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Bloody Sam
Book by Fine, Marshall
- GenresFilmBiographyNonfiction
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
3 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
Marshall Fine
12 books63 followersMarshall Fine is an author, journalist, critic, historian, and filmmaker.
His first novel, "The Autumn of Ruth Winters," will be published by Lake Union Press in November 2024.
His second novel, "Clara’s Girl," was recently purchased by Lake Union Press, to be published in the fall of 2025.
Fine is the author of three biographies: "Bloody Sam: The Life and Films of Sam Peckinpah" (1991); "Harvey Keitel: The Art of Darkness" (1998); and "Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented the American Independent Film" (2006).
Fine started writing rock criticism for the Minneapolis Star at the age of 18, beginning a journalism career that covered a half-century. He spent 25 years as film critic and entertainment writer for Gannett Newspapers and another 10 as film/TV critic for Star magazine. He wrote the website Hollywood & Fine.com from 2008-16.
His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, USA Today, New York Observer, Variety, Premiere, Cosmopolitan, Sports Illustrated, Penthouse, Indiewire.com and Entertainment Weekly. He conducted the Playboy Interview with both Howard Stern and Tim Robbins, and wrote more than two dozen cover stories for Cigar Aficionado as contributing editor.
Fine is a four-time former chairman (1992, 2002, 2006, 2015) and member emeritus of the New York Film Critics Circle. He was named general manager of the NYFCC in 2016 and retired from the position in 2021. He received a special award from the group in 2022 for "service to the group and his many decades on the New York film scene."
After 20 years of programming and hosting subscription film clubs at four different venues in the New York area, he retired in May 2021 as critic-in-residence at The Picture House in Pelham, NY, where he created its sold-out film club. He received the Harold Lloyd Lifetime Achievement Award from The Picture House in 2021.
Fine spent the 2020-21 academic year as an adjunct journalism professor at Purchase College-SUNY.
He directed and produced the documentary features "Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg" and "Do You Sleep in the Nude?", and the short documentary, "Flo Fox’s Dicthology."
His photography show, “Natural & Unnatural,” was exhibited in the Ossining Public Library Gallery in January 2023.
His first novel, "The Autumn of Ruth Winters," will be published by Lake Union Press in November 2024.
His second novel, "Clara’s Girl," was recently purchased by Lake Union Press, to be published in the fall of 2025.
Fine is the author of three biographies: "Bloody Sam: The Life and Films of Sam Peckinpah" (1991); "Harvey Keitel: The Art of Darkness" (1998); and "Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented the American Independent Film" (2006).
Fine started writing rock criticism for the Minneapolis Star at the age of 18, beginning a journalism career that covered a half-century. He spent 25 years as film critic and entertainment writer for Gannett Newspapers and another 10 as film/TV critic for Star magazine. He wrote the website Hollywood & Fine.com from 2008-16.
His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, USA Today, New York Observer, Variety, Premiere, Cosmopolitan, Sports Illustrated, Penthouse, Indiewire.com and Entertainment Weekly. He conducted the Playboy Interview with both Howard Stern and Tim Robbins, and wrote more than two dozen cover stories for Cigar Aficionado as contributing editor.
Fine is a four-time former chairman (1992, 2002, 2006, 2015) and member emeritus of the New York Film Critics Circle. He was named general manager of the NYFCC in 2016 and retired from the position in 2021. He received a special award from the group in 2022 for "service to the group and his many decades on the New York film scene."
After 20 years of programming and hosting subscription film clubs at four different venues in the New York area, he retired in May 2021 as critic-in-residence at The Picture House in Pelham, NY, where he created its sold-out film club. He received the Harold Lloyd Lifetime Achievement Award from The Picture House in 2021.
Fine spent the 2020-21 academic year as an adjunct journalism professor at Purchase College-SUNY.
He directed and produced the documentary features "Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg" and "Do You Sleep in the Nude?", and the short documentary, "Flo Fox’s Dicthology."
His photography show, “Natural & Unnatural,” was exhibited in the Ossining Public Library Gallery in January 2023.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 30, 2022
Did not finish. I read up to the end of Part Six, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid 1972 - 1973.
A very depressing biography, and rather repetitive on the subjects character.
