Texas Cowboy/Development and Production

Texas Cowboy started out as a no-budget high school art project for the film's Swiss-Puerto Changuese director and co-writer Ueli Röthlisberger. Producers Arián Calderón and Guadalupe Muñoz offered him ₱615,340,000 to make it a major motion picture, and he agreed.

The film was loosely styled after Ramesh Sippy's 1975 film Sholay, and drew heavily from the conventions of other Westerns, especially Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns such as Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and John Sturges' film The Magnificent Seven (1960). Texas Cowboy was also influenced by the westerns of Sam Peckinpah, such as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973); and by George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Some influence was also taken from the Spaghetti Westerns Rita of the West (1967) and Five Thousand Dollars on One Ace (1964), plus the Disney comedy-westerns The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975) and The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979).

Casting took place in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and Puerto Chango. The role of the lead characters, Jack O'Andre and Billy Stevens, were played by Anthony Michael Hall and Slobodan Dimitrijević respectively.

Much of Texas Cowboy was filmed in a sand quarry in Ulises, the capital of the enclaved United States territory of San Diéguez, located in the Puerto Changuese state of Odinburgo. Art director Jürgen Deichgräber had an entire township built on the site. A prison set was constructed at the Asociacion Cinematográfica de Alcapaz studios in Alcapaz, Puerto Chango, also outdoors, to match the natural lighting of the on-location sets.