Sam Peckinpah on the set of The Osterman Weekend (1983)
- The Wild Bunch original screenplay by Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah
- Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron (1993)
- Sam Peckinpah’s 2 hour film school
- Unseen photos from Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway
- Kicking ass with Walter Hill: The Getaway screenplay by Walter Hill
Unseen photos from Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway: John Bryson
In late Feb of 1972, production on Sam Peckinpah’s “The Getaway” began in San Marcos, Texas. The first few days would be shot inside and around the maximum security prison located there, using actual inmates as the majority of the background extras. The majority of this footage would be used as a complex editorial montage which opens the film. The following quote is from Jeff Slater’s excellent book Entered His House Justified, The Making of the Films of Sam Peckinpah. Associate producer Gordon Dawson recalls:
“It was not an easy task as we had to take McQueen and one hundred and thirty crew members inside the walls. The night before we began filming we were told that if a hostage situation developed, even if it included McQueen, the prison officials would do nothing, their policy was not to negotiate with inmates, they’d shoot first and ask questions later. That was a difficult night, Sam and I killed a bottle of tequila, we asked ourselves over and over, do we go in, or not? Something deep inside Sam loved taking risks, we got the first shot (the next morning) by nine thirty.”
The following photos depicting the shooting at the prison are from original contact sheets, the majority of them unpublished (all photography courtesy Mel Traxel). In some of these first photos you can see McQueen doing his best to win over the prison population, signing autographs and talking at length with the prisoners. Peckinpah looks quite happy to be shooting this new film. —the edit room floor, unseen photos from “The Getaway”
Kicking ass with Walter Hill: The Getaway screenplay by Walter Hill [pdf]. (NOTE: For educational purposes only)
Early in your career, you wrote scripts for John Huston and Sam Peckinpah. What did you pick up from them… or from the other prominent directors you worked for, like Norman Jewison or Woody Allen?
They were all talented filmmakers; interesting individuals, but as far as learning anything… I think what you learn is everyone makes their own way. As far as creativity goes, I think you get your head to a place where things are discovered, not invented. It’s that Platonic, Keat-ian idea that you don’t really write a poem; it’s already there, and you find it. I think that’s true for the audience as well: they discover what they already know or intuit. And that’s the most ideal relationship between the audience and the storyteller. Now Huston and Peckinpah had very similar outlaw personalities. At the same time, they were wildly disparate fellows; Sam worked in a much narrower—some would say deeper—channel, while Huston had a wider field of interest. I think it was also important that he was a much more omnivorous reader… which isn’t to say he was smarter or more talented, but he possessed a worldview, and sophistication, that went way beyond the very restricted world Sam chose to live in.I think you see that in Peckinpah’s films. In his later career, he seemed to be sinking into pure nihilism, while Huston always loved these offbeat character studies—right up to Prizzi’s Honor (1985) and The Dead (1987).
I think one of the biggest differences was that Peckinpah was purely a guy of film. He worked in it his whole life, from the time he got out of the Army, and his heroes were filmmakers, like Kurosawa and Bergman. Huston was from the generation before that; most of his generation never really regarded filmmaking as a serious artistic pursuit.I guess that’s why Huston could make so many films he didn’t really care about. He could take a job and just amiably do the work in a way Peckinpah never really could.
Huston was a soldier of fortune, as anybody in film has to be to some degree. He also liked to travel, and to drink. He liked high society, beautiful women, horse races, and buying great art… and to live that kind of life, you have to make a lot of money. John could turn a buck… Sam mostly lived in a trailer in Paradise Cove.And only made about a third as many pictures as Huston did.
But what’s so memorable about Sam is what a powerful, personal, artistic stamp he put on his work. His name alone conjures up a vision…
He comes up in almost every interview I do with filmmakers of your generation.
I think what we respond to most with Sam is his purity of commitment. And that’s always easier to idolize. And I’m not a critic, but I think it’s true his work fell into severe decline, while Huston was—in and out—but basically good until the end. —Kicking Ass with Walter Hill by Jon Zelazny
Source: theeditroomfloor.blogspot.com
After ‘Straw Dogs,’ Monty Python memorably parodied Peckinpah’s fondness for extreme bloodletting and slow-motion death scenes in a sketch called ‘Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days.’ The extremely gory sketch earned the BBC some complaints from disgusted ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ viewers, but Peckinpah himself reportedly found it hilarious. —Gary Susman
Flashback 1969: The Wild Bunch
Any script that’s written changes at least thirty percent from the time you begin preproduction: ten percent while you fit your script to what you discover about your locations, ten percent while your ideas are growing as you rehearse your actors who must grow into their parts because the words mean nothing alone, and ten percent while the film is finally being edited. It may change more than this but rarely less. —Sam Peckinpah
The Wild Bunch original screenplay by Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah [pdf]. (NOTE: For educational purposes only)
In-Depth Script Analysis by Paul Seydor:
Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (Cambridge Film Handbooks) available from Amazon.
