Sam Peckinpah's West

Sam Peckinpah's West PDF Author: Leonard Engel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
"I use violence as it is. It's ugly, brutalizing, and bloody...awful." Vilified for his violent vision of the American West as presented in films such as The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the artistry of Sam Peckinpah's work was largely overlooked in his lifetime. Dismissed by critics, he was essentially ignored in the decade following his untimely death in 1984 at the age of fifty-nine. However, with the publication of a biography in 1994 and Warner Bros.' theatrical re-release of The Wild Bunch in 1995, Peckinpah reemerged as a distinctive voice in American film. In Sam Peckinpah's West eleven scholars approach the director's oeuvre with an eye toward his minor films, touching on themes and characters previously overlooked and linking his vision to America's literary and historical traditions. These insightful essays assure us that Peckinpah's work will not be forgotten again, nor the vibrancy of his characters who go out "not with a whimper, nor even a bang, but a cinematic explosion that rocked Hollywood and riveted us in a way we'll never forget."

Sam Peckinpah's West

Sam Peckinpah's West PDF Author: Leonard Engel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
"I use violence as it is. It's ugly, brutalizing, and bloody...awful." Vilified for his violent vision of the American West as presented in films such as The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the artistry of Sam Peckinpah's work was largely overlooked in his lifetime. Dismissed by critics, he was essentially ignored in the decade following his untimely death in 1984 at the age of fifty-nine. However, with the publication of a biography in 1994 and Warner Bros.' theatrical re-release of The Wild Bunch in 1995, Peckinpah reemerged as a distinctive voice in American film. In Sam Peckinpah's West eleven scholars approach the director's oeuvre with an eye toward his minor films, touching on themes and characters previously overlooked and linking his vision to America's literary and historical traditions. These insightful essays assure us that Peckinpah's work will not be forgotten again, nor the vibrancy of his characters who go out "not with a whimper, nor even a bang, but a cinematic explosion that rocked Hollywood and riveted us in a way we'll never forget."

The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch PDF Author: W. K. Stratton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 163286214X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
For the fiftieth anniversary of the film, W.K. Stratton's definitive history of the making of The Wild Bunch, named one of the greatest Westerns of all time by the American Film Institute. Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch is the story of a gang of outlaws who are one big steal from retirement. When their attempted train robbery goes awry, the gang flees to Mexico and falls in with a brutal general of the Mexican Revolution, who offers them the job of a lifetime. Conceived by a stuntman, directed by a blacklisted director, and shot in the sand and heat of the Mexican desert, the movie seemed doomed. Instead, it became an instant classic with a dark, violent take on the Western movie tradition. In The Wild Bunch, W.K. Stratton tells the fascinating history of the making of the movie and documents for the first time the extraordinary contribution of Mexican and Mexican-American actors and crew members to the movie's success. Shaped by infamous director Sam Peckinpah, and starring such visionary actors as William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, and Robert Ryan, the movie was also the product of an industry and a nation in transition. By 1968, when the movie was filmed, the studio system that had perpetuated the myth of the valiant cowboy in movies like The Searchers had collapsed, and America was riled by Vietnam, race riots, and assassinations. The Wild Bunch spoke to America in its moment, when war and senseless violence seemed to define both domestic and international life. The Wild Bunch is an authoritative history of the making of a movie and the era behind it.

The Wild Bunch. A Western and More

The Wild Bunch. A Western and More PDF Author: Brad Sylvester
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3668543283
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 9

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Book Description
Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: 95.0, University of Westminster, language: English, abstract: Few movies have so equally enthralled and shocked their audiences like that of Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 Western "The Wild Bunch". The epic Western is set in the year 1913 and follows the journey of protagonist Pike Bishop and his gang of aging outlaws as they look to make one last score in a rapidly modernizing American West. The movie is considered by many as one of the greatest Westerns of all time. Yet it would be a mistake to not recognize all the ways in which it goes above and beyond the traditional Western. What makes "The Wild Bunch" truly a remarkable movie is the innovative use of new cinematic techniques, it’s epic shootouts, and the subtle but powerful messages within it.

