Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

This article is about the movie. For the musical album, see Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (album).
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Produced by Gordon Carroll
Written by Rudy Wurlitzer
Starring
Music by Bob Dylan
Cinematography John Coquillon
Edited by Roger Spottiswoode
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release dates
  • May 23, 1973 (USA)
Running time
 106 minutes
(Theatrical version)
122 minutes
(Preview version)
115 minutes
(Special edition)
Country United States
Language English
Budget $4,638,783[1]
Box office $11,000,000[1]

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a 1973 American Western drama film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, and Bob Dylan, and written by Rudy Wurlitzer. The film is about an aging Pat Garrett, hired as a lawman by a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid.[2]

Dylan composed several songs for the movie's score and soundtrack album Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, which was released the same year. It was filmed on location in Durango, Mexico,[3] and was nominated for two BAFTA Awards for Film Music (Dylan) and Most Promising Newcomer (Kristofferson). It was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of Best Original Score (Dylan).[4]

The film was noted for behind-the-scenes battles between Peckinpah and the production company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Soon after completion, the film was taken away from the director and substantially re-edited, resulting in a truncated version released to theaters and largely disowned by cast and crew members. Peckinpah's preview version[Note 1] was released on video in 1988, leading to a re-evaluation, with many critics hailing it as a mistreated classic and one of the era's best films. It is ranked 126th on Empire magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.[5]

Plot

In 1881 in Old Fort Sumner, New Mexico, William H. Bonney, known as Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson), is passing the time with friends shooting chickens for fun. An old friend of Billy's, Pat Garrett (James Coburn), rides into town with Deputy Sheriff J.W. Bell (Matt Clark) and joins the diversion. Later, over drinks, Garrett informs Billy that the electorate want him out of the country, and that in five days, when he becomes Sheriff of Lincoln County, he'll make Billy leave.

Six days later, Garrett and his deputies surround the small farmhouse where Billy and his gang are holed up. In the ensuing gun battle, Charlie Bowdre (Charles Martin Smith) and several other men on both sides are killed, and Billy is taken prisoner. As Billy awaits his execution in the Lincoln County Jail for the killing of Buckshot Roberts, he is taunted and beaten by self-righteous Deputy Sheriff Bob Ollinger (R.G. Armstrong) while the hangman's gallows are being built nearby. After J.W. Bell intervenes, Ollinger leaves to get a drink. Billy finds a gun hidden for him in the outhouse and gets the drop on Bell, shooting him in the back. He quickly retrieves Ollinger's shotgun loaded with "sixteen thin dimes" and shoots Ollinger dead in the street, saying, "Keep the change, Bob."

After Garrett recruits a new deputy sheriff named Alamosa Bill Kermit (Jack Elam), he rides to Santa Fe to meet with Gov. Lew Wallace (Jason Robards) who introduces him to a pair of powerful men from the Santa Fe Ring. They offer a thousand dollars for the capture of Billy the Kid, but Garrett rejects their money, saying he will bring him in anyway.

Billy returns to his gang at Old Fort Sumner, where he decides to lay back for a few days. He is confronted by three strangers looking to kill him; all three are killed in the subsequent shootout, helped by another stranger called Alias (Bob Dylan), who kills one of the men with a knife through the neck. Alias had witnessed Billy's escape from the Lincoln County Jail.

Garrett meets up with Sheriff Colin Baker (Slim Pickens), hoping he can provide information on Billy's whereabouts. Baker and his wife (Katy Jurado) go with Garrett to arrest some of Billy's old gang. In a gunfight, the gang members including Black Harris (L.Q. Jones) are killed and Baker is mortally wounded. Baker's wife comforts the dying lawman as he waits to die by a river. Later that evening, Garrett watches a barge floating down a river with a man shooting bottles in the water. Garrett and the two face off briefly from a distance before lowering their rifles.

