sign in sign up
<<
Home , Alias Smith and Jones, An Annapolis Story, Band of Angels, Black Saddle, Buchanan Rides Alone, Cimarron Strip

February 23, 2010 (XX:7) , (1962, 94 min)

Directed by Sam Peckinpah Written by N.B. Stone Jr., Sam Peckinpah and Robert Creighton Williams Produced by Richard E. Lyons Original Music by by by Frank Santillo

Randolph Scott...Gil Westrum Joel McCrea...Steve Judd ...Elsa Knudsen Ron Starr...Heck Longtree ...Judge Tolliver R.G. Armstrong...Joshua Knudsen Jenie Jackson...Kate ...Billy Hammond L.Q. Jones...Sylvus Hammond ...Elder Hammond John Davis Chandler...Jimmy Hammond ...Henry Hammond (1965), Wives and Lovers (1963), Ride the High Country (1962), "The Westerner" (3 episodes, 1960), "Disneyland" (3 episodes, SAM PECKINPAH (21 February 1925, Fresno, , - 28 1959-1960), "Zorro" (2 episodes, 1960), The Bramble Bush (1960), December 1984, Inglewood, California, of a stroke) directed 28 Al Capone (1959), Band of Angels (1957), The King and Four films and tv series, some of which were The Osterman Weekend Queens (1956), A Kiss Before Dying (1956), The Proud Ones (1983), Convoy (1978), (1977), (1956), The Magnificent Matador (1955), White Feather (1955), (1975), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), Pat Garrett & Prince Valiant (1954), The Desert Rats (1953), Don't Bother to (1973), The Getaway (1972), (1972), Knock (1952), Berlin Express (1948), Laura (1944), The Lodger Straw Dogs (1971), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), The Wild (1944), (1943), Coast Guard (1939), Rio Grande Bunch (1969), "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre" (1 (1938), Highway Patrol (1938), Penitentiary (1938), The Shadow episode, 1967), (1965), Ride the High Country (1937), The Devil's Playground (1937), and Crime and Punishment (1962), "Zane Grey Theater" (3 episodes, 1959-1960), "The (1935). Rifleman" (4 episodes, 1958-1959), and "Trackdown" (1957) TV series (unknown episodes). (23 January 1898, Orange County, Virginia - 2 March 1987, Beverly Hills, , California, of heart and LUCIEN BALLARD (6 May 1908, Miami, Oklahoma -1 October lung ailments) appeared in 105 films, some of which were Ride the 1988, Rancho Mirage, California, of a road accident) was the High Country (1962), (1960), Westbound (1959), cinematographer for 133 films and tv series, some of which were (1958), (1957), Shoot- My Kingdom For... (1985), Rabbit Test (1978), Mikey and Nicky Out at Medicine Bend (1957), 7th Cavalry (1956), Seven Men from (1976), From Noon Till Three (1976), St. Ives (1976), Breakout Now (1956), A Lawless Street (1955), Ten Wanted Men (1955), The (1975), The Getaway (1972), Junior Bonner (1972), Elvis: That's Bounty Hunter (1954), The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953), The Man the Way It Is (1970), The Hawaiians (1970), The Ballad of Cable Behind the Gun (1953), Carson City (1952), Man in the Saddle Hogue (1970), (1969), True Grit (1969), Will (1951) , Fort Worth (1951), Santa Fe (1951), Colt .45 (1950), The Penny (1968), Smith (1966), Nevadan (1950), The Doolins of Oklahoma (1949), Canadian Pacific (1949), Return of the Bad Men (1948), Albuquerque (1948), Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY—2

Home, Sweet Homicide (1946), Badman's Territory (1946), Belle of episode, 1959), "The Texan" (1 episode, 1958), "Broken Arrow" (1 the Yukon (1944), 'Gung Ho!': The Story of Carlson's Makin Island episode, 1958), (1956), and The Tender Trap Raiders (1943), Bombardier (1943), Paris Calling (1941), Belle (1955). Starr (1941), (1940), Virginia City (1940), Coast Guard (1939), (1939), The Texans (1938), L.Q. JONES (19 August 1927, Beaumont, -) appeared in 153 Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), The Last of the Mohicans films and tv series, some of which were A Prairie Home (1936), She (1935), The Last Round-Up (1934), The Thundering Companion (2006), Route 666 (2001), The Mask of Zorro Herd (1933), Hello, Everybody! (1933), and The Far Call (1929). (1998),The Patriot (1998), In Cold Blood (1996), Casino (1995), The Legend of Grizzly Adams (1990), Bulletproof (1988), "The JOEL MCCREA (5 November 1905, South Pasadena, California - 20 Yellow Rose" (10 episodes, 1983-1984), Lone Wolf McQuade October 1990, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, of (1983), The Beast Within (1982), "Charlie's Angels" (4 episodes, pulmonary complications) appeared in 93 films and tv series, some 1976-1980), "The Incredible " (1 episode, 1979), "McCloud" of which were Mustang Country (1976), Cry Blood, (1970), (1 episode, 1977), Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), White Line Fever Sioux Nation (1970), Ride the High Country (1962), "Wichita (1975), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), "Alias Smith and Jones" Town" (26 episodes, 1959-1960), The Gunfight at Dodge City (3 episodes, 1971-1972), "" (7 episodes, 1963-1972), (1959), Fort Massacre (1958), Cattle Empire (1958), The Tall "The Virginian" (25 episodes, 1963-1971), The Ballad of Cable Stranger (1957), The Oklahoman (1957), The First Texan (1956), Hogue (1970), The Wild Bunch (1969), Hang 'Em High (1968), Wichita (1955), Black Horse Canyon (1954), Border River (1954), "" (5 episodes, 1966-1968), "Rawhide" (5 episodes, Lone Hand (1953), Rough Shoot (1953), The Story 1963-1965), Major Dundee (1965), "Wagon Train" (5 episodes, (1952), Territory (1949), Four Faces West (1948), The 1959-1964), "Laramie" (7 episodes, 1959-1963), Ride the High Virginian (1946), (1944), Sullivan's Travels (1941), Country (1962), "The Life and Legend of " (1 episode, Foreign Correspondent (1940), Union Pacific (1939), Wells Fargo 1961), Cimarron (1960), Warlock (1959), "Cheyenne" (3 episodes, (1937), Come and Get It (1936), These Three (1936), Rockabye 1955), Target Zero (1955), and Battle Cry (1955). (1932), The Lost Squadron (1932), Kept Husbands (1931), The Jazz Age (1929), Freedom of the Press (1928), and Dead Man's Curve WARREN OATES (5 July 1928, Depoy, - 3 April 1982, (1928). Los Angeles, California, of a heart attack) appeared in 122 films and tv series, some of which were "Tales of the Unexpected" (1 R.G. ARMSTRONG (7 , Birmingham, Alabama -) episode, 1985), Tough Enough (1983), Blue Thunder (1983), The appeared in 182 films and tv series, some of which were The Border (1982), Stripes (1981), "East of Eden" (1981), 1941 (1979), Waking (2001), Purgatory (1999), "Millennium" (5 episodes, 1997- The Brink's Job/China 9, Liberty 37 (1978), The African Queen 1998), The Man in the Iron Mask (1998), "Cybill" (1 episode, (1977), 92 in the Shade (1975), Race with the Devil (1975), Rancho 1995), "Walker, Texas Ranger" (1 episode, 1994), "L.A. Law" (2 Deluxe (1975), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), The episodes, 1992-1993), Dick Tracy (1990), "Matlock" (2 