If They Move . . . Kill 'Em! The Life and TImes of Sam Peckinpah

by Weddle, David

• ISBN13: 9780802137760
• ISBN10: 0802137768
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-12-18
• Publisher: Grove Press

Summary

The only major biography of Sam Peckinpah in print, David Weddle's "If They Move ... Kill 'Em!" tells the wild story of Peckinpah's life with novelistic verve and does justice to one of the most important bodies of work in American cinema. Born into a clan of lumberjacks, ranchers, and frontier lawyers, David Samuel Peckinpah served in the Marines and then made his way to Hollywood, where he worked on a string of low-budget features before becoming a writer for Gunsmoke in 1955. Quickly becoming the hottest writer in television, Peckinpah went on to direct a phenomenal series of features, including Ride the High Country, Straw Dogs, The Getaway, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and The Wild Bunch. The life he led -- glamorous, wild, and beset by personal demons -- is as vivid as his films. A hopeless romantic and a grim nihilist, inspiration to such luminaries as De Palma, Scorsese, and Tarantino, Sam Peckinpah was an audacious American original. "If They Move ... Kill 'Em!" is his wild and woolly story. Book jacket.

Author Biography

David Weddle has written for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Film Comment, Sight and Sound, and Daily Variety. He lives in Malibu, California

Table of Contents

Prologue	1	(14)
``Oh, Another Black Peckinpah!''	14	(46)
The Prodigious Interloper	60	(50)
``You Can't Kill a Memory That Way''	110	(57)
The Bastard Son of John Ford	167	(56)
Moby-Dick on Horseback	223	(42)
On the Beach	265	(42)
The Wild Bunch	307	(71)
``Images They Can't Forget''	378	(67)
Caught in the Spotlight	445	(47)
Into the Abyss	492	(38)
``It Ain't Like it Used to Be, But...It'll Do''	530	(23)
Notes	553	(10)
Index	563