The Wild Bunch

“We gotta start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closing fast.” – Pike Bishop

No one made films like Sam Peckinpah. Tough, uncompromising, violent, nihilistic. He was a filmmaker unafraid to explore the darker aspects of human nature and often with a romantic streak. The Wild Bunch (1969) is all this and more – a no holds-barred western about a group of men being pushed to the margins of society because of the changes of the modern world circa 1913. Their way of life was no longer tolerated by the powers that be – if it ever was. The film follows a tight-knit group of outlaws with nowhere to go, pursued by one of their own to the inevitable bloody conclusion.

When The Wild Bunch debuted in 1969, Peckinpah’s innovative use of multi-angle, quick-cut editing that mixed normal and slow motion imagery was recognized as revolutionary. Along with Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Peckinpah’s film also helped usher in a new era of explicitly-depicted on-screen violence – something that we take for granted now but shocked audiences at the time. More importantly, The Wild Bunch is a romantic lament for an era that was no more – the life and times of the Outlaw Gunfighter.

Right from the get-go, Peckinpah establishes a cruel and uncaring world as symbolized by a group of children that delight in torturing a scorpion by immersing it among hundreds of ants. This imagery is meant to foreshadow the film’s protagonists who will soon find themselves surrounded on all sides by forces determined to destroy them. The film cuts back and forth from the children to a group of outlaws disguised as soldiers robbing a bank, the posse of bounty hunters waiting to ambush them, and a temperance union parade.

Peckinpah cleverly uses editing to increase the tensions until the inevitable confrontation when everyone is caught up in the ensuing chaos of the shoot-out. He doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of the violence even if the slow motion carnage gives it a stylish, cool vibe. We get innocent civilians gunned down (one is shot multiple times) in the middle of the street. Both outlaws and bounty hunters meet untimely ends. Amidst all the pandemonium, Peckinpah lingers on one outlaw – Clarence “Crazy” Lee played with memorable zest by Bo Hopkins – who forgets about the carnage raging outside the bank and decides to lead his hostages in a song. By the time he realizes what’s going on he’s killed but not before taking a few bounty hunters with him.

Unlike many of his imitators, Peckinpah lingers on the aftermath of the shoot-out. There are bloody dead bodies littering the street while women cry and wail over loved ones. He even injects some grim gallows humor as two of the bounty hunters (Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones) argue over who shot whom and therefore entitled to the spoils only to quickly make-up (“C’mon, T.C. Help me get his boots.”). They take great delight in pillaging the dead bodies.

Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) leads the bounty hunters and gets into a heated argument with Pat Harrigan (Albert Dekker), the railroad representative who sprung the hired gun from prison to catch the outlaws he used to ride with, and gives him an ultimatum: “You’ve got 30 days to get Pike or 30 days back to Yuma. You’re my Judas goat, Mr. Thornton.” I love the fiery exchange between these two men because it not only illustrates Harrigan’s naked greed but also that Deke isn’t an amoral mercenary like the other men in his crew. He follows his own code or at least tries to as it conflicts with Harrigan’s mandate. At least Deke has the balls to tell Harrigan what he thinks of the man: “How does it feel? Gettin’ paid for it? Gettin’ paid to sit back and hire your killings with the law’s arms around you. How does it feel to be so goddamn right?” Harrigan gives a smug smile and simply replies, “Good.”

Emerging from the deadly shoot-out is Pike Bishop (William Holden), the leader of this tight-knit group of outlaws, Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), his right-hand man, the Gorch brothers – Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector (Ben Johnson), and Angel (Jaime Sanchez), the newcomer. They attempt to put as much distance between them and the bank robbery as possible with Deke and his bounty hunters in hot pursuit. They cross the border into Mexico and take refuge in Angel’s village. Peckinpah not only uses these sequences to convey his love for the Mexican people and their way of life but also make a political commentary on how the corrupt government, as represented by General Mapache (Emilio Fernandez), exploits and oppresses the people.

That’s not to say there aren’t moments of levity as we see the Gorch brothers enchanted by a beautiful Mexican girl, which even makes Pike laugh. The town elder wisely tells him, “We all dream of being a child again. Even the worst of us. Perhaps the worst most of all.” These scenes are important because they humanize Pike and his gang and show that they are much more than just hardened killers. They are capable of enjoying the simple pleasures in life.

One of the most fascinating aspects of The Wild Bunch is the dynamic between the outlaws. With the exception of Angel, these men have been together for a long time, through thick and thin and this is evident in the way they interact with each other. For example, Lyle and his brother feel that they should get more of the loot than Angel because he’s new to the group. It goes against the way they’ve always done things and Pike confronts them by saying, “I don’t know a damn thing except that I either lead this bunch or end it right now.” As dangerous as Lyle is, not even he dares cross Pike and the look he gives him leaves little doubt that Pike can back up his threat.

