The Wild Bunch
Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film
-
- £9.99
-
- £9.99
Publisher Description
For the fiftieth anniversary of the film, W.K. Stratton's definitive history of the making of The Wild Bunch, named one of the greatest Westerns of all time by the American Film Institute.
Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch is the story of a gang of outlaws who are one big steal from retirement. When their attempted train robbery goes awry, the gang flees to Mexico and falls in with a brutal general of the Mexican Revolution, who offers them the job of a lifetime. Conceived by a stuntman, directed by a blacklisted director, and shot in the sand and heat of the Mexican desert, the movie seemed doomed. Instead, it became an instant classic with a dark, violent take on the Western movie tradition.
In The Wild Bunch, W.K. Stratton tells the fascinating history of the making of the movie and documents for the first time the extraordinary contribution of Mexican and Mexican-American actors and crew members to the movie's success. Shaped by infamous director Sam Peckinpah, and starring such visionary actors as William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, and Robert Ryan, the movie was also the product of an industry and a nation in transition. By 1968, when the movie was filmed, the studio system that had perpetuated the myth of the valiant cowboy in movies like The Searchers had collapsed, and America was riled by Vietnam, race riots, and assassinations. The Wild Bunch spoke to America in its moment, when war and senseless violence seemed to define both domestic and international life.
The Wild Bunch is an authoritative history of the making of a movie and the era behind it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The process of making a great film is often as fascinating as the film itself, a point amply illustrated by Stratton (Backyard Brawl) in his behind-the-scenes look at Sam Peckinpah's brutal 1969 masterpiece, The Wild Bunch. Stratton traces the basis for the film, about a band of American outlaws fleeing to revolution-era Mexico to escape changing times, not to a professional screenwriter but to stuntman Roy Sickner, who came up with the idea on the set of another film in the early 1960s. Stratton also recounts Peckinpah's earlier career, including the debacle of his previous film, also a Mexico-set western, Major Dundee, and the career revival he enjoyed thanks to an acclaimed TV version of Katherine Anne Porter's story "Noon Wine." For preproduction, Stratton discusses casting decisions, notably Peckinpah's then-unusual move to cast almost exclusively Mexican actors (with the exception of Puerto Rican born Jaime S nchez) in the film's Mexican roles. Finally, he suggests that, over the course of the shoot, cast and crew came to resemble their own version of the Wild Bunch: Hollywood outsiders, up-and-comers, and fading studio veterans trying to find their way in a rapidly changing industry. Stratton's thorough research yields a fascinating perspective on how Peckinpah created a western of unparalleled realism and intensity.