“It’s a tough thing, to separate the mythology of the Alamo from the new facts that historians have learned, but I’ve tried to embrace them both,” Hancock continues. “Like everybody, I’m captivated by the larger-than-life place the Alamo has taken in the story of the building of America, but at the same time, we’ve made a real effort to show, to the best of our knowledge, what it was really like to be there.”

“One of the most distinctive things about this movie is that it’s a character study,” states Oscar®- winning producer Mark Johnson. “The Alamo” marks the continuation of an association between Johnson and Hancock that began over a decade ago. “But, it’s a character study against a huge, epic background. It’s probably more character-driven than any previous version of the story. Beyond the siege and epic battle, it deals with a confluence of people who came together for different reasons, were actually fighting and defending the Alamo for different reasons. This heroism came from people who weren’t necessarily heroic characters. This convergence of events immortalized them forever.”

“I think that, as Americans, we’re drawn to underdogs, and these guys were the ultimate underdogs,” says Hancock. “When people decide to stay in a place even though it means certain death, it’s a heroic gesture.

“It’s also a story about second chances,” continues Hancock. “Many – most – of these men had been failures of one kind or another. The Alamo was a place where they got another chance at life, a chance to be reborn. I guess that they forgot that in order to be reborn, you have to die. Ultimately, these aren’t comic-book heroes; these are real guys, flawed guys, that still found something unexpected in themselves. I want the audience to feel their plight and ask themselves a question: ‘Would I have stayed?’

“There have been thirteen or fourteen Alamo movies and I’m sure each one has a cultural distinction based on the audience at the time,” the director continues. “It’s also been said of Wayne’s film that it’s important to the period because of the ideas he wanted to portray in terms of patriotism.” “I believe that this movie shows the fall of the Alamo and the aftermath in a completely different light,” says Johnson.

“I’m not sure I have an agenda,” Hancock continues. “It’s just that now is a good time to examine patriotism that’s not jingoistic, that’s not rallying around the flag just for the sake of rallying around the flag. It’s a story that’s been made thirteen times and I feel it’s never been told properly. They’ve never made the movie I wanted to make which, I think, tells the whole story. Why tell this story again? Because it’s a grand story.”

It’s no overstatement to say that the events at the Alamo changed the course of American history. With any such story, it takes on an importance greater than any of its participants could have known. “I grew up on the Alamo; it was always one of my favorite stories,” says screenwriter Leslie Bohem. “What grabbed me was the exploration of a story that had appealed to me since I was eight years old, watching the John Wayne movie. Over the years, I knew from that movie of my youth and the books I had read back then that they weren’t getting the whole story, which is so wonderfully rich and complicated.”

“Les had always wanted to do the Alamo story because he had read many of the more recent books and realized that the dozen-or-so movies that had come before really didn’t have a lot of historical information about these characters that we now have,” says Hancock. “He wanted to de-mythologize in some way the whole story and make these characters flesh-and-blood. And, for me, it’s all about the characters.”

“This story, where the threads of history and myth are so intertwined, has never gone out of fashion,” states veteran production designer Michael Corenblith, also a Texas native and son of a retired Texas history teacher. “This notion that freedom and liberty come with a price, a sacrifice, is one of the fundamental American truths. And we can’t let the facts obscure the truth.”

“The story of the Alamo is a myth, really,” says Dennis Quaid, the Houston-bred star who plays Gen. Sam Houston. “What’s more, myths can be truer than facts, in a way, because we feel them deeply inside us.”

“This is not history,” says the film’s military advisor, Alan C. Huffines, author of the book Blood of Noble Men: The Alamo Siege and Battle. “This is a motion picture. But, what John Lee said is he never wanted to make an artistic decision based on ignorance. He always wanted to know the facts before making that decision. For someone doing an historical epic, that attitude is so important to have, so constructive, and saturates the entire film.”

For Hancock, another way to let the audience experience what it was like to be in San Antonio de Bexar in the spring of 1836 was to draw three distinct characters set against the epic backdrop that we know so well. These characters find themselves in Texas for wildly different reasons, but in the end, all are trying for a second chance at life. “Some of the people were there by accident,” notes Johnson.

“Some were just trying to protect their land, and were forced to embrace ideals and a vision for the future of this country that they may not have had in mind to begin with. It was really important to John that each character, each moment, be true to what happened. At the same time, he has to tell a story, an exciting story, while not sacrificing what we have gathered to be the truth for the sake of storytelling. It’s a really good story! It’s exciting; it involves characters you care about and will also find sympathetic because they were real.”

“The way to make a myth human is by showing that these people had flaws,” says Quaid. “These people had flaws, but they did this heroic thing. You didn’t have people coming to Texas back then who weren’t flawed. This movie is based on the characters. A huge action movie with all these desperate battles that’s character-driven at the same time.”

“There were all these different lives, all these different stories,” adds Patrick Wilson, who stars as the fort’s commander, William Barret Travis. “Some were put there. Some wanted to be there. Some were just passing through. And, by the end of it, these ordinary men in this extraordinary situation found themselves fighting for a cause that maybe they didn’t believe in right away. It’s a complex story about fighting for something you believe in.”

Hancock hopes his film “is stirring and emotional, like I felt when I visited the Alamo as a little boy. It’s a telling of both the factual truth and the emotional truth. I don’t intend for this to be a history lesson. At the same time, we tried to be as historically accurate as we could. I do feel the pressure and the specter of the actual story and history that occurred. Being a Texan, I feel the burden and responsibility to get it right. I hope I did my best to portray this story in a way that is historically accurate and thematically correct while being dramatically sound and moving and inspiring.”

The True Story
It has long been recognized as the most celebrated military engagement in Texas history. Some historians have called the Alamo the “cradle of Texas liberty,” but its origins were that of a Franciscan mission of San Antonio de Valero. The mission was founded on May 1, 1718 by Gov. Martin de Alarcon in San Antonio (then the northern-most area of the Spanish territory known as Mexico) to help Spain Christianize the native population.

