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HBO Online Exclusive Interview with Larry Gelbart
HBO
Let's begin at the beginning. How did you come to the project?
LARRY GELBART
In the beginning, there was the telephone. [LAUGHS] And there was a call from HBO asking me if I was interested in doing a movie based on these not-so arcane facts about Pancho Villa and his brush with the early movie industry. And after I'd heard the description of what had happened, the idea just became irresistible.
HBO
How many drafts where there?
LARRY GELBART
About a foot and a half. [LAUGHS] Ah, a lot of drafts, a lot of drafts. The truth is, I was writing right through the post-production period, you know, off-camera lines and such.
HBO
So you were on set?
LARRY GELBART
On set, onstage, on mic... but the process took the better part of three years. And to me, it's all the writing process, I don't think of re-writing or the polishing process, it's all just one big challenge, you know?
HBO
Director Bruce Beresford - tell us about your collaboration. What was that like?
LARRY GELBART
Well, it was excellent. He had an enormous respect for the script, appreciated the humor, because it's a bit easier to get the dramatic down. It's um... maybe a little trickier to leaven it with the humor inherent in the situation, without trivializing what it was all about.
We are, after all, talking about people dying, in this case, people dying before the motion picture camera for the first time in history.
And he prepped himself thoroughly, he did a lot of reading about Pancho Villa, who I imagine a lot of young people don't really relate to.
He was Mexican obviously, the general of what was called the Northern Army, and there were several revolutionary armies in the early part of the 20th century, fighting to overthrow the government, which was run by a very notorious pot-smoking president, Victoriano Huerta.
And Pancho was a man as inspiring as he was flawed. People became aware of him first when he was about 12 years old, he was already in prison. He was Mestizo, that is to say, there was a lot of Indian blood in him, and purely a creature of instinct, and brilliant at that. Later on, he'd be compared to Napoleon for his superior battle skills, strategy, execution of all kinds.
He was from a very poor family, they were peons, virtually serfs to the ruling class down there, as most of the Mexicans tended to be in those days, and he had to run away because either an aristocrat or a federal soldier had assaulted his sister. There are legends that he shot him.
In any case, he had to flee. And he joined a band of bandits, horse thieves. His name was Doroteo Arango. You know the trip from Doroteo to [LAUGHS] Pancho Villa is a long one. He wasn't called Pancho Villa until a member of that gang was killed who was called Pancho Villa.
And as much as maybe one basketball player gets another basketball player's jersey with his number, the chief of the gang gave Villa the dead Pancho Villa's name, and it stuck, apparently.
I tell you, I've said this to several of the reporters, that you could really have a Pancho Villa channel. [LAUGHS] Night after night after night, the stories don't stop, this picture just takes up one significant but small part of the story.
HBO
In a sense, this was one of the first filmed documentaries of a war.
LARRY GELBART
It was, in fact, the creation of the newsreel.
HBO
Right.
LARRY GELBART
This was the very first newsreel. Because the camera crew would set up certain battles and even executions for the benefit of the cameras. In that sense, it was like a reality show.
HBO
Staged.
LARRY GELBART
Yes. The movie company, the Mutual Film Company, first of all, it supplied 5,000 Confederate Army uniforms for Pancho's motley soldiers, because they wanted to make a better picture. They sent them boots, helped them buy artillery, all in the service of getting a better show on film. And they did have a contract requiring that he fight during certain hours...
HBO
Yes. [LAUGHS]
LARRY GELBART
That he re-stage battles in the event that that was necessary, in case the cameras missed something. They put him in the picture, he was a real ham, he loved the camera.
They lightened his skin for his scenes, they coifed his hair, they trimmed his moustache, they made him look like Teddy Roosevelt, if you've ever seen that still of Pancho that's around. All to, you know, make him come off better on the 6:00 news, so to speak.
HBO
Mm-hmm-
LARRY GELBART
But there's no tickets. I mean, I think it's significant that they wanted him lighter, that they didn't want to push a dark skinned hero.
HBO
So, the manipulation of his public persona - these guys were mastering these techniques almost a hundred years ago.
LARRY GELBART
Absolutely, absolutely. More than 100. I mean, if you think about it, Napoleon crossed the Pyrenees on a donkey, but in every portrait of him, he's on a white charger, which is rearing up on its hind legs.
HBO
Like towering Roman statues when the Romans were actually fairly tiny.
LARRY GELBART
Absolutely, [LAUGHS] Exactly, exactly.
HBO
Now you've worked for HBO before...
LARRY GELBART
Twice, yeah...
HBO
... on "Barbarian at The Gate," and "Weapons of Mass Distraction."
LARRY GELBART
Right.
HBO
These kinds of subjects - what draws you to make comedy out tragedy? The tragedy of war, like M.A.S.H (which Gelbart wrote and developed for TV) or Pancho Villa?
LARRY GELBART
Well, there are only half a dozen subjects, really, that people are interested in. They are interested in war, of course, they're interested in sex, they're interested in animals, they're interested in little children... I have enough of the last two in my own life to not have to write about it. [LAUGHS]
But war... I guess my first contact with people at war goes back to the late 40s and the early 50s, I was with Bob Hope for four years, I was a member of his writing staff.
And we visited, as you can imagine with Hope, one military or naval group after another. I got to go, literally, into the Korean War with him. I went over to Berlin, during the Berlin airlift with him. And even though I was in the army, I was drafted after World War II and I spent a year and 11 days, and that 11 days saved me from being redrafted when the Korean War broke out.
But I got a glimpse of that kind of life, those kind of people, those kind of problems, that kind of stress.
I mean, with 100 million people in the last century dead as a result of one war, or 100 wars or another, you know. And I guess I'm drawn to it, I guess I'm drawn to... the futility of it, and the inevitability of it, and the... the poor statesmanship that allow us, as though history's on a loop, to sacrifice so many people. Even now, it seems, with such increasing frequency.
HBO
If you had to pick a single idea or theme that's emblematic of "Pancho Villa", what would it be?
LARRY GELBART
The single theme from this one is expressed by the character, the real life character John Reed in the piece, when he talks about Villa using the movies and the movies using Villa each for their own ends. And he says, together you prove that the lens is mightier than the sword.
But like Tolstoy said, I find I have better success with my stories when the reader doesn't know whose side I'm on.
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