Sam Peckinpah talks about his career. 1st December 1976.
‘I only have questions,’ Sam Peckinpah tells Barry Norman in this seldom seen interview from December 1976.
‘As a film maker I must look at both sides of the coin, and do my best as a story-teller. I have no absolutes. I have no value judgments,’ Peckinpah goes on to say, before asking, ‘Why does violence have such a point of intoxication with people? Why do people structure their day on killing?’
This is an incredibly honest and brilliant interview with Peckinpah, who doesn’t flinch form any of Norman’s questions - discussing his ignorance, his mistakes - explaining why he was wrong in thinking it could work as catharsis in The Wild Bunch, and why he was ‘a good whore.’ —Paul Gallagher
In the following extract from John Cutts’ 1969 interview, Sam Peckinpah discusses his career up to that point and his hopes for the success of The Wild Bunch:
You’re supposed to be a tough man to work with.
I work very hard, if that’s what you mean. Or maybe you heard how I fired two dozen people off Cable Hogue? Well, did you see that trade ad the cast and crew took out for me? There’s a difference between the things heard here in Hollywood and the way things happen on location you know.
How fast do you work? Do you overshoot?
I shoot about 22 to 1, and I cover very well. I have a low take ratio – about two to one. I like to use more than one camera – sometimes as many as three or four.
Any ambition you want to fulfil?
An awful lot is going to rest on how The Wild Bunch makes out. The studio seem to share my enthusiasm. Whether it’s too violent or not, I simply don’t know. I tried to make it as tough as I know how. As tough, and as honest as I know how. And as far as I’m concerned, the two are quite compatible.
John Cutts: ‘Shoot! Sam Peckinpah talks to John Cutts’, Films and Filmmaking. 16:1, October 1969, pp. 4-9. Reprinted in ‘Sam Peckinpah: Interviews edited by Kevin J. Hayes, University of Mississippi Press (2008).
Previously on Cinephilia & Beyond:
Sam Peckinpah talks about his career. 1st December 1976.
In Voices from the Set, Tony Macklin shares with his readers the interviews he conducted during the 1970s with many of Hollywood’s greatest stars. Because it was an era where the Old Hollywood was still extant, and the new cinema was burgeoning, he was able to meet the old with the new-actors, directors, producers, writers-and make some of his own memories along the way. Interviews with old masters Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks are juxtaposed with the new breed Martin Scorsese and Alan Rudolph and the mavericks Robert Altman and Sam Peckinpah. Icons such as John Wayne and Edith Head are included, as well as relative newcomers Stockard Channing and Richard Baskin. Voices from the Set is a unique vignette of Hollywood history, a snapshot in time, ideal for the film buff, film historian, for anyone with an interest in the intriguing personalities that made it what it is today. This book is an opportunity not to be missed.
Listen to the audio interviews with:
- David Seidler: (MP3 format, approximately 12 minutes)
- Robert Altman (part 1: MP3 format, approximately 50 minutes)
- Sam Peckinpah (MP3 format, approximately 48 minutes)
- Sidney Poitier (MP3 format, approximately 58 minutes)
- Vilmos Zsigmond (MP3 format, approximately 105 minutes)
- Leigh Brackett (MP3 format, approximately 70 minutes)
- Lee Marvin (MP3 format, approximately 9 minutes)
- Martin Scorsese (MP3 format, approximately 90 minutes)
- Howard Hawks (MP3 format, approximately 107 minutes)
- Richard Sylbert (MP3 format, approximately 67 minutes)
- Charlton Heston (MP3 format, approximately 89 minutes)
- Robert Altman (MP3 format, approximately 8.5 minutes)
- Edith Head (MP3 format, approximately 38 minutes)
- Warren Beatty (MP3 format, approximately 25 minutes)
- Stockard Channing (MP3 format, approximately 38 minutes)
- John Wayne (MP3 format, approximately 80 minutes)
- Alfred Hitchcock (MP3 format, approximately 43 minutes)
- The Best Jewish Cowboy: An Interview with James Caan
- “Plant Your Feet and Tell the Truth”: An Interview with Clint Eastwood
- The Ballad of Stella Stevens: An Interview
Check out Voices from the Set at Amazon.
