And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003) on Netflix
NR20031h 52mBiographyDramaHistory
Pancho Villa needs money for his war against Mexico's military-run government. He invites American studios to film his battles, and Frank Thayer is sent to Mexico to negotiate the deal.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.5/103,902 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes51%
Trailer
Plot summary
Pancho Villa's war against Mexico's military-run government lacks money, and an American press campaign led by the Hearst media empire has turned opinion against him. Villa sends his lieutenant, Sam Dreben, to approach American film studios with an offer: send a crew to photograph his battles. D.W. Griffith takes an interest and persuades Harry Aitken, the boss at Mutual Film, to send one. Aitken's nephew Frank Thayer, an errand boy at the studio, travels to Mexico with a camera crew and makes a good impression on Villa, who insists that Thayer run the project. Thayer films Villa leading his men in battle, and the first footage fails with backers.
Cast
- Lilia Zelinnaas Rosita
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Raoul Walsh, who played Pancho Villa as a young man in The Life of General Villa, wrote in his autobiography Each Man in His Time that after firing squads, peasants knocked gold fillings out of the teeth of corpses with rocks; the footage left projectionists in Los Angeles vomiting.
- At the time it was made, And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself was the most expensive two-hour television or cable film ever, with a budget of over $30 million.
- Pancho Villa's real contract with Frank N. Thayer and the Mutual Film Company, signed on January 5, 1914, to film the Battle of Ojinaga, still exists and is kept in a museum in Mexico City.
- The Life of General Villa, the 1914 film whose making And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself dramatizes, became the first American feature-length movie, introducing viewers to the true horrors of war.
- Frank N. Thayer persuaded studios to make The Life of General Villa, which they feared no one would sit through for more than an hour, by arguing they could raise ticket prices to ten cents, double the going rate.
