The Silver Screen Oasis

Mr. Arkadin wrote:Very cool. I don't have Starz, but am enjoying your "play by play". I wish there were some place we could order some of these docs.

I'm using the same Arkadin quote because I've got a different answer this time. Izcutter gave me a heads-up in an exchange on the Strother Martin
tribute thread on TCM. I posted a few hints around here, and the result
was a Father's Day present of a Peckinpah boxed set containing the Starz! special I've been quoting from. The 'Pat & Billy' package runs the
movie on one disc, and the other disc is the movie again, with learned
commentary overlapping. The 'Wild Bunch' package is the one that adds
the Starz! special, plus extra scenes, and commentaries from biographers and critics. 'Cable Hogue' and 'High Country' are also included. (My son
knows how to do this stuff.) Mr. A, that's where to find this material.

One fascinating fact I've run across already: 'The Wild Bunch' opens with the outlaws riding into town where they plan to rob a bank (and where an
ambush is waiting). It seems that Emilio Fernandez let Peckinpah in on one of his childhood memories. He and his little friends would drop a scorpion into an ant hill to watch the resulting attack and fight. Sometimes
they would lay straw over the battle scene and fire it up. Peckinpah got on the phone and demanded scorpions and ants, soon as possible. That's
why the opening finds the Bunch riding past cherubic preteens entertaining
themselves in just that manner. It sets the tone for the violence that follows, and for the whole movie in fact. The ants-and-scorpions scenerio
is duplicated in the final shootout, with the outlaws surrounded by hundreds of Federalies as they face their end.

An interesting factoid emerged from Robert Osborne's interview with
Norman Jewison the other night. Seems Our Sam was the origional
director of The Cincinnati Kid(!) Of course that title is one of the
proud credits in Mr. Jewison's resume.

The differences of opinion with producers that took Peckinpah off the
film was not fully explained. Sam preferred b&w rather than color was
the only point mentioned. I enjoy and respect the film that resulted after
the change of directors, but I can't help but wonder what would have resulted had S.P. remained at the helm.

A Peckinpah macho conflict with a poker table as the arena. Who would have entered his house justified?

Look at the book "If They Move Kill 'em" by David Weddle (?) which goes into the "Cincinnati Kid" story. Peckinpah was vulnerable then, after losing "Major Dundee," and he had a big row with the producer over shooting this one scene in which a female was supposed to be naked. that was what got him fired.

Thanks, Mike. Glad to learn it wasn't something silly.

cmvgor wrote:...Seems Our Sam was the origional director of The Cincinnati Kid(!) ... The differences of opinion with producers that took Peckinpah off the film was not fully explained. Sam preferred b&w rather than color was the only point mentioned. I enjoy and respect the film that resulted after the change of directors, but I can't help but wonder what would have resulted had S.P. remained at the helm.

Joan Blondell would have shot both McQueen and Robinson...