Picture above: Clint Eastwood checks the camera angle for a scene in The Bridges of Madison County.
Source: tonymacklin.net
Flashback 1969: The Wild Bunch
Any script that’s written changes at least thirty percent from the time you begin preproduction: ten percent while you fit your script to what you discover about your locations, ten percent while your ideas are growing as you rehearse your actors who must grow into their parts because the words mean nothing alone, and ten percent while the film is finally being edited. It may change more than this but rarely less. —Sam Peckinpah
The Wild Bunch original screenplay by Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah [pdf]. (NOTE: For educational purposes only)
In-Depth Script Analysis by Paul Seydor:
Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (Cambridge Film Handbooks) available from Amazon.
Sam Peckinpah talks about his career. 1st December 1976.
‘I only have questions,’ Sam Peckinpah tells Barry Norman in this seldom seen interview from December 1976. ‘As a film maker I must look at both sides of the coin, and do my best as a story-teller. I have no absolutes. I have no value judgments,’ Peckinpah goes on to say, before asking, ‘Why does violence have such a point of intoxication with people? Why do people structure their day on killing?’ This is an incredibly honest and brilliant interview with Peckinpah, who doesn’t flinch form any of Norman’s questions - discussing his ignorance, his mistakes - explaining why he was wrong in thinking it could work as catharsis in The Wild Bunch, and why he was ‘a good whore.’ —Paul Gallagher
Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron (1993). Sam Peckinpah was a paradox who both cultivated and disdained his own legend as one of Hollywood’s most difficult directors, his often violent films evoked strong responses and varied, almost contradictory, readings. This is part of the Moving Pictures television series devoted to cinema that aired on BBC 2 from 1991 to 1996. There is some difference in this edition from the original, scenes from other movies that originally appeared in the film have been edited out. The original length of the documentary is about 86-minutes, but without the movie scenes this runs at about 82-minutes. The story begins from his childhood and then soon moves through his acting career, with interviews from family and friends, including James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Jason Robards and a many others. It also covers his views of women, the ways of directing his actors and then also touches on his alcohol and drug problem.
More: Sam Peckinpah
Director Sam Peckinpah cools off with a slice of watermelon during the desert location of The Ballad of Cable Hogue
Here is a not-too-awful print of a rare short film by Sam Peckinpah: his adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter’s short story “Noon Wine.” It aired on ABC’s “Stage ’67″ in 1966 and stars Jason Robards, Olivia de Havilland, Theodore Bikel, as well as a couple more Peckinpah stand-bys, Ben Johnson and L.Q. Jones. If you’re a Peckinpah fan, I’d love to hear your thoughts about the film, which Peckinpah made between the ill-fated Major Dundee and his triumph, The Wild Bunch. It so happens that Jerry Fielding (blacklisted in 1953 and did not return until 1961) did the music here, and there are some motifs in the score that will reappear in The Wild Bunch.
Robards is great–just the perfect role for him (he will play a similar character in The Ballad of Cable Hogue. Peckinpah manages to get a pretty good performance out of de Havilland (though I understand his methods were borderline sadistic). Bikel is just on the right side of not too over the top and, although only on screen for about a minute or so, L.Q. Jones is terrific. The swedish actor Per Oscarsson plays the escaped loony Olaf. An odd performance, perhaps not well-suited to a Peckinpah film.
I’ve never seen Peckinpah use so many dissolves and superimpositions. They’re there in The Wild Bunch, certainly, but nothing quite like this–but here he has to tell a long story (really a novella) in just under 50 minutes, so I guess they’re necessary. —we like to watch
Previously on Cinephilia & Beyond:
Sam Peckinpah’s first feature film tells the story of an veteran Civil War Yankee officer Yellowleg (Brian Keith) who saves the cheater Turk (Chill Wills) in a card game, and together with the gunslinger Billy Keplinger (Steve Cochran), they ride to Gila City with the intention of heisting a bank.
Susan George listens to Straw Dogs director Sam Peckinpah
Previously on Cinephilia & Beyond:
The director’s role was one accepted ambivalently by Sam Peckinpah, so much so that much of his work aimed to reconcile his positions as artist, employer and businessman, and entertainer. In his August, 1972, Playboy interview, he likened himself to a hired hand and a whore. It was just a job, directing, lucrative after some successes; on the other hand, writing was the most painstaking activity ever undertaken by a man. He seemed to denigrate his status and to knock his artistic capabilities; however, a look at The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia reveals that whores, most of all, have a monopoly on humanity, nobility, and common sense among Sam’s characters. Furthermore, he who hired most of the film crew willfully opposed the demands and decisions of other bossmen: studio heads and the producers. Their interference left him with unequivocal feelings: “There are people all over the place, dozens of them, I’d like to kill, quite literally kill.” Metaphorically, he got his chance to kill them.
