And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself

Infobox Film
name = And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself


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director = Bruce Beresford
producer = Tony Mark
writer = Larry Gelbart
narrator =
starring = Antonio Banderas Eion Bailey Alan Arkin Jim Broadbent
music =
cinematography =
editing =
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released = 7 September 2003 (USA)
runtime = 112 min
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budget =
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website =
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imdb_id = 0337824

"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.Fact|date=August 2007

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.

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.

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)

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)

References

External links

*imdb title|id=0337824|title=And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself