ERA UN HOMBRE
What can I say I'm a sucker for docs featuring friends and collaborators sharing stories and paying tribute to pained and gifted men who died early due to substance abuse!! Non-violent men and their violent ends. A.k.a this one and I Don't Know Jack (2002) and that's it.
A real tear jerker! Very sad! Sam, a sweet and passionate and confused man! Self assured and insecure! He had perfect vision and worked himself and everyone in his wake to the bone to turn it into exhibition. A cautionary tale sure, but that son of a bitch was admirable and is absolutely my hero despite (maybe even because of) his flaws. Plus cool headbands, cool knives, cool paranoia...
You get Jason Robbards, the perfect apparatus, reading from Peckinpah's papers and letters as if Peckinpah himself was narrating our picture, woven amongst archival footage. It's really stunning. Here are two men who really know how to say things straight and true. I can't think of a better way to have done it.
This is someone who doesn't just push, prod, and poke but aggressively provokes in everything he does, in his hostility and in his tenderness. The most tragic and harrowing anecdote comes from Katherine Haber, long time associate/assistant/friend when she finds a microphone that Peckinpah planted in her drawer at the apex of his paranoia which as you can imagine, completely bulldozed their friendship. But despite it all, everyone recounts their stories with LOVE. So much love!
Kris Kristofferson resting on then plucking away at his guitar while he talks to us is lovely. It really makes me feel like I'm just shootin the shit with the dudes, reminiscing about our good pal Sam. Try not to cry listening to this song Kris wrote and performed for Sam's funeral. Sike! that's not possible!!!!! 😢ðŸ˜ðŸ˜°
The drug abuse really makes me squirm, it's distressing and disturbing and heartbreaking and tragic but that's merely a part of a whole. He really, truly touched lives goddammit!! I don't work or love as viciously and ardently or as excitedly as he did, but I can say that I wish I would and maybe I'll try! James Coburn ends the film by saying "He pushed me over the edge. Sam was the guy who would push you over the edge of the abyss and nine times out of ten, jump in after you. Sometimes he wouldn't." *affectionately wicked and reverbious laugh rings out*
All I'm sayin is that your friends aren't your friends if they offer you coke!! But do you, I guess!!
As an aside, here's my favorite picture from the set of my favorite movie. Peckinpah took out a full page spread in the Hollywood Reporter in response to the "rumours" of drunkeness and debauchery on set admitting "There have been some mornings." My duuuuuude.
**Seen on my computer, on the Straw Dogs Criterion supplements disc
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