'If They Move... Kill 'Em!": The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah

Rating:
Summary: Even the worst of us. . .Sometimes the worst most of all.
Review: As I peddled my latest play, "Rust To Dust", I thought I was being pretty cute by describing it as "The Glass Menagerie meets The Wild Bunch". Working under the false pretense that my work uniquely combined the "hot ice and wonderous strange snow" of Williams' delicate and tender memory play with Peckinpah's bloody machismo driven Darwinistic fables, I thought I had something rare. Wrong.

According to Weddle, Sam Peckinpah himself had already beaten me to the punch.

In reading David Weddle's expansively researched and annotated biography of one of film's great colorful and tragic characters, I rediscovered the suprisingly sentimental and softly poetic side of Peckinpah.

Influenced tremendously by the symbollic stage poetry of Tennesse Williams (Sam was one of his champions!)along with the he-man adventures of John Ford, Howard Hawks and John Huston, Peckinpah brilliantly (admittedly only consistent in three films)managed to combine both seemingly polarized worlds.

Weddle really brings to light the complex character of Sam Peckinpah. Weddle pulls no punches and portrays the director as abusive, selfish, self destructive, malignant and paranoid. He also illuminates the softer, romantic side that created some legitimate and heartbreakingly penetrating works of art. Sam felt moved by poetry and the longing we all have to find the innocent and pure sides of our selves. He searched for salvation. Even in the hearts of deeply flawed and violent men. Knowing that he, like his famous protagnists, would only find it in honorable death.

Weddle does a fine and admirable job painstakingly finding the autobiographical currents running through all of Peckinpah's work.Weddle really shines as a film critic as he deconstructs all of Sam's work. He deftly balances negativity with effusiveness like a fine concert pianist. Like Williams' masterpieces, Peckinpah used his art to exorcise his demons.

It is so refreshing to learn that Peckinpah did not just educate himself on a diet of films, as so many young directors choose to limit themselves. He was a voracious reader of philosophy, history and literature. He loved the stage.

Many of Peckinpah's fans will already know much of the incidents present in the book, which will cause one to skim. But when Weddle works to humanize a deeply misunderstood artist, this book really shines.

Rating:
Summary: Tragic examination of the Sam Peckinpah myth
Review: David Weddle's fine biography of director Sam Peckinpah "If They Move...Kill'em!" is a harrowing book, detailing an extraordinary professional life wrought with alcoholism, drug addiction, rage and eventually paranoia. This book doesn't attempt to brush Peckinpah off the mountain he will forever possess, but it does detail his inspirations, influences and life-long battle with the demons within. Peckinpah was indeed tortured, an Ernest Hemingway or even Jack Kerouac of his time. He was also one heck of an SOB.

As a fan of Peckinpah's extaordinary films, including "The Wild Bunch," "Cross of Iron," "Straw Dogs" and "The Getaway," I was always perplexed by the erratic quality of the films later in his career and his eventual disappearance from the filmmaking scene. I suppose Weddle's work provides an uneasy answer to these questions, and I think his arguments about Peckinpah living the life of the characters he created in his films is valid.

Peckinpah's legend has always overshadowed Peckinpah's work, which is why such underrated jewels as "Noon Wine," "Junior Bonner" and "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" have been overlooked. I appreciate Weddle's attempts at exposing this myth, and revealing the troubled inspirations and obsessions of Peckinpah. I have problems with the way Weddle skims the surface of many of his films, rarely providing much critical insight or interpretation. But to do so would be treading on the groundbreaking territory of Garner Simmons' ultimate work "Peckinpah, A Portrait in Montage." Weddle should be applauded for avoiding areas that perhaps have already been covered.

To support his argument, Weddle ignores films from Peckinpah's resume, and makes several generalizations which are not entirely accurate. As the years go by, curious viewers will eventually realize that "Cross of Iron" was one of his great films, just as they will also begin to appreciate the gritty greatness of "The Getaway." These films will never serve as examples of the eroding talent of Peckinpah. Though I do agree with Weddle that "Bring Me the Head of Alfred Garcia, "The Osterman Weekend" and "Convoy" are hollow shells of a once-great talent.

"If They Move...Kill'Em!" is eye-opening and disturbing. It needed to be written. Many artists who rose to prominence during the 1960s and 1970s suffered a similar Peckinpah fate - cocaine addiction, alcoholism, a life of excess. That he was still able to make his films was a stunning achievement. That he took 10 years and 5 films off of his life (at the very least), is an American tragedy. Weddle has done a good job at revealing a man who not only was his own worst enemy, but who lived the ignoble life of the tortured artist to the extreme. To know Peckinpah the man, is to eventually understand his utterly unique films.

