We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Badges Remake
BIO
Pepe García Gilling is a Mexican filmmaker and writer who has an MFA in Creative Writing and is a candidate for the MAIS in Mexican American Studies at UT Rio Grande Valley, where he currently teaches Intro to Mexican American Studies. Before moving to the U.S., he worked in the film industry in Monterrey, México, while also being a member of the Monterrey International Film Festival. In the Rio Grande Valley, he is currently Chair of the South Texas International Film Festival. The two short films he’s written and directed have been featured at several film festivals around the world. Although he’s been writing screenplays since then, it was until he began his MFA that he began to write poetry, non-fiction and essays. His films and writing focus mostly on the Latinx experience, and his research centers on the misrepresentation (and lack thereof) of Latinxs in U.S. films, more specifically Hollywood.
EXT. SIERRA MADRE – DAY
Passport? We ain’t got no passport.
We don’t need no passports
I don’t have to show you any stinking passports
Gold Hat doesn’t say passport.
Gold Hat says badges.
Maybe Alfonso Bedoya took the role
Because of the screens America stole
It wasn’t only Bogart searching for
Gold in the Sierra Madre
American producers hunted
Treasure in Mexican
Gold(en Age) sierras
EXT. BORDER RANCH – DAY
Camera shot of an
Immigrant shot for trespassing into
A White man’s lot.
So what does
Hollywood want us to see?
I guess Brown is also chroma key.
Question: This land of the free,
How does it show Mexicans on screen?
Answer: does it?
INT. OFFICE – EVENING
To properly wash your film
Do your laundry in White
For Zapata, make the skin light
Marlon Brando seems right
Get Natalie Wood to say buenas noches
In West side stories, love wins
For the role of Anglo Zorro
Get Anthony Hopkins
Supply Pacino with a machine gun
Violent Latinos are always fun
Or so says the NRA.
Cause who’s to say
Latinas are more than just a maid?
Lupe Ontiveros played over a hundred of ’em
Don’t worry, she got paid.
H’bout that gangbanger, Hector?
What movie was he in?
Oh, yeah. That’s right.
It was Noel Gugliemi in all of them.
INT. STUDIO – NIGHT
Two men sit behind a table. Our hero, Salma, walks in.
“Hi, my name is Salma.”
“Hi, Selma, what part are you auditioning for?”
“Naturally for
the maid
the hot Latina
the prostitute
the spit-fire lady
the immigrant mother.”
“The role is yours.”
“Hi, my name is Gael.”
“Hi, Gale, what part are you auditioning for?”
“Naturally for
the gangbanger
the gardener
the fieldworker
the immigrant
the drug lord
the lazy Mexican.”
“The role is yours.”
The casting director whispers to the producer:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best”
Yeah… Cuarón, Iñárritu and Del Toro
Are losers
Cause they don’t
Make films of
Violent bandits grabbing
Hypersexualized mamacitas
by the pussy.
EXT. SOME PLACE IN THE BORDER – DAWN
All we got is
Burning Brown-made celluloid
Sparked with spit-fire
Chingona dialogue of
Fuck your Gold and palms
My heroes reduced to
Comic-relief ant men
Fire ant men
Get your extreme close up
of scene 3A, take two
many times
we’ll cross the border
of the frame
so track your shot
and zoom in on my badge:
Acción. ACCIÓN. ¡ACCIÓN!