The mission fell into disrepair and ruin in the latter part of the century, and was secularized in 1793. In 1801, a Spanish cavalry unit known as Alamo de Parras occupied the buildings (which consisted of a series of conventual structures, a large, roofless church and semi-fortified walls that enveloped the mission) and converted the edifice into a fort and military barracks in defense against the French from the Louisiana territory and gave the building its new name. Mexican troops subsequently settled into the fort around 1821, when Mexico seceded from Spain.

From the late 1600s, Spanish colonial authorities had made attempts to settle the area known as the province of Tejas, a name coined by a tribe of Caddoan Indians from the word teychas, meaning ‘friends’. As the Spanish administration waned, they offered land grants to encourage people to settle the environs now known as Texas.

In 1821, Gen. Augustin de Iturbide led Mexico in its war of independence from Spain – and crowned himself Emperor the next year, and was ousted in 1823 by a liberal Mexican faction whose participants included a ruthless politician and soldier, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna Perez de Lebron. The secession included the vast land holdings which encompassed the northernmost state of Coahuila-y-Tejas.

In an effort to promote economic growth and civilize this frontier territory, Mexico formed a constitutional government in 1824 and granted land and tax advantages to Anglos, encouraging their move to the state. The only proviso: become Mexican citizens and Roman Catholics. Many came and accepted those terms. And, while Santa Anna boosted his influence (he was elected President in 1833), it became evident that his true goal was to become dictator. He closed the borders, sent occupational troops into the state, and dismantled the Mexican Congress of 1824, which had been patterned after that in Washington, D.C.

In an effort to enforce their rights as subjects of Mexico to form their own republic, the citizens of Coahuila-y-Tejas – Anglo and Tejano – began to organize a provisional government.

Sensing turmoil, discontent and a potential violent uprising (initiated by a deadly skirmish in the town of Gonzales between the Mexican army and local settlers), the citizens prepared for war. The first command – attack Gen. Martin Perfect de Cos (Santa Anna’s brother-in-law) and his troops and oust them from Bexar and the Alamo, which Cos had fortified with the addition of some cannon emplacements. Cos ultimately surrendered in December, 1835, at the Battle of Bexar, and the Texians secured the town and the fort. After Santa Anna learned that Texian forces had defeated the Mexican troops at San Antonio, he personally commanded an army against the rebels, marching 360 miles through ravaging winter weather in just thirty days.

Gen. Sam Houston (commander-in-chief of the Texian army), although admiring the victory staged by the Texian settlers at Bexar and the Alamo, had no intention of sacrificing more troops to the savage Santa Anna. Houston, knowing that the dictator was planning an invasion of Texas, questioned the wisdom of maintaining the garrison at the Alamo, and informed his officers to abandon the mission, feeling it was impossible to defend against such formidable forces. Lt. Col. James C. Neill, part of the effort to rid Bexar of Gen. Cos, yielded his commanding post to a young, inexperienced, 26-year-old Alabama soldier and lawyer named William Barret Travis. He, along with Col. James Bowie (an acquaintance of Houston), the legendary frontiersman Davy Crockett, and almost 200 other volunteers defied Houston’s orders and stayed at the Alamo.

On February 23, 1836, Santa Anna’s forceful army, numbering somewhere around 2,400 men, arrived in Bexar and immediately occupied the town and besieged the Alamo. When the Mexican Gen. Cos surrendered the Alamo in December, he left behind a number of cannons, including the powerful 18-pounder, which the Texian troops used to ward off Santa Anna’s first attempts to siege the fort. For twelve days, the Alamo’s defenders stood vigorously against the Mexican troops. Early (approximately 5:30 am) on the morning of Sunday, March 6, Santa Anna’s troops stormed the fort’s north wall. The general ordered that no prisoners be taken. At sunrise, the brief 90-minute battle ended, and all 189 Texians (an approximation) lay dead, but not before gallantly defending the fort and killing several hundred Mexican soldiers (no exact count has ever been substantiated).

These casualties weakened Santa Anna’s campaign while the deaths at the Alamo unified surviving Tejanos (most prominently, Juan Seguín) and Texians alike toward one goal – avenging the massacres at the Alamo and Goliad. Fortifying his own troops as he marched eastward across Texas, Gen. Houston refined his plans to defend the province, leading six weeks later to a violent confrontation on the banks of the San Jacinto River.

On April 21, Houston, leading his charge of 910 pioneers with the cry of “Remember the Alamo,” surprised Santa Anna and defeated the merciless Mexican general in the hostile engagement fought at San Jacinto near present-day Houston. The victory at the Battle of San Jacinto, which lasted only eighteen minutes, resulted in the killing, wounding or capture of the entire Mexican force (statistically, of the general’s 1,500+ soldados, 630 died, 208 were wounded and 730 were taken prisoner). Gen. Santa Anna’s surrender to Houston led to the Treaty of Velasco, giving Texas its independence. On December 29, 1845, Texas became the nation’s 28th state in the Union.

Since 1905, the Alamo’s existing church (that iconic wall and one of only two remaining sections of the original fortress) has been maintained as an historic site and museum in downtown San Antonio under the patronage of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. It remains to this day one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations, attracting over 2,500,000 visitors annually.

True Story About The Characters
In previous versions of “The Alamo,” the legendary characters have been drawn broadly, almost as heroes out of a comic book rather than the real, human figures that they were. John Lee Hancock was determined to show, as much as possible, the human dilemmas that these men were facing as they were placed in circumstances greater than themselves.

No man faced this more than David Crockett. “There was Davy Crockett, and then there was David Crockett,” Hancock explains. “We make that distinction because Crockett himself did. He preferred to be called David. He was this guy from the hills of Tennessee whose legend indicated he would wrestle an alligator and whip his weight in wildcats. He was also a successful politician and an international superstar even though that word didn’t exist at the time. Crockett has always been portrayed simply as a frontiersman, this wild man from the hills, but I was always interested in both sides of Crockett. The politician, the guy in Congress, amazes me. And, I think that’s what makes this character really interesting. It was just too good an opportunity thematically, to set up David versus Davy.”

