Billy, They Don’t Want You to Be So Free: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

“Legends in their time, but time was running out.” from the film trailer

Just released on DVD (Jan 2006) is the two-disc Special Edition of Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, “Bloody Sam’s” final take on the western.

Everybody knows the story of Billy the Kid - it’s been filmed something like 200 times in the history of movies. Every actor seems to have played him at one time or another, from Robert Taylor to Audie Murphy to Paul Newman, with one of the latest versions by Emilio Estevez. Billy the Kid is a part of the American legend and I’m sure, even as I write this, somebody may be making another film about Billy.

Sam Peckinpah was a director who wasn’t appreciated in his time. Like Orson Welles, Sam hardly made a movie the studios were satisfied with. Most of his films were cut to pieces and re-spliced by the studio execs destroying the director’s vision and spoiling the continuity. Since his death in 1984, Peckinpah has been rediscovered - I hesitate to say he has enjoyed a "rebirth" of popularity; but the studios have finally scampered to reissue his films in proper “Director’s Cut” format, restoring the continuity and vision that Peckinpah brought to the medium. Such is the case with our subject today, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the umpteenth retelling of the same events that have been told so many times before.

What Peckinpah brought to his version was psychological truth. He was a man obsessed with several themes that recur again and again in his oeuvre; honor, loyalty, friendship, betrayal; all observed through the lens of changing times.

Peckinpah’s first western, Ride the High Country explored these themes in relation to honorable men. It is an undiscovered gem, that I take a small pleasure in having championed for several years, especially since it has finally just been released on DVD, either separately or as a part of Warner Bros Sam Peckinpah Western Collection. Maybe they heard my voice crying in the wilderness? ;> His second western explored the same themes in relation to honor among thieves, the highly lauded, and rightly so, The Wild Bunch, the one that earned him the moniker “Bloody Sam.”

Like most of Peckinpah’s work, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was butchered by MGM executives to run at 90 minutes. Characters are introduced and inexplicably disappear, the payoff scenes left on the cutting room floor. No wonder the theatrical release in 1973 generated such tepid reviews. Thankfully, today’s Special Edition DVD has brought back the movie as close as we can get to the way that Sam envisioned it.

There are actually two versions of the movie on the discs, the 2005 “director’s cut” running 105 minutes and the 1988 Turner Preview version at 122 minutes, both in 2.35:1 Panavision format. Both versions can be viewed at leisure, together with the host of special features that make up the rest of the set.

Billy and Pat (Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn) are cut much from the same cloth. Pat, the older man, has determined to settle down, but to do so he has to “sell out” to the economic interests of the New Mexico territory. A noted gunslinger, he is made sheriff to clean up the territory, i.e., get rid of Billy and his band of hangers-on. Billy, a 22 year-old, despite being told to vamoose to Mexico, ain’t going nowhere. “Times are changing,’ Garrett says. “Times, maybe, but not me,” is Billy’s answer. The result is the proverbial immovable object meeting the irresistible force - something’s got to give. Ironically enough, the same interests that kill Billy through means of Pat also kill Pat, a few decades later. I guess he was expendable…

Besides the main characters, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid feature a virtual smorgasbord of western character actors playing the minor roles. Slim Pickens, Katy Jurado, Richard Jaeckel, Chill Wills, Jack Elam, Harry Dean Stanton, Jason Robards, Jr. - the list goes on and on. Most of them have a few minutes of screen time and then are killed off in a blaze of gunfire - it is as if by killing off all these familiar western players, Peckinpah is killing the legend of the West itself.

As usual, the screen compositions are brilliant; Sam Peckinpah showed the West in color as few others could, aided by cinematographer John Coquillon, and now you can see his vision in the full 2.35:1 widescreen format, unlike the 4x3 VHS tapes that up to now were the only commonly available format.

The soundtrack is not by Peckinpah’s usual composer Jerry Fielding, but by folk-rock enigma Bob Dylan. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door is one of the songs that sprung from the soundtrack. Dylan also plays a small but recurring role in the film and it’s worth it for his fans - and they are legion - to see it. The soundtrack grows on you - trust me.

If you have seen this movie on TV, you have not seen Peckinpah’s story. You owe it to yourself to watch the new DVD version of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

More Billy the Kid movies I recommend:

Young Guns

Young Guns II

Chisum

Treat yourself to a good film tonight!