Bloody Sam: The Life and Films of Sam Peckinpah - Hardcover

Fine, Marshall

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 155611236X ISBN 13: 9781556112362

Publisher: Donald I. Fine, 1991

Synopsis

Extensive interviews and research mark a detailed look at the volatile life and brilliant films of legendary director Sam Peckinpah, who has changed the face of modern cinema and influenced a generation of directors

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Gripping account of the two-fisted, drunken life of filmmaker Peckinpah (1926-84) that will keep even a repelled reader drawn in. Fine, a syndicated entertainment columnist, writes with a clear eye unblinded by myth about his hypnotic, larger-than-life subject. Born in Fresno, Peckinpah was the small, wiry, feisty son of a tall, Lincolnesque, dramatically well-spoken lawyer who was also a disciplinarian who thought it wise at times to backhand the boy across the room--which would send Sam into his mother's apron for comfort. Peckinpah went to military school, joined the Marines in WW II, never fired a shot in anger. Surprised readers will discover that his earliest theatrical work was as a stage director for the small-potatoes Huntington Park Civic Theater, mounting South Pacific, Our Town, The Man Who Came to Dinner, and loving productions of Saroyan and Tennessee Williams. Years writing and directing TV oaters (his mother's family were ranch folk) led to his first movie, The Deadly Companions (1961), a flop, then to his first classic, Ride the High Country, distinguished by its first- rate dialogue, authenticity, brilliant editing, and flawless turns by Randolph Scott and Joel McCrae as aging gunfighters. The climactic blood ballet of The Wild Bunch stamped him forever as ``Bloody Sam,'' a name he hated because it ignored everything sensitive and large-minded in his work. By Straw Dogs, he was already his image: a sucker-punching, wife-beating, smash-up drunk, addicted to rage and appreciative of rape and woman-stomping. Fine, however, shows Peckinpah's obverse, in the director's finely crafted, egocentric memos, and in his beleaguered fellow workers' love for him. Again and again, readers will want to backhand Sam across the room but instead will find themselves spellbound by a bullheaded alcoholic in eternal crisis. Like walking barefoot through a nest of snakes and scorpions. (Photos--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Best known for Ride the High Country , The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs , director Peckinpah (1925-1984) had a reputation for being difficult to work with, for making graphically violent films, for a brutish attitude toward women and, especially in later years, for alcoholism and drug abuse, which helped wreck his career and shorten his life. Much of the reputation is deserved, according to Fine, columnist for the Gannet newspapers, but, he argues, Peckinpah's best films are marked by "skill, artistry and vision"p. xiii and broke new cinematic ground. The author also maintains that despite the filmmaker's image as a "hard-drinking, hard-living maverick," Peckinpah was "a sensitive and poetic soul who tried to hide that side from the world."p. xiii The book supports these points, but the narrative is marred by blocks of meandering commentary from family, friends and colleagues of Peckinpah. In addition, Fine's own writing sometimes stoops to the juvenile: about the decreasing ability of Peckinpah's blood to coagulate, we're told, "During The Wild Bunch , that caused a serious pain in the ass: a raging case of bleeding hemorrhoids."p. 137 Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Donald I. Fine
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 155611236X
• ISBN 13: 9781556112362
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 426