Peckinpah!

An imminent restoration:

http://www.filmforum.com/films/dundee.html

http://www.movie-in-the-head.de/bilder/w_001.jpg

Special Peckinpah issue. I think the Straw Dogs essay is just tops. I really recommend it to anyone, but especially people who find the movie gross (I did, my first couple times through.)

his February marks the 80th anniversary of Sam Peckinpah's birth, and this spring Columbia will be releasing a recently discovered longer cut of his dark 1965 Civil War-era adventure MAJOR DUNDEE, the film he directed between his classics Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch, to selected theaters. What is most unusual about this re-release is that Columbia has commissioned an entirely new score, by a selected-but-not-yet-named composer (an unknown), to replace the film's original Daniele Amfitheatrof score (which was reportedly hated by Peckinpah, who was not involved in the film's final cut). The film's upcoming DVD release will feature the new score as well as the Amfitheatrof score on separate audio tracks.

Peckinpah expert Nick Redman is preparing a multi-box DVD set of Peckinpah films to be released later this year. One of the highlights for film music fans will be the DVD of THE GETAWAY, which is expected to feature the film's rejected Jerry Fielding score isolated on a separate audio track, spotted exactly as Fielding intended. The supplementary material will include one sequence from the film with Fielding's music mixed back in, and a documentary on Fielding's collaboration with Peckinpah and the rejection of the Getaway score, featuring interviews with Fielding's wife and daughter.

If this isn't enough for Peckinpah fans, Redman and film editor Paul Seydor (Cobb, Tin Cup) will follow up their Oscar nominated documentary The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage with A Simple Adventure Story: Sam Peckinpah, Mexico and The Wild Bunch, a new documentary which will feature newly discovered color outtake footage from The Wild Bunch as well as new footage exploring the Mexican locations where the film was shot. The documentary will premiere at the American Cinematheque in late February and also show at the Cannes Film Festival. Also at Cannes will be a new cut of Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

"The Wild Bunch" is one of my favorite films--the Bunch might not be totally admirable, but I find much to admire about them, as SP wants us to. They're certainly more admirable than anyone else in the film, except Robert Ryan.

I find the humor in Peckinpah in keeping with my own. The animus he had against the people who profit from the death of others is balanced by his certitude that that's just the way of the world, and you can fight it but can't win. "Alfredo Garcia" and "Straw Dogs" are both failures, but at least his failures have much to recommend them, unlike the failures of someone like Kubrick. "The Getaway" is Peckinpah Lite (Ali McGraw at her most toothsome yet nulled)--McQueen doesn't quite have the depth of a classic Peckinpah hero, though. But it's one enjoyable film.

Yeah, I do. It's the same thing that kind of bother's me about Fuller occassionally.

Also they butchered The Getaway by removing the ending from the novel. That's not Peckinpah's fault (nor is it McGraw's even though she is unwatchable as always.)

This is exactly why I try to avoid reading about actors/musicians/etc. and just watch the movies/listen to the albums.

While you dudes are hating Ali McGraw I will continue to carefully dust and arrange my shrine to her.

If you don't think that Peckinpah's movies don't have ahem a pronounced tendency to engage in the ever continuing deification of a rather disturbing line of gung-ho machismo (why oh why do I have a feeling that Dubya loves The Wild Bunch?) well then you might want to watch/listen a little closer.

To me, the great thing about Peckinpah is his realization that good or at least loyal and comptent men get forced into situations that aren't black-and-white. Certainly the Wild Bunch are mercenaries, killers, but they remain loyal to each other and the real test in Peckinpah is how you do those admittedly compromised things and how you treat your friends. And it's a rough not a genteel world they move in, so although I'm no proponent of "machismo" I do think to apply certain standards to that world is just plain foolish--which Peckinpah makes clear, I think. I don't know about anyone else, but I've had jobs where I had to make concessions to my so-called "morality" and have been forced to really think hard about what morality I'm actually adhering to, and at the end of it my co-workers and I have taken a cold-eyed view of the situation, have kept our mouths shut when we need to, have spoken up when it's become intolerable or a line has been crossed, have walked away from jobs/situations that don't smell right, that don't deliver the necessary payoff in return for our "compromises." Which seems, to me, a sane way to look at the world; none of us could've done it without the loyalty we felt toward each other, the collective sense we're going to weather this and keep our integrity. What makes the world Peckinpah attractive to me is that he explores all this, and he tempts you into not feeling anything. As in the famous opening sequence of "Wild Bunch" when they shoot up the town in the midst of a temperance meeting. Temperance, feh, unrealistic idealism that needs to be questioned...but of course, maybe not shot up. Yet you feel a pleasure in the violence. It ain't simple and I for one don't want it to be.

