The Sam Peckinpah Centenary 4 – The Wild Bunch

“Let’s Go.”

From Mexico to Malibu 

Major Dundee was not a box office success, failing to recover even half of its considerable expense. The reviews certainly did not help. In 1962, Newsweek named Ride the High Country as its best picture of the year. For Peckinpah’s next film, the magazine wrote “Think of…streaking meteorites downward toward earth and you’ll get some idea of the decline in the career of Sam Peckinpah.”

In spite of the brickbats, though, Peckinpah had a contract with MGM, negotiated before his falling out with Jerry Bresler and Columbia. His first assignment was The Cincinnati Kid, a vehicle for Steve McQueen produced by Martin Ransohoff.

Ransohoff made a name for himself with Mr. Ed and The Beverly Hillbillies, less-than-highbrow situation comedies for US television. But he decided to make movies as an independent producer. Prior to his association with Peckinpah, he courted publicity by challenging the Production Code over nudity in his film The Americanization of Emily, helpfully providing a press release about his concerns with the prudes at the Motion Picture Association of America.

The Cincinnati Kid had no script when Peckinpah arrived. Various writers generated various drafts; Sam disliked them all.

Perhaps characteristically, Peckinpah sparred with Ransohoff: over the script, over the tone, over the choice of actresses.

The first week of shooting, Peckinpah filmed a scene with a character talking on the phone but also massaging a young lady. Intimately. Filming went late in the evening with Sam making incremental changes in the scene.

The following Monday, Ransohoff met with Peckinpah and fired the director, essentially citing creative differences. The meeting was short but civil.

Less civil was the producer’s next move: he told reporters that Sam was fired for filming an unauthorized nude scene. A play to avoid paying the director, Ransohoff’s claim was disputed by Peckinpah…  and others who were actually on set for the event in question.

Ultimately, Peckinpah was paid. But the sordid allegations and the whispering campaign conducted by Ransohoff and Jerry Bresler made Hollywood power brokers take note.

Still, Sam had the contract with MGM, and for a year or so he and young writer Jim Silke worked in a bungalow on the studio’s lot. Story ideas and scripts were concocted, but to no avail; the deal brought no pictures to fruition.

After the MGM contract ended, Peckinpah settled at home in Malibu. He kept writing. After The Cincinnati Kid, he did not direct at all for more than a year; for three years, he did not direct a picture for theatrical release. Malibu became the Hollywood wilderness.

This post by Jeff Arnold summarizes Sam’s work during his exile.

Rehabilitation

ABC Stage 67 was an anthology series, a throwback to television’s early days of non-serialized dramas. Producer David Melnick obtained the rights to a novella about dark happenings on the US frontier, Noon Wine. But he needed the printed page turned to a screenplay. A colleague recommended Peckinpah as writer and director; she had worked in Ransohoff’s organization and thought Sam was treated unfairly. After the signing was announced, various people in the industry called Melnick to give dark warnings about using Sam: Bresler and Ransohoff, of course, but also others who had not even worked with Peckinpah.

Sam’s writing and direction, combined with strong performances from Jason Robards Jr and Olivia de Havilland, made Noon Wine a small triumph. During production, Peckinpah was impressed by the project’s camera operator, Lou Lombardo, who also had editing experience. Their association was renewed for The Wild Bunch to mutual benefit.

After years of only being available for in-person viewing at three locations (one of them being the home of Jason Robards!), Noon Wine is now available on YouTube.

Enter producer Phil Feldman. Feldman wanted Peckinpah as writer and director for a potential movie called The Diamond Story. Sam was initially suspicious. Would the producer yank the director’s gig after receiving the benefit of Peckinpah’s considerable writing skills? But he allowed himself to be convinced, and he and Feldman traveled to Mexico to scout locations. During multiple days of unrelenting rain, Sam handed Feldman another script which had captured his attention. It was called The Wild Bunch.

Stuntmen and a Marlboro Man

The title and the story idea came from Roy Sickner, a stuntman. Sickner and another stuntman, Chuck Hayward, expanded the story of aging outlaws south of the border. While doubling for Richard Harris in Dundee, Sickner talked to Peckinpah about his idea, but Sam’s focus was on the tribulations of his sprawling would-be epic.

