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Interview with Bruce Beresford
HBO
Tell us what you're about to shoot.
BRUCE BERESFORD
We're filming in one of the biggest haciendas in Mexico, which is more or less, a ruin these days. And we're shooting a big scene, one of the biggest scenes I have ever filmed - with horsemen and mounted troops, and explosions, and bombs, and people falling off walls, and it's exciting. It's very interesting.
HBO
Can you tell us a little about the technical aspects of shooting a scene like this?
BRUCE BERESFORD
Well, there is a group of well-trained stunt men, from both Mexico City, and from the U.S., who are doing all that stuff. They know all about horses. Evidently, if you fall on the ground - and there is a horse charging at you, he won't step on you; or he'll do his best not to; and he'll jump over you. But if you get kicked in the head, you are a bit unlucky. But nobody has been hurt - thank God.
HBO
Is this the most difficult aspect of shooting?
BRUCE BERESFORD
Well, oddly, I think, for a director, the most challenging scenes are really the dialogue scenes. You see, the action scenes - I storyboard them all. And then, I go through them with the horse people; I go through them with the stuntmen; I go through them with the assistant director and the cameraman.
Then once they are all set up - for me, I mean, relatively speaking, they are easy - because I thought them out, in the storyboards - and I wanted, you know, cannons here, and guns here, and explosions here. And then we really have to do it. And I can watch, and say, "Well, that wasn't quite right. The explosion should have been a bit earlier," or something like that.
But when I am directing dialogue scenes, it's often - . Well, it's much more tiring, because you are in there, hanging on every word. And, you know, you have got to go in, and you keep saying to the actors, you know, "I think we might have missed this nuance. Or, perhaps, you know, this should be the feeling of this point." I mean, it's really - . Every second, I am - I am concentrating.
And we shot a big dialogue scene, the other day, with Antonio Banderas, in which - well, one of the stronger scenes in the film - in which, he shoots a woman. A very powerful, a very well-written scene. Very, very hard to direct. And, I think, very hard to act - for everybody. And at the end of the day, I was much more exhausted than I was from shooting - action.
HBO
How has it been to work with Antonio Banderas?
BRUCE BERESFORD
Well, Antonio is a wonderful actor. I mean, he is very focused, very well-prepared, he has thought about it a lot, read about it a lot. And he is a very agreeable sort of guy to work with.
HBO
This is a different kind of role for Antonio than audiences have seen him in.
BRUCE BERESFORD
Well, he is playing Pancho Villa, you see? He is not doing the "Mask of Zorro" now. I mean, he can't look, really, like a romantic lead. And if he had those sort of beautiful, wide Hollywood teeth, it would just not be credible. And so the teeth have been darkened - and stained. It has to be believable. It's meant to be a very realistic film.
HBO
Were there any challenges working in this time period in Mexico?
BRUCE BERESFORD
The biggest was to get thousands of extras and to dress them all in costumes for the period. And I was quite surprised, when I came, you know? Everyone has seen photographs of Mexicans, wearing those great, big sombreros. When you come to Mexico, the astonishing thing is - nobody wears these hats - at all.
They used to, but they don't - now. So, I had great trouble finding them. They did find some here. But they had to bring in a lot from California. That surprised me. And then, of course, all the costumes have to be made. I mean, there is a lot of photographic records of the revolution. So, it was a lot of things we can base everything on because we have references.
Getting a train. We needed a train - Pancho Villa's train. That was tremendously difficult, because evidently the government here is shutting all the old trains into museums. And we had to find a train that - not only worked, but we could move up to a railway line, and be able to film there during the day.
It's all a huge logistical undertaking. And then the designer had to re-paint the train, so it looks like it's in 1913, because there were no old carriages. They all had to be altered. And perhaps, the most difficult thing is shooting scenes set in New York. And filming them 6,000 feet up in the mountains of Mexico. But we are shooting New York scenes with snow.
HBO
Tell us a little about the story.
BRUCE BERESFORD
Well the story is about an incident that really happened in Pancho Villa's life. During the Mexican Revolution in 1913, Pancho Villa - one of the leading Mexican revolutionaries against the government - was running very short of money, and he wanted publicity; he wanted goodwill spread about him, because he was getting bad press in America.
So, he invited Hollywood film companies to come into Mexico and make a film about him. He sent out an invitation, a number of them - but only one of them took the bait, which was the Mutual Film Company. They paid him $25,000 - which was a huge amount in 1913.
And they came down here with a group of cameramen, and a young producer named Frank Blair, and they made a movie called "The Life of General Villa." This was in 1913. Starring Pancho Villa - as himself. They really did this.
And it has been well-documented because some of the cameramen who came wrote memoirs about it. And our film deals with the relationship of Pancho Villa with the people in the American film crew. It doesn't cover his whole life; it's this specific incident in his life. But it covers many facets, too, of the revolution.
And I am directing two films. I am directing the film that we are doing. And I am directing the film that Christie Cabanay directed when he came here in 1913 - "The Life of General Villa." So, some of our film, is made in black and white. And that's to look like a silent movie. So, suddenly, I have to change styles and do black and white bits, remembering what films were like at that time.
Film wasn't so sensitive to light. They only had very wide-angle lenses. They didn't cut as much, as we do now. They tended to put the camera down, and everybody walked in front of it and acted, and then they all walked off. Cutting was quite infrequent.
So I looked at a lot of silent movies in the period so I could approximate the style. It was quite fun doing all that though.
HBO
Did you consult with anyone about the silent film era?
BRUCE BERESFORD
Well, yes. There is a silent film expert, Kevin Brownley, who is an old friend of mine from London. And he has written really all of the authoritative books on silent film. And in his book "The War of the West and the Wilderness," he actually interviewed a number of the people who came to Mexico and worked on the Pancho Villa film in 1913.
He interviewed Charles Rosher, who was the cameraman of that film, because Rosher was still alive in the '70s; elderly, but sharp. And Brownley devoted at least one whole chapter, maybe two, to the filming of the Pancho Villa movie. And Rosher gave him a lot of stills that he had taken. And we have copies of them from Brownley. They have been very valuable for research.
HBO
How has it been working with Larry Gelbart?
BRUCE BERESFORD
Larry Gelbert is a wonderful man. And he is a first-class writer. I love the script, the moment I first got it. It was great. And we did some revising on it, because it was quite long. We had to cut it a bit. And he was always very open to suggestions, and very thoughtful. It's interesting for someone as famous as he is as a writer, just how open he is to any kind of suggestion from anyone.
It doesn't matter what anyone says, he will take it seriously, consider it, you know? And he may reject it, or he may accept it. But, he has got a very sort of frank nature.
HBO
Last question: what was it like working with HBO Films?
BRUCE BERESFORD
They've all been very nice. They are a broad bunch. I mean, when you go in and talk to them, it's not like most of the studios, where you mostly look around, and you think, "How did they all get these jobs?" HBO, they seem to be well-informed. They make what I think are really quite mature films, and interesting films.
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