Sam Peckinpah
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| Sam Peckinpah | |
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| Birth name | David Samuel Peckinpah |
| Born | February 21, 1925 Fresno, California, USA |
| Died | December 28, 1984 Inglewood, California, USA |
| Other name(s) | Bloody Sam Mad Sam |
| Years active | 1952 - 1983 |
| Spouse(s) | Begoña Palacios (1965 – December 28, 1984) (his death) 1 child Marie Selland (1947 – 1960) (divorced) 3 children |
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah (February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film director. He became one of the major filmmakers of the 1970s through his innovative and explicit depiction of action and violence, as well as his revisionist approach to the Western genre. Peckinpah's films generally dealt with the conflict between values and ideals, and the corruption and violence of human society. His characters are often loners or losers who desire to be honorable and idealistic but are forced to compromise themselves in order to survive in a world of nihilism and brutality.
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[edit] Genealogy
Peckinpah's great-grandfather, Rice Peckinpaugh, was a merchant and farmer in Indiana during the early 1800s. The family moved to California in the 1850s to Humboldt County, and also changed their last name to Peckinpah. The family then settled down in the area to log. Peckinpah Meadow and Peckinpah Creek have been officially named within U.S. geographical mapping.
Peckinpah often claimed Native American ancestry, but this has been denied by surviving members of his family.
Sam Peckinpah's nephew is David Peckinpah, who was a television producer.
[edit] Biography
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was born in Fresno, California and attended Fresno grammar schools and high school. However, he spent much time skipping classes with his brother to engage in cowboy activities like trapping, branding, and shooting. In 1943, he joined the Marines, and in 1945 his battalion was sent to China with the task of disarming Japanese soldiers and repatriating them, and left China in 1946. While his duty did not include combat, he claims to have witnessed acts of war between Chinese and Japanese soldiers. According to friends, these included several acts of torture and other atrocities in which the Americans were not permitted to intervene. It has been argued that at the time of his deployment to China the Second World War was over and so it is unlikely he could have seen this, but pockets of Japanese soldiers did hold out against the Communist and Nationalist sides of the ongoing Chinese Civil War. This reportedly affected Peckinpah deeply and may have influenced his later depiction of violence in his films. After the war he attended college, earning a master's degree at University of Southern California in 1950. Afterwards, he was involved in stage work and theater productions before moving on to television.
Throughout his life, Peckinpah was plagued by alcoholism, drug addiction, and, according to some, mental illness (possibly manic depression or paranoia). He was married three times. His personality reportedly often swung between a sweet, soft-spoken, artistic disposition, and bouts of rage and violence during which he verbally and physically abused himself and others. He was fascinated with guns and was known to shoot the mirrors in his house during his "benders", and this image occurs several times in his films. Peckinpah's reputation as a hard-living brute has overshadowed his legacy in many respects, and his friends have often claimed that this does a disservice to a man who was actually more complex than generally credited. Peckinpah seems to have inspired extraordinary loyalty in certain friends and employees. He used the same actors and collaborators in many of his films, and several of his friends and assistants stuck by him to the end of his life.
Peckinpah spent a great deal of his life in Mexico, eventually marrying a Mexican woman and buying property there. He was reportedly fascinated by the Mexican lifestyle and culture and he often portrays it with an unusual sentimentality and romanticism in his films.
Peckinpah was seriously ill through the last years of his life, as a lifetime of self-abuse began to catch up with him, but regardless, he continued to work until the end. He died in December of 1984. At the time, he was in preparation for an adaptation of Stephen King's Gunslinger series.
[edit] Career
Peckinpah originally worked as a scriptwriter and director of Western genre television series such as Gunsmoke and The Rifleman. He also created a television series in 1960 called The Westerner, starring Brian Keith and John Dehner, but the show ran for only 13 episodes. In the early 1960s, he moved into film and earned a reputation in Hollywood as an enfant terrible of the cinematic world.
Peckinpah worked on a number of feature film scripts without credit before his directing career began. While working with director Don Siegel on Siegel's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956), Peckinpah appeared in a cameo as Charlie, the meter reader in Dr. Miles Benell's (Kevin McCarthy) basement.
His first film The Deadly Companions passed on largely without notice. His second, Ride the High Country, starring aging Western stars Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott, went unnoticed in the United States but was an enormous success overseas. Beating Federico Fellini's 8½ for first prize at the Belgium Film Festival, the film was hailed by foreign critics as a brilliant reworking of the conventions of the Western genre.
Peckinpah's next film, Major Dundee, would be the first of the director's many unfortunate experiences with the major studios that financed his films. The movie was taken away from him and substantially reedited, and he would hold for the rest of his life that his original version of Major Dundee was among his best films.
