Milling About with John Sayles

Director/writer John Sayles, a stickler for authenticity, went so far as to purchase the local rice crop and hire the locals as extras for his new film Amigo.

He tells host Robin Milling, "We lived on the island of Bohol, about 40 minutes away from where we shot. On the island they still grow rice and still plough by caribou; they can't get a tractor onto this particular bit of land, so we bought their rice crop without a middleman and they got to harvest three quarters of it.
  It was a good deal for the villagers. Plus, an awful lot of them ended up playing extras because they knew how to harvest rice."