To me, the great thing about Peckinpah is his realization that good or at least loyal and comptent men get forced into situations that aren't black-and-white. Certainly the Wild Bunch are mercenaries, killers, but they remain loyal to each other and the real test in Peckinpah is how you do those admittedly compromised things and how you treat your friends. And it's a rough not a genteel world they move in, so although I'm no proponent of "machismo" I do think to apply certain standards to that world is just plain foolish--which Peckinpah makes clear, I think. I don't know about anyone else, but I've had jobs where I had to make concessions to my so-called "morality" and have been forced to really think hard about what morality I'm actually adhering to, and at the end of it my co-workers and I have taken a cold-eyed view of the situation, have kept our mouths shut when we need to, have spoken up when it's become intolerable or a line has been crossed, have walked away from jobs/situations that don't smell right, that don't deliver the necessary payoff in return for our "compromises." Which seems, to me, a sane way to look at the world; none of us could've done it without the loyalty we felt toward each other, the collective sense we're going to weather this and keep our integrity. What makes the world of Peckinpah attractive to me is that he explores all this, and he tempts you into not feeling anything. As in the famous opening sequence of "Wild Bunch" when they shoot up the town in the midst of a temperance meeting. Temperance, feh, unrealistic idealism that needs to be questioned...but of course, maybe not shot up. Yet you feel a pleasure in the violence. It ain't simple and I for one don't want it to be.

Gesundheit!

Gotcha AlexSF...yeah, "Straw Dogs" makes me highly uncomfortable, you know...

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=58825

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000BRP4B2.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Not when Stella Stevens sings it to Jason Robards. It's sweet!

I liked how Stella Stevens didn't whitewash Bloody Sam in her DVD interview.

No, I like her, but as with most middle-aged-plus actresses, she's generally been wasted for 25 years (since the camera commercials with James Garner?).

I didn't get to listen to much of the RTHC DVD commentary, but apparently Peckinpah read the Bible often (thoroughly twice, claimed one scholar).

has anyone noticed that nearly all the best stuff in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid doesn't center on Coburn or Kristofferson? ie, Slim Pickens, Katy Jurado, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." And Chill Wills babbling in that long trading-post confrontation.

Also, that new cut on the DVD isn't really SP's, it's the experts'. And possibly better for it.

I still haven't seen that one. I didn't realize Katy Jurado was in it.

Fairly high billing for two scenes. Dylan said she was his inspiration for "Heaven's Door."

Bob really seems to have wandered into camera range for much of his role. Seeing it really didn't improve the 'Billy' Gere portion of I'm Not There.

Fairly high billing for two scenes.

There is a Spanish channel here in town that plays Garrett a few times a year. In their bumpers, Jurado is third billed after Coburn and Kristofferson.

I love that speech she gives to Lloyd Bridges in High Noon about the shoulders.

First time watching The Getaway tonight. I've got a bottle of wine to get me through the MacGraws.

they don't make PG movies like they used to, i tell you what

Or omelets like the kind McQueen makes in the first third.

the omelette of pent-up sexual frustration

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia ending with the machine gun firing at the viewer = damn dood.

kinda his most mysanthropic/nihilist movie

Perhaps mentioned upthread, but one of my favorite lines from any critic, ever, is Ebert describing Dylan in "Pat Garrett ..." as looking "as if he's the victim of a practical joke involving itching powder."

Ugg

RG Armstrong has passed away

Richard Brody on The Getaway

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/03/dvd-of-the-week-the-getaway.html

he picks some of my favorite scenes from that film. the shotgun sequence is probably my favorite thing of peckinpah's, full stop.

new book on Pat Garrett

http://nupress.northwestern.edu/titles/authentic-death-and-contentious-afterlife-pat-garrett-and-billy-kid

lol @ Dylan reading tincan labels scene

Watched "Ride the High Country", v enjoyable as far as fairly trad westerns go. lol'd at the bit early on where Judd takes Heck's gun out of his holster while he's ogling women.

RtHC is a stone fucking classic.

Convoy (his next to last feature?) newly out on BD/DVD.

I appreciated how much was crammed into it, lots of great little fluorishes and bit parts throughout. it doesn't get intense the way the best of his later work does, though that's not a knock against it, it's tone is different.

it doesn't get intense the way the best of his later work does

Disagree. All the wedding stuff is extremely creepy and intense.

it's creepy, but it's also punctuated by grotesque/comic elements

Scott and McCrea' chemistry is beautiful, some of the best I've seen b/w two guys on film.