Garrett is joined by a glory-seeking John W. Poe (John Beck), who works for the Santa Fe Ring. The two ride southwest to meet John Chisum (Barry Sullivan), a cattle baron in the region, who informs them that Billy has been rustling his cattle again and killed some of his men. Billy once worked for him and claims Chisum owes him back salary.

Anticipating Garrett's arrival in Old Fort Sumner, Billy's friend Paco (Emilio Fernández) and his family leave for Old Mexico, soon followed by Billy. Along the way, Billy stops at the Horrell Trading Post, which is owned by an old friend. By chance, Horrell (Gene Evans) is hosting Garrett's new deputy, Alamosa Bill. After they finish eating, Billy and Alamosa step outside for a duel at ten paces, with Billy shooting Alamosa dead. The deputy's last words are, "At least I'll be remembered."

As Billy continues south toward Old Mexico, he comes across some of Chisum's men murdering his friend Paco and raping his wife. Billy shoots them dead, and after Paco dies in his arms, Billy heads back to Old Fort Sumner.

Garrett and Poe stop at a saloon owned by Lemuel Jones (Chill Wills). Garrett tells Poe to ride on without him and that Garrett will pick him up in Roswell in five or six days. Three members of Billy's gang come into the saloon. After taunting Holly (Richard Bright) and getting him drunk, Garrett outdraws him and shoots Holly dead. He tells Alias to give Billy a message that they had "a little drink together."

Garrett rides to Roswell, where he learns from a prostitute named Ruthie Lee (Rutanya Alda) at a brothel that Billy is in Fort Sumner. Garrett then has group sex with Ruthie Lee and other prostitutes. Poe finds him there and is disgusted with Garrett's behavior. Garrett sends for the local Sheriff Kip McKinney (Richard Jaeckel), an old friend, to enlist McKinney's help.

Garrett, McKinney, and Poe arrive outside Old Fort Sumner and wait until dark before moving in. Billy and Maria (Rita Coolidge) bed down in a bunk at old-timer Pete Maxwell's (Paul Fix). Garrett approaches the house, but hearing them make love, he waits outside on the porch. Billy later steps outside to get something to eat. Garrett enters from a side door and waits in the darkness for his prey. After spotting the strangers McKinney and Poe outside the house, Billy goes back inside, sees Garrett and smiles. Garrett fires a bullet at Billy, hitting him above the heart, killing him. He then shoots his own image in a mirror.

Garrett spends the night watching over the body of his old friend. He angrily prevents Poe from touching Billy's body. The next morning, the townspeople of Old Fort Sumner gather to see the lifeless body of William H. Bonney. Sheriff Pat Garrett mounts his horse and rides out of town, with a small boy throwing stones at him.

Twenty-eight years later in 1909 near Las Cruces, New Mexico, Garrett is riding with some associates when he is ambushed and killed by men working for the Santa Fe Ring, a group of powerful attorneys and land speculators.[Note 2]

Cast

Production

The screenplay of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was written by Rudy Wurlitzer and was originally intended to be directed by Monte Hellman. The two had previously worked together on the acclaimed film Two-Lane Blacktop (1971). Sam Peckinpah became involved through actor James Coburn, who wanted to play the legendary sheriff Pat Garrett.

Peckinpah believed that this was his chance to make a definitive statement on the Western genre and complete the revision that he had begun with Ride the High Country (1962) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Working with Wurlitzer, he rewrote the script in order to create a more cyclical narrative, and added a prologue and epilogue depicting Garrett's own assassination at the hands of the men who hired him to kill Billy the Kid. In the original script, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid never met onscreen until the film's conclusion, and Wurlitzer reportedly resented Peckinpah's reworking of the narrative. Wurlitzer and Peckinpah had a strained relationship, and Wurlitzer would later write a book highly unfavorable to Peckinpah.

