Sam Peckinpah

[1925-1984]

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¤  The Ballad of Cable Hogue  ⇓  [Starring Jason Robards & Stella Stevens _ 1970]

The film is a charming and surprising comedy/love story built loosely around the biblical story of Job. It constantly defies the expectations of the audience by throwing in little plot twists utterly different from the cliche.

intro  ⇓

Tomorrow is the song I sing
Yesterday don’t mean a thing
I’ll make today my next day’s dawn

And I’ll still be here grinning
When the sun goes down

I’ll get through this day first
It’s not the worst
I don’t care
I’ll be there
To put the sun to bed

Tomorrow is the song I sing
Tomorrow ragmen can be kings
The smile I wear will be my crown
And I’ll be lighting up a lifetime when the sun goes down

Tomorrow is the song I sing
Tomorrow ragmen can be kings
‘Cause sometimes kings may ragmen be
If it can happen to a king, it can happen to me

I’ll get through this day first
It’s not the worst
I don’t care
I’ll be there to put the sun to bed

Tomorrow’s still the song I sing
Good or bad,
Whatever it brings
Got no choice,
Greet the day
And whatever decides old fate,
I’ll make fate pay

Tomorrow is the song I sing
Tomorrow ragmen can be kings
The smile I wear will be my crown
And I’ll be lighting up a lifetime when the sun goes down

If I don’t make it through
It’s up to you
To do your share
And be there to put the sun to bed

Tomorrow will be the song you sing
Yesterday won’t mean a thing
Make today your next days dawn
And you’re still be here grinning when today’s all done.

[Richard Gillis]

– Please, miss.
– Yes?
– Please… Well, hell, could you tell me where the land office is?
– Well, you’re looking right at it. Can’t you see the sign?
– Well, you see, miss, I… Well, hell, I don’t read too goddamn good. My name’s Cable Hogue.
Which one is it?
– It’s right there, with the white sign.
– Thank you kindly, miss.  The stage office?
– It’s kitty-corner from here, across from the bank.
– Thank you, miss.
– My pleasure.
– Thank you truly.

– Now?
– Now.
– You’ve been awful nice to me, Hogue. Never bothered you none what I am?
– Hell, no, it never bothered me. I enjoyed it… Well, what the hell are you? Human being. Try the best you can. We all got our own ways of living.
– And loving?
– Gets mighty Ionesome without it. You know, Miss Hildy, sometimes out here alone at night… Well, sometimes, I wonder what the hell I’m doing out here.
– Why don’t you live in town?
– I don’t know about that. In town I’d be nothing. I don’t like being nothing. Been that before. Out here I, well…got a good start. If you’d like to stay on awhile…
– Hogue, it’s not my kind of life. I can’t stay. We just don’t think the same. San Francisco for me. But not tonight.
– Now, that is a picture.
– You’ve seen it before.
– Lady… nobody’s ever seen you before.

On the wings of a butterfly I’ll walk to my morning
On the beams of a sunflower, on the day I was born in
On the petals of a wild flower, with the sun high at noon
I want walks in butterfly mornings and wild flower afternoons

– Blackie! Get on, boy! Get up, boy!
– Three hours early.
– What?
– Stagecoach.
– Well, go get me a robe… It’s too little. Go get my robe.
– Welcome to Cable Springs.

¤      ¤      ¤

♦   Straw Dogs   ⇓

The Siege of Trencher’s Farm (1969) is a novel by British author Gordon Williams and first published by Secker & Warburg. The novel was adapted into the film Straw Dogs (starring Dustin Hoffman & Susan George) by Sam Peckinpah in 1971, and again forty years later, under the same name, by Rod Lurie.

For the 1971 film adaptation, writers Sam Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman changed several aspects of the novel’s story while keeping the overall plot. George and Louise Magruder are renamed David and Amy Sumner, and their eight-year-old daughter, Karen, does not exist in the film. Perhaps most notably, the novel does not contain the controversial rape scene presented in the movie. As well, none of the besiegers die. Instead, they are badly injured and face charges.

The novel was adapted again in 2011, but this film is based more on the 1971 movie than the original novel.

♦   «The Wild Bunch»  ⇓   [Final shootout_1969]

(1973)

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