By Rubén Lardin
Many years ago, Diego Rodriguez worked as a stuntman for
the Almeria Star Studios aka Fort Bravo Texas Hollywood. The dusty Andalusian
province around it was used regularly as a substitute for Texas, Mexico, and
countless nameless towns, inhabited by gunmen. Over 600 Spaghetti Westerns were
filmed here and turned the southern Spanish region gradually into a caricature
of the Wild West, as it was presented by Italian directors. "In 1984 I was
in Rustlers' Rhapsody with Fernando Rey there," Diego revels in memories
of his glory days. "And in 1981 I was there in Conan the Barbarian with
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Do you know the scene in which he hits the camel with
his fist? You know, why it fell? They had it pumped full of sedatives. The
cinema is only an illusion, man, I'm 52 and I no longer do stunts. Do you think
I could ride a horse? Bah! Once I was a stuntman. I was here in 2000 for Queen
of Swords with David Carradine. I got some 30,000 euros. You cannot see me, but
I was there. "Today Diego is still working for Fort Bravo, but instead of
pretending to kill people and performing death-defying stunts on horseback, he
pushes a mop in front of them. As a caretaker on the site, he takes care of the
two remaining sets at Fort Bravo, "Texas" and "Mexico."
Even though they are quite dilapidated, the sets are occasionally used
according to their purpose. The French film Blueberry was filmed here in 2004
and a new episode of Dr. Who. Most of Fort Bravo serves as a second-class
tourist attraction, however. And although there are newly built apartments, a
new swimming pool and a new conference center, the former wild frontier
atmosphere takes over every Saturday when a bus load arrives to see a
"Wild West Show" to see a bank robbery and bar fight.
The law enforcement officer on site is the French
Guyanese Ibrahim, Fort Bravo's guard, whose workplace is located,
appropriately, in the jail. From a nearby saloon, of course, the command center
of the city continuing all through Fort Bravo loud-speakers reverberate a
compilation of the greatest hits of Ennio Morricone.
Outside of the tourist season the ticket price includes a
soft drink and a carriage ride with Rafael Aparicio Garcia, a gypsy who was
infected with the film bug, as everyone here loves to act.
"I have been here since 1992. I do everything:
janitor work, films, music videos and advertising, "he says." If the
money is there, we do stunts, gallop horses, jump out of windows ... Hey, I was
in Dollar for the Dead, with Emilio Estevez!"
Fort Bravo is not the only city that seems to have been
misplaced from North America to Spain. Just a few miles down the road is
located Fraile, a replica of El Paso, Texas. As in Fort Bravo Fraile was
converted into a tourist attraction, now known as a mini-Hollywood a theme
park. But Diego Garcia, who choreographed the Wild West show in town, remembers
a time when the entire region was a thriving outpost of show business.
"In my childhood, we all worked in Almería for the
film industry," he says. "I started with horses, and that brought me into
the stunts. I played a good guy, a bad guy, a pimp, a Mexican and a soldier in
the same movie. I do not know how many films I've done it's like someone asking
how many women he has he slept with. You always forget one. "
[Every Saturday a bank robbery is staged on Fort Bravo's
picturesque main street.]
Almeria is a popular Western-location mainly because of
the nearby Tabernas Desert, which extends over 174 square kilometers and the
American West, both climatically and scenically are very similar. The first
director to recognize the potential of this area was Michael Carreras, who shot
here in the early 1960s. Other voices, however, claim that Joaquin Romero
Marchent was here first. In any case, the real boom began with Sergio Leone,
nicknamed “The Nutcracker” due to his tireless hands, while working here. He
said that if Hollywood made movies about Romans, then why shouldn’t an Italian
filmmaker make movies about gunslingers? Although some scenes from A Fistful of
Dollars in 1964 were already shot in the region, Leone took advantage of all
the benefits of the environment that Almeria offered the following year, when
he and his production crew filmed the second of the dollar trilogy For a Few
Dollars More. These films are still among the best works of Clint Eastwood.
[José Novo aka Pepe
Fonda Pepe earns his living as an actor and stuntman in Fort Bravo, claiming
that he was Henry Fonda's illegitimate son.]
[Diego Garcia,
choreographer of the Wild West shows in Fraile, a replica of El Paso, stages
gunfights for the tourists.]
Leone's assistant Tonino Valerii was here the first time
in Almeria on his honeymoon. A large part of his honeymoon was spent in the
search for venues in the vicinity of the gold mine at Rodalquilar, the main
source of income for Los Albaricoques', a hamlet in the province of Níjar.
While visiting Los Albaricoques Tonino, saw a village full of pretty,
whitewashed houses, as would have been found in the Mexico in the 1870s. Jose
Ruiz, 81, tells that the whole village was involved in the film, which was
thereby turned into a kind of violence glorifying family photo album of a
generation of villagers.
