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Sam Peckinpah: Director
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Keith, who saw a ‘pretty bad’ script, was in; providing Sam Peckinpah was sat in the director’s chair. Sam would fix The Deadly Companions, no problem; it was the sort of challenge he relished.
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Outrageous and bizarre, this classic Sam Peckinpah saga stars Warren Oates as an American loser living in Mexico, who seeks redemption — and a large bounty — when a powerful patriarch calls for revenge against the man who got his daughter pregnant. Largely reviled when originally released, The Head (as it is known to film cultists) is a grotesquely gothic variation on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and is now considered one of the director’s most personal and uncompromising films. Costarring Kris Kristofferson, Gig Young and Isela Vega.
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More than two decades after his death, the considerable body of work writer/director/producer Sam Peckinpah left behind remains overshadowed by the unsavory labels applied to him (... justly) during his life. The fact is that once a public figure has been associated with such poisonous adjectives as “misogynist” and “fascist,” little can be done to shake off the accompanying stigma.
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Born to a California legal family, American director Sam Peckinpah was raised on Peckinpah Mountain, the descendant of pioneers. Learning to ride and shoot early, he became a troublemaker as a teenager.
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After earning a master's degree in drama from the University of Southern California, Peckinpah took a job handling props for network television. He was fired from the musician Liberace's TV show for refusing to wear a suit on the set. He next worked as a dialogue director and occasional writer for movies. As an assistant to director Don Siegel, Peckinpah helped write the script and had a small acting role in the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He then returned to television, working on scripts for such westerns as Gunsmoke. By 1960, Peckinpah was writing and directing his own TV series, The Westerner, but it was cancelled after 13 episodes.
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By 1982... Peckinpah's health was in poor shape. Producers Peter S. Davis and William N. Panzer were undaunted, as they felt that having Peckinpah's name attached to The Osterman Weekend (1983) would lend the suspense thriller an air of respectability. Peckinpah accepted the job but reportedly hated the convoluted screenplay based upon Robert Ludlum's novel. Multiple actors in Hollywood auditioned for the film, intrigued by the opportunity. Many of those who signed on, including John Hurt, Burt Lancaster and Dennis Hopper, did so for less than their usual salaries for a chance to work with the legendary director. By the time shooting wrapped in January of 1983 in Los Angeles, Peckinpah and the producers were hardly speaking.
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