Cinephilia and Beyond

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The following photos depicting the shooting at the prison are from original contact sheets, the majority of them unpublished (all photography courtesy Mel Traxel).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

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