Pike is barely keeping his gang together and life isn’t getting any easier as they discover that their “loot” is a bunch of steel washers instead of silver coins. Pike realizes that they have to re-think the way they do things as he tells his gang, “We gotta start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closing fast.” The situation eventually defuses itself and everyone ends up laughing about it all. These guys bicker and fight amongst themselves but at the end of the day they are loyal to each other because in this world that’s all they have. These men have spent their lives killing and robbing – it’s all they know but they have no regrets about it either.

The Wild Bunch becomes a battle of wills between two former friends now antagonists, both with their own personal code and something to prove. With Pike, it is the desire to pull off one more lucrative score like he did back in the day. For Deke, it’s to prove that he can outsmart his former cohort in crime and a chance to be a gunfighter for a little longer.

William Holden does some excellent work in this film as a tough man struggling not only with his own mortality but keeping a group of Alpha Males together. In private moments, the actor portrays a man who has doubts and fears. Pike is a dying breed. He’s getting old and knows that he doesn’t have many heists left in him. He has to make these last ones count. He is a man who’s led a tough life but on his own terms. He also has his own personal code, which he says during another dispute with the Gorch brothers: “We’re gonna stick together just like it used to be. When you side with a man you stay with him and if you can’t do that you’re like some kind of animal. You’re finished! We’re finished! All of us!” It is this personal code and a strict adherence to it that ultimately leads to the demise of him and his gang for he’s bound by a sense of honor.

Ben Johnson and Warren Oates are very good as the fun-loving Gorch brothers. They love drinking and carousing with women almost as much as they love stealing money with one feeding off the other. Always the memorable performer, Oates, in particular, is quite colorful as the irascible, unpredictable half of the duo and just as adept at spouting period dialogue as he is using body language as evident in the scene where everyone in the gang takes a swig from a bottle of alcohol while he watches in mounting frustration until he’s finally given it – now empty. Ernest Borgnine turns in another solid performance as Pike’s confidante and best friend. He also acts as a sounding board, not afraid to give Pike an honest opinion. Like his friend, Dutch believes in loyalty and the actor’s natural charisma helps make his character likable.

Special mention goes to L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin as the dirtiest and most cowardly mercenaries. They attack their respective roles with gusto and without a hint of vanity. They look horrible and provide a lot of comic relief, always blaming each other when their gang makes a mistake, which is often. Bo Hopkins has a memorable cameo as an enthusiastic psychopath working for Pike. He’s unhinged in a darkly humorous way and it’s fun to watch the actor chew up the scenery for his brief amount of screen-time.

The climactic battle is a master class in editing and an impressive orgy of slow motion carnage that is a spectacle to behold. From the point of Angel’s death, there is little dialogue, no catchy one-liners or cheesy puns – just full-on, unadulterated mayhem as only Peckinpah could orchestrate. The body count is extensive: people are shot and blow-up with men and women killed – some intentionally and some caught in the crossfire. It is also a fitting conclusion for men that led violent lives. There’s something simultaneously fatalistic and heroic about the Wild Bunch’s march towards certain death. It is also very influential, going on to inspire similar epic showdowns in action films like John Woo’s Hard-Boiled (1992) and Christopher McQuarrie’s The Way of the Gun (2000), but they all pale in comparison.

In 1967, Sam Peckinpah needed work. Producer Kenneth Hyman asked him to rewrite a screenplay entitled The Diamond Story. If his work was accepted he could direct it as well. Instead, Peckinpah submitted another script he had re-written to Hyman entitled The Wild Bunch, written by Walon Green from a story by Roy Sickner, a stuntman and a longtime friend of Peckinpah’s. Green and Sickner had spent a couple of years trying to get their script made with no luck until the latter gave it to Peckinpah. Warner Brothers decided to have Peckinpah direct The Wild Bunch rather than The Diamond Story.

According to Green, Peckinpah polished the dialogue, making it “saltier,” and gave it a “more authentic Western ring.” Green wasn’t happy with the changes Peckinpah made to the Mexican village scene, which was originally done entirely in Spanish and featured Angel without the rest of the Wild Bunch. Peckinpah also added two flashbacks: the capture of Deke in a whorehouse and Pike’s love affair with a married woman.

When it came to casting, Hyman wanted Lee Marvin to play Pike and Peckinpah agreed. According to the director, the actor wanted to do it but was offered a “fucking million-dollar contract to do Paint Your Wagon,” and did it instead, much to Peckinpah’s chagrin. The director liked William Holden’s performance in Stalag 17 (1953) and cast him as Pike. For the role of Dutch, Hyman wanted Ernest Borgnine and at first Peckinpah disagreed because he hadn’t worked with him before and wanted to “be sure of everybody,” but the producer convinced him to cast the actor.

