If I had to pick one person, it would be the late filmmaker Sam Peckinpah, the most complicated, contradictory, and self-destructively creative person I\u2019ve ever known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I first went to see The Wild Bunch<\/em> at Chicago\u2019s State-Lake Theater in the summer of 1969 \u2014 four years out of Colgate and still in search of a career. Instantly recognizing the work of an original American artist whose medium was motion pictures, it altered the course of my life. On the recommendation of Colgate art professor and my mentor, the late Eric Ryan, I applied to film school at Northwestern University, eventually leading to a career as a screenwriter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of The Ballad of Cable Hogue<\/em>, as Cable (Jason Robards) lies dying, the Reverend Joshua Douglas Sloan (David Warner) delivers a remarkable eulogy that concludes with: \u201cHe lived and died in the desert, and hell will never be too hot for him.\u201d Hence, for my dinner with Peckinpah, we would meet at El Compadre, the Mexican restaurant on Sunset Boulevard famous for its flaming margaritas. He has four before our food arrives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus properly lubricated, Peckinpah begins by discussing Aristotle\u2019s Poetics, then moves on to the works of Tennessee Williams, William Saroyan, and James Dickey, with Pirandello, Chekov, and Brecht thrown in. I ask him if there are any films he regrets not making? He speaks wistfully of Malcolm Lowery\u2019s Under the Volcano<\/em>, the tale of an alcoholic British consul in Mexico on the Day of the Dead that was filmed by kindred spirit John Huston in 1984 (ironically the year Peckinpah died at 59). \u201cI would have given anything to have directed it. That was my story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I ask him what he misses most, and he comments on how difficult it is to get roast wild boar, a dish that reminds him of the studio executives he fought with throughout his career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Always abrasive and uncompromising, difficult and demanding, Peckinpah was a visionary who had the ability to stare into the fire and capture on film what he found there. While it\u2019s been suggested he had a death wish, the truth is he simply lived himself to death. Fortunately, the genius of his work lives on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n