Academy Award® winner Billy Bob Thornton plays the legendary character “like he was channeling Crockett,” per Hancock. “When I first read the existing script before I started my rewrite, Billy Bob’s name came up. I don’t think there’s anybody else who could do this role.

“Billy Bob has that dichotomy as well,” Hancock adds about the apparent kinship actor and character seem to share. “You can see Billy in Arkansas, where he’s from, driving around in his truck with a hound dog, and he seems completely at home there. You can also see him on the red carpet at the Oscars®, and he seems at home there, too. He’s living in the backwoods and bright lights at the same time. This was somebody Billy Bob was able to really embrace. His performance was amazing to watch.”

“Crockett was kind of like a rock star in his day, a legend in his own lifetime,” says Thornton. “Any kid in his right mind would want to play Davy Crockett. When I was offered the part, I didn’t have to think twice about it. He’s a larger than life figure who was also very complex. I wanted to play Crockett because I thought that I could play this character with many colors. Now, the hard thing about talking about me playing this character is that I run the risk of sounding pompous and pretentious. The reason I say that is because when you read about his personality, how he was with people, I’m sort of the same guy. There are some myths about my life, too.

“I’d been to the Alamo several times growing up,” Thornton remarks. “I didn’t go to the real Alamo during filming of the movie because I thought it would be too emotional for me. When I did go, I felt a sense of comfort. We got to know all these guys in the movie. And, when I went to the Alamo, you see their names on the wall. I related to the guy, this character, I had just played in the movie. And, I didn’t have the sadness that I thought I was going to have. The only time I teared up was when I saw a lock of Crockett’s hair. There’s also a vest of Crockett’s there, and I wear an exact replica of it in the film.When I saw the vest and the lock of hair, I got a little funny.”

When dealing with a larger-than-life character – especially one who, like Crockett, cultivated his image – the largest challenge is to present the man in a way that is truthful both to the facts of his life and the image he instills. “Crockett’s death will always be a flashpoint for argument,” Hancock states.

Three theories abound regarding Crockett’s demise: first, he was killed, along with all the defenders, during the chaos of the Alamo siege; second, that he died trying to escape from the Alamo compound; and third, that he was taken prisoner in the aftermath of the Alamo assault and executed on the direct order of Santa Anna.

“I chose the more heroic death,” Hancock reveals. “And, Billy understood this in spades. When I wrote it this way, Billy said it was the best, because it made this the most heroic Davy Crockett, the stuff heroes are made of. I thought I could embrace the heroic Crockett and still at least give a nod to historians.”

“John Lee did a great job in shaping the script in a way that presents it in a historically correct way, but a lot of times, people want to see characters that are larger than life,” Thornton adds. “I think we managed to get in this one a great balance of both. I think the portrayals in this movie, not only of Crockett, but of everybody, Jim Bowie, Travis, and Sam Houston, are going to be not only satisfying dramatically, but historically accurate, too.”

“I knew about the Alamo from the time I can remember, as a small child,” relates award-winning star Dennis Quaid as he describes his experiences of playing Gen. Sam Houston, the Commander-in- Chief who led Texas into statehood.

“I am from Texas, from Houston, in fact,” the actor continues. “Growing up, we used to play Alamo. We used to play the Battle of San Jacinto, the battle that Sam Houston won which led to Texas’ independence. Everybody wanted to be Davy Crockett. I’m all grown up now, yet we got to play with all these great toys on the movie, which was a lot more fun.”

Quaid, who read up on the life of the legendary Texas leader, primarily in a new biography written by James L. Haley, admits, “I didn’t really know much about this character. What I did know was he was from Tennessee. He was a protégé of Andrew Jackson, and was being groomed to be the next President after Jackson. He was the George Washington of the Texas Revolution, was General of the Texas Army. He led the republic before it became a state in 1845.”

“He was the governor of Tennessee, but had to leave office because of a scandal when his wife left him,” Quaid adds about the slanderous event that tarnished his career in 1829. “That’s when he went off to live with the Cherokee Indians. He came to Texas to start over again, like so many people did.

And, wound up carving out a nation, figuring into one of the pivotal events in American history and helping to open up the entire West to the United States. He was a great man with great ideas, very much ahead of his time in many ways.”

The Golden Globe-nominated star came to the project after campaigning the studio for a role in the film. It did help to have two filmmakers who knew what he could do – he had starred for Hancock and Johnson as the aging baseball player Jim Morris in Walt Disney Pictures’ inspirational box-office hit, “The Rookie,” two years before.

“John Lee and I had just done ’the Rookie’ with Dennis and wanted to find another movie to do together,” Johnson recalls. “When he heard we were doing the Alamo, he called us before we could call him and stated he wanted to work together again. And, I can’t tell you the number of actors, Texans, who called us and said they would do anything to be in this. They’d be extras or have small parts – anything just to be in the film. When Dennis called, we looked him in the face and said, ‘You’re Sam Houston.’”

“When we first started talking about Sam Houston, I told Dennis not to be afraid to play this man just a tad mad,” Hancock relates .“He was a big, vain, glorious man who loved to have life-size paintings done of himself. He loved the sound of his own voice, had a grand wardrobe and didn’t suffer fools gladly.

“Ultimately, he had one of the two bigger egos in this movie, along with Santa Anna,” the director continues. “In Dennis’ portrayal, I wanted to find the right timbre for the character. I wanted it to be big and small, quiet and dark. And, I knew Dennis was the kind of actor who could embrace all that. And he did.”

“That was the hardest thing, getting under the man’s skin and feeling what he felt,” Quaid says about his personification of Houston. “That’s what fascinates me about acting, especially playing real people. I want to get inside their skin. It was the same way when I played Gordo Cooper in ’the Right Stuff,’ another Texas story in a way because Houston was Space City, and that’s where I grew up.”