episodes, White Dawn (1974), Badlands (1973), Dillinger (1973), The Hired 1989), "War and Remembrance" (2 episodes, 1988-1989), Hand (1971), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), The Wild Bunch (1969), Bulletproof (1988), "Trapper John, M.D." (6 episodes, 1981-1985), "Gunsmoke" (10 episodes, 1958-1967), In the Heat of the Night Lone Wolf McQuade (1983), "Dynasty" (3 episodes, 1982), (1967), Welcome to Hard Times (1967), (1967), "The Hammett (1982), Reds (1981), The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper (1981), Virginian" (4 episodes, 1963-1966), Major Dundee (1965), Ride the Raggedy Man (1981), Where the Buffalo Roam (1980), The Last High Country (1962), "Wanted: Dead or Alive" (5 episodes, 1958- Ride of the (1979), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Stay 1961), "Have Gun - Will Travel"(2 episodes, 1958-1960), The Rise Hungry (1976), Race with the Devil (1975), "Cannon" (2 episodes, and Fall of (1960), "Wagon Train" (1 episode, 1971-1973), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), The Great 1959), and "The Steel Hour" (1 episode, 1956). Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), "Disneyland" (4 episodes, 1959- 1972), "Hawaii Five-O" (2 episodes, 1969-1970), The Great White MARIETTE HARTLEY (21 June 1940, Weston, - ) Hope (1970), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), "Gunsmoke" (5 appeared in 119 films and tv series, some of which were The Inner episodes, 1961-1967), "The F.B.I." (3 episodes, 1965-1967), Circle (2009), "The Cleaner" (1 episode, 2009), "Law & Order: "" (3 episodes, 1959-1966), "The Fugitive" (3 episodes, Special Victims Unit" (5 episodes, 2003-2009), "Grey's Anatomy" 1963-1965), "Rawhide" (4 episodes, 1959-1965), Major Dundee (1 episode, 2008), Baggage (2003), "" (1968) (1965), "" (3 episodes, 1958-1962), Ride the High (unknown episodes, 2001), Snitch (1996), "Courthouse" (1 Country (1962), "Cheyenne" (2 episodes, 1960-1961), "Maverick" episode), "Murder, She Wrote" (1 episode, 1992), Encino Man (2 episodes, 1959-1960), The Fugitive Kind (1959), "Have Gun - (1992), "" (2 episodes, 1983), The Love Tapes Will Travel" (2 episodes, 1958), (1958), A (1980), "M*A*S*H" (1 episode, 1979), "" (2 episodes, Face in the Crowd (1957), and Garden of Eden (1954). 1974-1977), "Little House on the Prairie" (1 episode, 1976), "Gunsmoke" (5 episodes, 1963-1974), The Magnificent Seven Ride! JAMES DRURY (18 April 1934, City, New York - ) (1972), "Bonanza" (4 episodes, 1965-1971), Marooned (1969), appeared in 70 films and tv series, some of which were Hell to Pay "" (1 episode, 1969), "Peyton Place" 30 episodes, 1965- (2005), The Virginian (2000), "Walker, Texas Ranger" (3 episodes, 1966), "The Virginian" (2 episodes, 1964), Marnie (1964), "The 1993), "Firehouse" (13 episodes, 1974), "The Virginian" (249 Twilight Zone" (1 episode, 1964), Drums of Africa (1963), and Ride episodes, 1962-1971), The Young Warriors (1967), "Perry Mason" the High Country (1962). (1 episode, 1961), "Rawhide" (3 episodes, 1959-1961), "" (2 episodes, 1958-1961), "Gunsmoke" (4 episodes, 1955- 1961), "Cheyenne" (1 episode, 1959), "Have Gun - Will Travel" (1 Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY—3

PECKINPAH from World Film Directors, V. II, Ed. John also accumulated more demerits than anyone else in the school’s Wakeman. H.W. Wilson Co, NY 1988 history. Graduating in 1943, Peckinpah enlisted in the Marines. In American director and scenarist, was born in Fresno California, the the summer of 1945 he was sent to China, where he saw virtually son of David Samuel Peckinpah and Fern Church. Peckinpah told no action but fell in love with a Chinese girl and “began my study interviewers that he had a great-aunt with Paute Indian blood, but of Zen.” Back home in 1947, he enrolled at Fresno State College. he believed that his family name originated in the Friesland Islands There he met Marie Selland, a stage-struck student whom he of the Netherlands. married the same year. She introduced him to the theatre and Both the Peckinpahs and the Churches had migrated to the Peckinah took to it immediately, switching his major to drama. He Fresno area in the 1850s. His paternal grandfather had hauled borax graduated with a B.A. in that subject in 1949, the year that his out of Death Valley, earning enough to buy timberland and daughter Sharon was born, and went on for post-graduate work at establish a sawmill in 1873 on Peckinpah Mountain in the Sierra the University of Southern California. For a master’s thesis he Nevada, subsequently selling out to buy a general store and way wrote an adaptation of a one-act play by his idol Tennessee station. His other grandfather, Williams, and filmed it (to his relief Denver Samuel Church, had the movie was destroyed). come out west to work on an Peckinpah began his uncle’s sheepfarm. He career as a director-producer in qualified as a lawyer and set residence at the Huntington Park up a practice in Fresno, then Civic Theatre. After a year and a bought a cattle ranch in Crane half he decided to try television, Valley, near Peckinpah making a modest start at KLAC-TV Mountain. Church became in Los Angeles as a stagehand, District Attorney of Fresno propman, and floor-sweeper. He County, then a Congressman, lasted two years there and then, for and finally a Superior Court the first but by no means the last judge. In 1914 Sam time, lost his job after a row with a Peckinpah’s father David went studio executive. However, he had to work on the Church ranch, managed to put together some short where he met and married films in his time at KLAC, and on Fern. With his father-in-law’s the strength of these was hired by backing, the qualified CBS in 1953 as an assistant editor. as a lawyer and also went into That short-lived assignment ended practice in Fresno. when he failed to report for work Though they were raised in Fresno, Sam Peckinpah and his while his wife was in labor with their second child, Kristen. older brother Denver spent long periods on the Church ranch. His first sortie into the film industry followed. He sat for Peckinpah often referred to this as the happiest period of his life, a three days in Walter Wanger’s waiting room at Allied Artists, and kind of lost Eden. His grandfather Denver Church was an important in the end Wanger gave him a job as third assistant casting director and perhaps crucial influence on him. An American individualist of (or gopher). His first assignment was on ’s Riot in Cell the old school, he opposed all kinds of government control. Though Block 11 (1954). He and Siegal liked one another, and Peckinpah a total abstainer himself, he voted in Congress against Prohibition worked as “dialogue director”—in fact mostly as Siegal’s personal and later abandoned his political career