And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself is a 2003 American made-for-television western film for HBO in partnership with City Entertainment and starring Antonio Banderas as Pancho Villa, directed by Bruce Beresford, written by Larry Gelbart and produced by Joshua D. Maurer, Mark Gordon, and Larry Gelbart.

The cast also includes Alan Arkin, Jim Broadbent, Michael McKean, Eion Bailey, and Alexa Davalos.

Maurer, who originally conceived the story and did extensive research, sold the project to HBO and then brought on Gordon and hired Gelbart to write and collaborate on the screenplay.

The film opens in 1923 with studio executive Frank N. Thayer (Eion Bailey) receiving a letter in the mail, alongside a medallion of the Virgin Mary.

D.W. Griffith (Colm Feore) is immediately interested and convinces Mutual Film Studios boss Harry E. Aitkin (Jim Broadbent) to send a crew.

However, Thayer and his camera crew team witness Villa personally shooting a Mexican widow in cold blood with his handgun during the aftermath of the battle.

The Life of General Villa is shown in theaters in the U.S., and to great success, although Thayer and his crew end up regretting their participation.

The letter inspires Thayer to return to Mexico in order to screen the film, where it is met with a passionate audience who deliver a standing ovation Villa's ending speech.

That same year, Walsh directed the first gangster movie, Regeneration, on location in the Lower East Side of New York City, and went on to direct approximately 138 movies, including such films as The Big Trail (1930) with John Wayne (Walsh discovered Wayne as a propman, renamed him, and cast him in the lead in this widescreen epic), Me and My Gal (1932) with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, The Bowery with Wallace Beery and George Raft, The Roaring Twenties with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, High Sierra (1941) with Ida Lupino and Bogart, They Died with Their Boots On (1941) with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, White Heat (1949) with Cagney, and Band of Angels (1957) with Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier.