Original subtitles

My name is Alex Cox. I'm the director of the film that you are about to see

which is called El Patrullero or Highway Patrolman.

And my name is Lorenzo O'Brien. I'm the writer producer of El Patrullero.

Welcome to the film.

The film begins in Mexico City in El Z�calo.

Do not adjust your set. It has a weird colour cast to it.

The first ten minutes or so have this yellowish tinge

which is meant to replicate the smog atmosphere of Mexico City.

So don't adjust your television

I've always been amazed about this section.

For having two cents to do the title sequence,

it's one of the better ones I've seen.

It's great. Bob Dawson

a very good title person with whom we were at UCLA

back in the 1970s.

It fits the style of the entire film,

and it is visually so compelling.

It's amazing how sometimes less is more.

Do something simple and you can usually get away with it.

- And this guy is... - Mike Moroff!

Mike Moroff. I find it amazing

that he looks so much like the real head of the Mexican Highway Patrol.

And he's not actually a Mexican. He's from Chicano, Los Angeles.

He was born originally in Mexico and then moved to the United States.

There's the appearance of Roberto Sosa.

El Patrullero.

- An extraordinary actor. - Very good actor.

Won a prize at San Sebastian for his performance in this film.

And here comes Bruno Bichir, the other Patrullero.

We really have Claudia Becker and Miguel Sandoval

to thank for the extraordinary job they did on casting.

- As well as you, of course. - Oh no. On the contrary!

It's the script.

But this guy isn't cast. This is a real cop.

This is one of the funniest sequences... among others!

This is improvised. This was never in the script.

He's really giving them a ticket.

There are several moments in the film that just appeared out of nowhere.

This is shot in the old race track in Mexico City.

Where they used to have Formula One motor racing.

We were unable to obtain the support

of the Mexican Federal Highway Police,

so we ended up having to recreate the academy

at the old race track.

It worked out quite well.

Along with everything else. The cars, the uniforms. Everything is invented.

Since we didn't get any cooperation from the Highway Police

we had to invent our own police force

Pedro Armendariz! Pedro Armendariz.

He's the son of Pedro Armendariz, the famous actor,

and an extraordinary actor himself.

Standing behind him in this scene is Cecilia Montiel, the Production Designer.

Playing La Patrullera, I guess.

This is the point of the film.

This is the scene in which everything is explained.

As the English translation says, "They've always committed a crime".

It's actually, "They've always broken the law".

"They've always broken the law."

It's also one of the basic concepts that we discussed

while we were conceptualising the film

which is the impossibility of doing good.

That the best intentions are never enough.

That somehow or other you're doomed to commit a mistake

that someone is punished by.

Especially by being so grandiose as to think that you can do good.

This is the day of the total eclipse in Mexico City.

That's right. A shot of which we snuck in later on in the film.

But this is very unusual because it went completely dark.

The streetlights came on, the birds went to sleep,

and then woke up again.

It must have happened about 20 minutes before we did this shot.

It was an extraordinary event.

So Pedro receives his shield, his gun and his certificate.

That, we assume, is his brother on the right, videotaping him.

This is very much the same ceremony in which...

they are given their badges and their pistols,

and their guns.

In the actual highway patrol.

Obviously, as you well know

we got most of our story points,

and our information regarding the highway patrol from Alfonso Granados.

Who actually had been a highway patrolman.

He'd been a highway patrolman as a young guy.

He left the highway patrol at 22, 23 and ended up being a driver for films.

We met him on our location scouts for Walker.

And in the long hours of...

Driving around in a Volkswagen camper!

From one place to another, location scouting

he told us the story of his life.

Which then became somewhat an interpretation of this.

Modified, of course.

A lot of what Poncho said

although it changed in the writing of the script, the essence of it is there.

The highway patrolmen don't last very long out on the highway.

A couple of years. The attrition rate is phenomenal.

When I went to meet the heads of the highway patrol in Mexico City

to ask for their support, they liked the material because it did reflect.

They knew that we had been speaking to ex-highway patrolmen,

and they recognised that it was authentic.

It reflects the realities of their lives.

In another way they didn't like it because it wasn't a very heroic portrayal.

They appreciated it but they weren't going to give us a lot of support.

The real issue with them was the end of the film

which is the issue with most people.

- This is actually the transition shot. - Now the colour is correct.

The yellow tint should have left your screen and the colour should be bright

because we're entering Mapimi, in Northern Mexico.

The adventure of Pedro supposedly happens around this town of Mapimi

where many years ago they shot part of El Topo, Jodorowsky's film.

But in reality we shot all over Northern Mexico

as we will probably note as we go on.

There's Vanessa Bauche.

Here's Ernesto Gomez Cruz, a wonderful Mexican actor.

One of the best actors they have... The cast of this is superb.

This is like The Towering Inferno of Mexican cinema.

We have so many outstanding and well known Mexican actors

even though to a foreign audience they might be quite unknown.

It was an extraordinary situation that we were able to make this film at all,

and then to be able to make with the liberty that we had to do it.

And to do everything in a moving master

because in the film, there is no internal cutting.

There's no cutaways to close-ups.

You'll even notice on this.

They pull a stop as they go out through the door

which is pretty audacious.

The DP, Miguel Garz�n, really did an extraordinary job

in being able to pull this off as he did.

It was an incredible physical strain for him.

We were shooting probably three sequences a day, would you say?

It could have been. And sequences as long as three minutes.

A three minute sequence might take a whole day to get right.

We were shooting two or three shots a day

I mean, by shots a day, set-ups.

But each set-up would take us an hour or two to set up.

To walk through it, to rehearse it and then finally go for it.

Once we started it we ended up shooting maybe three or four shots at most,

and we usually had it.

And no Steadicam. It's all camera on the shoulder of Miguel Garz�n.

This is an old converted garage

that we made as the headquarters for the Federal Highway Patrol.

Did we shoot that in Mapimi?

- This is Mapimi, isn't it? - Is it Dinamita?

Dinamita was the little town that we'll go to later

I've got a feeling we shot the police headquarters in Torreon.

No. In Mapimi as well.

- Or was it Durango? - That's right.

So when we go to the police yard, we're not in Mapimi, we're in Durango.

This is definitely Mapimi.

Pedro's first arrest.