because of his disapproval assistant—on Private Hell (1954), (1955), of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Denver Church taught Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and his family that you hunted only for food, never wasted ammunition, (1956). Peckinpah also played a bit part in Invasion of the Body and respected the animals you killed. Snatchers and did some rewriting of one or two scenes. He learned His father David was also a man of principle, founder of a lot from Siegel, whom he called his patron and also worked as the Fresno Humane Society and a lawyer who, during the dialogue director on some of Jacques Tourneur’s films for Allied Depression, was always ready to accept payment in kind—or no Artists in 1955-1956. payment at all. He often said that he wanted only to feel that he At that time Peckinpah was beginning a new career as a could “enter his house justified.” David Peckinpah also became a television writer. It was Siegal who prodded him in this direction Superior Court judge and so did Sam’s brother Denny. “Sitting when he loaned him a batch of scripts submitted to the CBS around a dining-room table talking about law and order, truth and Gunsmoke series. Using these as models, Peckinpah wrote some justice, on a Bible which was very big in our family, “I felt like an scripts of his own that were accepted. Ten episodes of Gunsmoke outsider,” Peckinpah said, “and I started to question them. I guess produced in 1955-1956 were written by Peckinpah. most of them I’m still questioning.” adaptations of Gunsmoke radio scripts. He went on to write for Peckinpah attended primary school in Fresno and other series and in 1957 sold his first script for a feature developed an equal delight in movies and in books. At Fresno High film. This was The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones, based on the School he became a formidable member of the football team and book by Charles Neider that itself derived from Pat Garrett’s The also laid the foundations of his reputation as a brawler and boozer. Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. Much altered by other hands, it His parents tried another school, and when this did nothing to eventually surfaced as ’s One-Eyed Jacks. moderate his violent temper, sent him for his senior high school Peckinpah directed his first television film early in 1958, year to San Rafael Military School. He did well academically but an episode of Broken Arrow called “The Knife Fighter.” His television career took another step forward when he reworked an Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY—4 original script rejected by Gunsmoke and sold it to Dick Powell at Westrum (Randolph Scott) running a crooked rifle range, dressed Four Star Productions. This was “The Sharpshooter,” screened up like Buffalo Bill. Both men have outlived their jobs as frontier during the spring of 1958. A story about a boy growing up in the lawmen—Hornitos has uniformed policemen. Judd clings to the old California foothills of the , it drew on Peckinpah’s values but Westrum has sold out in the interests of survival and has own youthful experiences and was enthusiastically received. It acquired an equally unprincipled young sidekick, Heck Longtree became the pilot for a successful new series, The Rifleman, (Ron Starr). Judd secures for all three of them a job transporting beginning in the fall of 1958. Peckinpah directed four episodes of gold from the Coarse Gold mining camp. On their way they stop at the show himself but left it in 1959, saying that the producers had the farmhouse of Joshua Knudsen (R.G. Armstrong), a “perverted it into pap.” sanctimonious tyrant whose puritanism masks incestuous desires for Late that year, Peckinpah became producer of The his motherless daughter Elsa (Mariette Hartley). Westerner, an NBC-TV series that grew out of another pilot he had Coarse Gold is in a state of lawlessness close to anarchy, written and directed for Dick Powell. The series starred as Dave Blessingame, a self-sufficient drifter. Peckinpah, who directed five of the half-hour episodes, co-wrote four of them, and launched the series with one for which he had performed both functions. This was “Jeff,” a story (as Peckinpah said) “about a guy who goes to take this young whore, who he knew as a kid, home.” “Jeff” received ecstatic reviews…“The half-hour had only one flaw, a couple of descents into violence that didn’t help the story at all.” The Westerner went on to receive a Producers Guild nomination as Best Filmed Series, but was canceled after only thirteen shows— stifled by affiliate anxieties about its “adult” subject matter and by the viewing public’s sudden and mysterious hankering after hour- dominated by five brutish brothers, the Hammonds, against whom long shows. the drunken Judge Tolliver (Edgar Buchanan) is helpless. To escape Peckinpah’s first feature followed in 1961, The Deadly her father, Elsa Knudsen comes to Coarse Gold and marries Billy Companions, scripted by A.S. Fleischman from his novel Yellowleg Hammond (James Drury) in a grotesque ceremony in a brother- and produced for Pathé-America-Carousel by Charles B. saloon. After it, two of Billy’s brothers try to rape Elsa, but are FitzSimons. Peckinpah was hired at the request of Brian Keith of restrained by Judd and Longtree. “Cutting between the attempted The Westerner, who stars opposite FitzSimons’ sister, Maureen rape of Elsa and scenes of brawling in the saloon…,” wrote Terence O’Hara….Peckinpah had altogether less control over his first Butler, “Peckinpah for the first time in his work uses a montage feature than he had anticipated and was not much pleased with the technique to create the impression of energy exploding.” film. However, it performed adequately at the box office and The Hammonds break into Joshua Knudsen’s house and brought him some good personal notices. Indeed, as Doug murder him. Westrum relieves McKinney says, this “psychological Western” was an impressive Judge Tolliver of Elsa’s marriage lines, freeing her from her debut, placed resolutely in a Peckinpah landscape, allowing for the misguided union. He is a more humane man than the rigorously contrivances of the script in delivering a film of angular, subdued law-abiding Judd (who is given the line originally spoken by tensions, somewhat skewed within the confines of the genre.” Peckinpah’s own father: “All I want is to enter my house justified”). Moreover, this “story of a quest for redemption and identity” But Westrum has been corrupted by materialism, and he now provides “an auspicious introduction to themes Peckinpah will violates their friendship by making a bid for the gold he is supposed explore more fully in later films.” to protect. Judd wins out in this encounter, but is forced to reassess