This Savage Art

After the holidays I had a meeting with a production company who had an office on the Lower East Side (more on this later). The two partners were looking for a writer to develop a screenplay and get their production slate moving by the latter half of 2007. When talking to one of the partners the first thing he mentioned was a film he liked and was inspired by. It was Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia. Little did he know I spent the previous night watching Peckinpah’s nihilistic and twisted journey into the abyss. I think it won me some points, we’ll see.

(pull)“There ain’t nothing sacred about a hole in the ground or the man that’s in it. Or you. Or me.“(/pull)

The films of Sam Peckinpah were volatile and messy like the world erupting around him and Garcia was no different. The story about a second rate piano player turned bounty hunter in Mexico was pure sleaze and chaos. Cut the head off of a man and use it to collect your ticket out of hell. Irony, there is none. This was Sam’s world. Unadulterated. Another loser trying to hold onto what little shred of dignity this world was allowing him. Bennie (played superbly by Warren Oates) didn’t have to look far for inspiration. During production he was staring it in the face every single day.

Out of all of his films this is the most autobiographical. It’s no surprise it is the only film he had final cut on. You are watching a man scrape and claw for his humanity and realize in the end all the money in the world won’t buy it. If Bennie is going out, he’s going out justified on his terms because that is all a man has. Peckinpah battled actors, producers and just about everyone who stepped foot on his set. All he wanted to do was get it right because he knew he had to leave it all behind one day. Creating chaos was a way to control. He pitted crew members against each other by questioning their manhood and brandished loaded weapons to the Academy Awards. When he made a film he went to hell and took everyone with him. He was a magnet for loyalty, something he held in high regard thematically in his films but probably abused from time to time off screen.

His joy and his torment were one in the same, directing. All his films were him and Sam was every film he made. I don’t think there is another director living or dead who actually personified every frame of the films they directed. He was a Hollywood legend and he suffered both physically and mentally because of it. It didn’t matter, what was on the screen was everything. That is with us forever.