this article, and there are hints that he may be right.

“DiCaprio is in a bar,” he said, “and making some sort of explosive. I think that was shot in the Plaza Hotel saloon, but you can’t tell. It’s all zoomed in. I remember seeing a Budweiser light in the background when I peeked in. That’s the only thing that I could tell.”

At first glance, the counter that DiCaprio is sitting behind is very similar to that in the saloon. There is a distinctive wooden adornment that runs the length of the saloon’s bar, which is close in design to the counter in the film. 

However, photos taken through the door of the saloon while the location was being dressed, and published in a BenitoLink article, show features that do not appear in the scene in the film, such as a neon Budweiser sign and a tall refrigerated cooler for beer. There would have been a window and distinctive wallpaper directly behind DiCaprio, and the placement of the bar’s wooden adornment differs slightly from the one in the film. 

Sadly, it seems safe to assume that the scene was not shot in the bar.

The production credits at the end of the film list the shooting locations as Eureka, Sacramento, Tracy, Stockton, Borrego Springs, Walter’s Camp, Lompoc and San Diego in California and El Paso in Texas—omitting San Juan completely. The State Park’s Zanetta House, however, is listed by name in the Internet Movie Database as a location. 

The film crew carried out renovations on the house under the cover of night, and the glow from lights in the second-story windows served as the first hint to locals that setup was beginning for one of the movie’s locations.

There is one scene, approximately 20 minutes into the film, that evokes a Zanetta House vibe. It is shot in what appears to be a furnished, Victorian-era drawing room when the characters played by DiCaprio and Taylor are visiting her parents. However, as Grey explained, the interior of the home was totally altered in appearance for the film, eliminating that location as a possibility. 

“They dressed the house to be like a barracks for soldiers,” he said. “And the bottom story was a cafe-hotel type thing. I don’t remember it being like a residential-type place.” 

However, there is one last hope for the Zanetta House—and this is where the “err… umm…maybe” comes into the story. 

At the end of that interior scene, the film cuts to a shot in which DiCaprio rushes out to a waiting car, gets in, and is driven away. The action takes about four seconds of screen time, just enough to show fragments of the exterior and, in the distance and across what appears to be a plaza, a very long, single-story building.

As brief as that moment is, it is not hard to imagine that it is the arched front passage of the mission. But it will take the DVD release and a frame-by-frame examination of whatever is buried in the darkness and obscurity to demonstrate it one way or another. 

So… maybe.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter whether San Juan is in the movie. Regardless of that outcome, Anderson’s production crew brought a welcome moment of prosperity to a small tourist town that needed the financial support. 

And now, articles about the film’s locations that might be oblivious to the facts, including one in Travel and Leisure that describes the “beautiful, historic town of San Juan Bautista” as a “key shooting location for several scenes,” still highlight San Juan Bautista in the international press.

That can’t be bad, from a tourism angle, and even misinformed attention from the press is better than none. And with a rumored 20 minutes having been cut after the film’s previews, there is always a chance that cut scenes will appear on an extended DVD release. 

In the meantime, there’s always Vertigo, the classic film where those same historic buildings shine under Hitchcock’s brilliant directing, and San Juan Bautista steals the spotlight.

“One Battle After Another” is currently playing at Premiere Cinemas in Hollister.

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