In the background, the cinema is playing a film called Rojo Amanecer

which was also shot by Miguel Garz�n,

and had been a great controversy in Mexican cinema

because it dealt with the massacre of students in Tlatelolco in 1968.

It was directed by Jorge Fons, who's a well known Mexican director.

He did an extraordinary job on the film.

It was after seeing Rojo Amanecer

that you and I decided that Miguel Garz�n should shoot our film.

Which was a surprise to our Mexican production team.

They didn't understand what we were going for.

But at the same time, it was an extraordinary choice.

It's because this is the opposite of Rojo Amanecer.

Rojo Amanecer all happens indoors

in one flat, overlooking the massacre.

- You never see the massacre... - Actually occurring.

You just hear the sounds and see the reactions of the people.

It's very claustrophobic.

At the same time he showed such an extraordinary mobility

within a small...

Within a very confined space.

It convinced us that if he can do that, that he would do an extraordinary...

These are...

These are the heat waves that you buy by the yard for road movies!

They sell these at a special effects place!

No, actually what it is is the dips in the roads.

Oh those. Ah yes.

This is a first for me.

The first film I've done where the hero believes in God.

I don't think Walker believed in God.

But Pedro does. Pedro is a very sincere guy.

He's a creyente.. He wants to do good.

All of this is still Durango.

The next scene is out on the highway. Those Velasco skies.

The thing about Durango is that since it's up at 8000 feet

the clouds hang to the horizon much better.

There are our three friends with the iguanas.

Who ended up staying with you at the hotel.

Because we shot all over northern Mexico, the three kids with the iguana

originally were just extras in the background in Dinamita.

But when we'd shot them we thought we should use these kids again...

Sure enough, one day, Rene Maruri, the Extras Coordinator

just showed up his car with these three kids.

And we go, "Where are their parents?"

"The parents just gave them to me. Here you are."

The parents were happy to get rid of them for a while!

They had eight, so they get rid of three, it's better!

They just sent the kids, so we gave the kids their room

in the hotel we were staying in.

But they didn't like to be by themselves because they saw a frightening film.

They saw Gremlins 2 on the TV.

So they ended up having to sleep in the spare bed in my room

with my then partner, Cecilia Montiel.

Oh no! Look who's in the background.

There's Karl Braun.

Who we had originally met in Spain

where he was the Production Manager for Straight to Hell.

Then he was in Walker as an actor.

He played Bruno Von Namzer, the German General who rides a bull.

And there you are, too.

But I'm shy and I'm staying in the background. Unlike Charlie.

And so here's the corruption. Here's the villainous gringo

who likes to drink German beer.

See, Pedro isn't going to drink his beer.

"In case you change your mind."

This is the first conversation

between Pedro and his long-time friend, Anibal

about how they're supposed to rack up their quotas.

So they talk about the drug dealing in the region.

Obviously the tequila wasn't very good.

It's funny because in reality, very close to here

we stopped on our way from Durango to Sombrerete.

- In a place called Nombre de Dios. - Nombre de Dios. "Name of God".

And we bought maybe 15 gallons of mescal

which the crew got very happy about for a weekend if I remember correctly.

And that was also the weekend when the t-shirts arrived.

The Highway Patrolman t-shirts.

Which got the crew in trouble with the local cops.

They thought our crew members

were members of a rival police organisation

trying to muscle in in the town of Sombrerete.

A brawl between real policemen and fake policemen was narrowly averted.

All the cops are different corporations.

There are the Judiciales, the Federales de Caminos.

There are different police organisations.

Police organisations are always in competition.

- This is no different. - Exactly.

It's like in Los Angeles or Liverpool

you've got different cops and they hate each other.

They're all in competition and they never cooperate.

That's why you get such efficient service from them!

Here he's carrying out what he learned at school.

Just stop the car first and then find out what crime they've committed.

Not only that but he turns down his bribe.

- There's Claudia Becker. - The Casting Director.

This is only the second time that Claudia acted.

The first film that she acted in

was Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia for Sam Peckinpah.

This is the second film that she acted in

I don't know how many years she has been casting films.

What I love about this sequence is how she asks for the cigarette.

A running theme through this entire film

is that even the innocent are guilty.

Everybody's guilty!

There's Roberto Sosa being doubled by one of the stunt guys

Miguel did point out that that guy's head

is about three times as wide as Roberto's head.

And so we called that guy not the double, but the triple.

This is the voice of Carlos Puente, the Editor

inviting us to enjoy the delicious chilaquiles.

The story point here is that he's been up all night doing his job.

They work in 24 hour shifts.

So he's coming to the end of his shift and obviously he's hungry.

His hunger leads him into trouble, which he obviously did not expect.

This is Zaide Silvia Guti�rrez.

A very fine actress who started her career with Arturo Ripstein.

In a film with Ernesto Gomez Cruz and Blanca Guerra

- called El Imperio de la fortuna. - The Empire of Fortune.

- She's an extraordinary actress. - Brilliant.

The part that she played wasn't easy to pull off,

and she really did an extraordinary job.

Look at the sky! The sky did a pretty good job today.

I think we had Velasco for the film!

Once again, I think this has to do with the altitude in which this was shot

I went back to Durango about a month ago,

and it hasn't changed one bit.

Those clouds are still there!

They've hung them up for shooting!

It is amazingly beautiful, Durango. An amazingly beautiful state.

They used to shoot a lot of westerns there.

That's right. John Wayne had a ranch there called "La Joya".

They shot Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid.

They also shot The Wild Bunch.

The Wild Bunch they shot in Durango but also shot it in Parras, Coahu�la

.where we also shot.

Now we're in a town called Sombrerete.

This is Sombrerete. This is the town in Zacatecas.

Which was just south of Durango.

It's the state of Zacatecas.

We based here partially because it had a different look from Mapimi.

There were locations here that we couldn't get in Mapimi.

One of them was outside Sombrerete. The desert

de Los �rganos. The big national park.

There's Farnesio Bernal, who's also an extraordinary Mexican actor.

Farnesio, I think, is in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia as well!

I like this particular scene very much.

It's very typically Latin American in every sense.

The courtship that occurs between men and women in Latin America

is usually done in front of parents.

This is very typical

of how Latin American couples meet each other, how they get together.

This was your experience in Peru and in Mexico City?

Everywhere in Latin America, yes.