In 1961 the Pckinpahs had a third child, Matthew, who his old certainties when Elsa questions her own dead father’s later appeared in several of his father’s films; the marriage ended equally rigid morality. the same year. After another brief stint in television, Peckinpah was Having escaped from Judd, Westrum returns to help him in hired by MGM to direct Ride the High Country (1962; in Britain a final confrontation with the Hammonds at the Knudsen called Guns in the Afternoon), a modestly budgeted Western from a farmhouse. The Hammonds are wiped out and Judd is mortally script that Peckinpah heavily revised. The project became caught up wounded. In their final reconciliation, Westrum undertakes to in a front-office power struggle at MGM that resulted in Peckinpah deliver the gold to its rightful owners; Elsa and the reformed being banned from the studio during postproduction. He had by Longtree pair off. “According to the conventions of the Western,” then made his first cut, however, and the editing was completed as Butler says, “Gil Westrum, in his capacity as a good-bad guy, more or less in accordance with his intentions. should have been the character to die as a means of atoning for his Ride the High Country was shot by Peckinpah’s favorite disrespect of the law…. Westrum’s survival constitutes the movie’s cinematographer, Lucien Ballard, in Cinemascope and in the final refutation of the Manicheanism of the Western….For autumnal colors that set the film’s elegiac mood. Its opening credits Peckinpah, Westrum’s claim to human dignity lies not in whether roll over vistas of the American wilderness wilderness—mountains, he can uphold the law but in whether he can respond to Judd’s cry forests, rivers—all magnificently beautiful and totally empty. From for friendship.” there we switch to the crowded California town of Hornitos at the As many critics have pointed out, Ride the High Country is turn of the century. Hornitos is in carnival, and we see hucksters a film about the changing Western as well as about the changing selling mementos of the vanished frontier and a race between a West, and the casting of those old cowboy heroes McCrea and Scott camel and a horse—that emblem of the old West—which the camel emphasizes this; Scott’s role in particular—his last—is an almost wins. shocking assault on his screen image as a man of iron integrity. Riding into town (and almost run down by an early Peckinpah learned a lot in the making of this film, especially (as he automobile), Steve Judd (Joel McCrea) finds his old friend Gil said) fromLucien Ballard, who introduced him to the crane shot of Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY—5 which he makes such telling use here and elsewhere, and from the Southerner who has chosen to fight for the Union during the Civil editor Frank Santillo. Peckinpah credited Santillo with teaching him War, a stubborn but deeply divided man clinging to vague notions the “flash-cutting” that became a characteristic of his editing of order, law, and duty. Because of his arrogant behavior at style—the use of very short shots, only a few frames long, to Gettysburg, he has been relegated to the command of a prison capture rapid and violent action. camp....Major Dundee was the subject of bitter conflict during and For Doug McKinney, Peckinpah’s eye for detail adds after filming….According to the director he left the film at a length immeasurably to the movie’s impact: “the hole in his boot, the of about two and a half hours. It was cut by Columbia to a release frayed cuffs, the touching way he goes to the john to take out his length of 134 minutes. Whole scenes were excised, wrecking the glasses, telling Heck not to litter: all details which humanize Steve movie’s logic and rhythm. There is much to admire in what Judd…. Coarse Gold, Kate’s place, the slovenly quality of the remains, but the result as a whole has been described by Jim Kitses Hammonds’ camp, and the Knudsen farm are triumphs of detail,” as “one of Hollywood’s great broken monuments.” while in the dialogue, “the stories Steve and Gil reminisce over on In 1964 Peckinpah married Begonia Palacios, who had the trail...have a ring to them that must be recognized as a major played a minor role in Major Dundee. It was a fiery relationship, accomplishment.” McKiney goes on to describe Peckinpah’s and the couple were to be married and divorced three times in all; growing mastery of mise en scène in the final shootout, when Judd they had one child, Lupita. The anguish Peckinpah experienced and Westrum, walking steadily into the guns of the Hammonds— during the filming and editing of Major Dundee was followed by two against five—are filmed from an increasingly low angle until another tremendous blow. Signed by to direct they loom as “heroes of mythic proportions.” The Cincinatti Kid at MGM, Peckinpah began work in October 1964. He and the producer disagreed, and he was fired after four days of shooting, the film being completed by . The release of the truncated Major Dundee in April 1965 renewed gossip about Pekcinpah’s intractability, and he was effectively blacklisted throughout the industry, his career apparently at an end. The only feature credit Peckinpah earned over the next three years was or his script The Glory Guys (1965), a bitterly cynical cavalry Western loosely based on the Custer disaster and clumsily directed by Arthur Laven….He taught writing at UCLA in the fall of 1967, and at this time, his reputation partially rehabilitated, he reentered the movie industry. Signed by Phil Feldman for Warner Brothers-Seven Arts, Peckinpah began the second phase of his career with The Wild Bunch (1969), now generally regarded as his masterpiece. It was scripted by Peckinpah and from a story devised by the stuntman Roy Sickner, about the last days of the West’s last gang of aging outlaws. It was shot by Lucien Ballard in Panavision Because of the front-office conflict in which the film had 70 and , has a marvelous score by ,and become embroiled, it was released by MGM as the bottom half of a apart from its stars, features several of the character actors who double bill. To the studio’s embarrassment, it was enthusiastically formed a kind of Peckinpah “stock company—Warren Oates, Ben reviewed and became one of the year’s “sleepers.” Newsweek called Johnson, , and L.Q. Jones. From the outset, it the best picture of 1962, and the following year it won several everyone shared an awareness that they were involved in the European awards, including the grand prix at the Belgian creation of an important film. International Film Festival. Some regard it now not only as one of the finest examples of the genre, but as Peckinpah’s best film, free of his obsession with violence. However, Richard T. Jameson in [Referring to The Wild Bunch