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Originally Posted by SeanJoyce
Was it more Marvin just tired of doing westerns and wanting to try something different ( Paint Your Wagon), or did he really feel it was too similar to his role in The Professionals?  Both? |
I believe a combination of money, Peckinpah still being unrehabilited after the
Major Dundee and
Cincinnati Kid fiascos and the fact that the film was very obviously designed by Warners as a ripoff of the hottest script of the year, The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy (past their time outlaws are chased across the border by posse after failed robbery and die in shootout with local troops) when they wouldn't meet the $400,000 asking price for William Goldman's script because it would set a bad precedent. Peckinpah took it in a different direction, but Marvin was a hot property and Wild Bunch was a lukewarm project with a script co-written by a stuntman, a National Geographic documentary maker and a commercially unproven director with a toxic reputation on a shitty location that even William Holden thought was just another oater until his first day on set where he saw how Peckinpah was handling the opening shootout and prompty went back to his trailer to study the script because he realized he was going to have to up his game on this one.
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Speaking of Peckinpah, do you know how much of the finished script for Emperor of the North is his?
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No: I'd guess very little because the story was he dropped out over the money on offer, but I believe Garner Simmons' book is the one that goes into it in the most detail.