For several years after this Peckinpah was unable to work in Hollywood. In 1969, he made one of the most explosive comebacks in film history with The Wild Bunch. Irreverent, ferocious, and unprecedented in its explicit violence, the film was an instant and controversial classic. Many critics denounced its violence as sadistic and exploitative, while other critics and many of Peckinpah's fellow filmmakers hailed the originality of its rapid editing style and praised Peckinpah's revitalization of traditional Western themes. It was the beginning of Peckinpah's legend, and he and his work would remain controversial until and after his death. In fact, when The Wild Bunch was rereleased for its 25th anniversary, it received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, proving the film's undiminished impact after so many years.
Defying, as he often would, audience expectations, Peckinpah followed up The Wild Bunch with an elegiac, funny, and mostly non-violent Western entitled The Ballad of Cable Hogue. The story of a small-time entrepreneur who makes a fortune by finding water in the desert The film was largely ignored upon its initial release, though it has been rediscovered in recent years. It is often held up by critics as exemplary of the breadth of Peckinpah's talents. They claim that the film proves Peckinpah's ability to make unconventional and original work without resorting to explicit violence.
Doing another 180-degree turn, Peckinpah then directed his most violent and psychologically disturbing film. Straw Dogs starred Dustin Hoffman as an American mathematician living uncomfortably in his beautiful young wife's native village in a remote part of southwest England. The locals' resentment of him slowly builds to a shocking climax in which the mild-mannered academic kills several of the locals as he defends his home. The film deeply divided critics, some of whom pointed to its obvious artistry and the bravery of its confrontation of human savagery, while others attacked it as a misogynistic and fascistic celebration of violence. Most of the criticism centered around the film's lengthy rape scene and its seeming message of violence as a redemptive act. Although released in cinemas with only very minor cuts (to the rape scene), the film was for many years banned on home video in the UK and remains controversial, although some critics have come to hail it as Peckinpah's best film.
Despite his controversial reputation, Peckinpah was extremely prolific in this period of his life. In 1972 he released two films. Junior Bonner, the tale of a rodeo rider down on his luck, was Peckinpah's last attempt to make a non-violent film. Its total failure with audiences led him to remark, "I made a film where nobody got shot, and nobody went to see it." However, he and Junior Bonner's star Steve McQueen would also collaborate on The Getaway in the same year. A gritty but sentimental crime film about lovers on the run, the film was Peckinpah's biggest box-office success. Its reputation, however, has not stood the test of time, and most of Peckinpah's admirers consider it a minor work.
1973 would mark the beginning of the most difficult period of Peckinpah's life and career. Having agreed to make Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid for MGM, Peckinpah was convinced that he was about to make his definitive statement on the Western genre. However, clashes with MGM and numerous production difficulties, combined with Peckinpah's growing problems with drugs and alcohol, resulted in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid being released in a version truncated by the studio and largely disowned by Peckinpah. The experience soured Peckinpah forever on Hollywood and many date the beginning of his decline from this moment. In 1988, however, Peckinpah's director's cut of the film was released on video and led to a reevaluation, with many critics hailing it as a mistreated classic and one of the era's best films. Other filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese, have praised the film as one of the greatest modern Westerns.
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia would be the last true "Peckinpah film" in the eyes of his admirers, and the director himself claimed that it was the only one of his films to be released exactly as he intended it. An alcohol-soaked fever dream involving revenge, greed, and murder in the Mexican countryside, the film featured Warren Oates as a thinly disguised self-portrait of Peckinpah, and co-starred a leather bag containing the severed head of a gigolo being sought by a Mexican patrone for one million dollars. Castigated by critics upon its release, its reputation has also grown in recent years, with many noting its uncompromising vision as well as its anticipation of the violent black comedy which would become famous in the films of directors like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino.
Alfredo Garcia is generally considered the last of Peckinpah's great films, though he directed several more films before he died. Of these later movies, 1977's Cross of Iron is considered the best, and was reportedly a favorite of Stanley Kubrick's.
Peckinpah's career remains controversial to this day. His films were highly inventive visually: he used the telephoto lens to great effect, and was a pioneer in the use of flash cuts, and the intercutting of normal, slow and very slow motion shots during action scenes - a style which has been much imitated, but rarely equalled, ever since, by directors such as Walter Hill, John Woo, and others.
Peckinpah's critics, on the other hand, panned the filmmaker's use of blood and gore, and how often violence was cast as a redeeming action, bringing closure to its perpetrators and a brand of rough justice to its victims. This, however, was not always the case. Where film critics of this era were conditioned to expect movies with heroes, Peckinpah's films were often peopled with only victims and villains.