last battle] Richard Gentner Film Comment (January-February 1981) suggests that “those who and Diane Birdsall described this long orgy of killing as “the nostalgically prefer it to the more stylistically adventurous, and unparalleled montage event of cinema history. It is both ‘son of temperamentally contentious, works that followed must have an Potemkin’ and light years beyond it. It is the most exhausting reel of aversion to voluptuous kinesis.” film ever created—not merely a cluster of quick cuts. . . but a Peckinpah returned for a time to television, producing and cascading avalanche of comprehension. The destruction of directing two hour-long films for The Dick Powell Theatre. These Mapache’s stronghold (and, of course, the Bunch along with it) is as were Pericles on 31st Street (1962), based on a story by Harry Mark inevitable as it is exhilarating.” Petrakis (Peckinpah collaborated on the script) and The Losers . . .The film ends with a shot of the Bunch laughing, culled (1963), an adventure-comedy modeled on The Westerner and from an earlier sequence. “By ending with these killers as they starring and . Highly successful and laugh, behaving as everyone does,” Peckinpah said, “I wanted to frequently rerun, it was almost taken up as a series with Peckinpah remind the audience that they were just people like themselves.” as producer. This project collapsed with the death of Dick Powell, Cut from 148 to 135 minutes, The Wild Bunch was and Peckinpah then joined Walt Disney Productions as a writer- previewed in June 1969 and released the same month. Its realistic director. He left after a disagreement with a producer, and in the depiction of violence, “the way blood spurts practically across a late summer of 1963 was hired by the independent producer Jerry room, provoked an outburst of almost hysterical vituperation from Bresler to direct Major Dundee (1965), released through Columbia. critics, journalists, and other moralists. . . Peckinpah maintained Adapted from a story by , Major Dundee that he did not like violence: “My idea was that it would have a is a cavalry Western starring as an autocratic cathartic effect.” Asked why, if he wanted to oppose violence, he Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY—6

Peckinpah had other projects in mind but these fell through. Melnick then offered his own first-draft adaptation of the novel along with financing through ABC Pictures. Peckinpah sat down with David Zelig Goodman to try to make something out of a “lousy book with one good action sequence.” The result, which bears very little relationship to the original novel was Straw Dogs (1971)…. Peckinpah made no secret of the fact that he was much influenced in Straw Dogs by the thesis advanced by in The Territorial Imperative—that human behavior is much closer than is usually recognized to animal behavior, and that a key factor in both is the possession and defense of territory. The film’s title comes from Lao Tse: “Heaven and earth are ruthless and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs” (used as substitutes for real animals in Chinese sacrificial rites): “the sage is ruthless and treats the people as straw dogs.” David [] becomes a “sage” when he recognizes the truth of this adage. Or, as Peckinpah said in had not made a film about the , the director said: “The a much-quoted Playboy interview (August 1972), “an intellectual Western is a universal frame within which it is possible to comment who embodies his intellect in action, that’s a real human being.” on today.” Even at this “near-raucous” press conference, however, Released at the end of 1971, Straw Dogs revived and there were those (like the critic ) who insisted that The redoubled the uproar created by The Wild Bunch. It was hailed by Wild Bunch was “a great film...a masterpiece.” some as a masterpiece, vilified by others as an endorsement of According to Doug McKinneym Peckinpah’s thesis is that violence and as a sexist tract. called it “the first “violence is a part of all of us….Abhorring violence is not enough; American film that is a fascist work of art.” Others insist that the we must recognize that the enemy is within, and how that capacity movie does not endorse violence, but only asserts that it is an for violence works and shows itself.” J.-P. Coursdon, on the other element in human nature which must be dealt with, not simply hand, speaks of Peckinpah’s “exhilaration in depicting violence, denied. Peckinpah was still editing the film when , escalating it into orgiastic celebrations of death, given and received president of ABC Pictures, invited him to direct Junior Bonner as the ultimate experience.” (1972), from an original script by Jeb Rosenbrook. Lucien Ballard Coursodon (in his American Directors, V. II) points out shot the film in Todd-AO 35 during the annual rodeo in Prescott, that The Wild Bunch continues Peckinpah’s refutation of the . Many of Peckinpah’s films are elegiac studies of the old Western’s “moral Manichaeism,” driving home “the by then West in transition to the new. Junior Bonner, his first contemporary familiar point that there is no such thing as Good or Evil, only Western, wryly illustrates the outcome….An atypically gentle different forms and degrees of evil and different levels of awareness movie for both Peckinpah and McQueen, Junior Bonner was a of this evil.” All the men in the film are “motivated by self-interest commercial failure…. and greed” and “the only glimpse of a moral, lawful social Peckinpah’s next assignment was The Getaway (1972), structure” is the blatantly ludicrous Temperance Union. “Law produced by First Artists, a partnership set up by Steve McQueen enforcement is abandoned to outlaws and irresponsible killers. and other stars. The script, based on a novel by , was women are venal and treacherous (all the female characters in the by . Peckinpah had Ballard as his cameraman, but film seem to be whores). Even the childhood image of innocence is McQueen scrapped Jerry Fielding’s score, substituting one by repeatedly deflated. Quincy Jones….The Getaway was a major box-office success, In his Freudian reading of Crucified Heroes Terence grossing $25 million. Contemporary reviewers also like the film, on Butler dwells on the misogynism of the film (or of its heroes), and the whole, though some complained that Peckinpah was pandering offers a thesis that Pike Bishop is driven by a death wish inspired by to the current fashion for outlaw heroes. Molly Haskell found the the pain and confusion of unresolved homosexual impulses. picture “a lot more fun and less pretentious than Straw Dogs and Coursodon speaks rather of the Bunch’s “instinctive adhering to an The Wild Bunch,” and its violence, “not having to sustain the unformulated, dimly grasped code of virile togetherness.”