  

Peckinpah hired Lucien Ballard for director of photography and together they screened footage of the 1913 Mexican Revolution so that when they scouted locations they picked ones that captured the dry, dusty look he wanted. Another crucial collaborator was editor Lou Lombardo who had worked on an episode of the television show Felony Squad that featured a death sequence rendered in slow motion. Peckinpah liked that and the two men talked about shooting gunfights at various speeds and intercutting normal speed with slow motion.

At the end of February 1968, Peckinpah left for Mexico to finish up casting and a last few production details. This included meeting his good friend Don Emilio Fernandez who suggested Jorge Russek and Alfonso Arau to play Mapache’s lieutenants. Even more significantly, Fernandez read the script and offered a suggestion for the opening scene as Peckinpah recalled: “…suddenly he says to me, ‘You know, the Wild Bunch, when they go into that town like that, are like when I was a child and we would take a scorpion and drop it on an anthill…’ And I said, ‘What!’ And he said, ‘Yes, you see, the ants would attack the scorpion.’” Peckinpah loved this idea and rewrote the opening scene to incorporate it.

Not surprisingly, Peckinpah was a demanding director and there are many anecdotes of his antics during principal photography. Strother Martin remembered before the opening shoot-out Peckinpah wanted him to kiss his rifle. Martin refused because he thought it had been done too many times in films and the director yelled at him to do it. Martin did what he was told and when he finally saw the finished scene realized that “Sam had managed to get a different kind of kiss of a rifle than anybody else has ever gotten. He got it, of course, because I was scared shitless and mad at the same time.”

For the opening shoot-out, Peckinpah used as many as six cameras at the same time with some going 24 frames per second and some going faster to create the slow motion effects. Lombardo began editing a work print of this sequence and when he was finished it ran 21 minutes! Peckinpah took a pass at the sequence and cut it down to five minutes, retaining “the essence of every action we had but fragmented and intercut it all,” Lombardo remembered.

Peckinpah was a director that didn’t suffer fools gladly as William Holden recounted in an interview regarding a scene that featured Pike and his gang, which was particularly challenging. It was a long scene and everyone had dialogue but nobody knew their lines, assuming there’d be plenty of time to get it right on the set. Holden recalled:

“Sam said in this very calm but menacing voice: ‘Gentlemen, you were hired to work on this film as actors, and I expect actors to know their lines when they come to set. Now I’m willing to give you twenty minutes, and anyone can go wherever he wants to learn his lines. But when you come back, if you can’t be an actor, you will be replaced.’”

Holden remembers that this sent the cast scurrying to learn their lines and it was a memorable example of Peckinpah’s demand for professionalism.

The climactic shoot-out took 11 days to film. Peckinpah employed five cameras at the same time. It was very challenging because of the interlacing action that involved filming the foreground and then repeating it again for the background so that everything would match up. It was a very complex sequence to orchestrate due to the amount of action and the large number of extras.

Initially, the MPAA gave The Wild Bunch an X rating but Peckinpah and Lombardo argued that if they took a “particular segment out, it thrown off something else. They somehow understood most of that and allowed much of what we argued for to remain.” The studio previewed the film in Kansas City and Lombardo remembered, “The crowd turned out to be either completely for or completely against the film. And the ones who were against it were more violent than the film itself!” The Wild Bunch underwent final editing before general release.

The film was then shown at a special screening for the press in the Bahamas in June 1969. Not surprisingly, it polarized the audience with some people walking out in protest during the screening. At the press conference the next day, it continued to garner divisive reactions with Roger Ebert calling it “a masterpiece,” while Reader’s Digest’s Virginia Kelly saying, “I have only one question to ask: why was this film ever made?’ The New York Times’ Vincent Canby wrote, “In The Wild Bunch, which is about men who walk together, but in desperation, he [Peckinpah] turns the genre inside out. It’s a fascinating movie.” In his review for Time magazine, Jay Cocks wrote, “The Wild Bunch contains faults and mistakes, but its accomplishments are more than sufficient to confirm that Peckinpah, along with Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Penn, belong to the best of the newer generation of American filmmakers.” The New Republic’s Stanley Kaufman wrote, “[There is] a kinetic beauty in the very violence that his film lives and revels in…The violence is the film.”

After The Wild Bunch was given a general release, the studio decided to cut 20 minutes out because it wasn’t doing as well as they had hoped. All the flashbacks were cut, removing “the thing which humanized the characters. I couldn’t believe it,” Peckinpah said. In 1995, the flashbacks were restored to the film thereby allowing audiences to see his intended vision.

The Wild Bunch is about a group of men facing their own mortality. Their way of life is rapidly ending and they plan to go out doing it their way or die trying. In contrast, Deke’s gang are a bunch of filthy liars and cowards that are loyal to no one but money. They’re lazy and Peckinpah makes a point of showing close-ups of their leering faces full of grungy, missing teeth and beady eyes.

