And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself Page #5

the socialist-lover that John Reed is.

Hearst, no surprise,

is putting our nuts through a wringer.

Pardon me.

With all he's got invested in Mexico...

Hearst stands to lose

one or two of his fortunes down there.

Speak up, Harry.

We're a whole country apart, for God's sake.

Listen to this:

"Pandering to Villa's overblown vanity...

"the perpetrators

of this clumsy excuse of a film..."

"...clearly demonstrate

they were more interested...

"in selling tickets to a gullible public...

"than in telling the real truth..."

I'll take the pastrami on rye.

"...the real truth

about the self-styled Gen. Villa...

"and his ragtag army with nary

a piece of modern artillery to its name."

lt'd be more productive

for you to read the want ads.

You know what's so galling about all this?

It's all true.

We had so little control

over what happened.

Villa comes off as some kind of simple,

starstruck cowboy.

Give me the strudel.

We didn't offer a clue to his complexity,

to his greatness.

What a movie that would make.

This would all be better said

to someone with a checkbook, wouldn't it?

He's been beaten and tortured all his life.

They say that he still has whip scars

across his back.

He was a convict before he turned 20.

It's midnight.

Before he was 12,

he was already being hunted by the law.

Now there are places in Mexico

where he is the law.

Don't make me fire you twice in one week.

He's the James Boys, he's Billy the Kid,

he's Napoleon...

all rolled into one.

But he asks nothing for himself.

He takes nothing.

He builds schools where there were none.

He seizes the homes of the wealthy.

He redistributes the land.

He gives it to the poor. He feeds them.

He even prints his own money.

Prints his own money?

The man's not all bad, is he?

Tell me that this material would not make

a fantastic moving picture.

Forget it. The Times said the one we made...

Iooked like a high-school play

that couldn't afford the costumes.

For my money, and that's sure as hell

what every penny of it was...

we gave Pancho Villa more than his shot.

- But we didn't. That's the whole point.

- Be realistic.

You'd never crowd all that stuff

into a two-reeler, not in a million years.

I'd make it more like seven.

- Seven reels?

- Seven reels.

Did you smoke some of that funny stuff

down in Mexico, Frank?

Who in their right minds...

is gonna wanna sit through a movie

that runs for over an hour?

There's never a first until someone tries.

Don't give me fortune cookies

in the middle of the night, Frank.

And seven reels is a whale of a show...

you're ready to give away

for a nickel a ticket.

Then double it.

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