The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid PDF Author: Paul Seydor
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810168200
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 569

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Book Description
Long before Sam Peckinpah finished shooting his 1973 Western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, there was open warfare between him and the studio. In this scrupulously researched new book Paul Seydor reconstructs the riveting history of a brilliant director fighting to preserve an artistic vision while wrestling with his own self‐destructive demons. Meticulously comparing the film five extant versions, Seydor documents why none is definitive, including the 2005 Special Edition, for which he served as consultant. Viewing Peckinpah’s last Western from a variety of fresh perspectives, Seydor establishes a nearly direct line from the book Garrett wrote after he killed Billy the Kid to Peckinpah’s film ninety-one years later and shows how, even with directors as singular as this one, filmmaking is a collaborative medium. Art, business, history, genius, and ego all collide in this story of a great director navigating the treacherous waters of collaboration, compromise, and commerce to create a flawed but enduringly powerful masterpiece.

Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch

Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch PDF Author: Stephen Prince
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521584337
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
A collection of essays of Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch.

Peckinpah's Women

Peckinpah's Women PDF Author: Bill Mesce
Publisher: Scarecrow Filmmakers Series
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Although the passage of time has muted the initial shock value of his filmed violence, no similar reappraisal has dealt with those perceptions of misogyny and looked to reevaluate Peckinpah's on-screen treatment of women."--BOOK JACKET.

Sam Peckinpah, Master of Violence

Sam Peckinpah, Master of Violence PDF Author: Max Evans
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description


Horizons West; Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah

Horizons West; Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah PDF Author: Demetrius John Kitses
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description


Goin' Crazy with Sam Peckinpah and All Our Friends

Goin' Crazy with Sam Peckinpah and All Our Friends PDF Author: Max Evans
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 082633587X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Almost as famous for the legendary excesses of his personal life as for his films, Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) cemented his reputation as one of the great American directors with movies such as The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Max Evans, one of Peckinpah's best friends, experienced the director's mercurial character and personal demons firsthand. In this enthralling memoir we follow Evans and Peckinpah through conversations in bars, family gatherings, binges on drugs and alcohol, struggles with film producers and executives, and Peckinpah's abusive behavior--sometimes directed at Evans himself. Evans's stories--most previously unpublished--provide a uniquely intimate look at Peckinpah, their famous friends (including Lee Marvin, Brian Keith, Joel McCrea, and James Coburn), and the business of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s.

"If They Move . . . Kill 'Em!"

Author: David Weddle
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802190081
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
“A probing biography of the enfant terrible of 1960s and 1970s film-making . . . exhaustive and endlessly intriguing.” —Booklist Written by the film critic and historian David Weddle, this fascinating account does critical justice to an important body of cinema as it spins the tale of David Samuel Peckinpah’s dramatic, overcharged life and the turbulent times through which he moved. Sam Peckinpah was born into a clan of lumberjacks, cattle ranchers, and frontier lawyers. After a hitch with the Marines, he made his way to Hollywood, where he worked on a string of low-budget features. In 1955 he began writing scripts for Gunsmoke; in less than a year he was one of the hottest writers in television, with two classic series, The Rifleman and The Westerner, to his credit. From there he went on to direct a phenomenal series of features, including Ride the High Country, Straw Dogs, The Getaway, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah was both a hopeless romantic and a grim nihilist, a filmmaker who defined his era as much as he was shaped by it. Rising to prominence in the social and political upheaval of the late sixties and early seventies, Peckinpah and his generation of directors—Stanley Kubrick, Arthur Penn, Robert Altman—broke with convention and turned the traditional genres of Western, science fiction, war, and detective movies inside out. No other era in Hollywood has matched it for sheer energy, audacity, and originality; no one cut a wider path through that time than Sam Peckinpah. “Groundbreaking.” —Michael Sragow, The Atlantic