Sickner then had the extraordinary good fortune to be selected as a Marlboro Man by Philip Morris cigarettes. (The internet is uncharacteristically bereft of Sickner images, as a Marlboro Man or otherwise.) Now a minor celebrity, Sickner attempted to move his potential film project forward. One of Sickner’s drinking buddies was enthusiastic. That buddy happened to be actor Lee Marvin, the prematurely grey, hell-raising ex-Marine who had played memorable heavies in multiple Westerns and had just won an Oscar for yet another Western, Cat Ballou. Sickner, Marvin, and others attempted to assemble a treatment. But Sickner realized that a real writer was needed.

Holden with Walon Green

That writer was Walon Green, a young man who had traveled throughout Mexico and was an enthusiastic student of Mexican history, particularly the Mexican Revolution. Green convinced Sickner to set the story in 1913 during that Revolution; he filled plot holes and expanded the treatment.

Marvin very much liked the treatment, and even added his own flourish: for the film’s opening, the idea for the Bunch to dress as U.S. Army doughboys came from the actor. But a problem surfaced.

If a movie was to be made, Marvin didn’t want to act in it. He felt the setting was too similar to that of The Professionals, his recent film with Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode.

Sickner had received seed money for his project (through a producer acquaintance, Reno Carrell) and felt good enough about the progress to pay Green to write a screenplay. Even so, he thought the script needed additional revamping. Fatefully, he hired Sam Peckinpah, exiled in Malibu, to polish the script.

And the rewritten script was what Peckinpah handed to Phil Feldman in rainy Mexico.

Feldman and Peckinpah

Rights to William Goldman’s script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had sold for a record amount to 20th Century-Fox. With the recent success of Sergio Leone’s westerns, and the interest in the noble genre raised by the Goldman script, Feldman and his employer, Warner-Seven Arts, were intrigued by the nascent Wild Bunch.

(Warner Brothers had recently merged with Seven Arts and the iconic WB shield replaced with the abomination to the left.)

Ultimately, The Diamond Story was shelved. Rights to The Wild Bunch were purchased from Sickner and his collaborators.

Feldman and Sam Peckinpah, so recently persona non grata, began to concentrate on The Wild Bunch.

The Location

Director and producer wanted a base in Mexico which could accommodate the film’s settings without extensive travel (the locations for Dundee were widely and expensively spread across Mexico). Scouting by a relative of Peckinpah’s wife identified the state of Coahuila as that base. The city of Torreon had direct flights to Los Angeles. The town of Parras was within 100 miles of Torreon; it could, with suitable dressing, pass as a US border town. And critically, some forty miles from Parras was an abandoned, moldering winery that could serve as the headquarters for the worst of the bad men in The Wild Bunch, General Mapache.

The winery, Hacienda Ciénega del Carmen, with Peckinpah in the foreground

Cast and Crew

The cast was, of course, dotted with stock company members. After appearing in The Deadly Companions, Strother Martin was back; Ben Johnson, LQ Jones, Warren Oates, and Dub Taylor returned in spite of the Dundee experience.

Edmond O’Brien had played memorable roles during the 40s and 50s, particularly in noir pictures. Battles with weight and the bottle pushed O’Brien to character parts in films; he was cast as Sykes, the oldest member of the Bunch.

The part of Angel was filled by Jaime Sánchez, who made his name in New York after arriving from Puerto Rico. Sánchez worked hard in his role as the betrayed and then executed member of the Bunch; speaking with a Mexican accent, rather than Puerto Rican, was a particular focus.

The crucial role of Dutch, Pike Bishop’s number two, went to Ernest Borgnine. Other actors were considered, including Richard Jaeckel and Robert Culp; interestingly, Culp suggested Sammy Davis Jr. Peckinpah was uncertain about Borgnine, but studio chief Ken Hyman insisted on the actor whose uneven resume included an Oscar win for Marty and title character in the inane situation comedy McHale’s Navy.