The Wild Bunch has all the elements of a rousing western: exciting gun fights, chases on horseback, a daring train heist, colorful characters, and the shoot-out to end all shoot-outs. Epic shoot-outs bookend the film. The first one sets the tone for the rest of the film and establishes the protagonists and the antagonists. The last one is their last hurrah – aging gunfighters with nowhere else to go and making a choice to go out on their terms. In the first one, they killed for money and in the last one they killed for one of their own. This is summed up beautifully towards the end when Pike decides to rescue Angel from insurmountable odds and tells the Gorch brothers, “Let’s go.” Lyle sizes him up for a beat and then replies, “Why not?” That’s all that needs to be said because we’ve watched these men through the entire film fight, laugh and get drunk together. They’ve been in life or death situations that bond them forever.

The Wild Bunch is about men willing to die for what they believe in and for Pike it is loyalty. His gang of outlaws are like brothers. That’s why nothing explicitly has to be said at the end. It is understood that when Pike says, “Let’s go,” that means let’s take on General Mapache and his army knowing that they will die in the process but at least they will do so on their own terms.

SOURCES

Simmons, Garner. Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage. Limelight Editions. 1998.

DVD of the Week: Badlands: Criterion Collection

Badlands (1973) was an auspicious debut from Terrence Malick. Based loosely on the real-life killing spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in 1958, Malick made his film independently and for little money. The end result is a doomed lovers on the run road movie that juxtaposes the almost fairy tale voiceover narration by Holly (Sissy Spacek) with the sociopathic actions of her boyfriend Kit (Martin Sheen). The film would also demonstrate Malick’s uncanny ability to capture the beauty of rural landscapes and contrast them with the violent impulses of its protagonist.

Kit works as a trashman in a sleepy small-town in South Dakota. One day, after work he meets Holly on the front lawn of her house. It is one of the more unusual courtships as we don’t see too many displays of affection between them or declarations of love, but mostly because Holly tells us so in her narration. They gradually fall in love much to the chagrin of her strict father (Warren Oates) who doesn’t approve of Kit. After the two men have a confrontation, Kit and Holly go on the run.

Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, early on in their respective careers, deliver impressive performances. On the surface, Kit seems like a nice enough guy, but Sheen is able to turn this off on a dime to show the dispassionate killer that lurks under the James Dean good looks. It would be easy to dislike Kit, based on all the bad things he does, but it is Sheen’s natural charisma that makes the character so interesting to watch. Initially, Spacek plays Holly as something of an innocent, but she explains in her voiceovers that she had plenty of opportunities to leave or turn Kit in. There is a certain naiveté about Holly and she sees the older Kit as someone wiser in the ways of the world then herself.

Kit and Holly’s escape into the wilderness would mark the beginning of Malick’s preoccupation with nature. He is fascinated by the beauty of it and the wonder it represents, often juxtaposing the environment with the ugliness of human nature as he does in Badlands with Kit’s casual disregard for human life. Malick manages to de-glamorize what could have been a lurid tale by showing Kit and Holly enduring significant stretches of doing every day things or nothing at all. It is like the moments of violence punctuate the otherwise banality of their lives. Malick does a nice job of making the most of his meager budget, filming on location to give Badlands a more expansive feel.

Badlands has become an influential film, inspiring countless like-minded efforts. It would also foreshadow Malick’s subsequent film Days of Heaven (1978), which examines forbidden love with a rural landscape as its backdrop. It was an excellent start to an illustrious career of one of the most unique filmmakers to come out of America.

Special Features:

“Making Badlands” is a 42-minute retrospective documentary featuring actors Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek and production designer Jack Fisk. All three share their initial impressions of Malick. Sheen and Spacek spent weeks rehearsing and improvising little scenes without seeing a script! The two actors recall how much it meant to them at the time to be starring in a film so early in their careers. Fisk talks about how the characters affect the sets he designs and vice versa. This is an excellent look at how the film came together.

There is an interview with producer Edward Pressman. Influences by the French New Wave, he wanted to work with filmmakers interested in making artistic endeavors and found it with Malick. He talks about the challenges of funding Badlands and how much he learned from the experience so early in his career.

Also included is an interview with editor Billy Weber. He touches upon Malick’s working methods and the challenge of editing the film because of his inexperience at the time. He claims that the use of voiceover in Francois Truffaut’s The Wild Child (1970) influenced Malick’s use of it in Badlands.

There is a 1993 episode of the television series American Justice that focused on Charles Starkweather, a teen rebel who ran off with his girlfriend for nine days and killed ten people during that time. This extra provides a nice overview of the people that inspired the main characters in Badlands.

Finally, there is a theatrical trailer.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Sam Peckinpah spent his career fighting against the Hollywood studio system to make his own distinctive brand of films. Out of all the ones he made only on Bring Me theHead of Alfredo Garcia (1974) was he given final cut privileges. The film is the epitome of a grungy nihilism that was in vogue with many American filmmakers during the 1970s with Peckinpah leading the charge in 1969 with the explosive deconstruction of the western that was The Wild Bunch. Coupled with his love affair with the country of Mexico, the veteran director created a deeply personal film that alienated critics and mainstream audiences alike back in the day, but has gone on to become one of his most highly regarded films.

