Pat Garrett Pornography

Before I forget:

--Watch me this Thursday night (January 19) on E! Entertainment's E! True Hollywood Story: The Baldwins at 8 PM EST and Tuesday, January 24 at 7 PST and 9 EST. Yes, the Baldwins whom I avidly defend. I think. I love Alec. It was on last week but I forgot to mention.

--Read the The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight by Marc Weingarten. An absorbing and entertaining survey of journalism's last golden age, Weingarten's book offers all kinds of fascinating insight into the "New Journalism Revolution." From writers like Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson and Joan Didion to brave editors like Clay Felker, the book chronicles not only the ballsy stories and writing style (which, sadly has left us) but the backstory, the egos and the drugs. This book makes you want to write.

--Rent or buy Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid which, if you have any taste in film is like, "no shit." Must I explain the merits of one of Peckinpah's most ambitious Westerns? And dig this cast: James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Jason Robards, Chill Wills, Richard Jaeckel, Katy Jurado, Luke Askew, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Elam, Richard Bright, L.Q. Jones, Slim Pickens and Bob Dylan. Never mind how brilliant the film is (or which cut you're supposed to watch)--this is my version of pornography.

Comments

[Theron]

I remember when Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid came out in the '70s. It was pretty much buried and never got its due. Peckinpah had become a pariah and the industry was shitting on him. Poor man. But the film rocks!

[kd]

The whole damn box is great. Watched Ride the High Country & The Ballad of Cable Hogue last week. Stunned. Awestruck. Peckinpah, probably only after the Grand Lion John Ford, can be considered THE great American film maker. He ranks with Whitman, Melville, Twain, Pollack, Coltrane as an American master.

PS: John Huston & Orson Wells come close. Damn close.

PPS: Don't miss (new to DVD) Budd Boetticher's transcendental Seven men from Now. Randolph Scott. Lee Marvin. Script by Burt Kennedy. What more need be said?