Jeff’s Wild Bunch post has much to say about two JAW favorites, lead actors William Holden and Robert Ryan. Both men had risen through the studio system, although Holden was the bigger star (and an Oscar winner). Both had craggily distinctive voices; both looked older than their actual years, as did O’Brien, probably with an assist from alcohol and tobacco use.

“Don’t shoot. It’s the Army, you idiots!”

Like O’Brien, Ryan was a veteran of 40s and 50s noir; like Peckinpah, he was an ex-Marine.

Holden landed the role of Pike Bishop despite an initial quibble with Peckinpah. He had never played a part with a mustache and was vocal about his reluctance to begin, but finally acceded to Sam’s wishes.

During rehearsals and early filming, cast members began to buy into Peckinpah’s intensity. Oates, Jones, and other Peckinpah veterans knew what to expect; Borgnine quickly followed their lead. Shortly into shooting, Holden was observing a scene with Peckinpah and abruptly stood to leave the set. When asked about the reason, Holden indicated that he needed to study his script.

His studying paid on-screen dividends. Some sources indicate that Holden’s performance actually channeled Sam Peckinpah. Sam claimed to not see it.

Contrasts in wardrobe: two favorites on set

For the crew, Peckinpah brought back DP Lucien Ballard, whose work in Ride meshed so well with the director’s vision. Lou Lombardo was hired as editor, his first outside of television. The combination of Ballard and Lombardo enabled Sam to realize techniques that he had previously attempted unsuccessfully.

Innovations

During the production of Dundee, Peckinpah had attempted to incorporate slow motion into action sequences, expensively churning through vast amounts of film while doing so. He was never fully satisfied with the results; the incorporation of any usable footage was, however, rendered moot by Peckinpah’s exclusion from the film’s post-production.

The film Bonnie and Clyde, directed by Arthur Penn, was released during Sam’s Malibu period. Perhaps to Peckinpah’s frustration, the film successfully deployed slow motion into its climactic sequence. That sequence shocked contemporary audiences with its bloodletting and the slow motion emphasized the violence of the outlaws’ end.

With Ballard on board, Peckinpah was ready to try slow motion again, but not just that technique. Some sequences were captured as many as six cameras simultaneously, running film at different speeds and capturing action from different angles. Ballard’s footage seemed to capture the dust and heat of the Mexican location; some images were similar to historic pictures from the Mexican revolution.

Emilio Fernández and a squib in action

Meanwhile, Peckinpah was determined to bring new realism to the impact of bullets upon the human body. Long since gone were cowboys clutching their chest while falling; blood-stained clothing had slowly worked its way into films in the 50s. Faux blood flowed more freely in the 60s. The climax of Bonnie and Clyde famously used a large quantity of squibs: small bags of fake blood with a small explosive charge. Positioned under an actor’s costume and triggered remotely, the charge ripped clothing and sprayed stage blood. Peckinpah’s use went well beyond that of Penn, employing them on the front and back of actors and adding raw meat to the blood mix. Wardrobe supervisor Gordon Dawson and his crew were kept extremely busy repairing and recycling squibbed costumes.

On the Set

Peckinpah was also determined to make the most of his second chance. He minimized the alcohol use which impacted Dundee. Still, crew members not matching his expectations were fired on the spot. The mustache imbroglio with Holden was minor, but the two reportedly sparred over Sam’s treatment of the crew. After Ryan was on set in costume and make-up for 10 shooting days without stepping in front of a camera, the imposing actor had words with the director. And, although Peckinpah’s on-set relationship with producer Feldman was the best of his films to date, the two men still had squabbles, exchanging testy memos about various aspects of the production.

Fernández and friends

Even with Sam on relatively good behavior, unpleasant activity occurred on the shoot.  Members of the Mexican Army playing extras apparently used real bullets at one point (thankfully not hurting anyone). LQ Jones was jailed on at least twelve occasions. Legendary Mexican director Emilio Fernández, who played General Mapache, took residence in a large home accompanied by a coterie of women. Most vile was Albert Dekker, who played blustering railroad agent Harrigan: the actor brought an obviously underage girl to Mexico, claiming she was his wife.

Far from the shoot and any appalling conduct, executives at Warner-Seven Arts were increasingly enthusiastic by the footage delivered from Mexico. And, their enthusiasm only grew once shooting ended, as Sam and Lombardo innovatively edited this footage into the film’s final form.

