The skit begins with an overly sniffling film commentator speaking about his favorite cheese westerns. He then segues to a bit about his favorite director of the moment, Sam Peckinpah, and his latest film Salad Days. He introduces a clip from the film, which depicts a number of preppy-dressed men and women relaxing in the park on a splendidly sunny afternoon. One man asks the group if anyone would like to join him in a tennis match. After a few agree that this would be a jolly good activity, one man throws a tennis ball at the man making the suggestion. When the man doesn’t catch the ball and it hits him in the eye, a geyser of blood shoots from his head, and the madness ensues. The scene ends in a bloody mess with almost each character dying in the most ridiculous ways.
Such were the scenes in Monty Python’s Flying Circus’s third season episode “Salad Days.” Perhaps it represented why Peckinpah earned his ‘Bloody Sam’ nickname in hyperbolic fashion, but it represented what has sustained his legacy, nonetheless. With classic, yet notorious films such as The Wild Bunch (1969), Straw Dogs (1971), and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) in his catalogue, Peckinpah will forever be associated with his ‘innovations,’ so to speak, in the depiction of graphic violence. Unfortunately, his career in Hollywood was short-lived, but there is certainly no shortage of interesting stories coming from his life as a big-time director.
There is still a Black List in Hollywood, only instead of a list of suspected Communists, it now describes a list of unproduced screenplays, which have been put to a vote to see which is the best. According to The Guardian, “the list has been responsible for bringing Oscar-winning films such as Juno, Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech, and The Descendants to the attention of studios.”
On 2012’s list was a title called If They Move… Kill ‘Em, written by Kel Symons, with the title taken from William Holden’s famous line in The Wild Bunch. The screenplay tells “the story of the once-great Peckinpah’s bid to revive his career by funding his next film with financial backing from Colombian drug lords.”
This is merely one story in a myriad of colorful moments during Peckinpah’s Hollywood career. Many were not receptive of his often-excessive style, but many others did not take too kindly to when he tried to make something different, as well. A renegade of his time, Peckinpah’s story is one of a meteoric rise to notoriety, followed by a sharp decline from which he never recovered, with plenty of vice and controversy to spice things up.
After working as a writer and director for a number of Western television shows, such as Gunsmoke and The Rifleman, during the late 1950s, Peckinpah got his big break with 1961’s The Deadly Companions, based on Albert Sidney Fleischman’s novel “Yellowleg.” Little did Peckinpah know that he started to earn a less than stellar reputation on his first film. In her memoir “Tis Herself,” leading actress Maureen O’Hara went so far as to say that Peckinpah “didn’t have a clue as to how to direct a movie,” citing that Peckinpah shot the film without the screenplay’s crucial Indian attack scene, and that he “got a bizarre satisfaction on the set whenever something cruel happened to an animal.”
Peckinpah’s next film, and his first with a major studio in MGM, the revisionist western Ride the High Country (1962), did little to prove that his behavior might change. Mariette Hartley, starring in her first film as Elsa Knuden, was often on the receiving end of pretend criticism from Peckinpah. She took his personality in stride, even liked working with him, but she did reveal that Peckinpah started drinking and gambling during production, leading him to lash at her and other actors. Many others on set got along well with Peckinpah, as well, but leading actor Joel McCrea admitted he didn’t like how Peckinpah treated his crew. Peckinpah often fired crew members for making even one mistake, and that habit began on the production of this film (IMDb).
Peckinpah’s relationships with those he worked with only became more tumultuous on the production of Major Dundee (1965), a Civil War western starring Charlton Heston. Having enjoyed Ride the High Country, Heston signed onto the film because he wanted to work with Peckinpah. According to Entertainment Weekly, “when Columbia Pictures threatened to fire Peckinpah, Heston loyally threatened to walk.” In spite of this, he often got into heated arguments with Peckinpah, and once “charged at [him] with a saber.” Many others didn’t take to Peckinpah too kindly, and in fact, on the last day of principal photography, as James Coburn left the set, he “said to Peckinpah, ‘Goodbye, you rotten motherfucker.’” Peckinpah’s problems with vice continued on this film as well, drinking all hours of the night and visiting brothels using money from the film’s budget, while continuing to abuse and fire crew members during working hours (IMDb).