"The mine was closed in 1966, and many people moved
away," says Jose, "but those who stayed behind, worked in the films.
The work in the mines was hard and dangerous. The people were sick, many had
lung disease. Within a year, my grandmother buried my father, my uncle Pepe,
another uncle and their son Antonio. 1936 and 1937, all women were widows. We
never saw them wear white again. "
The Almeria burgeoning film industry was under Francisco
Franco's dictatorial government in 1964 a tailwind, and film production was
promoted in the region by law. King of Kings, Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra,
Travels with My Aunt, The Wind and the Lion, and Never Say Never all were
filmed here, before Almeria lost favor with Hollywood. A major incentive was
that film crews in Spain could do almost anything they wanted. Leone went so
far as to blow up mountains, to a working railway line in the middle of
building in the desert, Franklin J. Patton Shaffner’s classic movie of 1970,
used the Spanish army in the 20th Century Fox production, the services of an
entire company of soldiers was made available. The older employees of the Grand
Hotel still remember the stuntmen, who fell from the balconies on the first
floor and broke their noses on the mosaic tile of the swimming pool.
Today Fort Bravo stuntmen still wear Stetsons on their heads and revolvers on their waists.
Pepe, who lives in Tabernas, began his career 25 years ago as an extra in Fort
Bravo and earns his living, now as an actor and stuntman in tourist shows. At
our meeting, he appears with a green, overflowing folder full of screenshots
from films such as Once Upon a Time in the West and newspaper clippings of a
story that he had peddled a few years ago to the press.
"I was 13 or 14," he says, "and my mother
told me, we went to the movies, where I would meet my father. I looked around,
stared at everything: the chestnut seller, the usher, a motorcyclist, but my
mother said nothing. The movie that was playing was Once Upon a Time in the
West, and in the scene where Henry Fonda's gang takes over the ranch and kills
the child, she says to me, “That's him. That's your father.”
[Fort Bravo is like a ghost town, but was used as a film
set before, and still is, mainly for movies and shows, taking place in a ghost
town.]
For years, tourists who visited Almeria, pointed out the
similarity of the Spanish teenager with the Hollywood star, and it did not take
long for Pepe to decide to adopt the personality of the character shown by
Fonda. The shaggy beard, and the tortured look of quivering lips they are all
here. The only inconsistency: Pepe must have been during the filming of Once
Upon a Time in the West about six or seven years old. "Oh yes, my mother
told me that Henry Fonda was here before. Perhaps he had been here on holiday, "admits
Pepe. Can you blame the residents of a western town who act like they do when they
are prone to myths?
Nowadays it seems preferable to myths anyway. The region
of Andalusia is not a popular destination for filmmakers anymore, and money is
tight. When I visited Western Leone, another ramshackle village that served as
a film set, almost everyone wanted to talk to me, bribe me.
Pepe blames the irresponsible occupational travelers who
work for next to nothing: "The owner of the film set benefits from the
junkies and the fact that there is no other work. In the end they all work for
peanuts. Once I was at a casting, when a gypsy spoke to me and said, 'Pepe, go
home. That's my job. 'The gypsies are the worst. Let one make a movie and
hundreds of others emerge. I have seen gypsy women fill baskets with sandwiches
from the catering table.”
Although it is true that Beltrán, the Chef stuntman in
For a Few Dollars More, claims he was twice held-up by gypsies on the set, says
Raphael Garcia they overestimate the population and the influence on
occupational travelers in the industry. "If they do not work in films it
is because the production was moved to Ouarzazate in Morocco, where extras work
for only six euros a day."
The longing for the good old days takes strange forms. A
teacher Manuel Hernández spends his free time wandering through Los Albaricoques
and points out fake bullet holes at the sites of the most famous gunfight in
For a Few Dollars More. He is also the owner of the Hostal Rural Alba. Besides
his own brand of wine with Eastwood on the label, the guest house is adorned
with a fresco style mural, with its famous "pocket watch" scene at
the standoff between Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Gian Maria Volonte at the end
of the film.
Manuel is firmly committed to making the income of the
village gushing again and has even managed to rename some of the roads at the
site in accordance with the regional film history: It is now commonly referred
to Aguas Calientes (the town in the film), Ennio Morricone, Clint Eastwood Lee
Van Cleef, Sergio Leone, have lent their names to streets. When he presented
his idea, the neighbors were reluctant at first to make their city a tribute to
Leone. But when Manuel began to regularly show a documentary about the films
produced in the area, they were convinced over time.
Slowly the residents began to identify with the films, as
part of their history and to accept the idea. Maybe one day Hollywood will
remember the potential of the Western, and famous actors in cowboy costumes
will gallop wildly back through the dusty streets of Almeria.
Photos by Salvi Danés
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