The Reception

The film’s violence caused fissures during test screenings and among critics. Those critics who dismissed the film usually did so due to its bloodshed. Others saw beyond the carnage and focused on the film’s underlying themes, technical merits, and strong performances.

At the box office in 1969, two other offerings in the noble genre, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and True Grit, were blockbusters. The Wild Bunch performed respectably; years later, though, its influence and reputation are arguably much greater than were its ticket sales.

Jeff’s Take

Unlike this post, Jeff’s comments about The Wild Bunch were decidedly succinct. His opinions, however, were strong:

“The Walon Green/Roy Sickner/Sam Peckinpah screenplay is masterly. The direction by Peckinpah is… inspired: original and powerful.  This was his finest hour.

The film is elegiac, moving, stirring, exciting and beautiful by turns.

Actually… there’s nothing wrong with this movie. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’”

Bud’s Take

In an earlier post for Sam’s Centenary, I mentioned the importance of timing when viewing films. I first experienced The Wild Bunch about the time of its DVD release. It was my first Peckinpah movie; at that point, I was unfamiliar with Ryan and O’Brien, but knew of Borgnine (through McHale’s Navy, unfortunately) and Holden.

The film did little for me. I had seen my share of action movies which were loud, stupid, and violent; more crucially, I had seen Saving Private Ryan and its graphically realistic D-Day sequence. As a result, the violence in Bunch was not shocking to me as it was to audiences in 1969. As for the movie’s themes, I was not seasoned enough in the noble genre.

My timing was not right.

Many years and many movies later, I will watch a film just because Ryan, Holden, or O’Brien appear in it, with Ryan a particular favorite. The performances of these three men, plus Borgnine (and Heston, McCrea, and Scott previously), underscore Peckinpah’s touch with veteran actors, despite any on-set friction.

O’Brien is fantastic, a late great performance in a career filled with them.

Robert Ryan is excellent as well, his rage and invective for the majority of the movie providing a sharp contrast to his quiet introspection and wry smile near its conclusion.

In The Wild Bunch’s bleak world view, where even children torture and then burn scorpions, Thornton and Sykes/Ryan and O’Brien are the sole somewhat sympathetic characters. They also have the best lines in the picture.

(After a two-picture hiatus, Peckinpah’s unpleasant on-screen disregard for animals was back. And, spoiler alert, it would soon become worse.)

Borgnine is one of the many actors in Westerns usually given short shrift by the late Jeff Arnold with a standard dismissal (“not Western enough”). But even Jeff concedes that Borgnine was “superb” in this film. And he is. His characterization of Dutch brings a (small) measure of conscience to the Bunch, which makes his actions with Angel and Mapache all the more shattering.

My favorite part of the movie is the range of expressions on Borgnine’s face as he takes aim at several unaware soldiers during the train heist: after drawing their attention with several gentle taps of his rifle, he smiles gradually, broadly, and malevolently, looking very much like the proverbial cat who swallowed a canary.

Holden does not smile much in the film. But when he does, the charisma which made him a movie star pours from the screen.

David Weddle thought Holden gave the best performance of his career while taking leave of the prostitute in Agua Verde; I need to see more of the actor’s movies before making such a statement, but his wordless conveyance of weariness and self-loathing is gripping.

The whole sequence, first with Holden and the prostitute, and then Holden with Oates and Johnson, overshadows the fury of the confrontation which follows. And with only four words uttered.

The Walk, improvised on set, is spectacular, both as a statement of purpose and defiance in the face of destiny.

Now, thanks to the centenary and immersion into Peckinpah’s oeuvre and themes, the film makes more sense. To me, its ending hits notes of redemption as in Ride’s finale – although without that film’s grace. And O’Brien and Ryan riding away together makes for a compelling conclusion.

Although The Wild Bunch is a movie that I respect more than I love, my respect runs deep.

RR’s Take

I hesitate to admit to it (though I have before in replies to other posts), seeing how many critics and punters, numerous JAW readers among them, love and admire this movie. But I have to be truthful: The Wild Bunch has always left me largely cold. And it’s not as if I haven’t tried. I’ve viewed it several times over the years, always getting the same result, including this time  – admiring much, and loving parts, of the film, but neither admiring nor loving the whole.