After the film played at San Sebastian and we drove back to Madrid

we got in a debate with a Spanish actress

about the female characters in the film.

Her objection was that they didn't seem to have much of an out.

They seemed to be trapped in these roles, of either the wife or the prostitute.

She felt that we were just being reactionary for portraying that.

I think it's very honest, this portrayal

because this isn't Mexico City and Madrid.

This is a rural town in the third world.

Women don't have a lot of options in places like that.

This woman can't go away and become an actress,

or a politician or a TV newsreader.

Yet at the same time, she has her own way of controlling.

She runs her father's farm.

She's actually very strong willed.

She has her own agenda and she applies it.

She's not portrayed as someone who is lacking in ability.

No. In fact, by the end of the picture

it's pretty clear that the women are running the show.

But isn't that how it usually is?

Our friend's objection was that they have to do it through stealth.

But they're pretty overt about it.

This is the horrible video sequence!

The video quality was so good

that we had to deteriorate the image much more than it originally was.

Actually, the extraordinary thing about

what we had decided to do with the structure of the film

is that we made sure that every cut propelled us in time.

So here we're cutting from the first time that they have breakfast together

directly to them getting married

without having the courtship and the first date.

And without cutting away to other things.

What I thought you would do would be they would meet

then we'd cut to some cop stuff, then the wedding

more cop stuff, then they'd have a kid.

But you just did one scene after another.

So it becomes less about policemen

than about the domestic life of this couple.

The thing is that

the police work itself becomes very tedious and very boring.

It's much more interesting to combine it

with this material because then you get a domestic version of a cop film.

In reality it's one of the things that we set out to do.

We wanted to cloak the film in the appearance

of an action film, when in reality we were trying to make an art film.

Here she's pregnant and they're arguing about needing money.

This span of time, between when they first meet and this sequence

a good year has gone by.

It's interesting to say an art film. I suppose it's sort of.

What we were thinking of as well were the films directed by Emilio Fern�ndez

in the 40s and the 50s, in what they called the golden age of Mexican cinema.

Fern�ndez was a very macho guy

famous for shooting producers,

and for acting in American movies

where he would play the bad Mexican.

But as a director he was very sensitive,

and quite feminist in his approach.

So he would make films like R�o Escondido,

and work with actresses like Mar�a F�lix,

and create very strong female characters.

The discussion that we had with the Spanish actress

was not well founded.

We also had a discussion at the beginning of the film

about the ending that we originally had.

The ending that we originally had was, we felt, more humanistic

than what was acceptable to the...

- But we can discuss that at end. - Yeah.

No, the chicks were right!

So, Guillermo Rios is the cop in the background

who's always giving Pedro a hard time.

And the mechanic to whom Anibal gave the stereo

is Rene Pereyra, a very strong Mexican theatrical actor

who's done a fair number of films as well.

It's extraordinary. These guys were ready for their close-up all the time,

and these close-ups run eight minutes long.

Their capacity to maintain character and their lines,

and just continue no matter what occurred, is extraordinary.

And it has to do with a theatrical background.

They're trained to continue, no matter what happens.

The set falls, continue acting. Keep going.

At this time, although we show George Bush

we felt that it would be unwise to show the image of the President of Mexico.

The President of Mexico on the wall is actually the Second Assistant Director.

But even this taboo has now been broken

by Luis Estrada's film La Ley de Herodes

where he actually talks about the ruling party, he names the President,

and basically accuses them all of being corrupt.

But we were as outspoken and as truthful as we could be.

I think that for the times it was quite audacious.

Then again we were shooting right on the heels of Rojo Amanecer.

And we were foreigners too!

Luis actually is a Mexican director and the son of another Mexican director.

Here we are in a place called Chocolate.

This is where The Wild Bunch begins, when they ride the horses in.

There's the train tracks there.

They ride the horses down the tracks,

and the kids are playing with scorpions and ants.

Funnily enough, the actor that Pedro is about to go and see

inside the old railroad car at Chocolate is an actor from The Wild Bunch.

That's Jorge Russek

I like these hanging bags of water

which are, in these parts of the world, to keep flies away.

We would see that in Nicaragua. They would hang plastic bags of water.

And here's Jorge Russek

Jorge died quite recently.

A number of the actors in this film have started to die off, unfortunately.

But Jorge was a really good guy.

He drove up with his wife, Julie, from Mexico City, in his pick-up.

He had a pick-up truck with a camper on the back.

In this sequence, Pedro finally capitulates

to the extensive "doing business as usual,"

and finally takes money for letting this man go by with the pigs.

It obviously is a critical point in terms of the storyline.

He said he won't do it, there are some things he won't do,

and now he's going to do them.

It just has to do with the fact that as much as our intentions are to do good

in the end, life itself just wears you down.

Nah!

It's true.

In reality, I think this film is our reaction to having made Walker,

and the reaction to Walker

I think it does have something to do with that.

And how we felt.

We truly believed in how making a film like Walker

could change political perception on a situation.

In reality, we were not successful.

It gave way to a much more realistic approach, in this particular film

of how life really occurs and what life is really about.

The other funny thing about Walker was that

there was such alarm about Walker

in the film community here, in the States.

And such a determination to suppress the film

and not have it appear in cinemas

sell the videotapes for 90 bucks so no one will buy them.

And you see in the end that you don't really need to exercise

that form of censorship and that form of suppression.

Because look at the film of Luis Estrada, La Ley de Herodes.

It's had a hugely wide distribution in Mexico

goes out of it's way to denounce the PRI as a corrupt institution.

But it's not going to stop the PRI from winning elections.

The truth of the matter is a film is only a film.

It's just a film.

This is paranoia by governments towards arts in general.

Art is just art. It doesn't have the political power behind it.

It may criticise politics,

but it's not going to change anything that's happening.

But that takes a long time.

People are starting to understand that a bit more.

The systems of control are in place, they're not going to go away,

and everything exists to benefit the ruling class, corporations

a handful of wealthy families.

It doesn't matter what country you're in, it's always the same.

This is when Pedro finally meets Vanessa Bauche.

- This is Vanessa's first acting role. - Really?

Yeah. Extraordinary performance. An incredibly talented young actress.

She was only 19 when she made this film.

- Very beautiful. - And looks the same

I saw Vanessa when we were in Mexico City last,

and she looks the same as she did when she was 19.

It just means that she's 27 or 28.