The film begins with an image of idyllic beauty: a young, pregnant Mexican girl suns herself on the bank of a river. This is quickly shattered by a brutal scene where said girl is tortured by her land baron father, known as El Jefe (Emilio Fernandez), until she reveals the name of the man responsible: Alfredo Garcia. This is achieved by the breaking of her arm and Peckinpah makes sure he rubs our noses in the ugliness of the act, complete with the sickening snap, which sounds like a branch breaking.

Feeling that he was betrayed by Garcia (“He was like a son to me.”), El Jefe issues a bounty: a million dollars to whoever can deliver the head of Garcia to him. And so, he sets in motion a series of events that will have bloody, tragic consequences. Two rich businessmen (Gig Young and Robert Webber) search every town and small village for any signs of the man. One day, they happen by a small-town bar where they catch the eye of Bennie (Warren Oates), the bartender who likes the color of their money. We meet him playing piano and at first glance Warren Oates resembles a scuzzier version of Tom Waits during the Nighthawks at the Diner phase of his career. The actor exudes a sleazy charm that is a lot of fun to watch, especially when he talks sports with the two rich businessmen.

Bennie asks around and finds out that his girlfriend Elita (Isela Vega) once had Garcia as a customer when she was a prostitute. Bennie strikes a deal with the businessmen. He has four days to bring back Garcia’s head for $10,000 or they will come after him. So, Bennie and his girl go on the road with two thugs in a beat-up station wagon tailing them. They travel through some of the most dirt-poor parts of Mexico that you will not find in a tourist brochure any time soon. Bennie becomes obsessed, not with the money, but with Garcia and why his head is so valuable. He sees it as a ticket that will lead him to this answer.

Once they find Garcia’s body, Bennie and Elita’s lives get a lot more bloody and violent as the film shifts gears into a balls-to-the-wall revenge picture. Bennie’s descent into murder-fueled madness is something to see. He starts talking to Garcia’s severed head. He looks in the mirror and sees a completely different man looking back at him than who he was when this all began.

Peckinpah takes the time to show the relationship between Bennie and Elita — the intimate familiarity. It is almost like they are out for a picnic and not looking for a dead man. They have their dream of one day getting married. Oates delivers a fierce and fearless performance devoid of vanity. He’s not afraid to look unattractive and behave badly, like the way Bennie treats Elita. They live in a grungy flea pit that makes you want to have a shower – or at least check for ticks – it’s that tangible thanks to the set design. Bennie and Elita are in love – they’re a hard-drinking couple that cares for each other. She stays with him because she loves him and he’s devoted to her. He’s willing to kill for her. It’s a fully realized relationship with its own unique complexities. There is a scene where Bennie asks Elita to marry him that is touching and heartbreaking – easily one of the most intimate and emotional scenes in any Peckinpah film. It makes us care about what happens to them and it lays the groundwork for Bennie’s transformation into a hardened killer.

A troubling aspect of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is Peckinpah’s harsh treatment of women. From the pregnant girl that has her arm broken to Elita almost being raped by a dirty biker, women are abused and generally treated like crap. That being said, Elita is an interesting character in that she rises above the misogyny of Bennie and the biker. She doesn’t cower in fear but bravely faces her would-be abuser. Isela Vega does a wonderful job conveying Elita’s conflicted feelings that she has for her past relationship with Alfredo and the hopeful future she could have as a result of the bounty for his head.

What can you say about Warren Oates that hasn’t already been said? He was one of the most underrated actors in the ‘70s. He left behind an impressive body of work; some of the best was with Peckinpah. In Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, he looks the part of Bennie, with his cheap, white suit, gaudy shirt and loud tie, complete with large sunglasses — based on Peckinpah’s actual attire at the time. Oates always looks disheveled and world-weary — a life of hard-living. He has a natural, tough guy presence that you just don’t see any more. He has a cool, don’t-mess-with-me attitude. And no one can quite curse angrily as convincingly as Oates does. At one point, he tells two bikers (one played by Kris Kristofferson) who are about to rape his girlfriend, “You two guys are definitely on my shit list.” You don’t really like Bennie but you grow to respect him and his obsessive desire for the truth.

Filmmaker Sam Peckinpah was working on The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) when long-time friend Frank Kowalski told him about an idea for a film that he had. “’I got a great title: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo…,’ and he has some other name – ‘and the hook is that the guy is already dead.’” Peckinpah loved the idea and began working on it with Kowalski while making Cable Hogue and later in England while filming Straw Dogs (1971). Together, they produced a 20-page treatment with Lee Marvin and Jane Fonda in mind.