Pekinpah initially considered Bo Hopkins for the part of Billy, but he eventually cast country music star Kris Kristofferson as the outlaw. Kristofferson was 36 when the film was made, playing 21-year-old Billy. Kristofferson's band would play small roles, along with his wife Rita Coolidge. Kristofferson also brought Bob Dylan into the film, initially hired to write the title song. Dylan eventually wrote the score and played the small role of "Alias". Peckinpah had never heard of Dylan before, but was reportedly moved by hearing him play the proposed title song and hired him immediately. Among the songs written by Dylan for the film was "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," still regarded as one of rock music's most enduring anthems.

Peckinpah deliberately cast his film's supporting roles with legendary Western character actors such as Chill Wills, Katy Jurado, Jack Elam, Slim Pickens, Barry Sullivan, Dub Taylor, R.G. Armstrong, Elisha Cook, Jr., and Paul Fix. Jason Robards had starred in Peckinpah's earlier films, the television production Noon Wine (1966) and The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and had a cameo appearance as the governor. The large supporting cast also included Richard Jaeckel, Charles Martin Smith, Harry Dean Stanton, Matt Clark, L.Q. Jones, Emilio Fernández, Aurora Clavel, Luke Askew, Jack Dodson, Richard Bright, and John Beck.

From the beginning, the film was plagued with production difficulties. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer President James Aubrey, for economic reasons, refused to give Peckinpah the time or budget required, forcing the director to rely on local crew members in the Mexican state of Durango. Multiple technical problems led to costly reshoots, including malfunctioning cameras. Cast and crew members also came down with influenza. Aubrey objected to several scenes which he considered superfluous to the film's plot, and Peckinpah and his crew reportedly worked weekends and lunch hours in order to secretly complete the sequences. Aubrey began to send telegrams to the set complaining about the number of camera setups that Peckinpah used and the time spent to shoot specific scenes. According to producer Gordon Carroll, the movie's set was "a battleground."

Peckinpah was plagued by alcoholism, which he would struggle with for the remainder of his life. This, combined with his clashes with Aubrey and the studio, led to Peckinpah's growing reputation as a difficult, unreliable filmmaker. Reportedly, when Dylan first arrived on the set, he and Kristofferson sat to watch dailies with Peckinpah. The director was so unhappy with the footage that he angrily stood on a folding chair and urinated on the screen. Similar stories began to reach Hollywood, prompting Peckinpah to purchase a full-page ad in the Hollywood Reporter mocking the rumors and the brass at MGM. Hollywood producers were not amused. The film finished 21 days behind schedule and $1.6 million over budget.

Post-production controversy

By the time that Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was in the editing room, Peckinpah's relationship with the studio and his own producers had reached the breaking point. Aubrey, enraged by the cost and production overruns, demanded the film for an unrealistic release date. Peckinpah and his editors were forced into a desperate situation in order to finish on time. Furthermore, Aubrey still objected to several sequences in the film which he wanted removed, forcing Peckinpah to engage in protracted negotiations over the film's content. Adding to the problems, Bob Dylan had never done a feature film score before and Peckinpah's usual composer, Jerry Fielding, was unhappy with being relegated to a minor role in the scoring process.

Peckinpah did complete a preview version of the film, which was shown to critics on at least one occasion. Martin Scorsese had just made Mean Streets (1973) and was at the screening, and he praised the film as Peckinpah's greatest since The Wild Bunch.

This version, however, would not see the light of day for over ten years. Peckinpah was eventually forced out of the production, and Aubrey had the film severely cut from 124 to 106 minutes, resulting in the film being released as a truncated version largely disowned by cast and crew members. This version was a box-office failure, grossing $8 million domestically,[1] of which the studio earned only $2.7 million in theatrical rentals,[7] against a budget of more than $4.6 million. However, the film grossed a total of $11 million worldwide.[1] The film was also panned by most major critics, who had harbored high expectations for the director's first Western since The Wild Bunch. Roger Ebert rated the film two stars out of four, beginning his review with: "Sam Peckinpah attempted to have his name removed from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. I sympathized with him. If this wasn't entirely his work, he shouldn't have had to take the blame." Ebert went on to note, "Another alarming factor is that no less than six editors are credited. Not assistant editors, but editors; this sets a modern-day record, I think. My guess is that there was an argument over the movie's final form, and that Peckinpah and MGM platooned editors at each other during the battle. You'd think the executives would have figured out that their only chance was to release the movie as Peckinpah made it; audiences were more interested in the new Peckinpah film than in still another rehash of Billy the Kid."[8]