I suppose, yeah.

At 27 or 28 you can still look quite... Especially being an actor.

There's Rene Pereyra wearing his UCLA t-shirt in the background

to stress the UCLA connection.

This is shot at the Bombay

in Mexico City, which is right next to Garibaldi.

This is an actual club,

and a lot of the girls are the girls that had worked all night,

and then stayed for the following day to continue working with us.

And within the bar there, we've got a little crane with a platform on it

Miguel starts out on this platform, the crane comes down

he steps off the platform, walks around the room,

and gets back on the platform and the crane goes up at the end.

And that was one of the simpler shots that we did with Miguel Garz�n.

Actually, it's incredibly effective.

This is actually shot at Estudios America...

This is an editing room in Estudios America...

That was converted.

Both Cecilia Montiel and Bryce Perrin did an extraordinary job

in getting this to look the way that it did

I think they had a colour plan

to try and replicate the colours of Rufino Tamayo.

I think that was their intention

I think the colour scheme is quite similar to the paintings of Tamayo.

But she's the one that told me that. I can't say that for sure.

Only the Production Designer will know for sure.

She really is extraordinarily beautiful.

It's interesting. Pedro has really fallen hard now.

He's taken a bribe and then he's gone to the whorehouse

which is something he hasn't done before.

Bad day at the office!

This sequence was shot in a house in Mexico City.

This is the most complicated shot.

It was the last shot that we did in the film.

- Was it the last shot? - It was the very last day.

Pedro comes home, finds a carrot. Roberto's one of those actors...

He won't eat the carrot on the rehearsal in case you say, "Don't eat that carrot!"

He'll wait till the take and then he'll get the carrot.

The father has fallen asleep in front of the TV,

and what is he watching?

He's watching RoboCop!

And obviously this is our commentary

about the difference between a live cop and a stealth cop.

It's RoboCop 2, because it was Jon Davison and Irvin Kershner.

At one point I had been asked to direct RoboCop 2 by Jon Davison,

and didn't do it, partially because

you managed to come up with this very weird deal from Japan

where the Japanese would finance a Mexican film about the highway patrol.

And so we ended up including that little fragment of RoboCop 2

courtesy of Jon Davison and Irvin Kershner.

And here, Zaide's having a bad day.

I love her considering which weapon to use.

The collection of knives that she has there.

Of course the father is fast asleep.

There's a similar trajectory between this film and La Ley de Herodes...

Even though Damian Alcazar in La Ley de Herodes

becomes much worse than Pedro does.

But there's a similar tendency in both films.

This is one of the most controversial scenes in the film.

This is about domestic corruption.

It's about what is acceptable between couples...

and what money will buy in terms of that.

You're saying that because he's brought all this money to the house

she'll forgive him for betraying her? How cynical you are!

I don't think so.

What I'm saying is that sometimes you look the other way

depending on what happens or what the situation is and what is convenient

- I love this little fan. - He has his little fan.

His whole car is equipped.

More grotesquerie, directors coming up with this kind of horror thing!

One of the concepts that we talked about was making this film realistic

in the sense of, we never see car crashes.

We never see a shoot out till the very end.

You always see the aftermath of violence.

That's one of the other concepts that we discussed.

I remember now why we have that severed leg.

When we were in Nicaragua in post-production.

We were working on the film in a house outside the city of Granada.

We were around the flatbed one evening, looking at a scene,

and there was this god-awful crash outside.

We all went out and there were just bodies.

A car had ploughed into the back of a parked lorry,

and there were bodies and body parts lying in the road.

And yet you didn't see the accident. You only heard the sound.

And you run out and it's already happened.

You were very valiant, Lorenzo.

While the rest of us were standing around

you actually got the taxi drivers

to put people in taxis that weren't too severely injured,

and take them to the hospital.

So you were on the ball, Lorenzo.

I don't think it has anything to do with being particularly courageous.

On the ball, though. You kept your head.

That was very good. That's what a good producer should be

I remember this as being one of the most extraordinary shooting days that we had

Mauricio Rubi.

And Sergio Calderon

Sergio Calderon is sitting in the car with Mauricio.

You only see Sergio briefly but if you've seen the film Men in Black

Sergio is the head at the beginning of the film.

He was very pleased because they made a toy out of him.

You can actually get a Sergio Calderon doll.

Not this guy, Mauricio, who's a very good actor,

but the guy sitting in the car with him is Sergio.

But you're right. You can see the moisture in the sky here.

There's a storm coming.

You don't see them on camera but in the second part of the sequence

there were lightning flashes going while we were shooting.

Once again, this falls into our concept of

realising how violence is first depicted.

He doesn't know he's been shot.

And this is what happens to a lot of people.

A shoot-out begins and then they look down,

and they suddenly think, "Oh my god, I've been hit!"

Obviously, once he's been hit there's not anything to do.

In some films they'd have him get in the car and go after...

And chase them!

But not in this one.

People who get shot don't get up.

Something which is a reality.

What's going to happen now isn't really reality though.

Eduardo Lopez Rojas, another deceased actor...

who died quite recently, after they completed La Ley de Herodes.

He was involved in Los Angeles theatre, Eduardo.

He actually had a sort of bi-country career.

This is when the principal character, Pedro Rojas, finally meets his father

out in the middle of the desert

I originally scripted this sequence to be at the hospital.

But I think your choice of doing it here is extraordinary.

It has a lot more to do with

the absolutely surreal nature of the location,

and what became a momentary storm.

- There's no real effects here. - There's no wind machine added.

All of a sudden this storm came in.

It created an extraordinary light

extraordinary physical, geographical climate conditions.

What's happening in the story, although Pedro doesn't know it at this point

is that his father is dying.

And his father is coming to visit him before he goes off to the other world.

Of course, all these yucca plants in the back

just contribute to this otherworldly effect.

- And there's the eclipse. - There's the shot of the eclipse.

Obviously, Pedro getting shot in the leg conveys...

The thing about his father, who also has a bad leg.

Not only the father, but it's a turning point in the story

where he starts losing that innocence.

- Yeah, by now... - He's well on his way.

Once again, here we cut from no birthing sequences...

Yeah, it's just here. There's the kid.

Pedro still thinks his father came to visit him in the desert.

He doesn't realise that his father, in fact, died while he was in hospital.

The actual implication is that the father is already dead.