“For historians, Jim Bowie was the most difficult to get a handle on because he didn’t write letters. His fame had more to do with his infamy,” says actor Jason Patric about the notorious “adventurer, capitalist, treasure hunter, and all-around scoundrel,” Col. James Bowie, the enigmatic militiaman sent back to San Antonio de Bexar by Gen. Sam Houston to destroy the Alamo when Houston feared it would become a death trap, not a place of refuge, against thousands of Santa Anna’s invading troops.

“Like all of the other characters, he ends up at the Alamo because this was his last chance at redemption,” says Patric. “True character is forged in the fires of adversity. I’m not sure people are born heroes. Their own innate sensibilities get triggered by something and they either run or turn and face it. So, I think the idea of four flawed, rounded, colorful historic characters within this story makes for epic American filmmaking. It’s hard to find those subjects that actually satisfy the need to make an epic. The idea of these guys, all 180 guys, knowing they were going to die, still fought for that last stand was, in effect, what ultimately shaped America.”

When the fateful spring arrived, Bowie was a beaten man. The frontiersman had married the daughter of the Mexican provincial governor, only to lose her to a cholera epidemic a few years later. He left Texas, swearing never to return. But he did return, in 1836, suffering from his own terminal disease (possibly typhoid or tuberculosis).

“It was nostalgic for him,” says Patric. “As his own last days were waning away, this was the only place where he ever felt really comfortable. So, to blow that place up and take away these guns, leaving the rest of the townspeople with nothing, was something he really couldn’t stomach.

“He was fighting to keep himself on his feet for that last stand,” adds Patric, who repeatedly downed gulps of Tabasco sauce to graphically portray the hacking, dying Bowie. “He was a great leader and a great fighter. Those small nuggets he may have had as a human being were something he tried to impart on Crockett and Travis and the other guys because he knew he wouldn’t be up on that wall when the Mexicans finally came over.” Patric also notes that the man bore another legacy and was defined by his legendary frontier weapon, historically known as “the Bowie knife,” a prop the actor was never without in bringing this rugged character vividly to life.

“I always wore the knife, because it was an extension of the character and even affected the way I walked when strapped to my leg,” Patric relates. “Bowie was in a fight once where his gun didn’t go off. Guns back then were unreliable. He ended up getting shot and almost killed. From that moment on, after his brother made the knife, he always had it on him. I just loved the feel of it. Don Miloyevich, the propmaster, did such a good job with that knife; the weight of it and the way it felt in your hand. It was synonymous with the character.”

“Jason Patric was the best choice we could have asked for,” Hancock proclaims. “He looked like Bowie. He was drawn to the mannerisms of his character and behavior, like I was. This was a guy who traded slaves and was involved in land forging. At the same time, I wasn’t asking anybody to think he was nice. I want the audience to be fascinated by him. And, I think Jason’s the exact kind of guy that fascinates you and makes you lean in just a little closer to watch.

“The script caught him by surprise,” the filmmaker adds. “I’d been told he didn’t do big Hollywood movies, that he works only every three or four years, usually on little independents and was not enamored of big productions. He’s not someone who seeks the spotlight. But, he was really fascinated by this guy. He said to me, ‘Are you going to be able to make this really big movie a character movie?’ He knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

The Characters
“There have been many ideas brought forth in the last few months of what Texas is, or what it should become. I’d like each of you men to think of what it is you value so highly that you are willing to fight and possibly die for it. We will call that Texas.” – Lt. Col. William B. Travis

“For Travis, becoming the commander of the Alamo was something he didn’t expect,” offers bigscreen newcomer Patrick Wilson (HBO’s “Angels in America”), who plays the steadfast 26-year-old commanding officer, Lt. Col. William Barret Travis. “I don’t like the words ‘heroes’ and ‘legend.’ Anybody who says they’re a hero usually isn’t. That’s not what makes a leader. This was a man faced with a situation while becoming a man, too. There were legends created out of this event. What this movie tries to do is show the humanity of it. I was not trying to play a legend. I’m just playing a guy.”

“William Travis was the leader by law, but Bowie was the leader by the men,” Wilson elaborates. “Bowie’s the guy they want to hang out with. Travis wishes he could be that guy, but doesn’t know how to be that guy. He’s just a little bit too uptight and plays by the rules. Bowie and I have a very specific moment where we finally come to terms with the fact that we’re both going to die.”

“Bowie was the natural leader,” states actor Jason Patric in describing the contentious and confrontational relationship he shared with Travis. “People were attracted to him, rough edges and all. Travis was someone looking to cotton Bowie’s favor, and Bowie hadn’t much time for Travis.”

To which Patric adds, “Bowie, whose physical powers started to go, making him a shell of the strong man he was, realizes that Travis was going to have to lead this group. Not only did he relinquish his command, he believed Travis could become a good, even great, man.”

Wilson describes his character as “one whose life was well-documented. He was a lawyer. He ran his own paper when he was nineteen. He was very active in the military. He was called a dandy, among other things. But, he was a fighter and would gladly die for what he believed in, which he did.

“He left his wife and kid when he was 21,” Wilson continues. “He died at 26, a very young man just trying to make his way in the world, to start anew, have a new beginning in Texas. From his perspective, it’s a coming-of-age story. I saw that in the script.”

“When I met Patrick, I thought it a great opportunity to have someone relatively unknown make a huge splash,” Hancock continues. “On top of that, Patrick is a fantastic actor, and I cannot imagine anyone else playing Travis. I think the audience is going to embrace this guy.”

“Because he died a martyr, he was very much a legend. He’s painted as this big, swashbuckling kind of hero, but Travis didn’t consider himself a hero,” Wilson says. “He was a cavalry man who came to Texas much against his will. He was sent to Bexar to guard this old mission. He wanted to be active and fighting, and this was not why he signed up to be in the military. For Travis, he always thought a leader was someone who puts on fancy clothes. He finally figures out who he is in his last days. It was the same for a lot of these men at the Alamo.”