Peckinpah hired screenwriter Walter Kelly to write the script. He wrote the first half before the director fired him. Producer Martin Baum had formed his own independent production company, Optimus Productions, and had a deal with United Artists. Peckinpah came to him with Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and 25 pages of the script. Baum read and liked it. United Artists agreed to pay the director to write the rest of the script but he told Baum not to pay him because he owed him a favor. Peckinpah told the producer that if UA liked the script then he could pay him.

The director finished the script with Gordon Dawson who approached the project thusly: “I wrote Sam. How can I drag this guy through every toilet in Mexico? I knew Mexico and I knew Sam, and I knew how much Sam loved Mexico. And I knew what Sam liked about Mexico, so I just put it all in there.” Peckinpah showed the finished screenplay to James Coburn and Peter Falk, both of whom passed because they found the material too dark for their tastes. Then, the director thought of Warren Oates who accepted the role without reading the script as working with Peckinpah was the only reason he needed.

Peckinpah started pre-production in mid-August 1973 in Mexico City. With the exception of a few key people, the entire crew was Mexican. To that end, the director hired Alex Phillips Jr., one of the country’s premiere cinematographers, to work on his film. They bonded over a dislike for wide-angle lenses and an admiration for zooms and multiple camera set-ups. Peckinpah told him, “I make very few takes, but I shoot a lot of film because I like to change angles. I shoot with editing in the back of my mind.”

While scouting locations, the director relied extensively on his gut instinct and a desire to portray a gritty, realistic vision he had of Mexico. Peckinpah spent a lot of time searching for the right bar that would Bennie would frequent. He finally discovered a place in the Plaza Garibaldi known as “Tlaque-Paque.” The director looked around and said, “This is dressed. This is for real.” Mexican crew members told him that the bar’s owner had an infamous reputation and it was rumored that he once killed a woman there, serving very little jail time because he bribed the right people in positions of power.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia went into production in late September. A month later, Peckinpah was quoted in Variety magazine as saying, “For me, Hollywood no longer exists. It’s past history. I’ve decided to stay in Mexico because I believe I can make my pictures with greater freedom from here.” This upset the Motion Picture and Television unions and they openly censured Peckinpah for his statement at their National Conference in Detroit. They also threatened Alfredo Garcia with union boycotts upon its release, labeling it a “runaway” production. The director claimed he had been misquoted and before his film was to be released, the unions relented on their threat.

Early on, Oates had difficulty getting into the role – playing an outsider living on the margins of society. He realized that due to the personal nature of the script he should base his performance on Peckinpah: “I really tried to do Sam Peckinpah, as much as I knew about him, his mannerisms, and everything he did.” Once he made that choice, the actor committed completely to the role as one close friend found out when he visited the actor in Mexico during filming: “All traces of Oates had disappeared—he was that mean.”

As principal photography continued into the month of December, the demand, both physically and emotionally, were taking their toll on the cast and crew. Deep in the depths of a cocaine binge, Peckinpah put his cast through hell, playing mind games with Oates so that he would think the director was mad at him, which would put the actor on edge for a given scene. Oates was battling his own demons, indulging in vodka and tequila on a regular basis. He and Peckinpah would get into heated arguments, which was par for the course for these strong-willed men. This approach, according to friends, came out of Peckinpah’s own insecurity as he felt that the only way to exert control on his set was to make everyone more insecure than him. To help everyone let off some steam, Peckinpah and the producers bought out a local bar and threw a surprise party. Principal photography ended three days before Christmas and Peckinpah took a week off before supervising the editing process.

In mid-August of 1974, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia opened first in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. New York magazine’s Michael Sragow called it “a catastrophe so huge that those who once ranked Peckinpah with Hemingway may now invoke Mickey Spillane.” Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars and called it, “some kind of bizarre masterpiece.” The New York Times’ Nora Sayre felt that the film began “brilliantly, especially because of the pacing. Knowing when to speed the action up or slow it down, Mr. Peckinpah grabs our total attention. Then the movie disintegrates rapidly.” Newsweek criticized the plot as a “necrophiliac and nonsensical struggle for the love of a woman.”

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a ferocious crime film that has been imitated (see Man on Fire) but never equaled. No amount of visual and stylistic flourishes can compare with Peckinpah’s sparse, no-nonsense approach. It is a slow burn of a film for the first two-thirds only to erupt into an orgy of violence for the last third that acts as a cathartic release, both for us and for Bennie. At times, it is not an easy film to watch. One gets the feeling that Peckinpah doesn’t care if you like his film or not. He didn’t make it for people to love or hate, he made because he had to it – it was a story he had to tell. His film is unafraid to tell a story with such unflinching honesty and takes you to places that challenge you and make you think about things differently. That’s what Alfredo Garcia does so well. Finally free of studio constraints, Peckinpah was able to tell a story his way and that’s why this film is his most satisfying one.


SOURCES

Compo, Susan. Warren Oates: A Wild LIfe. University Press of Kentucky. 2009.

