STACK June 2016 Issue 140

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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
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
visit EXTRAS
22 JUNE 2016
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
around their beleaguered director.
Charlton Heston, Richard Harris,
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
Major Dundee (1965) Directed by Sam Peckinpah
First Cutand Betrayal
Part 4:
Leaving Fort Benlin, the Rebel volunteers begin to
sing the Confederate martial anthem "Dixie"
"It's not my country Major Dundee,
I damn its flag and I damn you"
Sam's contract had
guaranteed him the
right to a first cut of the
film and to screen that
cut at a public preview