“I left the movie and felt that as a fan I had to support them.
It was so simple.
I sent an email, I asked them and they, very attentive, took note and apologized for how long the process could take.
Two months later I received an email with the photo and a map indicating where my grave is,” says film director and radio host
Luis Hitoshi Díaz
.
A little more than 10,000 kilometers from the Clarín editorial office, in Santo Domingo de Silos, Burgos, in Spain, there is a mound of earth crossed by a wooden cross that bears the inscription: “Luis Hitoshi Díaz, Animal Boy.”
Jean Pierre, Niní, Louka, José Francisco, Henry, Abad, Oscar, Federica, Guillermo, Sancha, Hugo, Diego, Félix, Jorge, Chiri, Rubén, Nuria, Iván, Huséin, Iker, Vicente and Ana paid
15 euros to have his cross on Sad Hill
.
In area A1 of the cemetery are their graves and many more people.
The same happens in zones B1, C1, C2, C3 D1 and D2.
The tombs number nearly 5,000
.
There are no more places for the living or the dead.
There are, however, places reserved for certain surnames.
We'll get to that.
At the height of its popularity, the cemetery had 80 applications in one week.
Everyone wanted their place, but the land was not enough.
The organizers had to put a stop to it, so for some years now you can no longer ask for crosses.
The film Hitoshi watched that night is Sad
Hill
Unearthed, a documentary that tells the story of some fans who discovered the ruins of a “cemetery” under four inches of grass and made the decision to rebuild it.
Hitoshi's tomb on Sad Hill.
Photo: courtesy of Luis Hitoshi Díaz
In the finale of Unearthing Sad Hill (
spoiler alert
) Clint Eastwood appears.
Guillermo de Oliveira
, the director of the film, documented the entire restoration process and achieved the utopia of interviewing the quintessential spaghetti western cowboy.
-How did you get Clint Eastwood?
-Well, I said: 'I want to get Clint Eastwood', I went to Google and started searching.
Guillermo de Oliveira, director of "Unearthing Sad Hill."
Photo: courtesy Guillermo de Oliveira
Searching the confines of the Internet he found the telephone number of the “switchboard” of Warner studios.
He called and from there he was referred to Malpaso Productions, Eastwood's production company.
For months he tried to convince the emerging voice on Malpaso's phone to have a brief testimony from the actor.
She kept telling him that Eastwood was busy and asking him to call back in a few months.
One day, after telling that voice that
Ennio Morricone
and
James Hetfield
were already part of his documentary, Guillermo got his long-awaited testimony.
Eastwood took advantage of some free time and recorded the video that appears at the end of the film.
Clint Eastwood in the most memorable shot of Sergio Leone's film.
The Sad Hill cemetery is where the unforgettable final
triello
of
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
takes place , Sergio Leone's most representative spaghetti western.
It is the place where Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach settle their differences forever while “The Ecstasy of Gold” plays in the background.
The documentary of a utopia
Unlike the Metallica singer, who was very open to dialogue, Morricone did not want anything to do with giving Guillermo an interview.
However, the composer's adorable wife got him a date at nothing more and nothing less than her house.
Before and after Sad Hill Cemetery.
Photo: courtesy Sergio García
De Oliveira and his team had not spent even five minutes in the composer's bunker when Morricone already wanted to throw them out.
“Please, we have already talked about this.
They come from Spain, sit with them.
Be kind,” his wife told him while the musician promised everyone that he would not open his mouth for anything in the world.
Guillermo thought he would leave without an interview, but he never gave up on the idea of recording Morricone even if it meant kicking him out into the street.
His power of persuasion was more than any curmudgeonly act capable of hindering his interview.
Intelligent, de Oliveira had arrived prepared
.
As soon as he could, he gave the Italian the best Spanish ham, the best wine and a CD by Paco de Lucía.
And so he softened her tongue.
An overhead view of the cemetery.
Photo: courtesy Sergio García
His film toured the world.
It was nominated for a Goya and was awarded at the Sitges festival.
It was not until its arrival on Netflix that it became popular globally and reached the eyes of several references of the seventh art, such as Álex de la Iglesia, Joe Dante, Sean Baker or Giuseppe Tornatore.
“We owe the climax of popularity of the Sad Hill cemetery to Guillermo,” geologist Sergio García, co-founder of the Sad Hill Cultural Association (ACSH), acknowledges to Clarín.
The ACSH has around ten members.
It has members and a board of directors.
Sergio García, one of the three founders of the Sad Hill Cultural Association.
Photo: courtesy Sergio García
Sergio
, the historian
Antonio Sanz
and the journalist
David Alba
created it from their fanaticism for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but specifically after a bar talk that led to the crazy idea of going to see what had happened to the cemetery at the end of that movie.
-How did you come up with the idea?
-I always turn that question around and say: How come no one thought of it before?
We came up with three too many beers, talking half jokingly, half seriously about the locations of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Spain.
They began little by little, with Guillermo and his camera like a fly on the wall, to try to overcome the typical obstacles of a company like the one they wanted to face.
