:11:04
Leone hired him,
thinking he had something.
:11:07
He was a qualified architect,
:11:09
and his contribution to Sergio Leone's
Westerns has been much underrated.
:11:13
The look of those Leone towns,
the way in which the sets are dressed.
:11:17
Carlo Simi designed
the costumes in this film as well,
:11:20
some of which were ready-mades,
some specially designed.
:11:24
The poncho, for example,
was specially designed,
:11:27
although one member of the crew
remembers, perhaps falsely,
:11:31
that they found it in a flea market
in Madrid, on the way to the shoot.
:11:35
But I doubt that that's true.
:11:46
In the shooting script,
it wasn't Baxters versus Rojos,
:11:50
in other words,
an Anglo family and a Mexican family,
:11:53
it was the Morales instead of the Baxters.
:11:56
In the original version it was
in fact two Mexican clans fighting it out.
:12:00
But in the transformation of shooting
script into final script that they made,
:12:06
the idea of an Anglo family and a Mexican
family gave it a kind of racial edge.
:12:11
We're in a Hispanic society where there's
a racial conflict within the community.
:12:36
Eastwood worked
very cheap indeed for this film.
:12:39
He worked for $15,000 all-in fee,
plus a six-week holiday in Spain.
:12:44
The other actors who
were considered for the part,
:12:47
Charles Bronson,
James Coburn, Henry Fonda,
:12:50
and even some expatriate American
actors living in Rome like Rod Cameron,
:12:54
aged 54, who'd been
Buck Jones' stunt man
:12:57
but was still around making Westerns
in Italy, they all proved too expensive.