*McCrea's.

the bit where they meet each other at the beginning w Scott in his fake wig+mustache+beard combo is v lol

Rewatch of The Wild Bunch in 35mm today (WB no longer has a decent 70mm print, apparently)... That is some *grizzled* cast (Holden looks way older than 50).

And the villainous general is the most well-regarded Mexican film director of all time.

And his lieutenant later had some directing success himself *ducks*

I've always wanted to read Fernandez's autobiography.

Alfonso Arau is the guy with the teeth, right?

Yup.

Never heard of this before: http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/02/28/284081430/latin-pride-swells-for-mystery-model-behind-oscar-statuette

Guess it is not an autobiography: http://cinemexicano.mty.itesm.mx/libros/indio_pistola.html

Saw a 35mm print of The Killer Elite last night; certainly no masterwork, but i thought it was a watchable, vicious 'hangout' movie. Caan is funny. The mouthpiece for the lefty politics is, if you can believe it, Burt Young.

Just saw the 'restored' Major Dundee. If you're at all interested in him you gotta see it, but man it feels lots longer than 136 mins. Heston is better than usual (as is often the case when he plays a prick) til he gets his existential crisis (enter the breasty Mexican women), the ensemble is good, but Richard Harris frequently reminds me of Dave SCTV Thomas doing him. Of primary interest as a Wild Bunch warmup.

agree w this take, although I would add that the racial/political subtext of the gang makes for a bunch of interesting scenes. It does feel much longer than 136 minutes, at one point during Heston's Mexican Holiday I started to wonder if the plot was just going to go some totally different direction and they were *never* actually going to get their Navajo bad guy. Wouldn't have minded if it did, I could happily watch Peckinpah scenes of Mexican villages for hours. Given the length I kinda wish some of the supporting roles (Ben Johnson for ex.) had been given more to do but enjoyable on the whole.

Haven't seen it. I mentioned J. Hoberman's The Dream Life on the Trump-film thread; I think Major Dundee was another of his key LBJ films, along with The Chase and The Alamo.

I watched The Getaway last night for the first time, another chapter in the Tarantino book. Looked good (Lucien Ballard), but it just seemed to meander along. Al Lettieri is so much better in The Godfather as Sollozzo. I liked the Slim Pickens ending, though, supposedly drastically different than the novel.

The Getaway is terrific when it sticks to the double-crossing and gunplay, less good with Lettieri’s kinda bizarre side plot. Though I think he was plenty good during this era, just a great performer of genuinely evil bastards. Of course it was his *only* era, he died in 1975 (only 47!)

MacGraw isn’t as bad here as people suggest, but she’s not really right for the part.

Mighty brutal and sexual for a PG film but it sure was a different era.

Kael used to be brutal with MacGraw--John Simon-level mean--so I was encouraged by the first 20-30 minutes where I thought she was pretty good. The longer the film went on, though, she started to lapse into that smirk that marked Goodbye, Columbus and Love Story. Tarantino's background on the making of the film is interesting--Bogdanovich as director?! And because of that, Cybill Shepherd instead of MacGraw.

Not quite the bloodbath of The Wild Bunch, but yeah, PG is crazy.

MacGraw’s too much of an innocent for the role, part of the plot really hinges on her winning back Doc’s trust when she’s clearly eminently trustworthy, and was pushed into a spot where she shouldn’t have been w/Ben Johnson’s character. Of course her character was also therefore easily pushed around, in this characterization, so maybe that was the peckinpah preference. To have a woman more easily put in her place. This flick doesn’t have the best sexual politics obv, the less said about Sally Struthers here the better.

Didn't have the film career she should have. She was good (or at least suited the role) in All in the Family; in The Getaway and, even more so, Five Easy Pieces, anyone could have filled those roles.

Have you seen The Outfit, omar? I posted about it in the Duvall thread--thought it was sneaky good.

I watched The Outfit about a month ago. That was a very fucked-up movie, and man, when Robert Duvall is the best-looking man in the cast you're talking about some serious Early Seventies Ugly.

https://www.criterion.com/films/29028-pat-garrett-and-billy-the-kid

THREE CUTS!

I miss James Coburn, one of a kind

The “Turner” preview is all you really need. Just perfection. Saw it in 35mm with Charles Martin Smith and others who worked on it

The only problems with that one is the lack of lead vocal on the "Heaven's Door" scene and failure to include the bit with Garrett's wife.

The 2005 (?) redux fails right of the gate by not using the opening with Garrett's murder. Supposedly those were Peckinpah's wishes. If true, he was more far gone than we thought. Hopefully the new version fixes that.