Peckinpah drank and abused drugs, girlfriends and producers. His mean streak and abusiveness towards his actors while filming Major Dundee (1965) so enraged star Charlton Heston that the normally even-tempered actor threatened to run Peckinpah through with his cavalry saber if he did not show more courtesy to his cast. During the filming of The Killer Elite (1975) Peckinpah allegedly discovered cocaine. This led to increased paranoia and his slow psychological breakdown. At one point he overdosed, landing himself in a hospital and receiving a second pacemaker. He died in Inglewood, California from heart failure at the age of 59. A year earlier, he completed his final feature film - The Osterman Weekend (film), which was based on Robert Ludlum's best selling spy thriller novel of the same name. His last work as a filmmaker was undertaken just two months before his death. He was engaged by producer Martin Lewis to shoot two music videos featuring Julian Lennon - "Too Late For Goodbyes" and "Valotte." The critically-acclaimed videos led to Lennon's nomination for Best New Video Artist in the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards.
He is generally regarded as one of the most original filmmakers of Hollywood's second golden age.
[edit] Themes
Peckinpah's films generally deal with the conflict between values and ideals and the corruption and violence of human society. His characters are often loners or losers who harbor the desire to be honorable and idealistic but are forced to compromise themselves in order to survive in a world of nihilism and brutality.
The conflicts of masculinity are also a major theme of his work, leading some critics to compare him to Ernest Hemingway. Peckinpah's world is a man's world, and feminists have often castigated his films as misogynistic and sexist (espesially concerning the rape sequence in Straw Dogs). Many of his defenders point out that, while the women in his films are generally seen through men's eyes, it is the men who are abusive, corrupted, and violent. The women are generally either victims of the brutalities of men or survivors attempting to eke out an existence in the unforgiving world created by men. It could therefore be argued that his films portrayed a more negative view of men rather than women.
Peckinpah's approach to violence is often misinterpreted. Many critics see his worldview as a misanthropic, Hobbesian view of nature as essentially evil and savage. In fact, Peckinpah himself stated the opposite. He saw violence as the product of human society, and not of nature. It is the result of men's competition with each other over power and domination, and their inability to negotiate this competition without resorting to brutality. Peckinpah also used violence as a means to achieve catharsis, believing his audience would be purged of violence by witnessing it explicitly on screen. However, Peckinpah later admitted that this was mistaken, and that audiences had come to enjoy the violence in his films rather than be horrified by it, something that troubled him deeply later in his career.
Peckinpah, who was born to a ranching family that included judges and lawyers, was also deeply concerned by the conflict between "old-fashioned" values and the corruption and materialism of the modern world. Many of his characters are attempting to live up to their expectations of themselves even as the world they live in demands that they compromise their values. This is most explicitly stated in the famous exchange from Ride the High Country in which Joel McCrea states that "All I want is to enter my house justified." Many believe that this line is taken directly from a common expression used by Judge Denver Peckinpah, the director's grandfather.
This theme is most evident in Peckinpah's Westerns. Unlike most Western directors, Peckinpah tended to concentrate on the early 20th century rather than the 19th, and his films portray characters who still believe in the values of the Old West being swept away by the new, industrial America.
This persistent theme has led many critics to view Peckinpah's films as essentially tragic. That is, his characters are portrayed as being prisoners of their fates and their own failings who nonetheless seek redemption and meaning in an absurd and violent world. The theme of longing for redemption, justification, and honor in a dishonorable existence permeates almost all of Peckinpah's work and has helped to elevate his reputation from that of a skilled director of action films to one of the greatest cinematic artists of his era.
[edit] Influence
Peckinpah's influence on modern cinema is enormous and pervasive, perhaps greater than any of his contemporaries. However, this influence is also often shallow and purely aesthetic in nature, ignoring some of Peckinpah's greatest strengths in favor of pure imitation of his stylish approach to cinematic violence.
Peckinpah's greatest influence is upon the modern action film and the modern approach to action sequences. His signature combination of slow-motion, fast editing, and the deliberate distension of time has become the standard depiction of violence and action in post-Peckinpavian cinema. The approach to action in movies can be divided between before Peckinpah and after Peckinpah. While films before The Wild Bunch had used similar techniques, especially Bonnie and Clyde and Seven Samurai, Peckinpah was the first to use them as a distinct style rather than as specific setpieces. Directors such as Martin Scorsese have acknowledged Peckinpah's direct influence on their approach to film violence. Most notably, John Woo derived his techniques extensively from Peckinpah, adding his own touch of choreography and action concepts.
Peckinpah's themes have also been influential on other filmmakers and other Western films. Clint Eastwood's films High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven also take up Peckinpah's themes of the dangers of revenge, the nature of human violence, and men seeking to be honorable in dishonorable surroundings. The theme of the passing of the West into history and the destruction of the Western way of life by modern industrialism has also been taken up by many post-Peckinpah Westerns.
In many ways, Peckinpah's greatest legacy lies in his aggressive breaking of taboos. He allowed a new freedom to emerge in cinema, not only in the depiction of violence, but also in editing styles, narrative choices, and the willingness to portray unsympathetic or tragic characters and stories. His notorious reputation has often overshadowed the depth of his influence on modern film.
