SAM PECKINPAH

'David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah' (February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film director who achieved iconic status following the release of his 1969 Western epic ''The Wild Bunch''. 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 of violence in human society. His characters are often loners or losers who desire to be honorable but are forced to compromise in order to survive in a world of nihilism and brutality. Peckinpah's combative personality, marked by years of alcohol and drug abuse, has in many ways overshadowed his professional legacy. Many of his films were noted for his behind-the-scenes battles with producers and crew members, damaging his reputation and career during his lifetime. Several of his films, including ''Straw Dogs'' (1971), ''Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid'' (1973) and ''Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia'' (1974), remain controversial to this day.

Contents

Genealogy

Biography

Television Career

Early Film career

''The Wild Bunch'' and beyond

Themes

Influence

In Popular Culture

Filmography

Television credits

Quotes

References

External links

Genealogy

Peckinpah's ancestry is firmly rooted in California pioneer history. His great-grandfather, Rice Peckinpaugh, was a merchant and farmer in Indiana before moving to California in the 1850s to Humboldt County and changing the spelling of his family's last name to "Peckinpah." The family settled down in the area to participate in the logging business. Peckinpah Meadow and Peckinpah Creek, where the family ran a lumber mill on a mountain in the High Sierras north of Coarsegold, California, have been officially named on U.S. geographical maps.^[1] Peckinpah's maternal grandfather was Denver Church, a cattle rancher, Superior Court Judge and a United States Congressman of a California district including Fresno County.^[2] David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was born February 21, 1925, the son of David Edward Peckinpah and Fern Louise Church.^[1] Peckinpah and several relatives often claimed Native American ancestry, but this has been denied by surviving members of the family.^[1] Sam Peckinpah's nephew is David Peckinpah, who was a television producer and director, as well as a screenplay writer.^[5]

Biography

Sam Peckinpah was born in Fresno, California and attended Fresno grammar schools and high school. He spent much time skipping classes with his brother to engage in cowboy activities on Denver Church's ranch including trapping, branding and shooting. During the 1930s and 1940s, Coarsegold and Bass Lake were still populated with descendants of the miners and ranchers of the 19th century. Many of these descendants worked on Church's ranch. At that time, it was a rural area undergoing extreme change and this exposure is believed to have affected Peckinpah's Western films later in life.^[1]
He played on the junior varsity football team while at Fresno High School, but frequent fighting and discipline problems caused his parents to enroll him in the San Rafael Military Academy for his senior year.^[1] In 1943 he joined the Marines. Within two years, his battalion was sent to China with the task of disarming Japanese soldiers and repatriating them following World War II. 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 the murder of a laborer by random sniper fire. The American soldiers were not permitted to intervene. This reportedly deeply affected Peckinpah and may have influenced his depictions of violence in his films.^[2]
After the war he attended Fresno State College where he studied history. While a student, he met and married his first wife Marie Selland in 1947. A drama major, Selland introduced Peckinpah to the theatre department and he became interested in directing for the first time. During his senior year, he adapted and directed a one-hour version of Tennessee Williams's ''The Glass Menagerie''. After graduation in 1948, Peckinpah enrolled in graduate studies in drama at University of Southern California. He spent two seasons as the director in residence at Huntington Park Civic Theatre near Los Angeles before obtaining his master's degree. He was asked to stay on another year, but Peckinpah began working as a stagehand at KLAC-TV in the belief that television experience would eventually lead to work in films. Even during this early stage of his career, Peckinpah was developing a combative streak. Reportedly, he was kicked off the set of ''The Liberace Show'' for not wearing a tie and refused to cue a car salesman during a live feed because of his attitude towards stagehands.^[2]
In 1954, Peckinpah was hired as a third assistant casting director for the film ''Riot in Cell Block 11'', directed by Don Siegel. The movie was filmed on location at Folsom Prison. Reportedly, the warden was reluctant to allow the filmmakers to work at the prison until he was introduced to Peckinpah. The warden knew his family from Fresno and immediately became cooperative. Siegel's location work and his use of actual prisoners as extras in the film made a lasting impression on Peckinpah. He would work as an assistant to the director on four additional films including ''Private Hell 36'' (1954), ''An Annapolis Story,'' (1955, and co-starring L.Q. Jones), ''Invasion of the Body Snatchers'' (1956) and ''Crime in the Streets'' (1956).^[2] ''Invasion of the Body Snatchers'', in which Peckinpah appeared in a cameo as Charlie the meter reader, starred Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter. It would become one of the most critically praised science fiction films of the 1950s. Peckinpah claimed to have done an extensive rewrite on the film's screenplay, a statement which remains controversial to this day.^[2] Nevertheless, Peckinpah's association with Siegel established his career as a budding screenplay writer and potential director.
Throughout much of his adult life, Peckinpah was plagued by alcoholism and later drug addiction. According to some, he also suffered from mental illness, possibly manic depression or paranoia. It is believed his drinking problems began during his service in the military while stationed in China, when he would frequent the saloons of Tientsin and Peiping.^[2] After divorcing Selland in 1960, the mother of his first four children, he would eventually marry the Mexican actress Begona Palacios in 1965. A stormy relationship developed, and over the years leading up to his death they would marry three separate times. They would have one daughter together.^[1] 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. An experienced hunter, Peckinpah was fascinated with guns and was known to shoot the mirrors in his house while abusing alcohol, and this image occurs several times in his films. Peckinpah's reputation as a hard-living brute with a taste for violence, inspired by the content in his most popular films and in many ways perpetuated by himself, has overshadowed his artistic legacy. His friends and family have claimed this does a disservice to a man who was actually more complex than generally credited. Throughout his career, Peckinpah seems to have inspired extraordinary loyalty in certain friends and employees. He used the same actors (Warren Oates, L.Q. Jones, R.G. Armstrong, James Coburn, Ben Johnson, Kris Kristofferson) and collaborators (Jerry Fielding, Lucien Ballard, Gordon Dawson, Martin Baum) 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 after his marriage to Palacios, eventually 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. Four of his films, ''Major Dundee'' (1965), ''The Wild Bunch'' (1969), ''Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid'' (1973) and ''Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia'' (1974), were filmed entirely on location within the country, while ''The Getaway'' (1972) concludes with a couple escaping to freedom in Mexico.
Peckinpah was seriously ill during the final years of his life, as a lifetime of self-abuse began to catch up with him. Regardless, he continued to work until the last months before his death. He died from a stroke on December 28, 1984. At the time, he was in preparation for shooting an original script by Stephen King entitled "The Shotgunners".^[14]

Television Career

On the recommendation of Don Siegel, Peckinpah established himself during the late 1950s as a scriptwriter of Western television series of the era, selling scripts to ''Gunsmoke'', ''Have Gun - Will Travel'', ''Broken Arrow'', ''Klondike'' and ''Zane Grey Theater''. He also wrote a screenplay from the novel ''The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones'', a draft that would eventually evolve into the 1961 Marlon Brando film ''One-Eyed Jacks''. His writing would lead to directing, and he would helm a 1958 episode of ''Broken Arrow'' (generally credited as his first official directing job) and several 1960 episodes of ''Klondike'' (co-starring James Coburn and L.Q. Jones).
In 1958, Peckinpah would write a script for ''Gunsmoke'' which was rejected due to content. He reworked the screenplay, titled ''The Sharpshooter'', and sold it to ''Zane Grey Theater''. The episode received popular response and became the television series ''The Rifleman'' starring Chuck Connors. Peckinpah would direct four episodes of the series (with guest stars R.G. Armstrong and Warren Oates), but left after the first year. ''The Rifleman'' would run for five seasons and achieve enduring popularity in syndication.
During this time, he also created the television series ''The Westerner'', starring Brian Keith and John Dehner. From 1959 to 1960, Peckinpah acted as producer of the series, having a hand in the writing of each episode and directing five of them. Critically praised, the show ran for only 13 episodes before cancellation mainly due to its gritty content detailing the drifting, laconic cowboy Dave Blassingame (Brian Keith). Despite its short run, ''The Westerner'' and Peckinpah would be nominated by the Producers Guild of America for Best Filmed Series. An episode of the series eventually served as the basis for Tom Gries' 1968 film ''Will Penny''. ''The Westerner'', which has since achieved cult status, further established Peckinpah as a talent to be reckoned with.

