SAM PECKINPAH: PLAYBOY INTERVIEW
(1972)
A candid conversation with the screen’s “Picasso of violence,” controversial creator of “the wild bunch” and “straw dogs”
by William Murray
In a scene from Sam Peckinpah’s movie The Wild Bunch, the bunch — a ruthless gang of misfits — is gathered around a campfire after a busy day. They’ve robbed a bank and killed most of a town while escaping, only to discover that the blood bath had been committed not for the gold they thought they’d stolen but for a worthless bag of washers. Passing a bottle around, they talk about what’s to become of them. William Holden, the leader, says to Ernest Borgnine, “This was going to be my last. I was going to pull back after this one.” Borgnine replies, “Pull back to what?” This is the theme of Peckinpah’s classic film: desperate men with a worn out way of living locked in a doomed and brutal struggle against a new order.