[edit] In Popular Culture
- John Belushi portrayed Peckinpah as a deranged lunatic who directs his first romantic comedy by beating up his cast on an early episode of Saturday Night Live.
- Peckinpah's use of violence was parodied by Monty Python in Sam Peckinpah's "Salad Days", one of the more controversial episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, in which a lovely day out for an upper class English family turns into a blood-soaked orgy of severed limbs and gushing wounds.
- The Liverpool band Space briefly mention Peckinpah in their song "Hitch-Hiking" from Suburban Rock 'N' Roll.
[edit] Filmography
- 1961 The Deadly Companions
- 1962 Ride the High Country
- 1965 Major Dundee
- 1969 The Wild Bunch
- 1970 The Ballad of Cable Hogue
- 1971 Straw Dogs
- 1972 The Getaway
- 1972 Junior Bonner
- 1973 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
- 1974 Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
- 1975 The Killer Elite
- 1977 Cross of Iron
- 1978 Convoy
- 1978 China 9, Liberty 37
- 1982 Jinxed! (stunt director)
- 1983 The Osterman Weekend
[edit] Television Career
- 1955-58 Gunsmoke
- Episode 10 - The Queue (Writer)
- Epsidoe 18 - Yorky (Writer)
- Episode 27 - Corker (Writer)
- Episode 31 - How To Die For Nothing (Writer)
- Episode 35 - The Guitar (Writer)
- Episode 43 - The Round Up (Writer)
- Episode 47 - Legal Revenge (Writer)
- Episode 52 - Poor Pearl (Writer)
- Episode 78 - Jealousy (Writer)
- Episode 103 - Dirt (Writer)
- Episode 10 - The Queue (Writer)
- 1956-58 Broken Arrow
- Episode 29 - The Assassin (Writer)
- Episode 41 - The Teacher (Writer)
- Episode 72 - The Transfer (Writer & Director)
- Episode 29 - The Assassin (Writer)
- 1958 Have Gun, Will Travel
- Episode 22 - The Singer (Co-Writer)
- Episode 22 - The Singer (Co-Writer)
- 1958-63 The Rifleman
- Episode 1 - The Sharpshooter (Writer)
- Episode 2 - Home Ranch (Writer)
- Episode 4 - The Marshal (Writer & Director)
- Episode 22 - The Boarding House (Writer & Director)
- Episode 33 - The Money Gun (Co-Writer & Director)
- Episode 52 - The Baby Sitter (Co-Writer & Director)
- Episode 1 - The Sharpshooter (Writer)
- 1960 The Westerner
- Episode 1 - Jeff (Writer & Director)
- Episode 2 - School Days (Writer & Director)
- Episode 3 - Brown (Director)
- Episode 4 - Mrs. Kennedy (Writer)
- Episode 6 - The Courting of Libby (Director)
- Episode 8 - The Old Man (Co-Director)
- Episode 12 - Hand on the Gun (Director)
- Episode 13 - The Painting (Director)
- Episode 1 - Jeff (Writer & Director)
- 1960 Klondike
- Episode 1 - Klondike Fever (Co-Writer and Director)
- Episode 2 - River of Gold (Director)
- Episode 3 - Saints And Stickups (Director)
- Episode 4 - The Unexpected Candidate (Director)
- Episode 5 - 88 Keys To Trouble (Director)
- Episode 6 - Swoger's Mules (Co-Writer and Director)
- Episode 7 - Sure Thing, Men (Director)
- Episode 8 - A Taste of Danger (Director)
- Episode 9 - Bare Knuckles (Director)
- Episode 10 - Halliday's Club (Director)
- Episode 11 - Bathhouse Justice (Director)
- Episode 12 - Swing Your Partner (Co-Writer)
- Episode 13 - The Golden Burro (Director)
- Episode 14 - Queen of the Klondike (Director)
- Episode 15 - The Man Who Owned Skagway (Director)
- Episode 16 - Sitka Madonna (Director)
- Episode 17 - The Hostages (Director)
- Episode 1 - Klondike Fever (Co-Writer and Director)
- 1967 Noon Wine
[edit] External links
- Sam Peckinpah at the Internet Movie Database
- Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
- Wherefore Art Thou, Bloody Sam A collection of essays about Peckinpah's films.
- Peckinpah’s West vs Mann’s Metropolis Peckinpah’s West vs Mann’s Metropolis
- A Tribute to Sam Peckinpah by ConvoyTM.com
- Guns and Tequila: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah Biography which focuses on Peckinpah's drinking.
- Diary of a Mad Man: The Making of The Getaway Cinema Retro issue #3
- Major Dundee: The Restoration Cinema Retro issue #3
[edit] Quotes
"I want to make Westerns like Kurosawa makes Westerns"
