Alexa Davalos

And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003) (TV)

Directed by : Bruce Beresford
Written by : Larry Gelbart
Genre: Biography / Drama

Plot Outline: Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa (Antonio Banderas) finds himself without adequate funding to finance his war against the military-run government. He also finds himself at odds with the Americans because of the Hearst media empire’s press campaign against him. To counter both of these, he sends emissaries to movie producers to convince them to pay to film his progress and the actual battles. Producer D.W. Griffith (Colm Feore) becomes interested and sends Frank Thayer (Eion Bailey) with a film crew to develop film reels. Thayer becomes horrified and fascinated by the bandit. He finds an enigmatic individual that is both ghoulishly brutal and charmingly captivating. The resulting film became the first feature length movie, introducing scores of Americans 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. Contains graphic violence, including bloody executions, nudity and crude language.

Cast overview, first billed only:
Antonio Banderas .... Pancho Villa
Eion Bailey .... Frank Thayer
Alan Arkin .... Sam Drebben
Jim Broadbent .... Harry Aitken
Matt Day .... John Reed
Michael McKean .... William Christy Cabanne
Colm Feore .... D.W. Griffith
Alexa Davalos .... Teddy Sampson
Anthony Head .... William Benton (as Anthony Stewart Head)