Don Emilio - The Man Who Put The Wild In The Wild Bunch

A renaissance desperado remembered.

Unless you're a fan of Mexican cinema or old westerns, it's possible you won't have heard of Emilio Fernandez. Those that worked with him had a hard time forgetting 'El Indio'. "Emilio was a true original," recalls Cliff Coleman, who encountered Fernandez on the set of The Wild Bunch. "I don't know whether this was before he'd shot that producer, but he had an awesome aura. He'd brought his harem with him – 50 girls who lived at his hacienda. I'd love to have owned the penicillin concession on that place."

But there was more to Emilio Fernandez than extreme violence and hard-core carousing. From the 1930s until his death in 1986, Fernandez was Mexico's premier filmmaker, shooting over 40 features. He was a man of contradictions too – a card-carrying macho whose films featured strong heroines and whose hobbies included painting and poetry.

Had he been less of a degenerate, he'd have be a celebrated as a renaissance man.
But it's for a lifetime of violence that Fernandez remains a cult figure. And it's his dedication to the whoring arts that means people concentrate on his lifestyle rather than his trailblazing pictures.