And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself

Directed by	Bruce Beresford
Written by	Larry Gelbart
Starring	Antonio Banderas Eion Bailey Alan Arkin Jim Broadbent
Release date(s)	7 September 2003 (USA)
Running time	112 min
IMDb profile

And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself was a 2003 television film starring Antonio Banderas as Pancho Villa. The movie's tagline is Lights. Camera. Revolution.

At the time of production, this was the most expensive 2-hour television/cable movie ever made, with a budget of over $30 million.^{[citation needed]}

The film is based on The Life of General Villa which was shot in 1914. The actual contract that Pancho Villa signed with Frank N. Thayer and the Mutual Film Company on January 5, 1914 to film the Battle of Ojinaga still exists and is in a museum in Mexico City. The original film has been lost, but some unedited film reels of the battle, showing Pancho Villa and his army fighting Federal forces, as well as photographs and publicity stills taken from the original film still exist.

1 Plot
2 Cast and characters
3 Awards
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Plot

Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa (Antonio Banderas) finds himself without adequate funding to finance his war against the military-run government. He also finds himself at odds with the Americans because of the Hearst media empire's press campaign against him. To counter both of these threats, he sends emissaries to movie producers to convince them to pay to film his progress and the actual battles. Producer D.W. Griffith (Colm Feore) becomes interested and sends Frank Thayer (Eion Bailey) with a film crew to develop film reels.

Thayer becomes horrified and fascinated by the bandit. He finds an enigmatic individual that is both ghoulishly brutal and charmingly captivating. The resulting film became the first feature length movie, introducing scores of Americans to the true horrors of war that they had never personally seen. Thayer sold the studios on making the film despite their concerns that no one would sit through a movie longer than 1 hour by convincing them that they could raise the price of movies to ten cents, doubling the going price at that time.

[edit] Cast and characters

Antonio Banderas — Pancho Villa
Eion Bailey — Frank Thayer
Alan Arkin — Sam Drebben
Jim Broadbent — Harry Aitken
Matt Day — John Reed
Kyle Chandler - Raoul Walsh
Michael McKean — William Christy Cabanne
Colm Feore — D.W. Griffith
Alexa Davalos — Teddy Sampson
Anthony Head — William Benton (as Anthony Stewart Head)

[edit] Awards

Won 2005 Art Directors Guild award for Excellence in Production Design
Nominated in 2004 for Broadcast Film Critics Association for Best Picture Made for Television
Nominated for 2004 Costume Designer Guild CDG Award for "Excellence in Costume Design for Television"
Won 2004 Emmy Award for "Outstanding Sound Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special"
Nominated for 2004 Emmy Awards for "Outstanding Art Direction for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special", "Outstanding Cinematography for a Miniseries or Movie", "Outstanding Costumes for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special", "Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie", "Outstanding Made for Television Movie", "Outstanding Makeup for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special", "Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special"
Nominated for 2004 Golden Globe for "Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television" (for Antonio Banderas)