“The way to tell an epic tale is to maybe look at it in a very small, human way,” Wilson notes. “This was not a battle across a big plain. It was a very intimate battle fought face-to-face. That’s part of the human conflict. Even though this is a huge movie, told on an epic scale, it’s a very intimate story about these people. If we play these characters very real, very understated, you understand their situation,” he adds. “The audience can then walk away with that understanding of what made them legends. And, that’s what John Lee did with this script. I don’t really know the Travis legend. I only know what I learned about him as a real person.” Juan Seguín

“It’s a major misconception, this image of the entire Mexican army marching north and devouring all these Anglos in this big standoff,” actor Wilson says about the film’s story. “Rather, they were all Tejanos – Texans. You can’t break it down along racial lines – those attacking as well as those defending the Alamo were all Tejanos. It was a civil war. And, John Lee succeeded in telling both sides.”

“It wasn’t until Santa Anna took over Mexico and tried to expel the Anglos by imposing his dictatorship that this confrontation happened,” producer Johnson points out. “In many ways, people had been living in harmony, in a way that they were perfectly happy to go on living. Because of this dictator taking over, this battle happened.”

“One of the things we wanted to show was that there were many sympathetic Mexican characters in the history of the Alamo,” producer Johnson chimes in.“Many of them inside the Alamo were defending it against Santa Anna. Symbolizing that, the character of Juan Seguín is very important in our movie. In many ways, we see the story through his eyes.”

“Essentially, this was a Mexican civil war,” director Hancock states. “The idea was that someone was trying to take away their land. Juan Seguín, a Tejano, is the moral bellwether of the story. He is not a firebrand. This was his country. He was not from somewhere else who comes in to fight for this place. His family had been there forever. So, the land beneath his feet meant a different thing to him than it did to Crockett or Houston or Travis.

“Seguín is confused and guilty over killing his brothers because he disagrees with Santa Anna,” declares renowned Spanish actor Jordi Mollá, who embodies the key Tejano character. “At the same time, he always asks this question in his head – am I doing the right thing? He’s fighting for something he’s not convinced about, and that gives this character a tired soul. It’s not just a movie about war. It’s more a movie about human beings in a war situation.”

“He could be the narrator of this story,” Mollá muses. “He raises the question of the morality of war. He never shoots a gun. He’s an observer and gives the audience the opportunity to think about this story, this battle. People die in wars, and that’s what John Lee was doing, showing this war as one between human beings,” Mollá emphatically states. Antonio López de Santa Anna

One of the saga’s main characters who did not succumb at either the Alamo (he never sets foot inside the fortress until after the actual late night siege) or the Battle of San Jacinto was Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican army officer, revolutionary and dictator whose bloody victory at the Alamo on March 6 led to his defeat and surrender at the hands of Gen. Sam Houston 46 days later.

Portrayed as a mere faceless stereotype in earlier Alamo films (“In the past, he’s always been played as just the bad guy,” says Hancock), the filmmakers were more interested in exploring “the character’s logic, and what Santa Anna was thinking,” the director admits. “Santa Anna had a lot of charisma. You don’t have a career and a life like that, one that fascinating with many twists and turns, unless you have a great deal of charisma. I needed a really good actor and Emilio was just fantastic. I just think Emilio has that same charisma. I’d been a fan since I saw him in ‘Amores Perros.’ He had actually played Santa Anna in a play once before.”

“I had the luck to play Santa Anna eighteen years ago in a stage play called ’sleeve of the Nail,’” says popular Mexican star Emilio Echevarría in his native Spanish. “I consulted many books in preparation for this character. There is an enormous quantity of biographic literature about Santa Anna. In the subsequent years, there have been more books published that added new information that helped my vast research.”

In talking about the difference between how the history of this significant event is approached and portrayed in schools across the border, Echevarría offers that “Santa Anna is stigmatized in our official history. He is condemned. This is a man who was a determinant character in the history of Mexico. He is the character responsible for the loss of the territory that subsequently became part of the United States. For that, he’s seen as a villain, the devil. El diablo!”

“During my first interview with John Lee, he described the vision he had for Santa Anna. He said, ‘I don’t want to see only the villain,’” Echevarría recounts. “That would be very boring. My obligation as an actor, when confronting a historical character, is to abbreviate the facts that one has about him and represent him as faithfully as possible.”

In addition to the key representation of Santa Anna, and in his attempts to accurately portray the Hispanic side of the story, Hancock also included four other prominent Mexican military characters (among several dozen noted leaders of the revolution) who serve as a counterpoint to the actions of the dictatorial general.

Recreating History
“This was, without a doubt, the biggest production I’d ever been involved with,” proclaims producer Johnson about the enormity, in numbers, of the entire project. “As an example everyday at lunchtime, we would feed anywhere between 700 and 800 people. That’s 500 extras, 40 actors and a crew of 250!” Other key facts and figures associated with his production of “The Alamo” follow.

The siege of the Alamo on March 6, 1836, lasted a mere 90 minutes before all 189 Texian and Tejano defenders fell to over 2,500 Mexican soldados (while killing several hundred in the process). Six weeks later, Gen. Sam Houston avenged the Alamo slaughter by leading the charge at the Battle of San Jacinto. That skirmish lasted only 18 minutes, where 630 Mexican soldiers died, 208 were wounded and 730 were taken prisoner at the hands of his 910 Texian troops (of which only 6 perished).

Both heroic, ferocious battles took center stage in director John Lee Hancock’s updated epic, shot over the course of 101 days on location in Austin, Texas.

Production began on January 27 and concluded on June 13...the first day’s temperatures in central Texas were a biting 22 degrees. Over a hundred days later, the cast/crew ended on a scorching note – 102 degrees! From frostbite to sunstroke, director Hancock notes.

One notable number was recorded by production’s end – 275,842. No, not the amount of film stock shot by Oscar® winner Dean Semler (that number came in at 1,091,070 feet), but the total number of bottles of water consumed by the thirsty troops, especially during the final weeks of production.

The film’s magnificent set (comprised of 70 individual structures) stood on 51 acres – the largest free-standing set ever built in North America. While no guaranteed commitment was ever made by the filmmakers to bring this epic story of Texas independence to the Lone Star State, the location on a private ranch in the beautiful Texas Hill Country west of the state capital beat out over 80 other locations throughout 13 western states and Calgary, Canada.

