STACK #140 Jun 2016

EXTRAS

visit stack.net.au

Major Dundee (1965) Directed by Sam Peckinpah First Cutand Betrayal Part 4:

C olumbia's vice president and numerous studio lawyers had arrived in Mexico determined to fire Sam Peckinpah from the production and replace him. But although Sam's erratic behaviour had alienated most of his cast and film crew, a few cast members rallied R.G.Armstrong , Warren Oates, L.Q. Jones and Ben Johnson all threatened to walk off the set if Peckinpah was replaced. Heston went one step further and offered to forfeit his $200,000 salary if the studio relented and let Sam finish the movie. Much to Heston's surprise and chagrin, the studio willingly accepted his offer, which meant that the actor worked on the film for nothing. However, Heston's generous gesture allowed Peckinpah to retain the director's chair until the film finally wrapped at the end of April 1964. By the time Sam returned to Hollywood to begin post-production work on Major Dundee, his personal relationship with producer Jerry Bresler and Columbia executives was so dire, Bresler would have much preferred to have kept Peckinpah out of the editing process altogether. But Sam's contract had guaranteed him the right to a first cut of the film and to screen that cut at a public preview. One of the basic tenets of studio post-production was that the first cut of any motion picture was usually no more than raw material of the finished product. Peckinpah was aware of this, but he also believed that the public was the ultimate arbiter of a movie's quality and consequently, only an audience and not the "studio suits" could decide if a picture really worked or not. Peckinpah sensed that amongst the around their beleaguered director. Charlton Heston, Richard Harris,

Leaving Fort Benlin, the Rebel volunteers begin to sing the Confederate martial anthem "Dixie"

thousands of feet of exposed celluloid lurked a great movie; all he wanted now was to be left alone in the editing room to put it all together. With the assistance of three Columbia editing staff, Sam got

"It's not my country Major Dundee, I damn its flag and I damn you"

to work, sifting through 400,000 feet of exposed film. The assistant editors noted that the first sequence of edited scenes were all pure gold, realistically captured by award-winning cinematographer Sam Leavitt. Moreover, these scenes featured well defined, character-driven dialogue that immediately set the tone Peckinpah had been striving to establish for the film. The first scene introduced the authoritative Major Amos Dundee, as he arrives with his troop at the burnt out Rostes farm. As Dundee views from a distance the mutilated bodies of his massacred cavalry troop and the Rostes family, he addresses his lieutenant

Sam's contract had guaranteed him the right to a first cut of the film and to screen that cut at a public preview

JUNE 2016

22

jbhifi.com.au