“We lived in a place that has very little to do with what was done in 1966. Spain was under a dictatorship and Leone's production had permission from the regime to do whatever it wanted with the land.
We started working in 2015, in a context in which there is very different legislation and environmental awareness,” explains García.
Things were not easy or fast, however the permits arrived.
The entire process was recorded in the film
: “If on the first day the City Council of the Ministry of the Environment had told us 'yes, wonderful, here there is machinery at your disposal' there would not have been a documentary as beautiful as the one Guillermo made.
“I am more than satisfied with the work.”
Crazy about graves
García compares the restoration to the royal cemetery.
Photo: courtesy Sergio García
-Guillermo, do you have your grave on Sad Hill?
-Yes, but the name was erased because the wood is exposed to the Sun and the extreme cold of winter.
When the crosses are erased, anyone comes and writes her name on top.
-And did that happen with yours?
-Surely.
The different areas of the cemetery.
Photo: ACSH
The crosses “
require constant maintenance
,” highlights the director.
And García couldn't agree more.
The sponsorship of tombs is what the promoters of the project regret the most, since these were not economically profitable and caused things to overflow: "
If I had a time machine we would have done it differently
."
Sergio, Antonio and David asked for 15 euros to sponsor graves “without thinking that people were going to fight to have a grave.”
The trio came up with this romantic idea to warm the souls of the film's fans, but above all to attract the attention of the press.
“It is one of the mistakes that were made now, looking at it with perspective.
Well, it was asking for more money or not having done the sponsorship thing,” García acknowledges.
The geologist regrets the frustration of those people who go to Sad Hill and find their grave unpainted or completely absent.
Hence the difficult decision to stop offering sponsorships.
Eastwood and Wallach with the fictional cemetery in the background.
The remaining places are reserved for members of the association or for personalities from the film.
“
If one day Clint dies, a loving grave will be made for him
,” says García, and emphasizes that it will be one of the good ones.
Most of the people who applied for a spot on Sad Hill are fans of Westerns and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
Almost all of them are good Samaritans.
Only a rebellious minority complicated the adventure.
Many even asked for strange names that had little to do with the film-loving essence of the project
or asked if they could bury the ashes of a dead relative in Sad Hill
.
Sergio met several times with an English woman who wanted to bury her father's ashes in the cemetery.
“We read emails that gave us goosebumps: 'My father died two months ago.
We have cremated him, he has no real grave and we would like to have a place to bring flowers.'
There are people who for them are a real tomb.
It is a tremendous responsibility, a real grave is not worth 15 euros.
Dying is very expensive,” Sergio is honest.
It is one of the most remembered locations in the film.
A tourist attraction par excellence
Although anyone can visit Sad Hill, the site is guarded by the workers of the Sierra de la Demanda, the natural area to which it belongs.
The ACSH has no legal ownership of the cemetery, but still performs maintenance and makes decisions about the site.
Sergio maintains that “98% of the people who visit Sad Hill are very respectful, although in the end there is always a percentage that can be a bit of a hooligan.
Park staff come by from time to time, but there is no 24-hour security either.”
There is no age to visit the cemetery.
Although the average tourist is a man between 40 and 60 years old, the site is visited by many families and even school classes.
“
I have had excursions with children who had a great time
,” Sergio highlights.
Tourists tour the Burgos cemetery.
Photo: courtesy Sergio García
García and his team began rebuilding Sad Hill on Saturday, October 3, 2015. They worked every weekend in October, November and December until Christmas.
In January, February and March 2016 they practically did not go to the cemetery due to the intense rains there.
They only resumed their usual rhythm in April, May and June.
Finally, in July of that year they opened it for the film's 50th anniversary.
The site, which before 2015 was pure weed, is now a mandatory stop for tourists.
“When you enter Tripadvisor, the third most important thing to see in Burgos after the cathedral and the ruins of Atapuerca is the cemetery.
“It is a top-level national tourist attraction
,” says de Oliveira.
The next ACSH project
Sergio goes for more.
He will now rebuild the
Betterville Concentration Camp
, another star location in Leone's film.
The ruins of Betterville, Sergio's new project.
Photo: courtesy Sergio García
It is located 5 kilometers from the cemetery, which will invite tourists to visit it on the same day they tour Sad Hill.
One of the association's ideas is to decompress the cemetery, since there are days when it explodes with people.
Betterville will be restored with the help of the Natural Park in which it is located.
Two years ago, 3000 hectares of the map were destroyed by a fierce fire.
With the remains of logs left in the area, the team will build the palisade that appears in the film.
The new attraction (which will not feature the movie's bridge for logistical and budget reasons) will be ready for the Spanish spring.
She will be one of the great
stars
of the “fat” event that the association is preparing for the 60 years of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, in 2026.
The Betterville prison camp in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."
Photo: Tourism Castilla y León
Sergio plans to retire from film restorations after Betterville, however he does not rule out changing his mind in one or two years.