Trivia for
Desperado (1995) More at IMDbPro »

• Raul Julia was cast as Bucho, but pulled out due to declining health.
  
  
• The part of Campa is played by Carlos Gallardo. Gallardo played El Mariachi in the prequel El mariachi (1992).
  
  
• Steve Buscemi's character's name is "Buscemi" because the part was written with him in mind.
  
  
• Santa Cecilia (St. Cecilia) is the patron saint of music, which is an obvious reference to the Mariachi theme. Both Purcell and Handel wrote Odes to St. Cecilia's Day (22 November 1683, and 1739, respectively). Few hard facts are known about St. Cecilia who may not have existed at all, other than in legend.
  
  
• During the bar scene during the opening credits, Los Lobos, who provided the music for the film, can be seen in the audience.
  
  
• When Antonio Banderas enters the hospital, one of the signs next to the doorway has a picture of a gun with a silencer on it and the circle with the line through it saying no guns.
  
  
• The bar in the beginning of the film where Steve Buscemi and Cheech Marin talk is an actual bar in Acuna, Mexico called the Corona Club. The bar is a lot cleaner and bigger in reality, but it's like walking right into the movie. They also have quite a few pictures of the stars and crew of the movie on the walls.
  
  
• The bathroom scene before the 2nd bar shootout was directed by Antonio Banderas. Robert Rodriguez said he didn't like using 2nd unit crews and Banderas asked if he could direct the scene, so Rodriguez agreed.
  
  
• Jennifer Lopez tried out for the part of Carolina.
  
  
• Antonio Banderas performed all of his own guitar work, including "Cancion Del Mariachi" during the opening credits.
  
  
• The "crotch gun" that El Mariachi shows Carolina in her bookstore (it was in the guitar case) is the same gun used by Tom Savini's character Sex Machine in Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
  
  
• The movie was originally entitled "El Pistolero" ("The Gunman") to be consistant with the first film (El mariachi (1992)) but was changed at the request of the studio. In Mexico it was released as "Pistolero".
  
  
• Robert Rodriguez had originally written a rock version of the song "Malagueña Salerosa" into the screenplay. It would later be performed by his band "Chingon" during the end credits of Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004).
  
  
• Director Robert Rodriguez said in his DVD commentary that the day they shot Salma Hayek's love scene with Antonio Banderas, the entire crew showed up to see it.
  
  
• Though Quentin Tarantino wasn't initially cast in the movie, the character he plays was based on him. Steve Buscemi was originally cast in the role, but when Tarantino expressed an interest he was immediately given the part.
  
  
• The scenes with Steve Buscemi and Cheech Marin had to be shot quickly because they could only afford Buscemi for seven days and Cheech for six.
  
  
• During the shoot out in the bar Cheech's character is rarely seen. This is because they could only shoot his scenes in the six days they had him, so they made an approximation of what the shot up bar would look like and shot his scenes with it, putting his character behind it for most of the shootout.
  
  
• For most of the killings they used a gun that essentially fired fake blood at the characters instead of squibs. This unfortunately created too realistic of an effect resulting in them having to edit out much of the deaths for the censors.
  
  
• Due to the film's relatively low budget, the same two stunt men were used throughout the movie.
  
  
• Late in the film we discover Bucho's real name to be "Cesar". Bucho calls El Mariachi "Manito". Manito is short for "Hermanito" in Spanish, which means little brother.
  
  
• The huge black handgun that is seen throughout the movie (used by the bad guys) is a Desert Eagle .50AE pistol.
  
  
• This film cost approximately $7 million to make, 1000 times the amount of money Rodriguez spent to make El mariachi (1992).
  
  
• The accountant at the end of the bar shootout was the second assistant director, Diego Sandoval.
  
  

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