David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah (/ˈpɛkɪnˌpɑː/; February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film director and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch (1969). He was known for the innovative and explicit depiction of action and violence as well as his revisionist approach to the Western genre.Peckinpah's films generally deal with the conflict between values and ideals, and the corruption of violence in human society. He was given the nickname "Bloody Sam" owing to the violence in his films. His characters are often loners or losers who desire to be honorable, but are forced to compromise in order to survive in a world of nihilism and brutality.Peckinpah's combative personality, marked by years of alcohol and drug abuse, affected his professional legacy. Many of his films were noted for behind-the-scenes battles with producers and crew members, damaging his reputation and career during his lifetime. Some of his films, including Straw Dogs (1971), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), remain controversial.
Lupita Peckinpah, Matthew Peckinpah, Kristen Peckinpah, Sharon Peckinpah
Parents
Fern Louise Church, David Edward Peckinpah
Nominations
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film, DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Television, Writers Guild of America Award for Best TV Anthology, Any Length, Writers Guild of America Award for Television Be...
Movies
The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Getaway, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Ride the High Country, Cross of Iron, Convoy, Major Dundee, Junior Bonner, The Osterman Weekend, The Killer Elite, The Deadly Companions, Invasion of the Body Snatc...
TV Shows
The Rifleman, The Westerner
Star Sign
Pisces
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Trademark
1
His characters often die graphic and emotionally agonizing deaths.
Frequently cast Jason Robards, James Coburn, Emilio Fernández, Warren Oates, Kris Kristofferson, Ben Johnson, David Warner, Slim Pickens and L.Q. Jones.
4
The lead character (or characters) in most of his films live by a code of conduct or honor that proves to be obsolete in the face of changing times.
5
Mirrored Sunglasses
6
Balletic, slow-motion action sequences, edited so that the deaths of two or more characters are shown simultaneously.
7
The films he directed were notorious for their extremely violent and bloody action sequences and climaxes.
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Quote
1
[on how screenwriting allowed him to become a director] Yeah, but it was hell, because I hate writing. I suffer the tortures of the damned. I can't sleep and it feels like I'm going to die any minute. Eventually, I lock myself away somewhere, out of reach of a gun, and get it on in one big push. I'd always been around writers and had friends who were writers, but I'd never realized what a lot of goddamned anguish is involved. But it was a way to break in. I paid my dues in this business. I was a go fer, a stagehand. I swept studios and I watch a few good people work. The I started writing and finally selling TV scripts. And after a while I decided to try my hand at movies. I always had two or three projects going at a time. I'd put everything into them and I'd sell a few and then they'd disappear.
2
The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws--everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he's only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don't say to me we're not violent.
3
[on R.G. Armstrong] R.G. Armstrong played righteous villainy better than anybody I've ever seen.
4
[Responding to critics of his films as being too violent] Well, killing a man isn't clean and quick and simple. It's bloody and awful. And maybe if enough people come to realize that shooting somebody isn't just fun and games, maybe we'll get somewhere.
5
[on Four Star Productions, Dick Powell, and the genesis of The Rifleman (1958)] I did this one script for Gunsmoke (1955) that Charles Marquis Warren turned down--said it was a piece of shit! I knew it was one of the best things I'd written, so I took it back and reworked it and Dick Powell at Four Star bought it as a pilot for "The Rifleman". Dick Powell was really a fine gentleman and the eagle behind Four Star's success; he helped me a great deal. I didn't direct the first "Rifleman"; Arnold Laven did that. I just wrote it. I did direct four of them before I left, however. The first one I directed I also wrote, called "The Marshal" [The Rifleman: The Marshal (1958)]. It was the episode that brought in Paul Fix as the reformed drunk who became the marshal--a part he played for five years.
6
[on his departure from The Rifleman (1958)] I walked from the series because Jules V. Levy and that group had taken over my initial concept and perverted it into pap. They wouldn't let [Johnny Crawford] grow up; they refused to let it be the story of a boy who grows to manhood learning what it's all about.
7
[Discussing the protagonist of his series, The Westerner (1960)] I wanted to create a truly realistic saddle bum of the west. I wanted to make him as honest and real as I could do it. I drew him unlettered--most of these guys couldn't read or write. Not too bright. Certainly unheroic. I know cowboys. I grew up on a cattle ranch--in Merced County [California]. I wanted to draw a real one. No hero, no lawman, no bounty--a real saddle tramp. That's what Dave Blassingame is--a saddle tramp. Sure, sometimes he gets into funny situations--like in "Libby". Sometimes he tries to be a hero, like in "Jeff", tries to rescue a girl from a lousy life and the bum she's in love with. But he fails because he's not cut from any heroic mold.