Rating:
Summary: "Let's Go!"
Review: If there has ever been a man for whom the phrase "consumed by his inner demons" was apt, that man was director Sam Peckinpah. And as David Weddle makes clear in this massive and massively detailed biography, Peckinpah's films bring many of these demons out to strut or cower on the silver screen. As Weddle remarks, almost everyone who loves film can remember the first time he saw THE WILD BUNCH, and yet, like almost all of Peckinpah's "serious" films other than RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, it was severely mutilated by studio meddling.

Not since Orson Welles has there been a famous director who had so much trouble with studio interference. And yet there were clearly times when some intelligent interference was more than justified... MAJOR DUNDEE falls completely to pieces in its "third half," to echo Tom and Ray of CAR TALK. THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE is a giant void at its center... where there should be a love story, there's absolute vacuum, despite the talents of the performers. STRAW DOGS is repellant and unmemoriable despite the efforts of Dustin Hoffman. Sam turned every film in which he had much control into a psychodrama in which his characters wrestled with Sam's own problems. In this, he was a true auteur.

Weddle's research is overwhelming and his information about Peckinpah's childhood, college days and TV career is very enlightening... but he makes a major mistake in trying to relate these early experiences of Peckinpah in the most mechanical and naive way to Peckinpah's massive later psychological problems. We even listen in to some of Peckinpah's innermost thoughts, which is pretty preposterous in a supposed work of nonfiction.

And as another reviewer has noted, the list of influences on Peckinpah has a gigantic lapse--- other directors! Apart from a few random mentions of John Ford, there's hardly a hint that Peckinpah ever went to movies, or ever studied the works of other directors. Yet his early films burst onto the scene precisely when there was a directorial ferment almost without precedent in US and international film-making.

Peckinpah's film career is a sad and disturbing litany of maniacal career- and self-destruction. After alcohol withered his talents to a minimum, he discovered cocaine, and spent the rest of his short life in a moronic haze penetrated randomly by spurts of insane violence and agression... until his heart stopped abruptly. Ironically, in his decline he did a couple of by-the-numbers potboiler action films, and these were the only ones of his films that made real money for the studios. His best known, and best, films, like the WILD BUNCH, were box-office failures and not available for viewing even today in their uncut, unmutilated forms.

It's almost all here, a repellent and tragic story that only a Shakespeare could really do much justice to. Recommended, if you've ever wondered what kind of man could have had the vision embodied in the first 15 minutes or the final 15 minutes of THE WILD BUNCH.

Rating:
Summary: "Let's Go!"
Review: If there has ever been a man for whom the phrase "consumed by his inner demons" was apt, that man was director Sam Peckinpah. And as David Weddle makes clear in this massive and massively detailed biography, Peckinpah's films bring many of these demons out to strut or cower on the silver screen. As Weddle remarks, almost everyone who loves film can remember the first time he saw THE WILD BUNCH, and yet, like almost all of Peckinpah's "serious" films other than RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, it was severely mutilated by studio meddling.

Not since Orson Welles has there been a famous director who had so much trouble with studio interference. And yet there were clearly times when some intelligent interference was more than justified... MAJOR DUNDEE falls completely to pieces in its "third half," to echo Tom and Ray of CAR TALK. THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE is a giant void at its center... where there should be a love story, there's absolute vacuum, despite the talents of the performers. STRAW DOGS is repellant and unmemoriable despite the efforts of Dustin Hoffman. Sam turned every film in which he had much control into a psychodrama in which his characters wrestled with Sam's own problems. In this, he was a true auteur.

Weddle's research is overwhelming and his information about Peckinpah's childhood, college days and TV career is very enlightening... but he makes a major mistake in trying to relate these early experiences of Peckinpah in the most mechanical and naive way to Peckinpah's massive later psychological problems. We even listen in to some of Peckinpah's innermost thoughts, which is pretty preposterous in a supposed work of nonfiction.

And as another reviewer has noted, the list of influences on Peckinpah has a gigantic lapse--- other directors! Apart from a few random mentions of John Ford, there's hardly a hint that Peckinpah ever went to movies, or ever studied the works of other directors. Yet his early films burst onto the scene precisely when there was a directorial ferment almost without precedent in US and international film-making.

Peckinpah's film career is a sad and disturbing litany of maniacal career- and self-destruction. After alcohol withered his talents to a minimum, he discovered cocaine, and spent the rest of his short life in a moronic haze penetrated randomly by spurts of insane violence and agression... until his heart stopped abruptly. Ironically, in his decline he did a couple of by-the-numbers potboiler action films, and these were the only ones of his films that made real money for the studios. His best known, and best, films, like the WILD BUNCH, were box-office failures and not available for viewing even today in their uncut, unmutilated forms.

It's almost all here, a repellent and tragic story that only a Shakespeare could really do much justice to. Recommended, if you've ever wondered what kind of man could have had the vision embodied in the first 15 minutes or the final 15 minutes of THE WILD BUNCH.