Oscar®-nominated production designer Michael Corenblith’s construction crew numbered 300, of which only 25 (marking 87% of the crew local scenics) hailed from Hollywood. Together, his artistic troops spent almost 8 months erecting over 70 buildings that comprised the Alamo fortress, the town of San Antonio de Bexar and San Felipe/Gonzales.

Veteran costume designer Daniel Orlandi dressed over 2,000 extras and 82 principal actors (of which 54 were Texas natives). Orlandi’s crew supervised over 4,000 costumes, which included 1,000 Shako helmets manufactured in India (not to mention over 10,000 buttons adorning everything from Mexican generals to shopkeepers). Adding to the authenticity were 700 flintlock musket rifles either rented from L.A. prop houses or made in Italy and India. And, only one Jim Bowie knife (measuring a staggering 19 inches in length) was made specifically for actor Jason Patric’s frontier character.

The accounting dept. estimates that the amount of ice used to cool off both the water and crew was about 70 tons (10 tons more than F/X magician Larz Anderson’s crew used to dust four acres of Texas Hill Country for a winter snowscape sequence shot in early February). While we’re still counting the number of bottles of Gatorade that also doused the troops, the crew devoured over 18,000 Krispy Kreme donuts over the course of the production (don’t ask how much coffee washed down those delectable donuts, even though 510,000 cups of joe were recorded on the 1960 John Wayne version).

As a native Texan, John Lee Hancock felt a special obligation “to get it right” in every respect. That meant getting the story right and honing a screenplay that would help an audience put itself at the Alamo, but it also meant an unusual level of attention to detail in the production, beginning with the construction of the 51-acre set and continuing in the actors’ costumes, arms, and other props, which would literally take an audience to the famous fort.

“All of the work that went into building this set was painstaking,” observes producer Johnson. “For everyone involved, it was never just a job, not just another movie. Everybody felt a real obligation to get it right, starting with our production designer, Michael Corenblith. This Alamo was real, and every time we walked into it, we were overwhelmed by it.”

Hancock’s cool professionalism breaks down when he’s talking about the set. “I’m a kid who got to play in the biggest sandbox in the world!” That “sandbox” came to life through the talent and vision of two-time Oscar®-nominated production designer Corenblith (“Apollo 13,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”). Also a native Texan, Corenblith designed and erected the set with over seventy structures, making it the largest free-standing set ever built on location in North America. Anchored by the Alamo garrison to the north, and the town of San Antonio de Bexar and its parish church a quarter mile south, Corenblith built the structure on a private ranch in rural Texas Hill Country (the town of Dripping Springs) thirty miles southwest of downtown Austin. For Alamo aficionados, it’s the closest thing to what actually existed 168 years ago, with specs on the iconic church to within a 1/4 inch of the old Franciscan mission.

Like Hancock, Corenblith voraciously researched his topic, spending “thousands of man hours, both in research, in drafting and design, even before the construction aspect.” He turned to four recent books for historical veracity, with George Nelson’s The Alamo: An Illustrated History, which became his prime source. That book “really gave us an idea of the archaeological lineage of how this place came to be,” the designer states. “It gave us an understanding of the history behind each one of the buildings.”

Another dependable source was Frank Thompson’s The Alamo, as well as the two texts by the company’s military-history scholars who lent their expertise to the filmmakers as advisors during pre-production and the 101-day shoot – Alan Huffines’ Blood of Noble Men: The Alamo Siege and Battle, and Dr. Stephen L. Hardin’s Texian Iliad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution.

“Michael created a place that was just magical,” expert Hardin glows in recalling his first peek at the set construction back in October of 2002. “It represented such research and dedication, such fidelity, to detail. This marvelous recreation of the Alamo compound was almost surreal. I’d been recreating this place in my mind’s eye for years. I tip my hat to Michael and his team for their ability to create worlds we thought we had lost.”

“When you grow up imagining what this place must have looked like,” muses fellow advisor Huffines, “it was so powerful to walk around the Alamo mission, to stand in the tower of the San Fernando church and overlook the San Antonio valley. It was just incredible. I will always remember that first visit with Steve Hardin. The night after we’d gotten back, Steve called me on the phone and said, ‘Did we just dream that or what?’”

As he began envisioning his approach to recreating history, Corenblith assembled his creative team (most of whom he has collaborated with on prior projects) to help bring his designs to life. The designer fondly credits these key artisans with being “phenomenal craftsmen, a remarkable team, many of whom are alumni of previous movies we’ve done together. I’m like a conductor, standing on a podium, waving a baton with no orchestra out there. I am only as good as the people who are there to actually play the music.”

The result: the iconic church facade matched the real landmark (constructed in 1744) stone-for-stone. “We were dealing with such a treasured and revered icon, and all felt a responsibility to make this as historically perfect as possible,” Corenblith relates.

While the film’s historians marveled at the set’s verisimilitude, Corenblith did take some cinematic license with his designs, both inside the Alamo and the town plaza of San Antonio de Bexar, which included the San Fernando church (now a cathedral), the other surviving icon of the Mexican occupation that still stands a half-mile from the fortress in downtown San Antonio.

“When you’re dealing with historic facts, a movie designer has responsibilities to both the filmmakers and to the audience that will be overshadowed by the dictates of history,” Corenblith observes. “There will be tension between veracity to historic reality and the necessity of telling a compelling story. In other words, my responsibilities as a film designer will often overshadow those to the community of dedicated individuals around said event. But, this is a creative process...and the choice I made leaned toward a compelling cinematic experience.”

When choosing the location, Corenblith was attentive to his need for a body of water that could double for the San Antonio River (where that city’s picturesque River Walk exists today) for a crucial scene where Bowie attempts a truce with Gen. Castrillon on the bridge of what is now modern-day Commerce Street. He found that the Reimers Ranch in Dripping Springs had such a stream that flows into the Pedernales River not far away.