The epigraph that begins Part Seven is a quote by Packinpah. "I hope you've enjoyed the films. I trust they'll get better but if they don't, kiss my ass." Sam Peckinpah at the San Francisco Film Festival, October 1974.
A very depressing biography, and rather repetitive on the subjects character.
The epigraph that begins Part Seven is a quote by Packinpah. "I hope you've enjoyed the films. I trust they'll get better but if they don't, kiss my ass." Sam Peckinpah at the San Francisco Film Festival, October 1974.
October 27, 2014
Working, or being involved in any way with, director Sam Peckinpah was not for the faint of heart. The creator of "The Wild Bunch" and "Pat Garret and Billy the Kid" was a hard-drinking, hard living, obstreperous and stubborn human being, paranoid, quick to take offense where none was given ... and a truly unique and visionary American film director with a depth of artistic instinct unlike few who have come before or after him.
As with Hemingway or Fitzgerald, reading this fantastic biography of Mr. Peckinpah made me wonder what he could have created had he not drank so hard, snorted so much cocaine, bedded women left and right, been more cooperative with his producers, gone easier on his casts and crews of various films. But I came back to the conclusion I always do when wondering about someone like that: without his demons, would we have anything like what we WERE gifted with? Probably not.
This book will give you a portrait of a very complex man. You'll hear many voices of family, his various wives (he married five times, three of which were to the same woman, giving Taylor and Burton a run for their matrimonial money) and his fellow actors and crew members. Actor James Coburn said of Peckinpah that he "pushed me over the abyss and then jumped in after me. He took me on some great adventures." Here was a man that, despite all his personal faults and weaknesses, drove himself into the ground creating his films and he asked a lot - sometimes too much, it seemed - of those working with him. But, as several contributors acknowledge, he only asked of them what he was willing to do himself.
His vision of men standing on the cusp of a vanishing era and way of life, perfected in "The Wild Bunch", was possibly also a vision he had of himself. When making a picture, Sam wanted what he wanted how he wanted it. He didn't give a damn about the studios, petty penny-pinching producers or anyone else who didn't share his passion and dedication.
Halfway through this book, I purchased a copy of "The Wild Bunch" on Blu-Ray. I'd seen it on video in the 1990s but I needed another look at it, having lived more of my life now than I had then. What I watched was nothing short of a master work. The title of this book, "Bloody Sam", was a nickname he acquired after "Wild Bunch" that he loathed all his life. Never before had violence been depicted in American cinema in this way: actors loaded with more squibs than you could count, slow motion technique which made it possible for an audience to see the blood spew when a body was hit with gunfire. This was not your father's Western, where a man might have been gunned down in the street but he never bled. Up until then, in most pictures the killers were the bad guys and the heroes the good guys and that was that. "Wild Bunch" stood all the now-obsolete Western styles on their ears; violence was real and had devastating consequences; "good" guys possess ulterior motives; and the "bad" guys end up being the ones who stick together and live a code of loyalty and honor. The result was sheer genius and one of the best Western films ever made by ANYONE.
Next up in my viewing "Q"? Sam's other great film, "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia", which Roger Ebert put on his "Best 10" list of 1974 and, in his recent re-evaluation of it for "The Great Movies II", said, "I was relieved to discover that I was absolutely correct about its greatness."
"Sam was tough on his enemies and tougher on his friends," said Walter Peter at Sam's memorial service. "He wasn't an easy man - but nothing good comes easy." Reading this book will make you marvel even while you're shaking your head at his exploits and his ways of alienating those about him who loved him. In the end, concluded Peter, "He cared passionately about his work. He cared about stimulating an audience - to think, to react, to feel."
The same can only be rarely said about those creating movies today, when the great majority of them are targeted to an audience demographic of adolescent males. I can only imagine how irate Sam Peckinpah would be about that were he living today. Reading "Bloody Sam" will make you head for the DVD rack and pull, at least, "The Wild Bunch" out and take it home. And if doesn't - you should anyway. In this book and Peckinpah's films, go on that "great adventure" James Coburn spoke of. I doubt you'll regret it.
Note: Little known fact about Peckinpah. He directed Julian Lennon's music videos for "Much Too Late for Goodbyes" and "Valotte" and saw the music video in its early days as a rich source of potential for would-be directors.