It's the ghost that has come to visit him in the desert.

But how nice to be making this in Mexico.

You couldn't do an American police film where the ghost shows up.

Where Mel Gibson's ghostly dad shows up to give him a hard time!

- I'm sure we could do it. - Well, you could.

No, you couldn't!

No, it's too tightly controlled over here.

The nature of drama

in American cinema, and even in British cinema too

is very constipated.

If you're doing an exciting cop movie you're not going to have any ghosts.

Because the genres are very rigidly controlled

by the market researchers from the studio.

But this isn't really a typical cop movie in any sense.

No, but in Mexico you can do this and nobody thinks it's that odd.

Nobody complained about the ghost of his father.

And the Japanese didn't seem to mind it.

The Japanese Executive Producers didn't seem to have a problem.

For them it was a samurai film.

That's how we sold it to them - a samurai film in Mexico.

And it truly does follow that structure.

A young innocent upholder of the law goes off to uphold it somewhere else.

And finds that things aren't the way he was told in samurai school.

Obviously, here he commits the fatal flaw.

The inevitable mistake of the young macho.

When I spoke to the highway patrol in Mexico

that one of the fantasies that they all had

was to, somehow or other, save a prostitute.

From herself, I guess. I don't know from whom!

To reform a prostitute.

But what that also entails is taking a woman

who has her independent source of income,

and making her dependent on you.

That's right.

It's amazing how pissed she is without raising her voice.

He has committed a grave error.

The inevitable drug scene.

Baking powder.

- Or is it... - Baby laxative.

Filthy!

We haven't really talked a lot about the music.

No, we haven't. The very nice score of Zander Schloss.

A very beautiful bit

of music there

Zander, the composer, was one of the few people on the film

who wasn't based in Mexico.

At the time, he was a member of two bands in Los Angeles.

Thelonious Monster and The Circle Jerks.

But had worked with Joe Strummer on the score of Walker.

He played all the guitar on that and did some of the arranging,

and we thought, "This guy can do our film".

So the problems of Pedro continue. He's wrecked his car...

How many cars did we have?

We had eight of these cars. They didn't all run.

I think three of them ran.

Terry was in charge of the cars.

She did a very good job.

She also had that assistant, the mechanic...

He's behind there, the mechanic. He's grinning broadly.

- There he is. - Behind Rene Pereyra.

A real mechanic.

Guillermo Rios is good. He's a very intense chap.

This is the problem with these cops.

One of the reasons that this corruption is endemic

is because they're expected not only to bring back fines

to keep the organisation going, but to pay for things.

If they break things, if they lose a gun

if they have to have a gun, they have to pay for it!

Great.

Again, in an American film, they'd be having a fistfight right now.

They'd be fighting it out in the police locker room

guys would be separating them.

Somebody would be going, "Get your ass in here!"

And they don't do it. He's never going to fight with his bosses.

He's never going to throw a punch at anybody because he'd get fired.

This entire section is about

his inevitable slide.

These are, what are called in Mexico, Juniors.

At the time, this is ten years ago or more.

Juniors were sort of disliked.

They were viewed like this. Like rich cry babies.

Unfortunately the culture of Mexico

in the last ten years, has changed quite drastically.

And what you're supposed to aspire to be

is one of these rich jerks with a skateboard, in the American style.

But when we made the film there was general consensus

that decent Mexicans don't dress like this

don't act like an American.

What Pedro doesn't realise is that this kid really is the son of a governor.

He really does know the President and Pedro's in trouble again.

This is shot right outside Durango.

Near that abandoned base where they shot...

"Fat Man and Little Boy."

They recreated the set of the Los Alamos nuclear base.

Which is a location we never used. We couldn't think what to do with it.

It was too big to use as the police headquarters.

Now here comes the governor

Gerardo Moscoso who was our doctor.

A very good actor.

"It's the first thing we teach you" Oh yeah!

This is a terrible thing. What Guillermo Rios has done

is he's sided with the governor against his own police corporation

by opening the door for the governor

Guillermo did say that in reality he wouldn't do that.

That the solidarity between the cops wouldn't allow him

to open the door for the governor.

The blue wall of silence.

But I said, in order to emphasise what a creep you are to authority

go and open the door for the governor.

But he's right. In reality he wouldn't have done that.

Pedro is really beating up on himself now.

He's refusing to drive a decent car.

He's not interested in the shiny new gun of Anibal.

Here we are in the psychiatrist's office.

This is a scene based on your interview with the highway patrol.

This was shot in the production house that we all lived in.

In Mexico City.

Which is a very beautiful old house near the Estudios Churubusco.

The psychiatrist was to have been played by Arturo Ripstein, the director.

But Arturo, at the time, had long hair of which he was proud,

and he didn't want to cut it.

So at the last minute a very good actor, Alonso Echanove

took over the role of Dr Bola�os.

Pops a couple of Prozac, bites his fingernails, lights a cigarette...

That's the doctor for me!

This is also shot outside of Durango.

Jorge Fegan, a wonderful actor

who was also in Rojo Amanecer. Also now sadly dead.

A funny actor.

Karl Braun reappears in the story.

Again, all one take. Garz�n has covered everything

in what normally would have been done in close-ups, cutaways.

He shot the whole thing in one take.

What's extraordinary about using this method

is that it actually allows you to experience the film in real time

rather than in this compression of images.

Each sequence, you're transported into a real-time scenario.

For as long as that moment lasts.

The cuts come when there's a geographical change

like when in a minute, when we're going to see Anibal, or a time change.

Here he's done a 360 degree pan.

There's about 30 crew people behind him

that have to keep moving as Garz�n moves the camera around.

This is one of the few shots that he actually did on a tripod.

And it is a pretty extraordinary shot.

He captures his movement from the front of the car, all the way into the car,

and never loses his head or his face for a minute.

Now Pedro's trying to get going.

We had to haul these cars all over northern Mexico.

We were afraid that these cars

since they didn't have actual license plates

that the Mexican highway patrol was going to run interference with us.

But they actually behaved very well with us.

Well because you and Alejandra Liceaga, the Production Manager

struck this deal that if we would invent our own police corporation

that they would let us make the film.

Which was probably just as well.

The highway patrol were driving little black Mustangs.

These are ginormous Dodge Darts that we've got

which are more impressive looking cars.

This is also outside of Durango.

