Which Peckinpah?

One of the most reliable forms of film preservation is theft. A musical number in the 1954 version of A Star is Born survived to be included in the restoration only because it had been stolen by a collector before it could be junked. Indeed film collectors, whose titles to their prints are, to say the least, dubious, have been vital to the cause of film preservation.

The most justifiable theft of a movie in the history of film, however, is that of Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). Peckinpah was one of the most turbulent directors of the twentieth century. According to Charlton Heston, “Sam had a genius for setting the people who had the power to get his film made against him.” Heston ought to know, as he starred in Major Dundee, one of the first of the director’s films to be butchered by the studio. Heston also did his best to get the film released in something approximating Peckinpah’s version. Heston was the first of a long and honourable line of men and women who recognised Peckinpah’s talent, sympathised with his problems—he was for much of his career a functioning alcoholic—and helped him get his films made.

With Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid a preview version of the film was stolen from an unlocked projection booth by two of Peckinpah’s friends. This proved vital when the 1973 release turned out to be a travesty, the victim of a feud between Peckinpah and MGM boss James Aubrey. Aubrey was one of the most destructive and tasteless executives in film history; and this time, while Peckinpah may have been difficult, he was desperately trying to preserve his vision of what is now recognised as an extraordinary film.

However, the preview version—the one stolen from the projection booth—did survive, as did the theatrical release, which as well as some disastrous cuts includes editing by the director himself. Public screenings of the preview version after Aubrey had been fired from MGM established the film’s reputation and eventually resulted in the release on DVD of a so-called special edition. As no definitive cut of the film exists, this two-disc set has on one disc the preview version and on the other an assembly by Peckinpah scholar Paul Seydor that incorporates the sequences Peckinpah was known to have edited as well as a rearrangement of scenes that seem awkwardly placed in the preview cut. It is far from ideal, but with Peckinpah gone this is the best we are going to get, and provides an invaluable insight into one of the director’s last masterpieces.

For me seeing Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid becomes an extraordinary sequel to the restoration of Marlon Brando’s One Eyed Jacks, which I reviewed earlier this year. Like everyone else I was bitterly disappointed with the first release of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and dissatisfied with what we now know was the preview version when it was finally screened in Australia. (I should explain, as Seydor does in the commentary on the DVD, that the preview assembly is usually the preliminary to further shaping of the film before it is finally locked down. Usually there are two further cuts before a film’s release.)

Seydor’s inclusion of material edited by Peckinpah and his subtle rearrangements go a long way towards resolving the difficulties many of us had with the film. In addition we can explore the connection between One Eyed Jacks and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. One Eyed Jacks is based on Charles Neider’s novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones, which was a reworking of the Billy the Kid story set in Monterey. Peckinpah, who was already making a name for himself as a writer-director in television—Gunsmoke, The Rifleman—was hired to prepare a script based on the book. By all accounts this was a faithful adaptation of Neider’s work. It was discarded when Brando decided to take the film in a different direction and Peckinpah went on to other projects.

When he came to make Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Peckinpah went back to this earlier script. According to Peckinpah the original script by Rudolf Wurlitzer was fine and he only made normal director’s revisions. Wurlitzer told a different story. Peckinpah, he claimed, demanded daily revisions and the script became “more and more Peckinpah” as the shoot progressed. I have not been able to see the draft screenplays but one contribution Peckinpah probably made was to infuse the film with the mood and atmosphere of Neider’s novel. The book is a portrayal of relationships between men who have lived outside the law and are always on the verge of violence. This was familiar territory for Peckinpah and he does this as well as Neider; which is praise indeed, as The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones is a fine novel.

Peckinpah also insisted the viewers see the Kid and Garrett as friends before the hunt begins. The scene where Garrett tells Billy he has to leave the territory is one of the best in the film, with its evocation of the life they used to lead when they were on different sides of the law. It is interwoven with an opening sequence showing an older Garrett being murdered by the same people who manoeuvred him into killing Billy.

From the outset we see both men as doomed. The gunfights between Garrett and Billy’s friends from the old days are graphic and sudden. Equally abrupt are Billy’s clashes with murderous cowboys riding for Chisum, a powerful cattleman who was a major player in the Lincoln County range war in New Mexico. Historically both the Kid and Garrett were involved, and Peckinpah and Wurlitzer use this as a back story.

Only three years earlier Andrew V. McLaglen had made Chisum with John Wayne in the title role, a sanitised version of the Lincoln County range war. It was a traditional Western. Wayne plays one of his patriarchal authority figures. The plotting is conventional, with none of the ambivalences and complexity that directors like Peckinpah, John Sturges, Delmer Daves and Anthony Mann introduced into the genre. The villains and heroes are clearly defined and the climactic punch-up between Wayne and Scott Tucker’s heavy is spectacular and unambiguous.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid seems to be a reaction against the simplicities of a Chisum. Garrett, played splendidly by James Coburn, is morally compromised from the outset and of course doomed. He hunts and kills Billy in order to survive as the old order passes but, as we know from the opening, to no avail. Billy (Kris Kristofferson) is more likeable but his life is irresponsible and futile. They are both reluctant adversaries; but ultimately it is the “respectable” Garrett who is the more ruthless. In the final confrontation he catches his old friend by surprise and shoots without warning.

Working with cinematographer John Coquillon, Peckinpah creates a melancholy ambience, filming the exteriors in the low light of the late afternoon, so that while the film is often gritty and realistic it is also at times very beautiful. There is an extraordinary scene where some casual target practice between Garrett and the head of a family on a barge going down the river in the late evening nearly becomes a shootout. It contributes nothing to the plot but encapsulates superbly the casual violence of the frontier.

Similarly, Bob Dylan’s “score”, which includes some bleak folk songs, enhances the overall mood of despair. Seydor believes that the Nobel Prize-winner’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” should accompany the death of Slim Pickens’s old sheriff—another achingly beautiful low-light scene. This would have appealed to the producer, Gordon Carroll, who hired Dylan for the film, but not Peckinpah. Seydor and Coburn thought that given time they might have talked the director into it. In any case the special edition lets you see it both ways.

Finally the commentaries by a number of Peckinpah scholars on the two discs of the special edition are a valuable contribution to film scholarship and enhance an already extraordinary viewing experience.