Early Film career

After cancellation of ''The Westerner'', Brian Keith was cast as the male lead in the 1961 Western film ''The Deadly Companions''. He suggested Sam Peckinpah as the director and producer Charles B. Fitzsimons accepted the idea. By most accounts, the low-budget film shot on location in Arizona was a learning process for Peckinpah, who feuded with Fitzsimons (brother of the film's star Maureen O'Hara) over the screenplay and staging of the scenes. Reportedly, he was also refused by Fitzsimons to give directions to O'Hara. Unable to rewrite the screenplay or edit the picture, Peckinpah vowed to never again direct a film unless he had script control. ''The Deadly Companions'' passed largely without notice and is the least known of Peckinpah's films.
His second film, ''Ride the High Country'' (1962), was based on the screenplay ''Guns in the Afternoon'' written by N.B. Stone, Jr. Producer Richard Lyons admired Peckinpah's work on ''The Westerner'' and offered him the directing job. Peckinpah did an extensive rewrite of the screenplay, including personal references from his own childhood growing up on Denver Church's ranch and even naming one of the mining towns "Coarsegold." He based the character of Steve Judd, a once-famous lawman fallen on hard times, on his own father David Peckinpah. In the screenplay, Judd and old friend Gil Westrum are hired to transport gold from a mining community through dangerous territory. Westrum hopes to talk Judd into taking the gold for themselves. Along the way, following the example of Judd, Westrum slowly realizes his own self respect is far more important than profit. During the final shootout, when Judd and Westrum stand up to a group of youthful thieves intent on stealing the gold, Judd is fatally wounded and his death serves as Westrum's salvation - a Catholic tragedy weaved from the Western genre. It would become a major theme in many Peckinpah films to come. Starring aging Western stars Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott in their final major screen roles, the film initially went unnoticed in the United States but was an enormous success in Europe. 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 Western genre. New York critics also discovered Peckinpah's unusual Western, with ''Newsweek'' naming ''Ride the High Country'' the best film of the year and ''Time'' placing it on its best-ten list. Peckinpah, the eventual "enfant terrible" of the cinematic world, had arrived. Today, the film is admired as one of Peckinpah's greatest works.
Peckinpah's next film, ''Major Dundee'' (1965), would be the first of the director's many unfortunate experiences with the major studios that financed his productions. Based on a screenplay by Harry Julian Fink, the film was to star Charlton Heston. Peckinpah was hired as director after Heston viewed producer Jerry Bresler's private screening of ''Ride the High Country''. Heston liked the movie and said to Bresler, "Let's use him." The sprawling screenplay told the story of Union cavalry officer Major Dundee who directs a New Mexico outpost of Confederate prisoners. When an Apache war chief wipes out a company, Dundee throws together a makeshift army, including the Confederate veterans, and takes off after the Indians. Dundee becomes obsessed with his quest and heads deep into the wilderness of Mexico with his exhausted men in tow. Peckinpah's first big-budget film had a large cast including, Heston, Richard Harris, James Coburn, Senta Berger, Jim Hutton, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates. Filming began without a completed screenplay, and Peckinpah chose several remote locations in Mexico causing the film's budget to skyrocket. Intimidated by the project, Peckinpah reportedly drank alcohol heavily every night after shooting. He also fired at least 15 crew members. By the time filming ended, 15 days over schedule and $1.5 million over budget, Peckinpah and producer Bresler were no longer on speaking terms. The movie, detailing themes and sequences Peckinpah would master later in his career, was taken away from him and substantially reedited. An incomplete mess which today exists in a variety of versions, ''Major Dundee'' performed poorly at the box office and was thrashed by critics (though its standing has improved over the years). Peckinpah would hold for the rest of his life that his original version of ''Major Dundee'' was among his best films, but his reputation was severely damaged.
Peckinpah was next signed to direct ''The Cincinnati Kid'', a gambling drama about a young prodigy who takes on an old master during a big New Orleans poker match. Before filming started, Martin Ransohoff began to receive phone calls about the ''Major Dundee'' ordeal and was told Peckinpah was impossible to work with. In addition, Peckinpah decided to shoot in black and white and was hoping to transform the screenplay into a gritty saga about a kid surviving the tough streets of the Great Depression. After four days of filming, which reportedly included some nude scenes, Ransohoff disliked the rushes and immediately fired him. Eventually directed by Norman Jewison and starring Steve McQueen, the film went on to become a 1965 hit. Peckinpah found himself banished from the film industry for several years.
He caught a lucky break in 1966 when producer Daniel Melnick needed a writer and director to adapt Katherine Anne Porter's novella ''Noon Wine'' for television. Melnick was a big fan of ''The Westerner'' and ''Ride the High Country'', and had heard Peckinpah had been unfairly fired from ''The Cincinnati Kid''. Against the objections of many within the industry, Melnick hired Peckinpah and gave him free rein. Peckinpah completed the script, which Miss Porter enthusiastically endorsed, and the project became an hour-long presentation for ''ABC Stage 67''. Taking place in turn of the century West Texas, ''Noon Wine'' was a dark tragedy about a farmer's act of futile murder which leads to suicide. Starring Jason Robards and Olivia de Havilland, the film was a critical hit, with Peckinpah nominated by the Writers Guild for Best Television Adaptation and the Director's Guild of America for Best Television Direction. Robards would keep a personal copy of the film in his private collection for years as he considered it one of his finest performances. A rare film which can only be viewed at the Library of Congress and the Museum of Broadcasting, ''Noon Wine'' is today considered one of Peckinpah's most intimate works, revealing his dramatic potential and artistic depth.