Before I try and justify my un-enthusiasm, let me praise to the heavens things I do like. Two above all: their names are William Holden and Robert Ryan. Two of my favourite actors give two of their best performances (perhaps Holden’s very best). Both by now wearing faces etched with hard living and with a searing mix of both pain and pride, their characters are grappling with changed times and fast-shrinking options, something all of us can relate to as we age. Both are brilliant with their line readings but it’s the acting they do with their eyes that really penetrates.

Wild Bunch’s masterful moments, for me, are the quiet ones shining light on these tortured characters. I think of Holden downing his final swigs on what he decides will be the morning his life is likely to end. Or of Ryan, perched alone having come upon the aftermath of the massacre contemplating the loss of his erstwhile friend and of… pretty much everything. Or of Holden much earlier, painfully mounting his horse and riding over the horizon, uncertain if his men will follow.

But there’s no doubting either that the violence is also incredibly well executed, notably the opening sequence which is so tensely and doomily orchestrated by Peckinpah, and of course the final shootout which on every viewing leaves me open-jawed; the first time I saw it, it kind of took my breath away. One can only imagine how stunning it must have been for first-run viewers in 1969.

But. But. But. These things don’t add up to a satisfying movie for me. Really, it’s the script I have problems with. Some of the dialogue I feel is not that well written and doesn’t convincingly enough establish depth in the characters (I find Ryan’s moving because of his presence and acting more than the lines he’s given) or, in particular, the relationships between them. The moments of laughter between the Bunch, supposedly revealing their camaraderie, are particularly unconvincing and grating.

The railroad boss’s refusal to give Ryan a decent posse, landing him instead (and us) with cartoonishly savage halfwits, doesn’t make narrative sense to me, as surely he’d want to maximise Ryan’s chance of defeating Holden et al? Anyway it lessens the tension as you never really feel the Bunch is in maximum danger, with these losers chasing them, Wile E Coyote-like. And facing them on the other side is Mapache and his men whose portrayal feels similarly over-the-top grotesque, particularly in the later scenes of their drunkenness, greed, and lechery.

But the real problem is that I don’t much care for the Bunch either. Perhaps I can best explain by comparison with Ride the High Country. There, Randolph Scott portrays a character with decent instincts who allows himself to be led astray by the disappointments of life before genuinely redeeming himself by doing the right thing when it matters. But Holden and his gang are villains of a completely different order. They are established in the opening scenes as utter lowlife: psychopathic thugs who’ll casually kill innocent people in pursuit of money. After that, none of Sam’s later attempts to make us like them work on me, despite Holden’s wonderful performance, and I can’t see their final act as redemptive in anything like the same sense: they’ve basically run out of all other options than to go down in a hail of bullets.

On the scorpions scene cited by Bud: I similarly flinch from the pre-CGI cruelty, but this moment also encapsulates what turns me off The Wild Bunch as a whole. What it seems to say is this: the world and pretty much everyone in it is rotten to the core. Sorry, e-pards, but this just isn’t a view of life that resonates with or appeals to me (even if in my gloomiest moments I might fear that it’s true), and it’s not what I want from Westerns. Even some very dark ones that I like (including other Sam Peckinpah movies) offer shafts of light amid the shade.

Don’t get me wrong, I do recognise the importance of this film in not just Western but cinema history, and I don’t for a second want to take anything away from others’ affection for it. But in the end, a story which doesn’t have a single character for whom I’m really rooting is always going to be a struggle for me to love.

 

Sources:

Pelan, Tim: “It Ain’t Like It Used to Be. But It’ll Do”, Cinephilia & Beyond 1

Stratton, W.K.: The Wild Bunch

Weddle, David: “ If They Move… Kill ‘Em!”

Uncredited: Savage Poetry, Cinephilia & Beyond 2

‘Sam Peckinpah’ on Facebook As mentioned previously, this Facebook page is an excellent source of information and images on Peckinpah and films, actors, and associates; several images in this post are gratefully sourced from the page.