And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself

And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself is a 2003 American Western biographical drama television film directed by Bruce Beresford, written by Larry Gelbart, and starring Antonio Banderas as Pancho Villa. The cast also includes Alan Arkin, Jim Broadbent, Michael McKean, Eion Bailey, and Alexa Davalos. It premiered on HBO on September 7, 2003.

And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself
Genre	Western Biographical drama
Written by	Larry Gelbart
Directed by	Bruce Beresford
Starring	Antonio Banderas Eion Bailey Alan Arkin Jim Broadbent
Music by	Joseph Vitarelli
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
Production
Executive producers	Joshua D. Maurer Mark Gordon Larry Gelbart
Producers	Diane Sillan Isaacs Tony Mark Sue Jett
Cinematography	Peter James
Editors	Mark Warner Ed Warschilka
Running time	112 minutes
Production companies	The Mark Gordon Company City Entertainment
Budget	$30 million
Original release
Network	HBO
Release	September 7, 2003 (2003-09-07)

Executive producer Joshua D. Maurer, who originally conceived the story and did extensive research, sold the project to HBO and then brought on executive producer Mark Gordon and hired Gelbart to write the screenplay. At the time of production, this was the most expensive 2-hour television/cable film ever made, with a budget of over $30 million. It was shot almost entirely on location in and around San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Plot

In 1923 with studio executive Frank N. Thayer receiving a letter in the mail, alongside a medallion of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Thayer then flashes back to the height of the Mexican Revolution. Pancho Villa finds himself without adequate funding to finance his war against the military-run government. Villa also finds himself at odds with the Americans because of the Hearst media empire's press campaign against him. He has a Jewish-American lieutenant of his, Sam Dreben, to send feelers to American film studios. Villa's plan is to convince them to send film crew to film his battles. D.W. Griffith is immediately interested and convinces Mutual Film Studios boss Harry T. Aitken to send a crew. As Aitken’s nephew, Thayer is initially assigned an errand boy for the studio, but he makes a good impression with Villa, who demands that Thayer be placed in charge of the project. Thayer and a camera crew team film Villa leading his men to victory in battle. Despite the failure of this initial footage (which draws derisive laughter from potential backers) Thayer convinces Aitken to invest even more money in a second attempt, and also convinces Villa to participate in making a more narrative film.

Thayer returns to Mexico with a director, actors, producers, cameramen and screenwriters, and begin to film Villa's previous exploits using a younger actor, future film director Raoul Walsh as Villa. The filming goes well, although Villa becomes angry that the screenwriters and the director have decided to use creative license to enhance the film. However, he agrees to do a cameo appearance as an older version of himself. Meanwhile, Thayer begins a romance with actress Teddy Sampson. He also is assigned two young child soldiers as editing assistants by Villa.

The next morning, Villa assembles his men to attack the Federal-held stronghold of Torreon. Thayer and his team go in to film the battle. A skirmish on the way to the fort occurs, with Villa's army repelling the Federales, though one of Thayer's assistants loses his life. Villa's army arrives at Torreon and lays siege. Villa's army is initially successful, but they suffer heavy casualties and are forced to withdraw. That night, Villa orders his army to bombard Torreon into submission. The next morning, Villa's cavalry finishes off the last of Torreon's Federal defenders. However, Thayer and his camera crew team witness Villa shooting a widow in cold blood during the aftermath of the battle. Disgusted, the team leaves.

The Life of General Villa is shown in theaters in the U.S., and to great success, although Thayer and his crew end up regretting their participation. At the premiere, Thayer is also dismayed to find out that Teddy has broken off their romance. Nine years later, Thayer meets with Drebin in a restaurant. Having lost an eye and arm during the Revolution, he laments at the current Mexican government being no better than Huerta's. He is equally displeased that Thayer did not gift Villa with a copy of the film as promised.

Later Thayer reads the letter he was mailed. It is from his surviving assistant, who has since grown to manhood, married, and has a child with Villa as the godfather. The ex-assistant recounts that Villa had been assassinated, though the people of Mexico still hold him in great regard. The letter inspires Thayer to return to Mexico in order to screen the film, where it is met with a passionate audience who deliver a standing ovation during Villa's ending speech.

Thayer then goes on to narrate that Villa has since been reinterred in Mexico City to great fanfare, while the film has since become a lost film. He also states that he has become a footnote in history, though he "does not mind being a footnote to a legend."

