Art & Entertainment
The Wild Bunch Rides Again at L.A.'s Million Dollar Theater
by JORDAN RANE
In the annals of Hollywood, there are good movies, bad movies, and ugly movies; and then there are those true game changers that flicker in their own little stratosphere. When The Wild Bunch hit theaters and stunned audiences in 1969, it clearly placed itself in that select, final category. Yes, it was one more epic Western in an already well-worn lineage of them. No, it wasn’t like anything John Ford or John Wayne would have recognized, or, for that matter, would have felt very comfortable with.
Director Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece portrays an aging, nearly obsolete, and obviously doomed band of outlaws making its last stand somewhere (and seemingly everywhere) on the Texas-Mexico border while the curtain closes on the Old American West. Pummeling viewers with graphic violence (at least by 1960s standards), rapid-fire cuts, and vicious moral ambiguities, The Wild Bunch would have made Shane blush and was an instant, genre-redefining classic. Today, Premiere magazine ranks The Wild Bunch among the top 100 movies of the last century. The American Film Institute calls it the sixth best Western of all time.
It’s also been said that to see this double Oscar-nominated film is to be simply overwhelmed by it. At least when viewing it the proper way — on a giant screen in a spectacular movie theater with a packed, wide-eyed audience. If you missed that opportunity forty years ago (or wouldn’t mind an encore), now’s your chance to ride this giant one last time.
On Thursday, November 12, The Wild Bunch will return for a one-night-only director’s cut screening at one of the first movie palaces in the country, Los Angeles’ historic (and historically reopened) Million Dollar Theater. Former cast members attending the screening will include Oscar-winning icon Ernest Borgnine and fellow costars L.Q. Jones, Bo Hopkins, and Paul Harper.
“Without a doubt, this will be the last great ride of the movie with principal cast members in attendance,” says Jean-Christophe Jeauffre, president and cofounder of the Jules Verne Festival, an internationally acclaimed organization dedicated to the “spirit of adventure” in the arts, which will be hosting the event. “In fact, there was no formal opening with cast members present for The Wild Bunch when it was first released,” says Jeauffre, “because the studios at the time didn’t quite know how to handle a film like this. So, in a sense, this evening will be serving as a long overdue ‘premiere’ as well.”
The movie will be preceded by preshow entertainment (including a mariachi band) and a short screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage (1996), which traces the making of The Wild Bunch and captures the experiences and opinions of its central cast and crew — including Peckinpah, who notably described his creation as “a simple adventure story.” An after-screening party will follow.
“In Hollywood, The Wild Bunch really did help mark the end of one era and the beginning of another — alongside other groundbreaking releases at the time like Easy Rider — and its influence on films today is just huge,” says Jeauffre. “Interestingly, the movie itself depicts the end of the West as we know it, or at least knew it from all of those earlier, less controversial Westerns. So we’re not just celebrating a great Western, but a groundbreaking film on so many levels.”
The 40th Anniversary Screening of The Wild Bunch will be held on Thursday, November 12, 2009, at 7 p.m. (with a 6 p.m. preshow and VIP reception) at the Million Dollar Theater, 307 S. Broadway Ave., Los Angeles, California. Tickets are $15 for general admission and $30 for VIP admission. Information and tickets are available at www.julesverne.org or 213.884.7005.
• Info: www.milliondollartheater.com