... burden of Peckinpah’s atavistic anthropology, is less hateful.” … It is, as McKinney says, “at the very least a landmark For a Peckinpah project, the filming of The Getaway had Western,” and there are those who think it the greatest of all been relatively free of disputes. Not so Pat Garrett and Billy the Westerns. Kid (1973), “a Gordon Carroll-Sam Peckinpah Production” financed and distributed by MGM. An original script by Rudolph A much gentler film followed, again produced by Phil Wurlitzer, the film was shot on location in and around , Feldman for Warner Brothers-Seven Arts. The Ballad of Cable , during a ferocious flu epidemic and under conditions of Hogue (1970) was a original script by John Crawford and Edmund “open warfare” between the director and the president of MGM, Penney, brought to Peckinpah by his friend Warrem Oates. Once James Aubrey. John Coquillon, who had shot Straw Dogs, was the again the director had Lucien Ballard as his cinematographer, Jerry cinematographer, and the music was supplied by , who Fielding as his coposer, and several of his regular stock players. The also appeared in the film as Alias, a former printer who joins Billy’s movie was shot in Nevada’s Valley of Fire in the early months of gang. 1969….Cable Hogue was a script that Peckinpah initiated and Billy the Kid, an outlaw whom the dime novels turned into greatly liked, but his next was the opposite. During the filming of a legend in his own brief lifetime, was shot dead in 1881 by Sheriff the former, the producer brought him a British Pat Garrett, once his friend. Beginning with the silents, at least a novel by Gordon M. Williams called The Siege of Trencher’s Farm. score of movies have dealt in various terms with this incident. In the Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY—7 hands of Wurlitzer and Peckinpah, the story becomes another elegy There is a rumor that Ride the High Country was first offered to for lost frontier values, and one with something of the inevitability film director who had directed a number of of Greek tragedy. Pat Garrett () is one of Peckinph’s Randolph Scott Westerns in the late fifties and early sixties. When survivors. The cattle barons and the politicians want a west in he turned it down, the rumor continues, it was offered to Burt which their money talks louder than guns and Garrett knows they Kennedy, Boetticher’s scriptwriter, who had recently directed his will win. He accepts election as sheriff and sets out to hunt down first feature, The Canadians. When Kennedy turned it down, the his former friend and protegé Billy (), whose rumor concludes, Sam Peckinpah was offered the job. Another ways make him an embarrassment to the money-men….MGM cut rumor credits , the renowned Western director with seventeen minutes from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, excising recommending Peckinpah for the picture. The truth is that whole scenes and characters. The most serious of these mutilations Peckinpah got the job on his own merit. was the removal of framing scenes showing the murder of Pat Richard Lyons, the film’s producer, recalled: “I’ve heard Garrett in 1908 by the so-called Santa Fe Ring, representing the several stories through the years that a number of other directors same powerful and corrupt interests on whose behalf he had killed were considered for Ride the High Country, but that’s a lot of crap. Billy. As originally conceived, the movie would have been a I was the producer, and I’d know. The way Sam got the picture was flashback composed of Garrett’s dying memories….In spite of that he and I were both at the William Morris Agency in those days, mutilations (for which Peckinpah sued the studio), the film had its and Silvia Hirsch, who was with the agency, heard that I was fervent admirers…. looking for a director for this Western and asked me if I’d ever The screenplay of Peckinpah’s next film, Bring Me the heard of Sam Peckinpah. I said no and she convinced me to look at Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), is credited to Gordon Dawson and a couple of the segments of The Westerner that Sam had directed. the director, from an original story by Frank Kowalski and So I did, and they really impressed me. Peckinpah….Peckinpah said: “I did Alfredo Garcia and I did it “Now you have to understand that this picture was to be exactly the way I wanted to. Good or bad, like it or not, that was my made at Metro and they were very class conscious. I mean they just film.” Most contemporary reviewers disliked it intensely, and the didn’t even consider hiring television directors. But I called Sol film was censored in Germany and Sweden. Later critics have Siegel who was head of production at the studio at the time and told responded very differently…. him that I had this director who’d worked in television, and Id seen In his 1972 Playboy interview, Peckinpah said that “a four segments that he’d done and I thought they were outstanding. director has to deal with a whole world absolutely teeming with Well, Siegel was coming in over the weekend and said he’d have mediocrities, jackals, hangers- look at one. So he came in, and on, and just plain killers….The we ran one, and then he did just saying is that they can kill you what I’d done. He said, ‘You got but not eat you. That’s any more?’ So we looked at them nonsense. I’ve had them eating all, and when we finished Siegel on me while I was still walking turned to me and said, ‘Hire around….” him.’” As J.-P. Coursodon Ride the High Country says, Sam Peckinpah is was Rick Lyons’s first major “undoubtedly the most picture as a producer. ...Lyons controversial American director was hired to produce a small since .” Dismissed budget Western—roughly by some as a failed prodigy $800,000—primarily for release and/or a fascist, he is regarded in European markets to offset by others as a major artist who expensive productions, which “reinvented the shape of the cinema.” Robert Wood calls him the were then being made by Fox, like Lewis Milestone’s Mutiny on the heir of John Ford, his values, like Ford’s “embodied in the myth of Bounty starring Marlon Brando. The story Lyons finally decided to the Old West, with its emphasis on manhood and film dealt with two over-the-hill who get one last independence...but he follows through the implications of such a chance at glory when they are hired to escort a fold shipment from a commitment (clung to in the context of contemporary America) High sierra mining camp back to civilization…. with a ruthlessness of which Ford (ultimately a more complex artist) was incapable.” “Lucien Ballard did a magnificent job,” stated Joel McCrea. “He was very smart. He knew Sam better than any of the from Peckinpah A Portrait in Montage. Garner Simmons. rest of us, and he had a very tactful way