A lot of drive-bys outside of Durango because of the canyons,

and the impressive nature of the landscape.

This is one of the few shots that you can see

this very interesting scar that Roberto Sosa has on the side of his face.

Which contributed, I think, almost as a part of his character

Roberto was a child actor.

His parents got him into the acting thing when he was quite young,

and he, as a result of that, got a nervous tumour on his face.

Their family didn't have money, they sent him to public hospital.

And the doctors just get in there with a razorblade

cut it out, stitch him up and send him home.

He gets home, looks in the mirror and thinks

that's the end of my acting career. He was only 13.

Of course, the perverse thing is that film directors love that scar.

So whenever he does a feature, you have the scar,

but when he does a soap opera they cover it up with make-up.

This is one of the most extraordinary shot sequences in the film.

This and the shot that follows.

This is a pick-up truck. Miguel is just sitting in the back of the pick-up

which is being pushed by the crew members.

And in a moment, we assume time has gone by, he's still running.

Now, Miguel is on the front of the pick-up truck

standing on the bumper, being held on by ropes.

And the pick-up truck is being pushed along behind Roberto Sosa.

As we get closer to the car

the pick-up truck slows down, stops, the grips release the ropes

Miguel Garz�n steps down off the bumper and starts to walk.

There we are.

Again, Pedro's got there too late. The shoot-out's already happened,

but he can't even find his partner.

He goes from the asphalt to the desert.

After we shot this sequence

we heard that, in this same spot a few weeks previously

a bunch of Judiciales had got into a fight with drug dealers,

and had been killed right in the same area.

Which is interesting because the concept is

the cops are so corrupt, which a lot of them are.

But at the same time they have these very dangerous jobs,

and at times they get killed.

I had never contemplated doing a film about the police before

because I wasn't that keen on the police.

But as a result of the experiences that we had had

I felt that we couldn't be too critical of people

because life isn't that simple.

Including the funeral sequence would have been breaking

some of the structural advantages that we had.

It was falling too much within what would have been expected.

It was too obvious.

The funeral sequence was very funny.

It was the three widows of Anibal.

It turned out that Anibal had three wives and three babies,

and they're all there at the funeral.

- But it was too funny. - It was too obvious.

And it wasn't the point we were trying to make.

That, by the way, is my favourite line in the film.

"Please make an exception in this case"

I have found, in the years since Highway Patrolman

that "Please make an exception in this case"

is the most useful sentence that you can possibly utilise.

You acknowledge that whoever you're dealing with

doesn't do this kind of thing normally, whatever it is.

On this occasion, perhaps they can make an exception.

And I have found that useful in terms of all manner of things.

In all matters of negotiating.

Trying to get air cargo out of Narita Airport

on a Sunday, when it's closed.

You just keep on saying, "Please make an exception in this case,"

and you don't leave, and eventually, they make an exception.

In this sequence, they're obviously drinking to Anibal.

And on the television there's a sequence going up

about re-approving Mexico.

Yes, Mexico has to be certified every year by the US Congress

which is very insulting to the Mexicans.

Because the whole deal about the drug trade

which is devastating and corrupting Mexico

is that the drug trade is there for the benefit of the Americans!

Well the market is the United States,

and their country just happens to be on the way to the market.

This is a great source of division between Mexico and the United States.

Funnily enough, I was on a flight

out of Mexico to Europe that stopped in Washington,

and I found myself sitting next to the Foreign Minister of Mexico.

Everybody gets on the plane and greets him, shakes his hand

I'm saying, "How do you know so many people on this plane?"

And we get into a conversation.

He was going to Washington.

Various third world countries go to the United States and say,

"Until you guys can control your arms trade"

"we can never control the drug trade."

The United States is the greatest provider of arms in the world.

Not only nuclear weapons and jets but small arms.

Machine guns, handguns.

As long as these weapons pour into the third world

as long as Latin America is full of American weapons

the cops, the local authorities, are never going to get a handle on crime.

It's well known that the guerrilla wars in South America are fuelled by

the exchange of weapons for cocaine

in Columbia and in Peru and in different places.

And that in every case, the military and their paramilitary allies

are making money out of it and exchanging guns for drugs.

They're the ones who have got the guns in the beginning.

But as the United States prepares for a war against Colombia

the blame is always placed on left-wing rebels.

Here are the iguana kids again.

He's in a fury now. He just wants to arrest somebody.

He just wants to do some justice.

No, I think this is

his final lame attempt at trying to do good!

I think that once again he's...

trying to find some way to get back

to what originally inspired him to be a cop.

And taking three kids to school is as innocuous as can be, so he thinks.

But he'll see.

- I think this is Dinamita. - This is Dinamita, yes.

But once again, no good deed will go unpunished.

So he's turned over the children to Farfan, the head of Special Effects.

In the blue shirt.

We also have to take into consideration that

our character is now under the effects

of the drugs given to him by the psychiatrist.

Yes, he's on some sort of early version of Prozac or Zoloft...

which is exacerbating his homicidal tendencies!

And he's looking for a rabid dog.

He's such a brave actor, Roberto.

Unlike most of the English-speaking actors I've met

he's really prepared to devote himself to the character.

And he's not afraid to appear ridiculous or silly.

When he crosses the bridge, we said...

"You've also got a fear of heights."

"Not only do you have all these other problems but you're afraid of heights."

So he plays it that way. He crosses the bridge in a very timorous manner.

This is Malena Doria. Another extraordinary actress.

Once again, the impossibility of doing good.

And the extras. These are the people in the town.

These are the people of Dinamita, showing up to watch the filming.

Once again, this is where Zander's music really does an extraordinary job.

This is near Mapimi.

This is called Puente Ojuela, which is a bridge that connects two mines.

And I think you did an extraordinary reveal here.

You don't really understand why he's holding onto the side.

But as you zoom out here

it becomes evident that this is one of the most

hair-raising bridges I've ever crossed

Cecilia had to do repairs to the bridge before they let us use it

I think there was just a couple.

It wasn't that much.

So he's come to help a young girl in need.

The mother of the two children.

This is a real sky. This isn't a process shot.

That's actually what the sky looked like outside.

One of the extraordinary things about this film

is that we didn't use any camera cars.

All of it was car mounts.

Not one camera-car shot. It's incredible.

