Will second Son of Griff on Junior Bonner, which is frequently funny (and there is a great fight that explicitly pokes fun at the end of Wild Bunch) but quietly sad as well. And acknowledging sorrow is something Peckinpah could do quite well, it’s there in the end of Ride The High Country and it’s there as the Bunch is slung over the saddles of that egg-sucking gutter trash. Not only do we see them die (no Butch and Sundance bullshit here) but we see them dead and fodder for assholes, there are no illusions about what has been lost and where it got them, but that just makes their actions stand up stronger.

Thats Pike claiming his power, if only for a moment. Hes asserted his dominance by shooting Mapache, and for that one moment he has the respect and fear hed claimed from authority as a young outlaw.

One constant theme in Peckinpah’s films is that the old school mid century code for masculinity was self destructive and suicidal. Its unfortunate he had such a blind spot about misogyny b/c his films are a great great insight into a certain kind of toxic masculinity.

From what I understand Junior Bonner was meant to be his shift away from overtly violent films. Then it bombed and the rest is history.

No problems. Sorry its kind of late.

You alright sharing a date with Miller?

Sent

I really had NO idea about the ending except that it was famous, and I’m very glad I didn’t know what was coming. I watched open mouthed for a good ten minutes. Hell of an impact.

Yeah, some of it was certainly bluster, and if you actually watch his movies you get the feeling the man doesn’t mean half of it, but it was painful to read. The guy really did destroy himself but then I don’t know if he could be any other way.

Peckinpah’s values were those of frontier California and they don’t quite map on to modern ideologies. (Henry George would be one of his philosophical ancestors; probably Joan Didion would be his closest contemporary match.) He saw the final result of what the imperialism of Progress did to California; I think it’s why his very best movies have great endings, and are about endings. If he took his view of the world to the point where he saw it destroyed, it’s because that’s what he saw growing up. (It just hit me, the connection to Paul Verhoeven: you can see both of their oeuvres as a lifelong struggle with what they saw in their childhood, a part of themselves they could never fully assimilate or reject.)

As @johnbruni:disqus previously stated, they operate on a different value system that seems more in tune with establishing roots in community and tradition, as well as heteronormativity. Vega in Alfredo Garcia really communicates her withering respect for Benny as he predicates his romantic commitment through an act of sacrilege. In Cross of Iron—well, lets just say that it literalizes a Freudian metaphor.