Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
It became hard to tell whether alcohol was his refuge after his continual spats
with producers and financiers or whether the alcoholism was what caused these sp
ats. He had a ferocious work ethic and often simply fired assistants who couldn t
keep up with him. At the same time, his self abuse must surely have stopped him
from functioning effectively.
The BFI retrospective of Peckinpah s work won t just focus on his magnificent but of
ten revived masterpieces like The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
There will also be screenings of mint and unfaded prints of lost films like Cross
of Iron, Convoy and of one of Peckinpah s lesser-known westerns The Deadly Compani
ons. Peckinpah wasn t always on top of his game. The Osterman Weekend was a film a
bout paranoia made by somebody clearly suffering from the condition. Convoy is c
heery enough, but it s baffling why a film-maker of Peckinpah s stature would make a
dumb movie about truckers with names like Rubber Duck and Cotton Mouth (ironica
lly, it was one of his top grossing films).
What his body of work shows, though, is both extraordinary intensity and craftsm
anship. He was never a film-maker to take the easy route when a more difficult o
ne was available.
The most jarring scenes in Berlenghini and Dalto s documentary about Peckinpah are
the interviews in which actress Susan George demurely discusses Straw Dogs. One
moment, she is praising Peckinpah s sense of humour and mischief ( he had eyes that
could smile for England ). The next, she is discussing the notorious rape scene i
n the film. I did zoom along in the script to find out where I take my clothes of
f and I did find out that this was quite different from any other script I had e
ver read before, she says, adding with monumental understatement that the scene w
as quite daunting .
George, 21 years old when Straw Dogs was made, recognised that the scene was an
integral part of the story. That didn t make it any less uncomfortable to film. It
was a typical Peckinpah moment: confrontational, violent and disorientating in
the emotions it sets out to elicit.
The fact that George is still ready to talk about it 30 years later underlines t
he affection and loyalty Peckinpah was able to inspire in his collaborators, wha
tever indignities he heaped on them. As David Warner, who also appeared in Straw
Dogs, put it (sounding like a soldier back from a tour of duty): Anybody who app
eared in a Peckinpah movie somehow had a bond.
Why would actors want to keep on working with such a dysfunctional and seemingly
cruel man? The late Coburn pinpointed the answer: Peckinpah enabled them to do
their best work. He may have been a nasty bastard, but at least he was truthful a
bout that. You had to justify everything for Sam... you couldn t just go out there
and play it. It had to come from some place within you.