The film remained something of an enigma for the next decade, with rumors flying about other versions and the nature of what had been left out of the release version. Peckinpah himself was in possession of his own preview version, which he often showed to friends as his own definitive vision of the film.

Rediscovery

In 1988, Turner Home Entertainment, with distribution by MGM, released Peckinpah's preview version of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid on video and Laserdisc. This version led to a rediscovery and reevaluation of the film, with many critics praising it as a lost masterpiece and proof of Peckinpah's vision as a filmmaker at this time. The film's reputation has grown substantially since this version was released, and the film has come to be regarded as something of a modern classic, equal in many ways to Peckinpah's earlier films.[9] Kristofferson noted in an interview, though, that Peckinpah had felt that Dylan had been pushed on him by the studio and thus left "Knocking on Heaven's Door" out of the preview version. In Kristofferson's opinion, "Heaven's Door" "was the strongest use of music that I had ever seen in a film. Unfortunately Sam ... had a blind spot there."[10]

In 2005, a DVD of the film distributed by Warner Brothers was released containing the preview version as well as a new special edition which combined elements of the theatrical version, the preview version, and several new scenes never released in the previous versions. This third version of the film, known as the "special edition", runs slightly shorter than the preview version.[11]

References

Notes
  1. ↑ The preview version is sometimes referred to as Peckinpah's "director's cut".
  2. ↑ This framing device was not included in the theatrical version of the film.
Citations
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Retrieved May 7, 2013.
  2. ↑ "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved April 9, 2012.
  3. ↑ "Locations for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved April 9, 2012.
  4. ↑ "Awards for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved April 9, 2012.
  5. ↑ "Empire's 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". Retrieved 24 January 2013.
  6. ↑ "Full cast and crew for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
  7. ↑ "Big Rental Films of 1973", Variety, 9 January 1974 p 19
  8. ↑ Ebert, Roger (May 23, 1973). "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved April 24, 2012.
  9. ↑ Weddle, David (1994). If They Move...Kill 'Em!. Grove Press. pp. 489–491. ISBN 0-8021-3776-8.
  10. ↑ Leigh, Spencer. "Kris Kristofferson Talks to Spencer Leigh". Spencer Leigh. Retrieved November 25, 2011.
  11. ↑ "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Three Films, One Man's Opinion... Comparing the Three Different Cuts". Listology. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
Further reading
  • Bliss, Michael (1993). Justified Lives: Morality and Narrative in the Films of Sam Peckinpah. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-1823-0.
  • Dukore, Bernard F. (1999). Sam Peckinpah's Feature Films. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-02486-3.
  • Engel, Leonard ed. (2003). Sam Peckinpah's West: New Perspectives. University of Utah Press. ISBN 978-0-87480-772-1.
  • Evans, Max (1972). Sam Peckinpah: Master of Violence. Dakota Press. ISBN 978-0-88249-011-3.
  • Fine, Marshall (1991). Bloody Sam: The Life and Films of Sam Peckinpah. Donald I. Fine. ISBN 978-1-55611-236-2.
  • Hayes, Kevin J. (2008). Sam Peckinpah: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-934110-63-8.
  • Seydor, Paul (1996). Peckinpah: The Western Films, A Reconsideration. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-02268-5.
  • Simons, John L. (2011). Peckinpah's Tragic Westerns: A Critical Study. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-6133-2.
  • Weddle, David (1994). If They Move ... Kill 'Em! The Life and Times of Sam Peckipah. Grove Press. ISBN 978-0-8021-1546-1.

External links