of saying, ‘What would University of Texas Press, Austin, 1982. you think of it if we shot it from over here?’ and, of course, it would look twice as good. He is a very talented fella.” “An incurable romantic who has been married five times to three McCrea’s co-star, Randolph Scott, retired from the motion women, and who frequently has fallen in love with prostitutes on a picture business following completion of his work on Ride the High “pay-as-you-go” basis, Peckinpah summed up the end of his first Country, leaving behind a distinguished career. He is now a private marriage: “You clothe the object of your own needs in the businessman in Southern California and declines to give interviews vestments of your own desires. When you wake up to the fact that it or “talk about old movies.” In a phone conversation, he did, just ain’t there, that’s when you’ve got to go.” however, make the following statement about his experience with Peckinpah: “Sam, in my estimation, is one of the top directors—the Ride the High Country upper echelon of directors. I would have liked to have worked on “Good fight...I enjoyed it.” other films with him. I wish that he had come along earlier in my Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY—8 career, which is not to say that I was not satisfied with the many some of the shots were only two frames long. Sam has always given men I did work with. But Sam is a great troubleshooter on a film. he me credit for teaching him how to ‘flash cut’ like that.”… has an innate instinct and talent for dealing with a script that many others just do not have.”… for the picture was completed on November 22, 1961. Then Peckinpah’s luck took over….MGM employed a full-time staff of cutters under the direction of Margaret Booth, MGM’s editor-in-chief, who had begun her career as an editor working for D.W. Griffith before MGM had even been formed. As a consequence, MGM could easily have decided to take the film as shot and turn it over to Booth for routine editing by a staff editor with minimal interference from Peckinpah on the “director’s cut.” There was one complication, however, Margaret Booth disliked the daily rushes that had come in from location and had virtually said that the film would be impossible to cut. Siegel, on the other hand, had been impressed by what he had seen. This circumstance, coupled with the fact that Siegel was a fighter and had liked Peckinpah from their first meeting, caused him to offer Peckinpah a legitimate chance to make the first cut on the picture….We had a marvelous little editor name Frank Santillo, and Sam spent fourteen weeks with Frank in the cutting room editing the picture until they threw him off the lot. But in those fourteen weeks, Santillo taught him how to edit.”… [Santillo:] The thing that’s really difficult in cutting for Sam is that he shoots a lot of film, but it’s all good. That makes it difficult to decide what to keep and what to throw away. With other directors, you start to assemble a scene and about half the stuff is no good, so you can throw it away. You have no problem in deciding what to use. Sam’s footage is just the opposite. And Sam knows every inch of that film. You’ll almost be finished with a picture, and Sam will look at it, and he’ll say there was such and such a shot and to cut it in. And Sam doesn’t care how long it takes. You’ve got to find it because it is essential to Sam’s conception of that character. “But probably the best illustration of what Sam was able to do with Ride the High Country is in the final shoot-out sequence at the end of the film. Margaret Booth had seen the dailies and said: A Time review: “This story could have been sheer ‘This is the worst footage I’ve ever seen. It’s impossible. Two old slumgullion, but under Sam Peckinpah’s tasteful direction, it is a guys who have been trapped by three young ones. Nobody will ever minor chef d’oeuvre among westerns.” believe they could possibly win. And the number of shots they all As a consequence of all this, the film began to be fire when they’re standing there in the open. It’s ridiculous!’ discussed as a possible dark horse nomination for an Academy “At any rate, I had done montage for Metro for years, and Award in two categories, best direction and best original during the Second World War I had worked for the military censors screenplay. When Peckinpah learned of this, he called both Metro at the Pentagon. We’d get the footage shot by the Army, and we’d and the Academy and told them flatly not to bother, “If this film is have to cut it quickly, making a little story out of it, and then turn it nominated for best screenplay without my name on it as writer, I over to the newsreels. So when we came to this final sequence in will sue every one of you!” Ride the High Country received no the picture, Sam was upset because he didn’t really want to cut any nominations for an Academy Award that year. of it. I mean it was all good footage. So as always, I took it and Released for foreign distribution in 1963, the film, called made a rough cut. But because of my work with Vorkapich, I knew by a variety of names abroad (most notably by its working title, that even with a one-frame cut the audience could retain something Guns in the Afternoon) won the Belgium International Film Festival of what was on the screen, and because of my war experience, I Grand Prix (beating out ’s 8 ½ among others), knew how exciting a battle sequence could be made by cutting it to Mexico’s Diosa de Plata (Silver Goddess) for Best Foreign Film, as a fast pace…..Consequently, I cut the sequence and some of the well as high praise from France’s Le Conseil des Dix. shots were only six frames long [one-quarter of a second on the More important to Peckinpah, however, was the personal screen], and I said to Sam that even at that length some of them victory bound to this film. His sister, Fern Lea, recalls: “we went to would appear to be too long on the screen. And he said, ‘Oh, no.’ I see Ride the High Country at a sneak preview, and when it was could tell that he was afraid that maybe I’d cut them too short over, I went into the ladies’ room and cried and cried because the already. character played by Joel McCrea reminded me so much of my “So we went to the screening room and looked at what I’d father who had just died the year before. My father liked to quote cut, and after the sequence was over Sam looked at me, smiled, and the Bible and could. The line ‘All I want to do is enter my house said, ‘You know, you’re right.’ And then we went back, trimmed justified’ was a saying I often heard my father say.” This was the sequence down until it was exactly the way Sam wanted it, and Peckinpah’s tribute to “the Boss.” Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY—9

