The Wild Bunch Poll

Pike, of course.

I kind of regret not including LQ Jones and Strother Martin. Kind of.

I mean, I can't remember the names of their characters, so...

Um, no LQ Jones and Strother Martin, no credibility.

Voting for General Mapache, as played by the great macho Mexican director Emilio 'El Indio' Fernandez.

Note that, in addition to directing to directing many great films such as Maria Candelaria, he also popped up in small roles in Anglo films such as this one and The Night of the Iguana, where he played the bartender.

Note also, the word 'Mapache' means 'raccoon.'

Ben Johnson = most badass western star ever. Gorch #2 for me.

Um, no LQ Jones and Strother Martin, no credibility.

-- James Redd and the Blecchs, Saturday, November 24, 2007 2:08 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Western character actors poll?

"You wan An-hel, no? Okay. I am going to give 'im to you..." > "I keeled a dose cock-a-roaches"

p.s. Where's the Old Man and Crazy Lee?

I'm not giving every speaking role in the damn movie a poll option.

Although now that I think about it, the burning scorpion swarmed by ants is pretty memorable...

Oh yeah, no Dub Taylor, no credibility.

To reiterate, this is a poll about the main characters in the movies, not excellent and prolific character actors.

bump for weekdayers

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

this movie

imo

the movie is really about the Pike/Thornton binary, of course

Sam would be pissed.

https://deadline.com/2018/09/mel-gibson-the-wild-bunch-remake-directing-writing-warner-bros-sam-peckinpah-1202470272/

I recall literally nothing about who was involved in the Straw Dogs remake a few years ago. May this suffer the same fate.

why is Mel Gibson still allowed to work

brb gotta go report this to the Elders of Zion

I like Tarantino's westerns more than this

Counterpoint: Tarantino's westerns are the pits.

this is shorter than The Hateful Eight and doesn't produce soul death.

I don't like them very much. Peckinpah just bores me. like Breathless, the editing techniques that were revolutionary 50 years ago don't move me or get my attention. Ford & Hawks westerns aren't dated at all, the craft is overwhelming, the acting is often extraordinary. for pulpy shoot-outs, I'll take Tarantino over Peckinpah and that wackass fake blood.

xp only by 24 minutes!

but yes I did see the 187 min. roadshow 70mm version, and haven't seen it since. doubt it would hold up well at home. still would rather revisit it or even Django, by some distance his worst movie, than The Wild Bunch or Straw Dogs

I'd say Ride the High Country and The Ballad of Cable Hogue have the grace and warmth of Rio Grande and Red River.

Fun fact that may or may not be upthread: when in 1993 The Wild Bunch was released in a slightly different cut, it was initially branded an NC-17 ... despite none of the new material having any sex or violence it it.

i think i kind of agree with flappy bird here (except i do like breathless)

Django is mostly awful, his worst film otm. There are some okay bits and a couple of the performances are quite good but every time i think about it, i wish Tarantino hadn't wasted his time on it. the fake blood in DU is a lot worse and it's the only Tarantino film I've seen where he seems exhausted and bored.

The Wild Bunch owns for a lot of reasons. One that sticks with me is after the blaze of glory, the bodies of the bunch being unceremoniously marched out of Mapache's fort over the backs of horses by the bounty hunters, after iirc they start digging into the Gorch bros' teeth for gold with a knife. Edmond O'Brien is really disgusting in the film, i love it.

Breathless is fine but it gets too much attention still and overshadows dozens of more interesting films by Godard. Really I'm against the canonization of '60-'67 Godard at the expense of his extraordinary 70s & 90s work [specifically Histoire(s) du Cinéma, Ici et Ailleurs, and The Image Book].

I like Godard with a little plot, and I don't watch Breathless for its innovations -- does anyone? does anyone read The Waste Land or Citizen Kane to be awed by novelties that are no longer new or because they're fun poems and movies?

That said, I've admired the last couple of Godards this decade.

Neither do I, to me it's just in the bottom half of the dozen+ movies he made in the 60s (obv it's still pretty fucking great). like I love Vivre Sa Vie and it's not for the aspect ratio or something, it's very moving. Alphaville rules, too. and yes... Citizen Kane.

new book on its making

If a film were made today the way Sam Peckinpah shot The Wild Bunch in Mexico in 1968, and if people found out, members of the cast and crew would be facing time in jail. The history of the film’s production fascinates because it was all so wrong. What happened encompasses many vices and several crimes, including manslaughter and statutory rape. It is an often repellent tale, a stew of toxic masculinity feeding a movie designed to dismantle the very myths about heroic cowboys, gun violence, and la frontera that it succumbed to as a production....

