The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez | movie | 1983 | Official Featurette - video Dailymotion

Forced to run from Texas Rangers after a heated misunderstanding leads to the death of a lawman, Mexican American farmer | dG1feGRkXzIwSnduZFE

Transcript

00:00The importance of this film is monumental. It's the first American hero of Latin descent

00:22that was made. 1981 is when we shot it. And people say, oh, there had to have been one

00:28before that. I mean, please. But there hadn't. Not an American Latino hero. There had been

00:36stories done on Medal of Honor winners that were Latino, but they used Anglo-Saxon actors

00:45and very seldom talked about the culture itself. So it became and has become the centerpiece

00:57of Chicano studies in the United States of America. For me, it became the most enjoyable

01:04and difficult movie I've ever made. It took us five weeks to make it. There were 5,000

01:10wardrobe changes. There was 150 horses. There was period trains. We shot through three states

01:18of the Union, and we did it for a million dollars. And it was quite an epic event. When

01:31you see the Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, you're going to see something, something that the

01:35United States Historical Society proclaimed to be the most authentic Western ever made

01:40in American film history. So it's like, if you write a book about Lincoln, it can become

01:46historically accurate, and you use it as historical document. Well, this is the only

01:51dramatic film, dramatic meaning fiction, film that has ever been made that the United States

01:56Historical Society has proclaimed it to be a totally accurate and the most authentic

02:02Western ever made in American history to this day.