Just a quick wrap-up in which Josh discusses the impact Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia has had on filmmaking over the last three decades.

This video analysis focuses on the violent picnic scene from Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. This is our first video using a swank new microphone from Samson that should vastly improve the quality and quantity of these analysis videos. Look for many more in the future!

Danielle was inspired to put together this awesome little song after watching Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia three times in the course of two weeks while prepping to write her article for this month.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a film that grabs attention with title alone. A harbinger of the violent ride on which we are about to embark. Films with guns are often commenting in some way about dominance. It is a desire each of us has: to conquer something, be it within ourselves, in relationship to others or the world.

Convoy is to Smokey & The Bandit as Torque is to The Fast and the Furious. Landing someone like Peckinpah to direct was a bit like hiring Scorsese for a Go-Bots film – it just didn’t make sense to anyone. Garner Simmon’s bio claims that Sam’s friends were on that same wavelength and thought he was nuts to pick up something so shallow and commercial.

We’ve been doing a lot of Peckinpah related research here at the site, and have found that this 1993 documentary from the BBC is something more people should have access to. To be fair, it’s the only docu we could get our hands on, as Passion & Poetry: The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah seems to be somewhat more difficult to acquire. The documentary features interviews from long time friends like LQ Jones, James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson, who shed some light on who Peckinpah really was.

Today we’d like to share not one, but two videos. The first is a deconstruction of the action as shot and directed by Sam Peckinpah in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. The second is a music video of sorts, featuring the final shootout of The Wild Bunch set to a song by Beck. The second video really serves no function other than to highlight the rhythmic, musical quality to Peckinpah’s shooting and editing.

This is the first in a series of articles I hope will accompany each and every film we feature from here on at The Film League. It’s just a brief chance for us to share the sources of our research, and the basis for the articles we feature each month. Sources will continue to be cited directly when applicable.

We selected Garcia from the Peckinpah catalog because of the filmmaker’s claims that it was his only untarnished cinematic vision. The early days of film saw a great many Hemingway inspired, man’s man, blowhard directors and Peckinpah may have been the last in that great line of hollow men. A great actor in his own story, fighting the light of day with a flask and a syringe, his cult of personality being almost certainly larger than any of his films. Like many of his contemporaries, Peckinpah’s gruff demeanor harbored a fragile ego, and a distorted sense of self that might never have been mended. What is left of the man is his work, which is as much as we need to understand his own view on the world.