Whatever
criticisms could be leveled at Sam Peckinpah, no one could question his
dedication to a film project once it was under way. He labored away at
it like a fiend. It became the thing; nothing else much mattered. He was
too deep into his alcoholism to give up drinking altogether, but he cut
way back. Compared to his consumption during the previous hunting trip
in Ely, Nevada—when he took his nephew to the local whorehouses to get
laid and Sam wound up dead drunk on wire spools in the back of a
truck—he was almost a model of sobriety. He limited himself to drinking
beer at night after work was complete. Contrary to the reputation he
developed in the 1970s, he was never drunk on the set while he was
working on The Wild Bunch. Too much was on the line for him, both
professionally and artistically. His intensity was unmatched by anyone
else’s. He was at his creative best as he created The Wild Bunch, the story that had obsessed him for more than a year now.
Likewise, William Holden swore off hard
liquor. He was a beer sipper in Parras, carefully eschewing entry into
the blackout zone. He generally avoided the after-hours liquor-soaked
high jinks that other members of the company engaged in after shooting
wrapped for the day. He likewise stayed away from the prostitutas—some
imported from Mexico City—and spent his evenings quietly. Several years
earlier, he’d been on safari with the goal of killing an elephant in
Africa. Once the guides had led him into place and an elephant was an
easy rifle shot away, Holden was unable to pull the trigger. In an
epiphany it came to him that he should be working to protect African
wildlife, not destroy it. Conservation of African wildlife was now his
passion—and would remain so for the remainder of his life. Evenings in
Parras, beer in hand, he loved nothing more than to while away the hours
talking about Africa to anyone who would listen. One person who showed
up at Holden’s table night after night was Billy Hart, the Texas-born
stuntman and actor, who hung on to every word Holden uttered about
elephants and lions, totally fascinated.
Holden’s career and personal life may
have been in a slide, yet he was part of Hollywood’s royalty, at least
in the eyes of many in the cast and crew. He had a regal air, but he
also strived to be very much a regular guy, just Bill Beedle from South
Pasadena. One day he went for a walk and encountered a large
rattlesnake, which he shot, then brought back to show his Wild Bunch
colleagues—the kind of thing that any guy might do, although Eddie
O’Brien’s son, Brendan, staying with his dad in Parras, saw Holden with
the dead snake and was scared of the movie star thereafter.
Following Peckinpah’s lead, the other
members of the Wild Bunch company worked incredibly hard, Holden among
them. He had his vanities to be sure. Holden may have shown up looking
like a fifty-year-old who’d aged more than his years—face heavily lined,
gut soft. But when Sam asked him to wear a mustache as Pike Bishop,
that was too much. Holden replied, “The hell I will.” But he didn’t hold
out long. He was soon sporting a mustache in front of the camera.
Sharp-eyed observers noted that Holden’s fake lip hair was similar to
Peckinpah’s real mustache. ... [mehr] https://lithub.com/transforming-a-tiny-mexican-town-into-an-iconic-hollywood-backdrop/
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