On his previous project, Corenblith built his vivid, imaginative Whoville set for “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (which earned him his second Oscar® nomination in 2000) entirely inside a Hollywood soundstage. This time out, he refrained from erecting any of his interior sets “in a soundstage, warehouse or hangar. I think it really helped our cast in many ways to be out here experiencing these ruins by not walking into a soundstage.”

Instead of building a set on location for exterior shots only, and repairing to a warehouse for matching interiors, Corenblith insisted to his fellow filmmakers that he “didn’t want this to be disjointed and unconnected. The idea was that everything you see out there is all one whole. And, the details of Bexar were equally as important as our attention to detail and history of the Alamo.”

“The plan all along was to build practical interiors right there,” echoes Hancock. “And, the beauty of that was just so great. When I walked somebody across the square and walked them right into a room, into a house, it just felt more real. As opposed to a sound stage, where the door opens and the door closes and there’s a flat behind it or something. That decision was made early on, and it worked out great.”

The film’s interiors, incorporated into the entire facade and filmed right there at the 51-acre site, included the luxurious Yturri House where Santa Anna lived during the occupation and siege; a rustic cantina where Hancock staged a festive ‘Fandango’ to welcome the arrival of Crockett into town; Travis’ quarters opposite the Alamo church, where he wrote his famous letters recruiting reinforcements; the Veramendi House, where Jim Bowie, then a citizen of Bexar, lived after marrying into the wealthy Veramendi family; and Bowie’s sick room, “inspired by a painting of Bowie’s death by an artist named Louis Eyeth,” per Corenblith.

As the actors and extras have to be made up and dressed, so too does the set, and that gargantuan challenge fell to Texas resident Carla Curry, who calls her work on the film “a fabulous opportunity, but a huge job, one of the biggest movies I’ve ever done. Our work encompassed 60 sets over 51 acres, and we brought in things from Los Angeles, Mexico, New England and North Carolina. Even Czechoslovakia, where we found the thatching for the huts.”

Curry and her set decorating crew launched their own treasure hunt in their attempts to find actual period “furniture, tinware, candlesticks, pottery and blankets. We imported two truckloads of pottery and two truckloads of basketry from Mexico. Tables and chairs were the hardest things to get hold of, and we had most of that made especially for the sets.”

Costumes And Props
Veteran costume designer Daniel Orlandi also tapped into the historians’ vast knowledge in his attempts to recreate history right down to the last buttons and threads. Like Corenblith, Orlandi’s titanic task consumed almost two years of his life. As director Hancock relates, “The colors make you realize this is not a western. Look at Daniel Orlandi’s wardrobe to realize there is something far more intriguing than a western. Stetsons were not yet invented. People wore top hats. This has more in common with Dickens or the Jacksonian era than it does westerns. I referred to this as ‘dirty Dickens.’”

Orlandi’s enormous effort (4,000 costumes in total) was global in scope – he fashioned fabrics in England, India (the leather shakos worn by the soldados, from a company that makes uniforms for the British military), Pakistan (where they found “handmade gold embroidery from one of the few places on earth that still does this,” Orlandi notes), Mexico (the Mexican’s army boots), and Hollywood (where all these components were brought together to actually manufacture the Mexican wardrobe).

“Outfitting the Mexican army was a big task unto itself, and that was only one portion of the movie,” the veteran costumer adds. “The Mexican army’s uniforms were very elaborate, especially the generals. We made virtually everything from scratch. All the gold embroidery was done by hand, as were the sashes and boots. All the generals’ uniforms were modeled after Napoleonic uniforms. We probably made a thousand Mexican shakos. We copied the shako plates from one that an archeologist actually excavated in the ruins of the Alamo. Even the buttons, probably 10,000 of them, were molded specifically for us from the original designs.”

Orlandi’s full-time staff of 29 craftspeople (artisans whose expertise ranged from tailoring to textiles, from seamstresses to sanders) “aged and dyed and painted the clothes to make them seemed lived in,” he notes. At the costume factory based twelve miles away from the Dripping Springs set at another ranch, these wardrobe artists wielded sanders and sprayers, spending upwards of two hours on a single garment, transforming brand-new fabrics into textured fibers that authentically represented the period.

One particularly satisfying piece of wardrobe was Davy Crockett’s vest – based on the vest that actually resides at the Alamo. “We copied its design, every little meticulous bead, all Indian embroidery,” Orlandi says. “We first found photos of this item in books. A company that does Indian beading made this for us... it was beautifully done. And, when Billy Bob put this on, I think it just immediately took him to being David Crockett.”

“Crockett wore buckskin pants only for show,” Orlandi says. “My research indicated that any portraits of Crockett show him in borrowed buckskins. He usually wore a tailcoat, indicating that he was a gentleman. As for the coonskin cap, eyewitness accounts confirm he did wear one at the Alamo. We tried to be as true to the legacy of David Crockett as possible.

“It was an interesting story to tell in relation to the costumes, because there were so many different strata of people,” the costumer continues. “We had Mexican peasants. The Spanish nobility living in Texas. Santa Anna and his elegant generals. Tejanos and Americans alike. The many different defenders at the Alamo that included doctors, farmers, lawyers, storeowners. We tried to give each and every extra a character, just like we did with every actor. All of the defenders at the Alamo have a legacy, their family name lives on, so we didn’t take it lightly. We wanted to be true to who they were. Also, our task was to make it seem like they weren’t wearing costumes. To make them seem like they were of the time. Real people in real clothes, not costumes.”

Hancock’s crew of almost 500 artists and technicians included almost four dozen hair and makeup specialists for both the principal cast and the many hundreds of extras who worked on the production virtually every day during its 101-day schedule.

For propmaster Don Miloyevich, the film proposed several challenges. One key prop he would have to locate was a handmade, 150-year-old American violin. Veteran musician Craig Eastman was “instrumental” in providing the fiddle for an emotional moment in the film. Hearing a haunting melody called “DeGuello” (from the Spanish meaning “slit throat”) played by Santa Anna’s marching band to spook the inhabitants of the Alamo, Crockett, a noted fiddler, accompanies the song for his own troops.

Eastman, whose crew badge read “Fiddle Maestro,” brought several vintage violins from his personal collection for director Hancock to review before choosing the one actor Thornton would mimic playing on-camera. “We were trying for historical accuracy, finding one that would be similar to the type that he would have played. This one was handmade in the southeastern United States. John Lee liked the sound of it, as well as its dark, rustic look.”

“There are two scenes in the movie where Crockett plays the fiddle,” the musician notes. “There’s that moment where he plays along with the attacking Mexican army’s drum-and-bugle corps on the last night before the siege. I worked with Carter Burwell on that part of the score. In researching this, we found out that Davy Crockett’s parents were Irish. So, we figured that his playing style would probably draw on Irish fiddling traditions. So we incorporated some of that into the scene.”

“You would have to play a violin for ten years before you’d be able to play something like DeGuello,” Eastman remarks. “It’s technically difficult to play. Because Billy is a musician, a good drummer, he really wanted to learn how to play the actual note-for-note fingering of it to have it look right. Getting the notes is pretty challenging, but getting the notes in tune is really, really hard.”

In addition to the musical instrument, Miloyevich was responsible for a much larger task: arming every single cast member with a real rifle from the period. He would find and maintain almost 700 guns on the show, and train each cast member in their use. Assisting Miloyevich was the production’s “master armorer,” Vern Crofoot.

The compact, goateed Crofoot says, “the weaponry on this show was absolutely, historically correct. Every firearm you see in the hands of a defender or Mexican soldier is the real firearm. Even the cartridges are real buck-and-ball load cartridges.”

In his research for the project, Crofoot accurately paired the proper weapon to the different defenders inside the Alamo. He explains that “military men were armed primarily with .69 caliber smooth-bore weapons, U.S. model 1816 muskets, which were not much different from what was used during the War of Independence. The local townspeople carried shotguns, small-bore rifles that were used for hunting. The Tennesseans brought their own rifles, long-barreled muskets, which ranged from .32 caliber all the way up to .58 caliber.”

“On any given day, we had 400-500 guns on the set,” the armorer adds. “At approximately $1,000 apiece, that meant in excess of a half-million dollars worth of firearms on the set.” The production’s most prevalent model was “the Brown Bess carbine, a .75 caliber buck-and-ball load gun that was the standard of the Mexican army. We had exact duplicates made in Italy. These were fully functional and work on a flintlock mechanism.”

While demonstrating how to operate a flintlock rifle, Crofoot also quickly points out that “the only thing that went down the barrel was black powder. There were no projectiles, no paper, no wadding. Nothing except powder...because its firepower is massive.”

“We had a very significant training program from the start,” the weapons expert emphasizes about the caliber of instruction imparted on the stars, extras and re-enactors who made up the ranks of the Alamo defenders and Mexican soldados. “Well before anyone had a real gun placed in his hands, he spent two or three days of comprehensive training, learning to march correctly, form ranks correctly and utilize and fire the guns. Every person who handled a gun had to go through the training. Safety was paramount.”

“There were no fake guns,” Crofoot proudly states about his arsenal (rubber imitations were used only for off-camera deep background extras). “Everything done for the cameras was live fire. We were very careful to insure safety not only for our stars, but also for the deepest background person. I didn’t want anyone injured on this film from our firearms. We fired a total of 90,000 rounds of black powder, and had no firearm-related accidents on the entire show.”

Crofoot’s training program (implemented with the help of the film’s re-enactor coordinator, J.R. Flournoy) proved so effective that “when everyone left the set at night, they felt almost uncomfortable not having a gun in their hands. It almost became a part of them,” he says.

Among the 2000+ extras employed on the film were 150 re-enactors, “trained troops that already know how to perform these mock battles for movie productions,” says movie veteran Flournoy about his army of history buffs employed on the project through his San Antonio-based company, Historical Productions.

Flournoy found a copy of “an original 1830 Mexican manual that was used by the Mexican troops in 1836. We duplicated it and made it available to all of our trainers so they could learn the proper drill the army used at that time. Prior to this, the best thing available for reference was an 1808 Spanish manual. Ten years ago, this show couldn’t have been done as accurately historically as we’ve done today because we didn’t have this research. We stuck to it as closely as possible, and shared it with the historians on the show.”

The lanky, laconic Flournoy, a Texas native and history aficionado who prides himself on his knowledge of various global battles, calls the Alamo “the most well-known battle in world history. From my aspect, I tried to make it as historically correct as possible. I don’t want to look back 20 years from now and see that I made a mistake. This is the most historically correct show that I’ve ever worked on.”

One of the reasons for that was the dedication displayed by Flournoy’s 150 re-enactors, who “set up their own camp on another section of the property, with their own shower facilities and catering hall. They stayed in tents for months on-end, which helped them stay in character.” The group maintained this camp throughout the entire five-month shoot, living in conditions similar to those endured by the participants in this 1836 event.

Flournoy’s training drills were not only physical in nature, but cerebral as well, with his reenactor ranks advising the few thousand extras on “which books were good for them to read and understand this event. Most of them were Texans, so they already had a great interest in this subject. The ones who showed up and were tough enough to make it through class made the grade and became Alamo defenders.”

In addition to training the thousands of extras to enact their roles as Alamo defenders, Mexican soldados or Houston’s Texian troops at San Jacinto, Flournoy (along with armorer Crofoot and boss wrangler Curtis Akin) also “trained all of the actors in their parts. They were all really eager to portray this correctly. There was a large amount of pride involved.”

The experience as a whole was quite realistic enough for the historical experts. “As I sat there night after night, watching them shoot the battle footage, I was impressed at how terrifying it was,” historian Hardin. “Dean Semler, the director of photography assured me that after it was edited, it would be even more horrifying. That was something John Lee brought to this battle that we’d never seen before. We’ve seen the spectacle of 19th century warfare before, but John Lee captured the horrific nature of 19th century warfare.”