Cast

• Antonio Banderas as Pancho Villa
• Eion Bailey as Frank N. Thayer
• Alan Arkin as Sam Dreben
• Jim Broadbent as Harry Aitken
• Matt Day as John Reed
• Kyle Chandler as Raoul Walsh
• Michael McKean as William Christy Cabanne
• Colm Feore as D. W. Griffith
• Alexa Davalos as Teddy Sampson
• Anthony Head as William Benton
• Saul Rubinek as Eli Morton
• Damián Alcázar as General Rodolfo Fierro
• Pedro Armendáriz, Jr. as Don Luis Terrazas

Context

The film concerns the filming of The Life of General Villa (which was shot in 1914) and is seen through the eyes of Frank N. Thayer, a studio boss's nephew who gets a career boost when he is placed in charge of the project. The resulting film became the first American feature-length movie, introducing scores of viewers 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. 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.

Raoul Walsh, who played Villa as a young man in The Life of General Villa, wrote extensively about the experience in his autobiography Each Man in His Time, describing Villa's charisma as well as noting that peasants would knock the teeth out of corpses with rocks in the wake of firing squads in order to harvest the gold fillings, which was captured on film and had the projectionists vomiting in the screening room back in Los Angeles.

The original film's producer, D. W. Griffith, directed The Birth of a Nation in 1915, which featured Walsh as John Wilkes Booth. That same year, Walsh directed the first gangster movie, Regeneration, on location in New York City on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and went on to direct approximately 138 movies, including such films as The Big Trail (1930) with John Wayne (Walsh discovered Wayne as a propman, renamed him, and cast him in the lead in this widescreen epic), Me and My Gal (1932) with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, The Bowery with Wallace Beery and George Raft, The Roaring Twenties with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, High Sierra (1941) with Ida Lupino and Bogart, They Died with Their Boots On (1941) with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, White Heat (1949) with Cagney, and Band of Angels (1957) with Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier.

Accolades

Year	Award	Category	Nominee(s)	Result	Ref.
2004	Artios Awards	Best Casting – TV Movie of the Week	John Papsidera	Nominated	[1]
	Cinema Audio Society Awards	Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Television – Movies and Mini-Series	Hank Garfield, Rick Ash, Adam Jenkins, and Drew Webster	Nominated	[2]
	Costume Designers Guild Awards	Outstanding Period/Fantasy Television Series	Eduardo Castro	Nominated	[3]
	Critics' Choice Awards	Best Picture Made for Television		Nominated	[4]
	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television	Antonio Banderas	Nominated	[5]
	Golden Reel Awards	Best Sound Editing in Television Long Form – Dialogue and ADR	Zack Davis, Geoffrey G. Rubay, Lou Kleinman, and David Williams	Won	[6]
		Best Sound Editing in Television Long Form – Sound Effects and Foley	Zack Davis, Geoffrey G. Rubay, Tony Lamberti, Carey Milbradt, Bruce Tanis, Karen Vassar Triest, and David Williams	Won
		Best Sound Editing in Television Long Form – Music	Allan K. Rosen, Nicholas Viterelli, and Joshua Winget	Nominated
	Imagen Awards	Best Movie for Television		Won
		Best Actor in a Television Drama	Antonio Banderas	Won
	Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild Awards	Best Makeup – Television Mini-Series/Movie of the Week	Dorothy J. Pearl	Nominated	[7]
	NAMIC Vision Awards	Best Drama		Nominated
		Best Dramatic Performance	Antonio Banderas	Won
	Primetime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Made for Television Movie	Joshua D. Maurer, Mark Gordon, Larry Gelbart, Gary Levinsohn, Tony Mark, Sue Jett, and Diane Sillan Isaacs	Nominated	[8]
		Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie	Antonio Banderas	Nominated
		Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special	Larry Gelbart	Nominated
		Outstanding Art Direction for a Miniseries or Movie	Herbert Pinter, Bernardo Trujillo, and Jay Aroesty	Nominated
		Outstanding Cinematography for a Miniseries or Movie	Peter James	Nominated
		Outstanding Costumes for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special	Eduardo Castro, Michael R. Chapman, and Bárbara González Monsreal	Nominated
		Outstanding Makeup for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Non-Prosthetic)	Dorothy J. Pearl and Nena Smarz	Nominated
		Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special	Mark Warner and Edward Warschilka	Nominated
		Outstanding Sound Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special	Geoffrey G. Rubay, Zack Davis, Tony Lamberti, David Williams, Karen Vassar Triest, Bruce Tanis, Carey Milbradt, Lou Kleinman, Allan K. Rosen, Nicholas Viterelli, Joshua Winget, and Michael Lyle	Won
	Producers Guild of America Awards	David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television	Joshua D. Maurer, Mark Gordon, and Larry Gelbart	Nominated	[9]
	Satellite Awards	Best Motion Picture Made for Television		Nominated	[10]
		Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film	Eion Bailey	Nominated
	Writers Guild of America Awards	Long Form – Original	Larry Gelbart	Won	[11]
2005	Art Directors Guild Awards	Excellence in Production Design Award – Television Movie or Mini-series	Herbert Pinter, Bernardo Trujillo, and Gian Fabio Bosco	Won	[12]