Two-Lane Blacktop

In anticipation of its release later that year, Esquire magazine ran a substantial piece on Two-Lane Blacktop, boldly proclaiming it to be the best film of 1971. Despite such high praise from a prestigious periodical, the studio refused to promote the film and it was barely released theatrically. Perhaps the studio felt that the minimalist plot and characterization, coupled with the existential vibe, wouldn’t appeal to a mainstream audience. However, over the years Two-Lane Blacktop has developed a small, but loyal following among car enthusiasts who fetishized the 1955 Chevy and 1970 Pontiac GTO featured so prominently that they deserve top billing alongside the lead actors. The film also found an audience with people who dug other nihilistic road movies like Easy Rider (1969) and Vanishing Point (1971).

Two-Lane Blacktop’s plot (if you can call it that) follows two young men who race other cars in their customized ’55 Chevy. We never find out their names and the credits list them simply as the Driver (James Taylor) and the Mechanic (Dennis Wilson). Early on, they pick up the Girl (Laurie Bird) in Santa Fe, New Mexico and cross paths with a rival driver (Warren Oates) in a ’70 Pontiac GTO. The Driver and the Mechanic say little to one another and when they do it’s only about cars – their own and others. The Girl, in comparison, is infinitely chattier. Eventually, they meet GTO at a gas station and challenge each other to a cross-country race to Washington, D.C. for “pink slips,” the title to the loser’s car. GTO is gregarious to a fault, scaring off a hitchhiker by repeating the same stories twice and telling his life story, which changes with every new person he picks up.

All these guys are is reflected in their cars and the open road that stretches out in front of them. Even though they’re racing against each other, they help each other out, sharing food and offering mechanical advice. They may be polar opposites personality-wise, but they share a love of going fast in their cars – it’s the fuel that keeps them going. The Driver, the Mechanic and the Girl are enigmatic blank slates and this allows us to imprint on them our ideas and theories as to their backstories and motivation for what they do. If they give Two-Lane Blacktop its existential vibe then it is GTO who gives the film its humanity with Warren Oates’ genial performance. He welcomes hitchhikers and delights in telling the same stories, inflating his own ego.

Director Monte Hellman’s camerawork is very minimalist, almost documentary-like in how matter-of-factly it depicts the race, the places and the people that they encounter along the way. For example, the near-dialogue-less prologue depicts illegal street racing that is eventually broken up by the police. Later on in the film, the Driver and the Mechanic come across a car accident and the Mechanic’s first instinct is to check their car before he sees if the others are okay. With all of the car-speak and loving shots of fast, muscle cars, Two-Lane Blacktop is a car lover’s dream. It has also become a nostalgia piece as they just don’t make cars like the ones in this film anymore. This film also immerses us in the car-racing culture of its day like no other film then or since.

The two cars travel across the country through desolate landscapes. They travel on backroads and through small towns, existing on the margins of society. Director Monte Hellman and screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer have an innate understanding of the expansive nature of the United States while traveling through it by car. I would love to see these guys team up again for an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I think that they could do the book justice because they also understand the loneliness and camaraderie that is associated with cross-country travel.

Two-Lane Blacktop originated with producer Michael S. Laughlin. He had a two-picture deal with Cinema Center Films and convinced them to pay Will Corry $100,000 for his screenplay about two men, one black and one white, who drive across the country followed by a young girl. The script was inspired by his own cross-country journey in 1968. Returning from Italy after a film project had fallen through; Hellman was introduced to Laughlin and presented with two films, one of which was Two-Lane Blacktop. Laughlin asked Hellman to direct and he agreed on the condition that he could hire another writer to give the script a polish.

Hellman found Corry’s story “interesting but not fully realized.” A mutual friend recommended underground writer Rudolph Wurlitzer. Hellman read and enjoyed his novel Nog, “a strange ‘60s road novel,” according to its author, and was impressed enough to hire Wurlitzer. The writer began reading Corry’s script but gave up on page five. Hellman and Wurlitzer agreed to keep the basic idea of the cross-country race as well as the Driver, the Mechanic and the Girl characters. To prepare for Two-Lane Blacktop, Wurlitzer stayed in a Los Angeles motel and read car magazines. He also hung out in the San Fernando Valley with several obsessive mechanics and “stoner car freaks.” He didn’t know much about cars but did “know something about being lost on the road.” Wurlitzer wrote a new screenplay in four weeks and invented the GTO character as well as all of the others.

In February 1970, Hellman did some location scouting and was a few weeks from principal photography when Cinema Center suddenly canceled the project. Hellman shopped the script around to several Hollywood studios that liked it but wanted a say in the casting. However, a young executive at Universal Pictures by the name of Ned Tanen gave Hellman $850,000 to make the film his way, including final cut. At the time, Tanen was quite the maverick, overseeing some pretty adventurous fare with films like Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971) and Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand (1971). According to Hellman, at the time Universal was trying to “figure out what it was that made independent films, particularly Easy Rider, successful.”