Peckinpah’s real vindication as a director, however, came for his former employer, Sol Siegel, who upon seeing the film in a WESTERNS ON U.S. TV, 1950-2000: theater wrote Sam a letter that began, “Who the fuck do you think Action in the Afternoon, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., The you are...John Ford?” Adventures of Champion, The Adventures of Cyclone Malone, The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, The Adventures of Jim Bowie, Sam Peckinpah’s Feature Films. Bernard F. Dukore. University The Adventures of Kit Carson, The Adventures of Lariat Sam, The of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999. Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, The Adventures of Spin and Marty, The Adventures of , The Alaskans, Alias Smith and Documentation on Peckinpah’s uncredited revisions of Jones, Annie Oakley, Barbary Coast, , Best of the screenplays is abundant. “The producer Richard Lyons, and the West, The Big Valley, , Bonanza, Boots and Saddles, head of the MGM studio at that time, Sol Siegel, brought me in to Bordertown, Branded, BraveStarr (animation), Brave Eagle, Bret rewrite the N.B. Stone script [of Ride the High Country] and shoot Maverick, Broken Arrow, Bronco, Buckskin, Buffalo Bill Jr., The the picture,” says Peckinpah, for example, “and they gave me a free Californians, Casey Jones, Cheyenne, The Chisholms, The Cisco hand.” According to Lyon and Joel McCrea, who played Steve Kid, Cimarron City, , Circus Boy, Colt .45, The Judd, Peckinpah rewrote some 80 percent of the dialogue, Cowboys, Custer, The Dakotas, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, reconceived the characters of the two old westerners, and had Judd Deadwood, , The Deputy, Destry, Dick Powell's rather than the other old-timer die at the end; furthermore, Zane Grey Theater, Dirty Sally, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Peckinpah’s copy of the original shooting script, which he gave to a Dundee and the Culhane, Dusty's Trail, Empire, Father Murphy, typist, authenticates how massive his revisions were…. Four Feather Falls (puppet show), Frontier, Frontier Circus, Frontier According to cinematographer Lucien Ballard, Peckinpah Doctor, Frontier Justice, F Troop, The Gabby Hayes Show, The “must have rewritten half of The Ballad of Cable Hogue while Show, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, shooting it,” and , who played Hildy, maintains that Gunslinger, Guns of Paradise (originally, Paradise), The Guns of once she signed to do the film he reconceived the role for her; Will Sonnett, Gunsmoke, Harts of the West, Have Gun – Will Marshall Fine flatly states that Peckinpah and Gordon Dawson Travel, Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, Hec Ramsey, Here “rewrote the script, though they didn’t receive credit.” Jeb Come the Brides, The High Chaparral, Hondo, , Rosebrook, the screenwriter of credit for Junior Bonner, admits the Hotel de Paree, How the West Was Won, Into the West, The Iron director “helped me a great deal” in revising the script and calls him Horse, , Judge , Johnny Ringo, Kung Fu, “a master rewrite man.”... Lancer, Laramie, Laredo, , Lawman, The Lazarus Man, Legacy, Legend, The Legend of Jesse James, The Peckinpah “knew Aristotle’s Poetics cold,” says Paul Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Little House on the Prairie, The Seydor. It “gave him the foundations for dramatic writing,” notes Lone Ranger, The Loner, Lonesome Dove, Lonesome Dove - The David Weddle, “and he became a strong believer in the Outlaw Years, Mackenzie's Raiders, The Magnificent Seven, A philosopher’s theory that great drama provides an audience with a Man Called Shenandoah, The Man From Blackhawk, Man Without catharsis through which they can purge their own pain, rage, and a Gun, The Marshal of Gunsight Pass, Maverick, The Monroes, My fear.” Such contemporary French writings as Sartre’s No Exit and Friend Flicka, Nichols, Northwest Passage, The Oregon Trail, The The Flies, adds Weddle, also fascinated him…. Outcasts, Outlaws, Overland Trail, Paradise (later Guns of Paradise), Pistols 'n' Petticoats, Ponderosa, Pony Express, The Complexities mark characters in Ride the High Country. Quest, The Range Rider, Rango, Rawhide, The Rebel, Red Ryder, Joshua Knudsen’s language and rules of conduct cue audiences to Redigo, The Restless Gun, The Rifleman, Riverboat, The Road consider him not only a harsh and inflexible religious fanatic, an West, The Rough Riders, The Rounders, The Roy Rogers Show, unyielding, moralistic despot who may have driven his wife, Hester The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show, Saber Rider and the Star (probably named after the heroine of The Scarlet Letter), to seek Sheriffs, Sara, Shane, Sheriff of Cochise, Shotgun Slade, , affection elsewhere—that is, to commit adultery—but also a West, State Trooper, Steve Donovan, Western Marshal, tyrannical father….Although Peckinpah rewrote a great deal of Stoney Burke, , Tales of the Texas Rangers, Tales of Richard E. Lyons’s screenplay, as Weddle points out, he “made Wells Fargo, The Tall Man, Tate, Temple , Tombstone only one structural change.” Yet this change “was crucial.” Weddle Territory, Trackdown, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, 26 Men, says, “Instead of Westrum getting killed in the final gun battle, he Two Faces West, Union Pacific, The Virginian, Wagon Train, switched things around; Judd would die and Westrum would Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Westerner, Whiplash, Whispering survive. It was an inspired move, not only because it flew in the Smith, Wichita Town, The Wide Country, The Wild Wild West, face of the genre’s conventions (the villain must always die for his Wildside, Wrangler, , Young Maverick, The sins), but because it threw the story’s theme into sharp focus. With Young Pioneers, The Young Riders, Zorro. a few quick strokes of the pen, Peckinpah had made Westrum the protagonist and the upstanding Judd the antagonist.”

Peckinpah—RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY—10

COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2010 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XX:

Mar 2 Costa-Gavras Z 1969 Mar 16 Peter Yates, The Friends of Eddie Coyle 1973 Mar 23 John Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence 1974 Mar 30 , The Shining 1980 Apr 6 Wolfgang Petersen, Das Boot 1981 Apr 13 Federico Fellini, Ginger & Fred, 1985 Apr 20 , Collateral 2004

CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: [email protected] …email Bruce Jackson [email protected] ...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com ...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] ....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News

Michael Lee Jackson & Warren Oates, 1976