As with Hemingway or Fitzgerald, reading this fantastic biography of Mr. Peckinpah made me wonder what he could have created had he not drank so hard, snorted so much cocaine, bedded women left and right, been more cooperative with his producers, gone easier on his casts and crews of various films. But I came back to the conclusion I always do when wondering about someone like that: without his demons, would we have anything like what we WERE gifted with? Probably not.
This book will give you a portrait of a very complex man. You'll hear many voices of family, his various wives (he married five times, three of which were to the same woman, giving Taylor and Burton a run for their matrimonial money) and his fellow actors and crew members. Actor James Coburn said of Peckinpah that he "pushed me over the abyss and then jumped in after me. He took me on some great adventures." Here was a man that, despite all his personal faults and weaknesses, drove himself into the ground creating his films and he asked a lot - sometimes too much, it seemed - of those working with him. But, as several contributors acknowledge, he only asked of them what he was willing to do himself.
His vision of men standing on the cusp of a vanishing era and way of life, perfected in "The Wild Bunch", was possibly also a vision he had of himself. When making a picture, Sam wanted what he wanted how he wanted it. He didn't give a damn about the studios, petty penny-pinching producers or anyone else who didn't share his passion and dedication.
Halfway through this book, I purchased a copy of "The Wild Bunch" on Blu-Ray. I'd seen it on video in the 1990s but I needed another look at it, having lived more of my life now than I had then. What I watched was nothing short of a master work. The title of this book, "Bloody Sam", was a nickname he acquired after "Wild Bunch" that he loathed all his life. Never before had violence been depicted in American cinema in this way: actors loaded with more squibs than you could count, slow motion technique which made it possible for an audience to see the blood spew when a body was hit with gunfire. This was not your father's Western, where a man might have been gunned down in the street but he never bled. Up until then, in most pictures the killers were the bad guys and the heroes the good guys and that was that. "Wild Bunch" stood all the now-obsolete Western styles on their ears; violence was real and had devastating consequences; "good" guys possess ulterior motives; and the "bad" guys end up being the ones who stick together and live a code of loyalty and honor. The result was sheer genius and one of the best Western films ever made by ANYONE.
Next up in my viewing "Q"? Sam's other great film, "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia", which Roger Ebert put on his "Best 10" list of 1974 and, in his recent re-evaluation of it for "The Great Movies II", said, "I was relieved to discover that I was absolutely correct about its greatness."
"Sam was tough on his enemies and tougher on his friends," said Walter Peter at Sam's memorial service. "He wasn't an easy man - but nothing good comes easy." Reading this book will make you marvel even while you're shaking your head at his exploits and his ways of alienating those about him who loved him. In the end, concluded Peter, "He cared passionately about his work. He cared about stimulating an audience - to think, to react, to feel."
The same can only be rarely said about those creating movies today, when the great majority of them are targeted to an audience demographic of adolescent males. I can only imagine how irate Sam Peckinpah would be about that were he living today. Reading "Bloody Sam" will make you head for the DVD rack and pull, at least, "The Wild Bunch" out and take it home. And if doesn't - you should anyway. In this book and Peckinpah's films, go on that "great adventure" James Coburn spoke of. I doubt you'll regret it.
Note: Little known fact about Peckinpah. He directed Julian Lennon's music videos for "Much Too Late for Goodbyes" and "Valotte" and saw the music video in its early days as a rich source of potential for would-be directors.
August 11, 2014
It was hard to read about Peckinpah's life. The peak of his career is in the middle of the book when he made 'The Wild Bunch' and 'Straw Dogs'. Up till then the drugs and alcohol made him interesting. Afterwards there is no sign of the great writer he was and the rest of his movies were full of problems due to his alcoholism and coke habits. It was difficult reading a couple hundred pages that talk only of problems. Pretty draining but only because of the subject matter, not the writing.
September 19, 2009
I'll let everyone know.......Enjoyed it a lot. Full of trivia and behind the scenes stuff you would otherwise not know.
May 25, 2011
The only Peckinpah bio I've read. I have a strong inkling there's a much better one out there.
July 28, 2012
Down and dirty biography of a great film director. Lots of coke, lots of booze, and a lots of whores.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews