Robert Woods on Sicily and stuff

From: That's With An "S" IV

An interview with, and a look at the films of, Robert Woods

by William Connolly

with research by Michael Ferguson, Tom Betts and Gordon Harmer

Spaghetti Cinema #53, June 1993

Robert Woods: (On MY NAME IS PECOS...) Demofilo Fidani did the costumes. Demofilo and Mila Fidani. They did the costumes and that sort of stuff. And he became very big.

WC: Fidani?

RW: Yeah, as Miles Deem. The guy released films in South America and made fortunes. I did his first film. They begged me to do for nothing. It was called PEONYS and it was a piece of garbage. I hated that film. And I die in the end, and in Naples they tore out the seats of the cinema and threw them at the screen, because you don't kill the hero. You just don't. Not in a Latin country. You just do not kill the hero.

That's Naples, though. The Southern Italians, man, they just, "Arrgh! This isn't what I want to see. I want him to win."
Rome and the South are kind of weird people; kind of strange people. Arab almost. I mean there's sort of this Arab influence.

WC: I understand that Italy and Sicily are almost like two different countries.

RW: Oh, yeah. Indeed.

I did a film in Yugoslavia, I can't remember the name of it, with Gianni Grimaldi.

[STARBLACK.]

And he was Siclian and I went down to visit then. I love Sicily. What a beautiful place. We went fishing all night, Elga Andersen and I. The lights on the water, and fish flying - the flying fish - and the moon. Ah, man it was great! It was great! It was one of those unforgettable experiences where even the smells around you; everything was sensual. Great time. Great time.

WC: And, of course, we have Sicily to thank for Claudia Cardinale.

RW: I've got a Claudia Cardinale story. I was sitting on the set with Hank Fonda one day when we were doing BATTLE OF THE BULGE and she was down doing something... She was down getting ready to do something, and somebody brought her in and introduced her to Fonda. And he introduced her to me. I hadn't met her either. And he talked; he was very congenial - Fonda's a great guy. And as she walked away, he said, "Beautiful girl."

And I said, "Yeah."

He said, "Fat ass."

She's got this huge butt, you know?

And that was shocking from Fonda, because he wouldn't usually do that.

Robert Woods on MY NAME IS PECOS

From: That's With An "S" IV

An interview with, and a look at the films of, Robert Woods

by William Connolly

with research by Michael Ferguson, Tom Betts and Gordon Harmer

Spaghetti Cinema #53, June 1993

Robert Woods: I think I might have dubbed MY NAME IS PECOS, because I did some of them, but I was so busy that I have very little time... You'll find that most of the actors were so busy that they could not dub themselves. You'd have it in your contract; 'cause I always wanted to dub myself - I mean I do voice-overs and things like that, and I thought it was right to do things like that.

I dubbed alot of Brad Harris films, as a matter of fact.

WC: When I saw you in the makeup for Pecos, I wondered if you had had an accident. It looked rather odd.

RW: I liked the look; I liked the idea. You see, the whole thing about becoming an actor is... I like any kind of thing where you can... Okay, maybe I was playing myself with the Pecos makeup, but it was a way out of myself, you know? Acting for me is an escape. I'm not basically a shy person anyway, but I like to do something different. I played Ned in THE THREEPENNY OPERA and I liked it. I liked to be deformed, you know what I mean? I prefer that to being clean and...

WC: Was it a conscious idea in MY NAME IS PECOS to have the Mexican hero be sort-of a representative of the "Third World" getting back at the Ugly Americans?

RW: Of course. The whole thing about the Europeans is that they don't look at Americans as individuals; they look at us as a suppressive country, because we're the country in power. I mean I'm not kidding; we're very hated almost every where. If you learn the language, they respect you and like you more; you can get along with them, and everything works. I have alot of friends because of that. If you don't bother to learn the language, you're a hated individual or a collective society in Europe.

Many times I've sat in an outdoor cafe and heard Ugly Americans come in and say, "What the hell do you mean 30 thousand lira? We won the war."

And you just want to go: "Whoa...", you know? Or "back to Mom" or something. The worst feeling in the world is to watch Americans behave badly in a place that isn't their's, but Americans have this attitude that, "Hey, we won the war; it's our's, and you should bow-down to me. I'm American."

WC: I figured that that was probably why PECOS was so popular in places like Africa.

RW: Sure, that's why it was. Basically, it had a social message. There were a lot of these films that you might laugh and say they're campy and they're this and that, but they said a few things in those films. Not all of them... PECOS happened to one of them.