8
[recalling how close 1963's _"The Dick Powell Theatre" (1961) {The Losers (#2.16)}_ came to becoming a series] "The Losers" was a funny show. We had Keenan Wynn and Lee Marvin locked up for a series with it until Tom McDermott wouldn't pay Lee's price. Well, after the show continued to draw a large segment of the audience around the sixth time out, McDermott called Lee and raised the ante to something like a million dollars and Lee told him to go stick it up his ass! I've always liked Lee for that--it cost me a lot of money at the time but I would've done the same thing in Lee's place.
9
[on Kris Kristofferson] I like Kris because he writes poetry and he's a fucking good man. Working with Kris on Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) was one of the great experiences of my life.
10
[interview in Le Devoir, 10/12/74] I don't want to hear it said that I don't like women! I tried to show in [Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)] that I adore them. They represent the positive pole of the film, the life force and instinct.
11
The end of a picture is always an end of a life.
12
I want to be able to make westerns like [Akira Kurosawa] makes westerns.
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Fact
1
Drank up to four bottles of whisky or vodka a day.
2
The character Roger the Alien from American Dad! (2005) has a pet parrot called Lady Peckinpah in one episode.
3
Worked for 12 days as second-unit director in Jinxed! (1982) while director Don Siegel was recovering from a heart-attack while shooting the movie. Though Peckinpah wasn't popular--or even liked very much--in Hollywood in the late 1970s due to his many troubled productions, Siegel insisted on hiring him (as he had been a mentor to the future director many years earlier) and he wanted to help his friend. Though working uncredited in Siegel's film, their collaboration was noted in the movie industry, and that resulted in Peckinpah returning to directing with The Osterman Weekend (1983), which would be his final film.
4
According to an interview with L.Q. Jones available on YouTube, one time Slim Pickens proposed to loan $5000 to his friend Sam, who was broke at this time. The offer resulted in Peckinpah never speaking to Pickens again.
In 1954 director Don Siegel and producer Walter Wanger had been desperately trying to persuade the warden of San Quentin Prison to allow the use of the facility to film Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), but the warden had adamantly refused. After the final meeting in the prison, when the warden had said there was nothing Siegel or Wanger could do to persuade him to allow filming there, Siegel turned to speak to Peckinpah, who at the time was his assistant. When the warden heard Peckinpah's name, he asked, "Are you related to Denver Peckinpah?". Sam replied that Denver was his brother. Denver Peckinpah was a well-known judge in northern California who had a reputation as a "hanging judge" and the warden had long been an admirer of his. He immediately granted the company permission to shoot the movie in San Quentin.
12
Producer Martin Ransohoff felt compelled to fire Peckinpah after the beginning of principal shooting on The Cincinnati Kid (1965) due to disagreements over the conception of the film. The incident led to a physical altercation between the two. In the early 1970s, remarking on their fight, Peckinpah claimed Ransofhoff got the worst of it: "I stripped him as naked as one of his badly told lies", claimed the director known as "Bloody Sam" for the violence in his films. Peckinpah was replaced with Norman Jewison, a relative newcomer to feature film directing at the time, whose long and successful career as a journeyman filmmaker and producer brought him three Oscar nominations as best director and the Irving Thalberg Award in 1999 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Peckinpah, a master before he was discombobulated by substance abuse, received only one Academy Award nomination in his career, for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Wild Bunch (1969).
13
Was hired by Marlon Brando to adopt Charles Neider's novella about Billy the Kid, "The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones," that served as the basis for Brando's directorial debut, One-Eyed Jacks (1961) (the only film Brando ever directed). While Stanley Kubrick was still slated to be the project's director, Peckinpah wrote what he believed was a good script; subsequently, he was devastated when he was let go after turning it in. Later, some of the thematic elements and scenes that survived and were showcased in "Jacks" also became part of Peckinpah's own take on the legendary outlaw, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973).
14
In his January 1972 Playboy interview, Peckinpah was asked to comment about critic Pauline Kael's assertion that in Straw Dogs (1971), he endorsed rape by having the protagonist's wife seemingly enjoy being violated by her ex-boyfriend. Pointing out that the scene in question was actually the first stage of a gangbang and that the wife clearly did not enjoy being taken by the second man, he went on to gently criticize Kael, who was a great admirer and supporter of his. Noting that he had shared a drink with Kael and liked her personally, Peckiinpah said that on the subject of his movie endorsing rape, "she's cracking walnuts with her ass."
15
Served in the US Marine Corps during World War II, but did not see combat.
16
In 1976 he signed a contract to film "Cukoo's Progress", a novel by Swedish author Sture Dahlström. The novel is about Xerxes Sonson Pickelhaupt, whose life's ambition is to impregnate every women on the face of the earth. He died before the movie was made, but Dahlstrom still got paid.
17
Was voted the 32nd Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
18
He wrote his scripts by hand in his nearly illegible scribble. Only two women were ever employed as his secretaries because they were the only ones who could transcribe his terrible handwriting.
19
Ida Lupino hired him to work on her series Mr. Adams and Eve (1957) after she found him living in a shack behind her property. He paid her back by casting her in Junior Bonner (1972) some years later.
At the time of his death, Peckinpah was in pre-production on an original script by Stephen King entitled "The Shotgunners." (Source: Cinefantastique magazine, 2/91)
Writer
Title
Year
Status
Character
Straw Dogs
2011
earlier screenplay
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
1974
screenplay / story
Straw Dogs
1971
screenplay
The Wild Bunch
1969
screenplay
Villa Rides
1968
screenplay
ABC Stage 67
1966
TV Series writer - 1 episode
The Glory Guys
1965
Major Dundee
1965
screenplay
The Dick Powell Theatre
TV Series story - 1 episode, 1963 teleplay - 1 episode, 1962
Ride the High Country
1962
uncredited
The Westerner
TV Series 3 episodes, 1960 creator - 9 episodes, 1960 written by - 1 episode, 1960
Klondike
TV Series writer - 1 episode, 1960 story - 1 episode, 1960 teleplay - 1 episode, 1960
Pony Express
1960
TV Series writer - 1 episode
Zane Grey Theater
TV Series 1 episode, 1960 writer - 3 episodes, 1958 - 1959
The Rifleman
TV Series teleplay - 3 episodes, 1958 - 1959 written by - 3 episodes, 1958 - 1959 story - 2 episodes, 1958 - 1959
Broken Arrow
TV Series teleplay - 2 episodes, 1957 writer - 1 episode, 1958
Man Without a Gun
1958
TV Series written by - 1 episode
Gunsmoke
1955-1958
TV Series screenplay by - 11 episodes
Tombstone Territory
1958
TV Series teleplay - 1 episode
Have Gun - Will Travel
1958
TV Series written by - 1 episode
Trackdown
1957
TV Series writer - 1 episode
Tales of Wells Fargo
1957
TV Series teleplay and story - 1 episode
The 20th Century-Fox Hour
1957
TV Series teleplay - 1 episode
Mr. Adams and Eve
1957
TV Series
Director
Title
Year
Status
Character
Essential Music Videos: Classic '80s
2004
Video short video "Too Late for Goodbyes"
Julian Lennon: Too Late for Goodbyes
1984
Video short
Julian Lennon: Valotte
1984
Video short
The Osterman Weekend
1983
Convoy
1978
Cross of Iron
1977
The Killer Elite
1975
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
1974
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
1973
The Getaway
1972
Junior Bonner
1972
Straw Dogs
1971
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
1970
The Wild Bunch
1969
Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre
1967
TV Series 1 episode
ABC Stage 67
1966
TV Series 1 episode
Major Dundee
1965
The Dick Powell Theatre
1962-1963
TV Series 2 episodes
Ride the High Country
1962
Route 66
1961
TV Series 1 episode
The Deadly Companions
1961
The Westerner
1960
TV Series 5 episodes
Klondike
1960
TV Series
Zane Grey Theater
1959-1960
TV Series 3 episodes
The Rifleman
1958-1959
TV Series 4 episodes
Broken Arrow
1958
TV Series 1 episode
Producer
Title
Year
Status
Character
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
1970
producer
The Dick Powell Theatre
1962-1963
TV Series producer - 2 episodes
The Westerner
1960
TV Series producer - 13 episodes
Actor
Title
Year
Status
Character
The Osterman Weekend
1983
Maxwell danforth's aide (uncredited)
The Visitor
1979
Dr. Sam Collins
China 9, Liberty 37
1978
Wilbur Olsen, Dime Novelist
Convoy
1978
News Crew Director (uncredited)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
1973
Will (uncredited)
Junior Bonner
1972
Man in Palace Bar (uncredited)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
1956
Charlie
Wichita
1955
Bank Teller (uncredited)
An Annapolis Story
1955
Pilot (uncredited)
Dial Red O
1955
Cook in Diner (uncredited)
Miscellaneous
Title
Year
Status
Character
Morbo
1972
screenplay supervisor - uncredited
Crime in the Streets
1956
dialogue coach - as David S. Peckinpah
World Without End
1956
dialogue director - uncredited
An Annapolis Story
1955
dialogue coach
Dial Red O
1955
dialogue coach
Private Hell 36
1954
dialogue director - as David Peckinpah
Riot in Cell Block 11
1954
production assistant - uncredited
Art Department
Title
Year
Status
Character
The Liberace Show
1952
TV Series stagehand
Assistant Director
Title
Year
Status
Character
Jinxed!