''The Wild Bunch'' and beyond

The surprising success of ''Noon Wine'' laid the groundwork for one of the most explosive comebacks in film history. In 1967, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts producers Kenneth Hyman and Phil Feldman were interested in having Peckinpah rewrite and direct an adventure screenplay. An alternative screenplay written by Roy Sickner and Walon Green was the western ''The Wild Bunch''. At the time, William Goldman's screenplay ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' had recently been purchased by 20th Century Fox. It was quickly decided that ''The Wild Bunch'', which had several similarities to Goldman's work, would be produced in order to beat ''Butch Cassidy'' to the theaters. By the fall of 1967, Peckinpah was rewriting the screenplay into what would become ''The Wild Bunch''. Filmed on location in Mexico, Peckinpah's film was inspired by his hunger to return to films, the violence seen in Arthur Penn's ''Bonnie and Clyde'', America's growing frustration with the Vietnam War and what he perceived to be the utter lack of reality seen in westerns up to that time. He set out to make a film which portrayed not only the vicious violence of the period, but the crude men attempting to survive the era. Starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Ben Johnson, Warren Oates and Edmond O'Brien, the film detailed a 1913 gang of veteran outlaws on the Texas/Mexico border trying to survive a rapidly approaching modern world. ''The Wild Bunch'' is framed by two ferocious and infamous gunfights, beginning with a failed bank robbery and concluding with the outlaws battling the Mexican army in vengeance due to the death of one of their members. Irreverent and unprecedented in its explicit detail, the 1969 film was an instant classic. Multiple scenes attempted in ''Major Dundee'', including slow motion action sequences, characters leaving a village as if in a funeral procession and the use of inexperienced locals as extras, would be perfected in ''The Wild Bunch''. Many critics denounced its violence as sadistic and exploitative. Other critics and filmmakers hailed the originality of its rapid editing style, created for the first time in this film and ultimately becoming a Peckinpah trademark, and praised the reworking of traditional Western themes. It was the beginning of Peckinpah's legend, and he and his work would remain controversial for the rest of his life. The film would be ranked No. 80 on the American Film Institute's top 100 list of the greatest American films ever made and No. 69 as the most thrilling, but the controversy has not diminished. When ''The Wild Bunch'' was re-released for its 25th anniversary, it received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, proving the film's continued impact after so many years. Today, the film is considered the zenith of Peckinpah's turbulent career.
Defying, as he often would, audience expectations, Peckinpah followed up ''The Wild Bunch'' with the elegiac, funny and mostly non-violent Western ''The Ballad of Cable Hogue''. The film detailed a small-time entrepreneur (Jason Robards) who makes a fortune by finding water in the desert. Largely ignored upon its initial release, the film has been rediscovered in recent years and 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 one of his most violent and psychologically disturbing films. ''Straw Dogs'' starred Dustin Hoffman as an American mathematician living uncomfortably in his beautiful young wife's native village in a remote part of England. Resentment of his presence 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'' the same year. A gritty but sentimental crime film about lovers on the run, the film was Peckinpah's biggest box-office success to date. Though remade in 1994 (''The Getaway''), its reputation has not withstood the test of time and many Peckinpah 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 works including the commercial products ''The Killer Elite'' (1975) and ''Convoy'' (1978) before he died. Of these later movies, 1977's European World War II drama ''Cross of Iron'' is considered the best, and was reportedly a favorite of Orson Welles'.
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 thanks to star James Caan. 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, 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.