Director Sam Peckinpah on the set of The Getaway
Sam Peckinpah talks about his career. 1st December 1976.
‘I only have questions,’ Sam Peckinpah tells Barry Norman in this seldom seen interview from December 1976.
‘As a film maker I must look at both sides of the coin, and do my best as a story-teller. I have no absolutes. I have no value judgments,’ Peckinpah goes on to say, before asking, ‘Why does violence have such a point of intoxication with people? Why do people structure their day on killing?’
This is an incredibly honest and brilliant interview with Peckinpah, who doesn’t flinch form any of Norman’s questions - discussing his ignorance, his mistakes - explaining why he was wrong in thinking it could work as catharsis in The Wild Bunch, and why he was ‘a good whore.’ —Paul Gallagher
Previously on Cinephilia & Beyond:
This is the definitive documentary about Sam Peckinpah to date and it’s unlikely that anything with the same range of sources and material will be put together again.
Viewing (22’11”). Sam Peckinpah talks about his career. 1st December 1976. cinephilearchive.tumblr.com/post/385603436… Gold! #filmmaking
— LaFamiliaFilm (@LaFamiliaFilm) December 22, 2012
Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw and director Sam Peckinpah at work on The Getaway
Previously on Cinephilia & Beyond:
The life and times of actor Steve McQueen, on the 75th anniversary of his birth. From filmmaker Mimi Freedman, this all-new documentary The Essence of Cool (2005) uncovers the complex man behind the image by watching McQueen’s life and career through the eyes of the people who knew him best and extensive use of film and television clips. Available as part of the Bullitt 2 Disk SE DVD set, which is also included in the Essentail Steve McQueen Collection Box Set.
Short documentary about Steve McQueen, his screen presence, his acting, and the image of masculinity that he embodied. Written, edited and narrated by Matt Zoller Seitz; originally published at The L Magazine.
All hail legendary producer Albert Ruddy and The Vulture for graciously making public the first fifteen pages of Sam Peckinpah’s November 15th, 1980 draft of THE TEXANS! Peckinpah was actually the second writer Ruddy went to (after giving John Milius a shot), and Bloody Sam responded with a 250-page epic that might’ve played like a pissed-off version of George Stevens’s GIANT. Beaks
Read The First Fifteen Pages Of Sam #Peckinpah’s Unproduced #Screenplay For THE TEXANS is.gd/PqFA7A #screenwriting
— LaFamiliaFilm (@LaFamiliaFilm) November 19, 2012
Source: vulture.com
The director’s role was one accepted ambivalently by Sam Peckinpah, so much so that much of his work aimed to reconcile his positions as artist, employer and businessman, and entertainer. In his August, 1972, Playboy interview, he likened himself to a hired hand and a whore. It was just a job, directing, lucrative after some successes; on the other hand, writing was the most painstaking activity ever undertaken by a man. He seemed to denigrate his status and to knock his artistic capabilities; however, a look at The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia reveals that whores, most of all, have a monopoly on humanity, nobility, and common sense among Sam’s characters. Furthermore, he who hired most of the film crew willfully opposed the demands and decisions of other bossmen: studio heads and the producers. Their interference left him with unequivocal feelings: “There are people all over the place, dozens of them, I’d like to kill, quite literally kill.” Metaphorically, he got his chance to kill them.
Source: thefilmjournal.com
Interview conducted by Tony Macklin (MP3 format, approximately 48 minutes). The Peckinpah interview was conducted in his living quarters at Burbank Studios. Published in the Summer 1976 issue of Film Heritage.
Source: tonymacklin.net
- 498 Plays
- Straw Dogs Criterion Collection (1971) Audio Commentary with film scholar Stephen Prince
Download External AudioSam Peckinpah’s 2 hour film school: The track provides a two-hour film course on both film and filmmaker (NOTE: For educational purposes only. Unfortunately, the Criterion edition is out of print). Prince thoroughly analyzes each scene and performance while sprinkling his comments with nuggets of information about Peckinpah himself, and the result is an engrossing and exhaustive discussion about what makes the film so relevant three decades after its initial release. Prince is also the author of Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the rise of ultraviolent movies, among many other books and articles about film.
25 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Straw Dogs’