Sam Peckinpah and Senta Berger on the set of Major Dundee (1965)
In addition to Peckinpah’s antics, Major Dundee was a notorious production due to Columbia Pictures’ frequent interference. Peckinpah rarely had a positive relationship with producers, and Major Dundee was merely the beginning of his distrust in them. Before principal photography began, the film was to have a $4.5 million budget and 75 days to shoot. After a change in studio heads, however, the budget was cut down by $3 million, and the shooting schedule was reduced to 60 days, all of which was done two days before shooting began. Peckinpah wanted Lucien Ballard, who was his director of photography for Ride the High Country, for the film, but producer Jerry Bresler refused. Columbia changed the film’s runtime and often changed the script during shooting, adding a romance with the character Teresa. Peckinpah would get the last laugh, though, getting revenge on Bresler by ending shooting “fifteen days over schedule and $1.5 million over budget, exactly the original schedule and budget.”
Peckinpah would have to wait four years for his next film, the critically acclaimed The Wild Bunch, and while he had moments of being his typical self, there was another sympathetic side to him that shone during production. Peckinpah continued to drive his crew into the ground and verbally abuse them when he felt necessary, which angered many of his actors. Both Robert Ryan and Ernest Borgnine threatened to physically harm him if he wouldn’t make the working conditions less rough, and William Holden threatened to leave the set if Peckinpah refused to stop harassing his crew (IMDb). But during the shooting of one particular scene involving Holden and Borgnine sitting around a campfire, Peckinpah began crying (IMDb). This moment belies the frequent behavior that many had known Peckinpah to exude, highlighting the man’s emotional complexity. This was a man who started his career with Westerns, continued to make Westerns, and as he did the emotions of the scene would wash over him.
Sam Peckinpah and the cast & crew of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) in a photo mocking “rumors” of Peckinpah’s excessive drinking.
After The Wild Bunch, it was only a long and steady decline for Peckinpah. Two of his next three films, The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) and Junior Bonner (1972) were stark shifts from the violent style he established with The Wild Bunch, and neither film was a commercial success – Ballad’s budget was a little over $3.7 million and made back $5 million, while Junior Bonner’s budget was $3.2 million and only made $2.8 million during its run. After each of those films, Peckinpah would return to the violence that made him notorious in Hollywood with the still controversial Straw Dogs and the Steve McQueen-led The Getaway (1972), almost as if he were compelled to take on these projects to reestablish his foothold as a popular director.
It was on the set of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), the final chapter in his trilogy of revisionist Westerns, including Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch, that his problems with alcohol reached their climax. Apparently Peckinpah’s problems with booze had gotten to the point where he needed large servings of vodka at the beginning of each day to maintain a physical equilibrium, and remained coherent for only a few hours a day (IMDb). According to Men’s Journal, ” by the afternoon he would be loaded and walking around firing a revolver into the air.”
These problems continued to persist, and on the set of the anti-war film Cross of Iron (1977), according to The Quietus, “Peckinpah was, at the time, experiencing one of his serious relapses into alcoholism and pill abuse, sleeping three hours and drinking three bottles of vodka or slivovitz per day.” On the set of Convoy (1978), according to Twitch, there were many moments when Peckinpah “could barely function as a filmmaker,” and longtime colleague James Coburn “shot much of the film while Peckinpah remained in his on-location trailer.” During all of this time after The Wild Bunch, he continued to abuse crew members and express his disliking of producers, alienating himself more and more from a Hollywood community that had finally had enough of him. Between Convoy and his final film The Osterman Weekend (1983), he went five years without directing.
By the time Peckinpah began directing The Osterman Weekend, which many suspected was his comeback project, it had finally become clear that many years of alcohol and drug abuse were taking its toll. Many in the production of the film believed that Sam was on the verge of death due to his deteriorated state (IMDb). A little over a year after the film premiered, on December 28th, 1984, Peckinpah died of heart failure at the age of 59.
With a relatively short life and a relatively short career in Hollywood, Peckinpah was a tragic figure, as well as an innovative director. His work has inspired many of modern filmmaking’s foremost action directors, such as Quentin Tarantino, John Woo, and Park Chan-wook. He may not have always been the best person to work with, but the complexity of his character begs for a more sympathetic approach.