The Wild Bunch by W. K. Stratton
Author:W. K. Stratton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
6.
Chalo González’s title might have been technical adviser, but in Mexico, he was assuming a role as de facto production coordinator, filling voids that William Faralla couldn’t handle. “He didn’t know how to do what a production coordinator has to do in Mexico,” González told me. “He didn’t know Mexico.”18 It fell to González to begin finding places for the cast and crew to stay once filming began. With his knowledge of the town and the connections provided by his old professor, Chalo knew just which doors to knock on. It was no easy task, given how small and remote Parras was. When he’d finished, he’d rented many of the town’s houses and had booked every available hotel room in Parras.19
González also negotiated the deal with Parras civic leaders to allow filming in the town. Among other things, the town agreed to postpone a planned upgrade of its municipal utilities until after completion of the movie to allow vintage power, telephone, and telegraph lines and poles to remain in place. Warner Bros.-Seven Arts recorded a cash payment of twenty-five thousand pesos (roughly $1,300 in 1968 dollars, based on the exchange rate at the time) made by Chalo González to the alcalde of Parras as la mordida to ensure the mayor’s cooperation. Peckinpah had the location he needed. Parras was the real deal, remote, harsh, demanding.
Permissions in place, Carrere and others from Hollywood descended on Parras to work with a mostly Mexican crew to transform the town into the early twentieth-century border town San Rafael/Starbuck. From that point on, most of the people involved with the production of The Wild Bunch would be from Mexico, ranging from virtually all the laborers to some of the people filling professional roles to the majority of the extras to the billed actors themselves.
Mexico’s film sindicatos were heavily involved, and at times they were at odds with American union and guild members. The wages paid to the Mexicans were minuscule compared to what American workers north of the river might have received, which could only please the bean counters back at Warners’ corporate offices. Parras nevertheless benefited. The Wild Bunch provided a cash flow into a remote town with many financially desperate people. Carrere’s transformation work required scores of carpenters, painters, truck drivers, and people with a back strong enough to handle a shovel. Tons of soil were hauled into the plaza to remake its main street from flagstone to dirt. Gritty false facades went up over the rather charming nineteenth-century adobe and stone buildings in the heart of Parras’s small business district. As more and more Hollywood gringos poured into the small town, resentment among some of the locals grew over what they took to be the dismissive arrogance of the white men, starting with the pronunciation of the town’s name. Almost all of the Anglos insisted on calling it Paris, some out of a sense of irony, but most out of ignorance of Spanish. They never seemed to want to learn how to say it correctly.
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