Read my interview with Cástulo Guerra, who portrayed General Manuel Fernandez Castrillon in The Alamo (2004)!

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The new vision for the Alamo, it turns out, involves returning the old mission to its past.

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AS: Are there any characters within the history of the Texas Revolution that you can relate to?

ACH: Sure, but let me comment on the terminology. Even though the term Texas Revolution is used, and I’m just as guilty as anyone on this, it was not a revolution. The more accurate term is The Texian War of Independence. I realize that’s a mouthful, but that is what it was. Of course the same could be said about the American Revolution. Now to your question. Travis was always it for me. Perhaps it is because of Lawrence Harvey, but he has always been my favorite. When my wife and I were coming out of the premier for THE ALAMO, she said she could not believe a man who abandoned his wife and children could have ever been my hero. I really could not answer because he did do that, but I am still fond of him to this day.

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AS: How long have you been a student of the Alamo?

RC : My Alamo interested started February 23, 1955, when I saw Disney’s Davy Crockett at the Alamo on TV’s Disneyland. I had seen the first two episodes and was already hooked on Davy. I knew every verse in the Jimmy Dodd recording of the ballad, but as a seven-year-old, I couldn’t understand what they meant in the song when they sang, “And they needed him at the Alamo.” Until then, the “Alamo” to me was a restaurant in Knoebels Grove ammusement park near our home in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. So… what? They needed Davy to wash dishes?
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AS: How long have you’ve drawn for publications and when were you first asked to commission an illustration for a book?

GZ: My first commissioned illustration came in 1972, a gouache painting entitled DUNBAR’S MASSACRE, for Burt Garfield Loescher’s THE ST. FRANCIS RAID, volume four of his series, THE HISTORY OF ROGERS’ RANGERS. Since then my work has been published fairly steadily, even while I worked in the downtown rat race for 15 years as an art director. I quit the field in 1987, and devoted myself full-time to historical/western/military illustration and writing.

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AS: How were you introduced into the Alamo?

JE: Born in 1950, I am a classic Baby Boomer. As with most Baby Boomers, I have now reached that very comfortable and convenient stage in life wherein my age, my IQ, and my waist size are all approximately the same. Also, as with most Baby Boomers, Hollywood introduced me to the Alamo.
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AS: What was the most happy “Alamo” experience you’ve ever taken part in? Most exciting?

MB: Both the most exciting and happy experience had to be when Tony Pasqua and I performed inside the Alamo for the Alamo Descendants Ceremony on March 5th 1995. We performed a song we had written with Tony’s brother Willie called, Memories of the Alamo. This is included in the At The Alamo CD. We had our wives there, Nancy Boldt and Linda Pasqua, as well as many Alamo friends. I wasn’t nervous…until it was over. Than we played at The Menger Hotel Bar till about three in the morning. It was a night I will never forget.
A close second is the night we spent with Walter Lord at the Alamo restaurant in New York City. You can’t go no better.
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AS : How has the buzz been about your new book, David
Crockett: Hero of the common man?

BG: It has received favorable mention in Kirkus Review,
Library Journal, Book List, and a very good review in
the Western Writers of America’s Roundup magazine. I
was in the local rare book shop today and they told me
that none other than the candidate for Texas governor,
Kinky Friedman, bought a copy yesterday, so don’t be
surprised if he starts using some of Crockett’s
campaign tactics.

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AS: How long have you been a student of the Alamo?

NH: Like most ‘Baby Boomers,’ I reckon that I can trace my Alamo origins back to Disney’s 1955 DAVY CROCKETT AT THE ALAMO episode. (And I can still remember how my mother sacrificed the rabbit fur lining of her winter coat to make ‘coonskin’ caps for my brother and I.) It wasn’t until 1960, however, upon viewing the trailer for John Wayne’s upcoming film THE ALAMO, that I became a die in the wool Alamo devotee. There was just something about that trailer, with its fleeting glimpse of the Waynamo facade that got me entranced. The day after seeing the film, I picked up my first Alamo book, William Weber Johnson’s THE BIRTH OF TEXAS. I was 7 1/2 years old.

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AS: What obstacles did you face in creating the set? It’s understood that there were some political problems within Disney while The Alamo was in production.

MC: Considering the scale of what I was proposing and attempting (the largest standing set ever built in North America) I encountered few genuine obstacles or problems in creating the Set. The transition of Ron Howard from Director to Producer, and the hiring of John Lee Hancock to Write and Direct, was a surprisingly small hiccup. The Disney Executive to the project was Bruce Hendricks, also a Texan, and University of Texas at Austin alum, and John Lee Hancock’s Texas Credentials were such that I was allowed to maintain the course that had been determined prior to all of these transitions.

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