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Spring 2015

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68 CINEMONTAGE / SPRING 2015 CUT/PRINT The Authentic Death & Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: The Untold Story of Peckinpah's Last Western by Paul Seydor, ACE Northwestern University Press Paperback, 408 pages, $29.95 ISBN 978-8101-3056-2 by Betsy A. McLane S ometimes a title can be misleading, but in the case of The Authentic Death & Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: The Untold Story of Peckinpah's Last Western — the title, including ampersand — is part and parcel of ACE member Paul Seydor's exactingly told story. The notorious history of acclaimed director Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973); its decades-long gestation, multiple script versions, casting changes, troubled location shoot in the Mexican desert and, most controversially, its nightmarish post- production are detailed by Seydor in a way that is both excellent and excruciating. The author is an expert not only on this film, Peckinpah and the Western genre, but on film editing. He is a working Guild editor and teaches the craft at the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University in Orange County, California. He authored Peckinpah: The Western Films – A Reconsideration (1997) and was nominated for an Oscar (with Nick Redman) as producer for Best Documentary Short for The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage (1997), which Seydor also directed. These bona fides coupled with a 30-plus year devotion to the subject make this book an unequaled revelation of Peckinpah's singular way of creating — and disowning — his art within the changing Hollywood studio system of the late 1960s and early '70s. These are the excellent and exciting elements in Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife. The excruciating part is the challenge to get through this saga's thousands of details, knowing that the outcome is a soul-draining collision of personalities and economic forces that make Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid a classic film maudit. Seydor starts at the beginning of the "true" Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid story. Chapters One and Two are comprised of a thoroughly researched introduction to this mythic tale of the American West. The book is full of the same reliable scholarship, appended by almost 50 pages of notes, footnotes, bibliography and filmography. It also incorporates many unique interviews with Peckinpah's collaborators, friends and antagonists conducted by the author. Brightest among these are the conversations with editor Roger Spottiswoode. There is no one alive to interview about the Lincoln County, New Mexico cattle/business wars of the 1870s and '80s, which led to Garrett's killing The Kid, so Seydor probes many recountings of this legend. He starts with "penny dreadfuls" published almost before Billy's body was in the ground, and settles on the account written by (or as told to) Garrett as the most accurate. This is The Authentic Life of Billy – The Kid, the full title of which continues: "The Noted Desperado of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of Daring and Blood Made his Name a Terror in New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico by Pat F. Garrett, Sheriff of Lincoln Co., New Mexico, by whom he was finally hunted down and captured by killing him, A Faithful and "Interesting Narrative" (inconsistent italics included). Respected novelist Charles Neider did a similar study for his fictionalization, The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones (1956), raising the story from pulp Western to serious novel. Study of this novel's genesis and continuing influence comprises Seydor's Chapter Three. Admired and adapted into a screenplay by Peckinpah in 1957 with Stanley Kubrick the intended director, Neider's book and the screenplay are compared character-to-character and almost sequence-to- sequence in The Authentic Death. This screenplay never was filmed, but it eventually morphed into One Eyed Jacks (1961), starring and directed by Marlon Brando, and written by Guy Trosper. The original Peckinpah screenplay begins his long attachment to the Billy and Garrett material, and leads Seydor to further detailed comparisons as he explores what became the shooting script for Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, written by Rudolph Wurlitzer and given to Peckinpah in 1970-71. Originally written for director Monte Hellman (whose Two Lane Blacktop was Wurlitzer's first screenplay), this version was titled simply Billy the Kid and sold to producer Gordon Carroll at MGM. Knockin' on History's Door The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage before Billy's body was in the ground, and settles on the account written by (or as told to) Garrett as the most accurate. This is Billy – The Kid continues: " of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of Daring and Blood Made his Name a Terror in New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico Sheriff of Lincoln Co., New Mexico, by whom he was finally hunted down and captured by killing him, Faithful and "Interesting Narrative (inconsistent italics included). Neider did a similar study for his fictionalization, of Hendry Jones story from pulp Western to serious novel. Study of this novel's genesis and continuing influence comprises Seydor's Chapter Three. Admired and adapted into a screenplay by Peckinpah in 1957 with Stanley Kubrick the intended director, Neider's book and the screenplay are compared character-to-character and almost sequence-to- CONTINUED ON PAGE 75

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