Since almost all the Americans involved in The Wild Bunch had seen action in the Second World War, the film can be read as a crypto-reenactment of the violence they witnessed and its subsequent trauma. William Holden, the film’s star, was a particularly haunted vet. His younger brother had died in combat while Holden was on duty at a cushier post he had been assigned because of his star status. Holden, a suicidal alcoholic like Peckinpah, was a former gymnast who occasionally walked on his hands on hotel ledges while drunk. In 1966, driving his Ferrari a hundred miles an hour in Italy with two young women in the car, he rear-ended another driver and killed him. He was found guilty of manslaughter but let off by the Italian authorities with a suspended sentence. Outliers among the cast and crew were unsavory, too. Albert Dekker, the journeyman Hollywood actor and former California State assemblyman who played the corrupt railroad boss, showed up on location with a thirteen-year-old girl he claimed was his wife. When his role finished shooting, Dekker returned to Los Angeles, where days later he was found dead, hanging in his shower in Hollywood’s most infamous and bizarre case of autoerotic asphyxiation.

https://www.bookforum.com/print/2505/the-chaotic-scenes-behind-the-making-of-a-cult-classic-20644

I just read that book last week. It's not bad. It still blows my mind that Holden was 50 when he made this movie, but thanks to his hard drinking looks at least 10 years older.

yeah he looks absolutely wrecked. that book sounds really good

yeah. i knew he was a drinker, but not the details above.

Sam was obv hell to be around quite often.

I re-watched the movie pursuant to reading that, having not seen it in probably 15+ years. I'm not 100% sure it holds up, but the performances really are great. (I could kinda do without O'Brien's Gabby Hayes-manque but I understand why it's in there.)

Well, let's recall he was found dead two days later at the foot of his own stairs, thanks to a drunken tumble.

Robert Ryan was i believe 59 when the film was made, he looks to be in his 70s.

there are a few of the supporting cast members still around: Jaime Sanchez, L.Q. Jones, Alfonso Arau, Bo Hopkins (all vv memorable; i particularly enjoy L.Q.'s look of anticipation right before the shooting starts in the opening scene).

I love how Hopkins gets unceremoniously offed in every Peckinpah film he's in.

Men in general looked older then, esp drinkers and smokers (Ryan died of lung cancer in '73).

I once talked to a guy who visited the set of Walter Hill's Extreme Prejudice (his attempt to make his own Wild Bunch), his description was "the drunkest set I've ever been on." Reminded me of a woman I knew who saw Flipper live in the early '80s and said only, "I've never been so insulted in my life."

Watched this a few months ago for the 1st time. Yeah the "innovative" and "controversial" aspects were somewhat lost on me, but the performances were great and overall I enjoyed the film and think it deserves its rep as classic Western.
Def prefer it to Hateful 8, ugh.

Relax, it's just some champagne we ordered. Being sure is my business.

What’s in Agua Verde?

In Mexico, Señor, these are the years of sadness.

Feel like Robert Ryan is the key to the whole thing.

In other words, Deke Thornton wuz robbed!

Finally saw this for the 1st time this year and uh, has anyone ever remarked on how violent this movie is? I knew it was going to be "shocking" but did not expect myself to be, at several points, actually shocked. Impressive.

It’s pretty violent. I found Straw Dogs more disturb for some reason.

The violence has been talked about since day one!

Ebert:

I saw the original version at the world premiere in 1969, during the golden age of the junket, when Warner Bros. screened five of its new films in the Bahamas for 450 critics and reporters. It was party time, and not the right venue for what became one of the most controversial films of its time--praised and condemned with equal vehemence, like "Pulp Fiction." At a press conference the morning after the premiere, Holden and Peckinpah hid behind dark glasses and deep scowls; it was rumored that Holden had been appalled when he saw the film. After a reporter from the Reader's Digest got up to ask "Why was this film ever made?" I stood up and called it a masterpiece; I felt, then and now, that "The Wild Bunch" is one of the great defining moments of modern movies.

In some ways, the violence became the selling point, as when the film was cut down, they dropped quiet character-oriented scenes.

Circumstances kind of forced Warner Bros. into making the film: they had just lost the bidding war for William Goldman's Butch & Sundance script to Fox, but had Peckinpah under contract developing (IIRC) a modern day action vehicle for Lee Marvin when they realized Peckinpah also had an epic Western script ready to go that had several similarities to B & S (aging outlaws on the run in Latin America, concluding with a major set-piece pitting the (anti-)heroes in seemingly one-sided stand-off against the local military), and which could be fast-tracked into production, beating Butch & Sundance into theatres. So that's what they did, losing the Marvin film in process.

And that Lee Marvin film was…Cat Ballou?

j/k don’t really care. Came to say I think there was a thing of “if you thought Bonnie and Clyde was violent, well then just wait until you see this film.”

Rog OTM again.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/straw-dogs-1971

Not sure about all the different edits of Straw Dogs, but Ebert's review strongly implies the one he saw is missing a major scene, or it didn't and he's just ignoring a huge elephant in the room in a very interesting way, not unlike the Hoffman character in the film.

Tbc I was trying to goof on myself for making such an obvious remark re:the wild bunch. The main thing i ever heard about it is that everyone clutched their pearls over how violent it was supposed to be, but I still honestly didn’t expect to watch it in 2022 and be thinking “damn this is actually really very fucking violent”

Feel like Robert Ryan is the key to the whole thing.

― L.H.O.O.Q. Jones (James Redd and the Blecchs),

As ever.

I almost added “D’oh!” right after I typed that.

If you don't like Roger's take, try Pauline Kael's: https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/straw-dogs-peckinpahs-obsession-pauline-kael/