Forced to run from Texas Rangers after a heated misunderstanding leads to the death of a lawman, Mexican American farmer | dG1feGRkXzIwSnduZFE
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Short filmTranscript
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01:46historically accurate, and you use it as historical document.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.