1982
second unit director - uncredited
Soundtrack
Title
Year
Status
Character
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
1974
"Bad Blood Baby"
Thanks
Title
Year
Status
Character
Palominas
2017
inspirational thanks pre-production
Santiago Violenta
2014
inspirational thanks
Nosferatu vs. Father Pipecock & Sister Funk
2014
special thanks
Edición Especial Coleccionista
2013
TV Series in memory of - 1 episode
Django Unchained
2012
dedicatee
Tráiganme la Cabeza de la Mujer Metralleta
2012
acknowledgment
Passion & Poetry: Sam's War
2011
Video documentary in memory of
Vixen Highway 2006: It Came from Uranus!
2010
special thanks
Dream House
2009
Video short special thanks
Henry John and the Little Bug
2009
Short special thanks
Little Red Riding Hood
2009/I
Video short special thanks
Ten Dead Men
2008
inspiration, thanks and love to the works of
Death Proof
2007
special thanks
Running Scared
2006
film dedicated to
Killer: A Journal of Murder
1995
dedicatee
Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown
1986
Short dedicatee - as Sam 'The Man' Peckinpah
Self
Title
Year
Status
Character
Un pasota con corbata
1982
Himself (as Sam Peckimpah)
Dinah!
1975
TV Series
Himself
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
1972
TV Series
Himself
On Location: Dustin Hoffman
1971
TV Short documentary
Himself
Cinema
1971
TV Series documentary
Himself
The David Frost Show
1970
TV Series
Himself
The Irv Kupcinet Show
1970
TV Series
Himself
Archive Footage
Title
Year
Status
Character
I Am Steve McQueen
2014
Documentary
Himself
The Greatest Ever War Films
2014
TV Movie documentary
Himself (1976)
Passion & Poetry: Sam's Trucker Movie
2013
Documentary
Himself
Edición Especial Coleccionista
2013
TV Series
Himself
Passion & Poetry: Sam's Killer Elite
2013
Video short
Himself
Passion & Poetry: Sam's War
2011
Video documentary
Himself
For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism
2009
Documentary
Himself
Passion & Poetry: Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs
2007
Video documentary short
Himself
Edge of Outside
2006
Documentary
Himself
Filmmakers in Action
2005
Documentary
Himself
Passion & Poetry: Major Dundee
2005
Video short
Himself
Passion & Poetry: The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah
2005
Documentary
Himself
Sam Peckinpah's West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade
2004
TV Movie documentary
Himself
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession
2004
TV Movie documentary
Himself
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
2003
Documentary
Himself
Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron
1993
TV Movie documentary
Himself
Hollywood Mavericks
1990
Documentary
Himself
La nuit des Césars
1985
TV Series documentary
In Memoriam
Won Awards
Year
Award
Ceremony
Nomination
Movie
2011
OFTA Film Hall of Fame
Online Film & Television Association
Creative
1984
Special Jury Prize
Cognac Festival du Film Policier
The Osterman Weekend (1983)
1984
TF1 Special Award
Cognac Festival du Film Policier
The Osterman Weekend (1983)
1984
Golden Boot
Golden Boot Awards
1971
KCFCC Award
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards
Best Director
Straw Dogs (1971)
Nominated Awards
Year
Award
Ceremony
Nomination
Movie
1970
Oscar
Academy Awards, USA
Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced
The Wild Bunch (1969)
1970
DGA Award
Directors Guild of America, USA
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures
The Wild Bunch (1969)
1970
Golden Laurel
Laurel Awards
Director
8th place.
1968
WGA Award (TV)
Writers Guild of America, USA
Best Written Dramatic Anthology
Noon Wine (1966)
1967
DGA Award
Directors Guild of America, USA
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Television
Noon Wine (1966)
1958
WGA Award (TV)
Writers Guild of America, USA
Western
The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955)
1957
WGA Award (TV)
Writers Guild of America, USA
Episodic Drama, 30 Minutes in Length
Gunsmoke (1955)
Known for movies
The Wild Bunch (1969) as Writer
Straw Dogs (1971) as Writer
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) as Writer
$10 Million