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 (especially 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 Church, 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.

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. Another Asian filmmaker Park Chan-wook is also a huge fan of Peckinpah.
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.

In Popular Culture

★ John Belushi portrayed Peckinpah as a deranged lunatic who directs his first romantic comedy by beating up his cast in the fifth 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.

★ In the 1993 film Deadfall an unnamed assailant attempts to kill a small-time criminal named Eddie, played by Nicholas Cage. When Eddie mortally wounds the would-be assassin, Eddie asks the man "Who sent you?" to which the killer responds, "Sam fuckin' Peckinpah" before dying from his wounds.

★ The Liverpool band Space briefly mention Peckinpah in their song "Hitch-Hiking" from ''Suburban Rock 'N' Roll''.

★ The Santa Barbara based band Snot have a song called "Deadfall" based on the film of the same name, with the phrases "Who sent you?" and "Sam fuckin' Peckinpah" repeated several times.

★ In the 1985 film ''Fletch'', the main character - while imitating a doctor in order to examine medical records - calls out; "...and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia!"

★ Ray Bradbury tells the story of Peckinpah's long interest in filming Bradbury's novel ''Something Wicked This Way Comes''. When Bradbury asked how Peckinpah intended to shoot it, Peckinpah said he would "rip out the pages and stuff them into the camera." Bradbury sold the rights to another party, and the incensed Peckinpah sent Bradbury a gift: a potted cactus and a jar of Vaseline.

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''

★ 1982 ''Jinxed!'' (stunt director)

★ 1983 ''The Osterman Weekend''

Television credits

★ 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)

★ 1956-58 ''Broken Arrow''

★
★ Episode 29 - The Assassin (Writer)

★
★ Episode 41 - The Teacher (Writer)

★
★ Episode 72 - The Transfer (Writer & Director)

★ 1958 ''Have Gun, Will Travel''

★
★ 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)

★ 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)

★ 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)

★ 1967 ''Noon Wine''

Quotes

"I want to make Westerns like Kurosawa makes Westerns"

References

1. Peckinpah, A Portrait in Montage, , Garner, Simmons, University of Texas Press, 1982,
2. "If They Move...Kill 'Em!", , David, Weddle, Grove Press, 1994,
3. Peckinpah, A Portrait in Montage, , Garner, Simmons, University of Texas Press, 1982,
4. Peckinpah, A Portrait in Montage, , Garner, Simmons, University of Texas Press, 1982,
5. Internet Movie Database, David E. Peckinpah
6. Peckinpah, A Portrait in Montage, , Garner, Simmons, University of Texas Press, 1982,
7. Peckinpah, A Portrait in Montage, , Garner, Simmons, University of Texas Press, 1982,
8. "If They Move...Kill 'Em!", , David, Weddle, Grove Press, 1994,
9. "If They Move...Kill 'Em!", , David, Weddle, Grove Press, 1994,
10. "If They Move...Kill 'Em!", , David, Weddle, Grove Press, 1994,
11. "If They Move...Kill 'Em!", , David, Weddle, Grove Press, 1994,
12. "If They Move...Kill 'Em!", , David, Weddle, Grove Press, 1994,
13. Peckinpah, A Portrait in Montage, , Garner, Simmons, University of Texas Press, 1982,
14. Internet Movie Database, Biography Sam Peckinpah

External links

★

★ Senses of Cinema: Sam Peckinpah

★ Essays about Sam Peckinpah's films

★ Roger Ebert review of ''The Wild Bunch''

★ Sam Peckinpah versus Michael Mann

★ A Tribute to Sam Peckinpah by ConvoyTM.com