STACK May 2016 Issue 139

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24 MAY 2016
them the gradually-aged look Peckinpah wanted.
Next it was the prop men's turn to face
the wrath of the now incessantly shouting
director; the guns misfired so frequently, it
swiftly depleted the stock of blank ammunition.
The following day it was the sound engineers
who were screamed at, then the caterers, after
some of the cast found maggots in their food.
Throughout the Dundee shoot Peckinpah
would fire a total of fifteen Columbia-contracted
staff, which directly impacted on the progress
of the production. The intense pressure
of directing his first big budget movie also led
him to drink more heavily, often arriving on set
in the morning still drunk from the night before.
James Coburn, who played Dundee’s scout
Samuel Potts, described Peckinpah thus: “Sam
was a working alcoholic who was a genius
filmmaker for three hours a day, after that he
was just a mean, drunken son of a bitch."
With the first month of shooting falling
well behind schedule, Jerry Bresler, described
by one of the cast as “wall-to-wall worry”,
arrived in Durango intending to speed up the
production. But his arrival created immediate
friction between himself and his director,
culminating with Peckinpah threatening
him: “Jerry, I’m not going to shoot another foot
of film until you leave this set”. A chagrined
Bresler had no choice but to fly back to LA.
Moving the film equipment – along
with hundreds of horses and ponies – to various
locations across the inhospitable Mexican
terrain was akin to a full military operation, and
swiftly racked up costs. The production was
now seriously falling behind schedule despite
shooting 12 hours a day, six days a week, and
all in the searing heat of the Mexican desert.
Peckinpah gave his near exhausted
actors very little direction, but he seemed
fire-breathing civilian preacher
Reverend Dahlstrom, had earlier
described Major Dundee as “Moby
Dick on horseback”. And as filming
progressed, Armstrong perceived
that reality was indeed paralleling
the story – Peckinpah, like the
Dundee/Ahab character, had
become obsessed with his quest.
Although Peckinpah admired
Heston, he felt the actor's
performance in many of his films
always seemed to have too much
swagger and posturing to be
entirely convincing. Never the
diplomat, Sam would often tell
his star – in front of the cast – to
stop posing and try to act natural.
Needless to say these outbursts
infuriated the actor.
It all came to a head during the
filming of a scene with Heston
moving his cavalry troop down a
hill at a trot. Peckinpah, stationed
atop a camera crane, shouted to
Heston “Chuck, that was absolute
crap, you came far too slow. Go
back and do it again.” “You told me
to do it at a trot,” yelled Heston.
Peckinpah fired back, “I did not,
you goddamned liar”. Heston’s
fuse finally blew and he wheeled
his horse around, drew his cavalry
sabre, and charged at the director
at full gallop. Peckinpah screamed
at the crane operator, “Crank it
up! For Chrissakes crank it up!"
As the crane arm lifted, Heston’s
outstretched sabre missed the
seat of Peckinpah’s pants by a
whisker, which highly amused the
cast and crew.
By the middle of March the film
was 14 days behind schedule and
$600,000 over budget. Columbia’s
vice president, accompanied
by numerous “studio suits”, arrived
in Mexico and immediately drove
to the production’s Rio Balsas location. Their
mission – to remove Sam Peckinpah from the
Major Dundee project and replace him.
To be continued...
Sam was a working
alcoholic who was a
genius filmmaker for
three hours a day, after
that he was just a mean,
drunken son of a bitch
The character Teresa Santiago was not in the original story, but producer
Jerry Bresler wanted a “love interest” injected into the script. Peckinpah
balked at the idea but Bresler insisted that a female role be written, and
that Austrian actress Senta Berger be cast in that role. The end result was
an unlikely – and superfluous – romantic sub-plot that went nowhere.
to instinctively know when a scene was not
quite right, ordering the actors to repeat it and
blandly adding, “but this time do it differently”.
Often he appeared to be just wildly shooting
thousands of feet of film, which prompted
Charlton Heston to ask, “What the hell is this
film about?” R.G. Armstrong, who played the
Heston takes a
break from filming
with his young son
Fraser. (Fraser Heston
had appeared in The Ten
Commandments (1956)
as the Infant Baby Moses
where his father had
played the adult Moses)
Actress Senta Berger discusses her role with director
Sam Peckinpah during a break in shooting
James Coburn as
Dundee's one-armed
scout, Sam Potts,
with two of his Indian
scouts on location
filming in Mexico
Actor R.G.
Armstrong
as Reverend
Dahlstrom