I think, as a car-based film, it works better than Repo Man

I think that sometimes all those camera cars and stuff

it takes you away from the actors.

It becomes about the car and not about the person in it.

But with the car mount looking in the window, you're always on the actors.

- The actors also have to drive. - They have to drive themselves.

They're not being towed.

And so he's returned.

This is the back lot of Estudios America

.which is now part of Televisi�n Azteca.

There were two film studios in Mexico...

- In 1991 - But now there's only one.

Great location.

This is the only scene in the film that we re-shot.

We did a version of this scene that just didn't seem to be working

because we were playing it on the two characters in the background.

On Maribel and her boyfriend, Emilio.

When we saw the rushes we just thought

this isn't a film about those two guys, it's a film about Pedro Rojas.

And so we re-shot the scene

with them all in the back and Pedro in the foreground.

This is also one of the few scenes where we have a dolly move.

Yeah, he's on tracks.

He's on tracks, which is

completely opposite everything that we had done up to that point.

A homage to Ripstein is coming up now.

In Ripstein's films, the characters used to ask the time,

and the reply would be, "Late".

When we were preparing the video version of this in England

I did have the opportunity of putting an effect

of the binoculars on the shot.

But we didn't want that.

You know, that binocular effect!

I'm not sure it really served a purpose.

No, I left it off.

It's such a naturalistic film

that to go for that would have been, once again

going against the established set parameters.

There are special effects, in terms of things blowing up and gunshots,

but there's no actual process shots or mattes in the film.

What you see is what's really there.

He doesn't listen.

Who does?

This is all shot around Dinamita and Mapimi.

A lot of abandoned mines.

This shot you could have put a binocular matte on,

but we decided against it originally.

The binocular matte always looks hokey.

Anyway, by that time, I think we had run out of money.

I think so. There was no money for binocular mattes!

Not enough money for binocular mattes!

You need to mix the film and deliver.

This movie's so poor, they can't even afford a helicopter!

He takes off his identification.

This was a complicated sequence to shoot.

- There's Damian Alcazar. - On the right.

He's got a leading role in Bajo California

Damian is quite a movie star in Mexico.

He's the lead in Bajo California which is a pretty good film.

He's the lead in La Ley de Herodes which is, of course, a brilliant film.

With great acting.

And he's the lead in Dos cr�menes.

So he's actually, in the sense that there are movie stars in Mexico

he's the movie star.

"Por mis hijos." He doesn't have any hijos.

I hope it came that Pedro is so nuts he could have killed them

I'm not sure it does come across.

My wish is that the audience would think

the guy is so crazy, he can murder those two people.

It's interesting because the character still has several surprises for us in store.

It's this combination

of wanting to still do good,

and absolute self-interest. Motivated by both.

- This is shot in Parras. - The Wild Bunch location.

Where the horses fall down the sand dune

during one of the transitions in The Wild Bunch.

- Extraordinary location. - Beautiful.

This particular piece of music

was the cause of an ongoing dispute

between Zander Schloss and the actor Del Zamora.

Because Del came up with the...

Da da da da!

And Zander just did all the other music.

And somehow Del didn't get a credit for the...

Da da da da!

But I would like to go on record as saying that those

da da da da, four notes, were thought up by Del Zamora.

They sound more like Beethoven to me!

At the beginning of the third or something!

So at this point, gathering the stash that he has

hidden away in the desert

we don't know exactly how long he's been putting the stash together

I would think a year or so. I think he's been at it for a while.

And the Virgin Mary on the wall of the whorehouse.

Little shrines to the Virgin Mary everywhere in this film

just like in Mexico.

- Coming out the door is our... - Extras Casting, Rene Maruri.

I love the texture, in terms of the production design, in this particular set.

That and the house of Pedro.

It has a colour palette that is unusual for films.

And the designer of this film

went on to do a variety of films with us and with other people,

and ended up spending about ten times the budget of El Patrullero

on the art department of The Mask of Zorro.

Some of the locations... I don't think you can see them clearly in the film,

but some of the locations that she designed

Cecilia designed a mine set for The Mask of Zorro

that's a square mile of construction.

With working elements, huge wheels revolving

people in cages, a graveyard...

Ah! Another shrine to the Virgin Mary.

This is fake rain, obviously.

This is one of the more difficult shots just because it involved so much rain.

It then has to match the following.

The rain was shot in Mexico City, this was shot in Durango,

but we have to wet down though, I suppose.

One of those continuity problems.

This is based on a shot from R�o Escondido

directed by Emilio Fern�ndez.

Again, it's on a tripod. It's one of the few shots on a tripod.

And there's a tiny little pan that turns a single into a two shot.

And then as Pedro steps back it becomes a single again.

This is so much more interesting a way of shooting and composing

than just close-up of one guy, close-up of the other guy.

It's also interesting that you see a lot of activity outside the window.

In fact it contains everything.

It contains two singles, a two shot and all of the background action,

but there's been no cut.

So the focus switches from

Gomez Cruz at the beginning

to Roberto Sosa at the end. But they're both isolated.

Even when they're together in frame, they're right on the edges of it.

Even though, in a certain way

he's proving a successful police officer and he's bringing in money

he's becoming distanced from his own guys as well.

There's the entrance to the Sierra de �rganos

which is outside Sombrerete, in Zacatecas.

An incredible location.

Along the lines of Monument Valley.

- And here's another shot on a dolly. - Good grief! Another dolly.

You can hardly notice it though.

I wonder how many days we shot here. Was it for just one day or was it two?

I think we had a couple of days

I slept in a tent out there one night.

So we must have had at least two days in the �rganos.

This is the best kind of filmmaking.

It was always my dream that we would go to the countryside

to wild places that you wouldn't normally go,

and make films there.

With four northern states... actually three...

Coahuila, Durango and Zacatecas. Three northern states.

The helicopter was originally going to be lent to us by the governor of Durango.

But he ended up having to leave with it to go see some flood in the north.

So we ended up having to bring the helicopter from Mexico City.

Again, it's all one shot.

We talked about breaking the sequence up into different elements.

But from the arrival of the helicopter, Pedro tracking it

the landing, another shoot-out, takes off again, all in one take.

And not one reviewer of this film made any comment about that

which really surprised me.

The extent to which people who are professional watchers of films

don't notice things.

Even though the film got good critical responses

of the films I've done, it got the best critical response

nobody noticed that everything played in a master.

What it does is it draws you in.

I suppose it's good in a sense if the technique doesn't draw attention to itself.

We had one sequence in here of him actually burying...

Burying the gringo who was just killed.

But we thought that was useless too.

It's funny. The elements that you actually need

to convey a story are sometimes a lot less.

As long as there's an exploding police car, it's pretty much OK.

The film's going to be OK.

But it is interesting. Of all the films that we had done up until that point

this follows the script just page for page.

There's no deviation

I remember one day, we got ahead of ourselves,

and we had a few hours spare, we were half a day ahead,

and so we tried to invent a sequence.

And we shot a sequence with two narcos waiting by a railroad track,

and Pedro watches them. It was useless.

It was useless. It did nothing to further the story.

It's a very tight script, even though it changed,

but the changes were all done prior to the shooting.

This is an extraordinary sequence

because you have the entire vista and the camera's on a crane,

and then the camera will actually go into...

It goes underground!

Also all shot in one take.

I'm very impressed by the special effects in this.

We had worked with Marcelino Pacheco who's a wonderful special effects guy

I was disappointed that we couldn't get Marcelino for this,

and that we were going to work with the Farfans.

But it really turned out good. Farfan did a very good job.

Here we're also finding our general concept

that no shoot-out should last more than seven or eight bullets.

This is the only person who gets shot on camera apart from Pedro.

All the other violence takes place off screen.

- The location is truly extraordinary. - It's tremendous.

And almost unknown.

How often have you seen this location in a film?

Well, by now, a few more times.

I saw a couple of Mexican cowboy films from the 70s that they shot there.

I think Cisco Kid was also shot there.

And now it's been a bit known.

This is the scene that the Federal Highway Patrol in Mexico objected to,

and the reason that we didn't get the support from them to shoot it.

It had to do with the fact that Pedro Rojas decides to abandon...

Ah! He quits and doesn't stay on board.

This is something they feel very sensitive about.

The resignation is so high among the cadets that first go out into the field.

The job is incredibly difficult, incredibly demanding,

and not a lot of them survive.

They had conveyed to me that if I had been willing to change this sequence,

and he had taken a desk job

that we would have had the support of the Federal Highway Patrol.

And the way you convey the turnover of these guys, I think, is very clever.

What we're about to see is one of the best scripted moments in the film.

It's your description of what we see when we open the draw in his desk.

All those badges. Without dialogue, you know exactly what the problem is.

Her kid got bigger.

The original ending of the film, the one you were talking about

was a more traditional ending

in the sense that Pedro and his wife survived,

but the prostitute, Maribel, died of a drug overdose.

With the drugs that he gave her.

And so he feels the responsibility of taking on the children,

and then goes back home and shows up with the children.

With Maribel's two children at the house of Griselda.

But that was pointed out to us as highly unlikely

Alejandra Liceaga, the Production Manager,

and Cecilia Montiel

said that no woman would accept these two extra offspring...

From another woman.

Which, of course, we were somewhat appalled by.

Naively thinking her maternal instincts would override...

The fact that they were the children of another woman.

So we changed the script to something which is much more traditional,

and what is called in Mexico, casa chica.

The literal translation is small house.

What happens is that after a man establishes his first house

he goes on to establish a second house and a third household,

and becomes a cacique or an empire.

And what Malena Doria just said

is the other thing that an actor said to me, "No Mexican would ever do this".

One is when Guillermo Rios opens the door for the governor.

And the other is when Malena Doria says,

"We'd invite you to eat but there isn't enough".

She said no Mexican woman anywhere on the planet would say,

"We'd invite you to eat but there isn't enough".

But I said, "Leave it in because it's so funny."

"That you are so mean!"

Well, I think that the whole point is that

she's trying to sell the point that they're in dire economic need.

And obviously, Maribel is going to push the point of

"What are you going to do with me?"

And so pressure him into accepting his responsibility as...

The father of the casa chica.

The financier of the casa chica

I like this ending better. It's more ambiguous.

How is Pedro going to pay for these two households?

- He doesn't have any income. - He's going to become more corrupt.

Yeah, he's going to go back to the desert,

and find the rest of the drugs and sell them.

But look at him. Look how happy he is.

He's playing with his wedding ring, he's got a little smile.

But does he? Yes, he has a smile. Slightly.

And that's it. Pedro Rojas.

There are the iguana kids throwing rocks at him.

And the sign says, "Paying taxes is participating".

Which, of course, is the ultimate irony.

But we thought we'd throw it out there for everybody to think about.

Just trying to drag this country into another world in which it does not belong.

Actually it's the second film that you've made that ends with children.

- Sid and Nancy does too. - That's right.

But Sid and Nancy is bogus. This is actually authentic

I don't believe anything in Sid and Nancy anymore.

But I think that this is a very truthful film and I'm very proud of this one.

And the closing song is being sung by Tito Larriva

chicano rocker from The Plugz and Los Cruzados.

Well, Alex, I must say it's quite entertaining doing this.

It's been very nice. Thank you

I know you're very busy producing films,

and I'm very pleased that you were able to join us here today.

Any time. This is the best film I ever made.

The best film I made too.

- Well, congratulations. - It's a love fest!

It's the most unified film that I've done

I'm very proud of Walker

in terms of what we pulled off and the ambition of it,

but this is the more unified film, the more completely successful.

I think it has to do with a lot of different elements.

It has a lot to do with the style and how it was shot

I think also the style. By that point

we'd learned enough about films to establish a style

which I hadn't done before this

I'm very pleased about the way it turned out.

Also, to end our love fest, I'd like to congratulate you on the subtitles.

Because you did the English subtitles, didn't you?

That's right. Even though I change them...

They change somewhat but they're very authentic.

They're very close to the original language.

If possible, if the author is bilingual, the author should do the subtitles.

Now that I've seen the end credits

my heart goes out to goes out to all these people that helped us.

Such a great crew. A wonderful crew and a wonderful experience.

It's unusual to go and make a film

with the kind of licence that we had to make this.

It gives you the ability to utilise all your best instincts.

We were very free,

and yet, at the same time, also quite disciplined.

And also being able to...

get away from this filmmaking by committee

which is a ridiculous enterprise.

Yeah, this is the thing I'm happiest with.

This is the only film I've done that I wouldn't change anything in