Hellman saw James Taylor’s picture on a billboard on the Sunset Strip and contacted him, inviting the musician to do a screen test which was impressed the filmmakers. Four days before principal photography was to begin, the role of the Mechanic had not been cast. Hellman was desperate and screen-tested people he met in garages. A friend of Fred Roos, the film’s casting director, suggested Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. Hellman chose the musician because he felt that Wilson “had lived that role, that he really grew up with cars.”

Principal photography began on August 13, 1970 in Los Angeles and lasted for six weeks with a crew of 30-35, three matching Chevys, and two matching GTOs traveling through the southwest towards Memphis, Tennessee. Hellman took an unconventional approach with his three non-actors by not letting them read the script. Instead, he gave the pages of dialogue on the day of shooting. They felt uncomfortable with this approach but it achieved the desired affect that Hellman was after. In particular, James Taylor, used to having control when it came to his music, was upset at this approach. Hellman finally relented and allowed Taylor to read the script in its entirety but he never got around to it. Hellman also insisted on actually going across country because he felt that the only way to convince the audience that the characters raced across the United States was to actually do it. He said, “I knew it would affect the actors – and it did, obviously. It affected everybody.”

Hellman shot almost the entire script as written and edited the film himself. He said, “I can’t look over someone’s shoulder. I need my hand on the brake.” The first cut of the film was three-and-a-half hours long. He had final cut but was contractually obligated to deliver a film that was no longer than two hours. The final version ran 105 minutes.

In their April 1971 cover story, Esquire magazine proclaimed Two-Lane Blacktop “Film of the Year” and published Wurlitzer’s script in its entirety. Hellman thought that this would be good publicity but in retrospect would not have done it because “I think it raised people’s expectations. They couldn’t accept the movie for what it was.” There was a lot of advanced buzz about the film but Lou Wasserman, then head of Universal, saw and hated it. He refused to promote the film. It opened in New York City on the fourth of July without one single advertisement in the newspapers.

Two-Lane Blacktop received mixed to positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and found the characters to be “too impersonal, though, and that's bothersome. After half an hour or so, the fact that we're told so little about their inner workings becomes a distraction. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for making them so awesomely one-dimensional,” but did enjoy “the sense of life that occasionally sneaked through, particularly in the character of G.T.O. He is the only character who is fully occupied with being himself (rather than the instrument of a metaphor), and so we get the sense we've met somebody.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby felt that it was a “far from perfect film (those metaphors keep blocking the road), but it has been directed, acted, photographed and scored (underscored, happily) with the restraint and control of an aware, mature filmmaker.” Time magazine’s Jay Cocks wrote, “Few film makers have dealt so well or so subtly with the American landscape. Not a single frame in the film is wasted. Even the small touches—the languid tension while refueling at a back-country gas station or the piercing sound of an ignition buzzer—have their own intricate worth.” The Village Voice’s J. Hoberman wrote, “Two-Lane Blacktop is a movie of achingly eloquent landscapes and absurdly inert characters.” Finally, in his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “The movie starts off as a narrative but gradually grows into something much more abstract—it's unsettling but also beautiful.”

Laurie Bird, James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are attractive actors and Two-Lane Blacktop captures them at a time when they had their whole lives ahead of them. Sadly, both Bird and Wilson would die way too early in their respective lives – Bird at 25 and Wilson at 39. Taylor was so unhappy with the experience of making the film that he never acted in another one again. The characters in Two-Lane Blacktop never really connect with each other in a meaningful way. The Driver and the Mechanic only talk about their car, GTO talks about his car and lies about his past, and the Girl is just along for the ride until something better comes along. They live on the fringes of society, living a vagabond existence, striving to live constantly in motion. Being on the road is what defines these characters. It isn’t where they’ve been which is important, but where they’re going as the film’s final image demonstrates.

Ed Howard posted an excellent take on the film over at his Only the Cinema blog. This Distracted Globe also takes a solid look at it. Finally, over at The Huffington Post, Kim Morgan wrote a fantastic tribute to the film.

SOURCES

Benoit, Shelly. “The Making of Two-Lane Blacktop.” Show Magazine. March 1971.

Liebenson, Donald. “Classic Two-Lane Blacktop Takes the Long Road to Video.” Los Angeles Times. November 3, 1999.

O’Brien, Joe. “On the Drift: Rudy Wurlitzer and the Road to Nowhere.” Arthur magazine. May 2008.

Phipps, Keith. “Monte Hellman: Two-Lane Blacktop. The A.V. Club.

Savlov, Marc. “The Continuing Career of Director Monte Hellman.” Austin Chronicle. March 10, 2000.

Walker, Beverly. “Two-Lane Blacktop.” Sight and Sound. Winter 1970/71.