From FB:

The preview cut that will be available on The Criterion Collection's upcoming release of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID is not Turner's, but Sam Peckinpah's final and never before seen preview cut, recovered and restored specifically for this release -- the closest we have to a director's cut of the film that we will ever get. Its 2k restoration will be included in the blu-ray, along with a 4k (and tweaked) 50th-anniversary restoration of the final cut and the theatrical cut.

Here's the story: A "heist" was engineered to get Peckinpah's final preview print out of the projection room where it was screened for MGM execs. Sam was walking off the picture, and a Watergate-esque "break-in" was orchestrated by those who felt that Sam's preview needed to be preserved. Unfortunately, the clean up crew didn't realize that it was an interlock print. Sound and picture were separate, so they grabbed the picture and left the sound behind whose retrieval required a second heist. But all missions were ultimately successful. When Sam was presented with the print, he was so paranoid that MGM was going to come after it that he put a fake title ("The Racquet Club;" pictured) on the cans and leader. It's never been released until now, because it was among Sam's personal prints, not in the studio vaults.

When Michael Chaiken reached out to me on behalf of Criterion about their restoration and upcoming release of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, I got him in contact with Sam's friend and archivist Don Hyde, who pointed them in the right direction to locate and restore Sam's preview cut. I also encouraged them to contact Mike Siegel, who ended up making a documentary for this release, and connected Michael with Jeff Slater, who contributed from his abundance of archival material for the special features and provided additional contacts for supplemental material.

In short, this was a team effort -- and we are so grateful for Criterion's collaborative spirit to ensure that we did right both by Sam and all of his fans who have waited so patiently for its release. Now it's up to us to honor their work and procure our copies, which releases on 7/2/24 and can be pre-ordered here: https://www.criterion.com/films/29028-pat-garrett-and-billy-the-kid

only seen it once, can't remember the version it was. hopefully one of those cuts features an extended scene of bob dylan's character just reciting canned goods.

Walter Chaw on the Garrett Variations: https://www.rogerebert.com/features/pat-garrett-and-billy-the-kid-criterion-blu-ray-4k

The Masses Demanded It, So Imprint Delivers...Convoy on 4K

https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=35077

One treasured item I was able to rescue from my mom's house was this photo from the Birmingham News, May 1940

https://live.staticflickr.com/8110/8530608120_e69e10042e_h.jpg

On the left R.G. Armstrong. On the right, my dad.

Centennial Today!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MMPfFExul4

Watched Pat Garrett yesterday (second time, I think) for a Zoom on Dylan films. No idea which of the 17 versions it was--a two-disc reissue on DVD from 10 or 20 years ago.

Quite liked it--perfect film for the moment.

^^There's two cuts on that one. If the one you watched doesn't have the sepia opening with Garrett getting killed, it's the 2005 edit. If it did, it's one of the two 1973 "Preview" cuts.

Mine had the prologue, so the first.

Oops--I mean one of the '73 cuts.

That's good! The 2005 cut was an underbudgeted rush job that was eventually disowned by the Peckinpah scholar who put it together. He got another, better shot with the Criterion edition, which also comes with the original theatrical version and the <other '73 Preview cut>.

Had to laugh at Charles Martin Smith turning up. I'm sure the timeline makes this impossible, but I'd like to imagine Peckinpah watching American Graffiti and blurting out "Get me Toad! I want Toad!"

Having recently picked up the Criterion edition and screened the new cut before scrubbing through the included '73 preview to check for exclusive material, I have to say I prefer the long '73 cuts. In tightening up some of the scenes we lose some good, colorful lines, particularly in Peckinpah's cameo, which is cut down from a full rant to just two--albeit important--lines. Also, Seydor's devotion to the theatrical release credits is perplexing given how well integrated the titles and freeze-frames already are in the '73 preview versions. The prologue is still there in the new cut, sans credits, which appear separately after that sequence.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend checking out Frank Perry's Doc from '71, which is an attempt to do a similar revision job to the Gunfight At The O.K. Corral, with Stacy Keach as Doc Holliday, Faye Dunaway as Katie Elder, and Harris Yulin as a Nixony Wyatt Earp.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend checking out Frank Perry's Doc from '71, which is an attempt to do a similar revision job to the Gunfight At The O.K. Corral, with Stacy Keach as Doc Holliday, Faye Dunaway as Katie Elder, and Harris Yulin as a Nixony Wyatt Earp.

Totally underrated and deserves as much a cult status (though for different reasons) as Tombstone