Cinema Speculation

The Getaway

(1972)

The imprint of Steve McQueen, and Sam Peckinpah, and the stuntmen, and the location, and the kind of maleness of it all, was so exciting . . . and it’s never been duplicated.

—Ali MacGraw on The Getaway

The story of both Jim Thompson’s novel and Sam Peckinpah’s movie is the same. Master bank robber Doc McCoy, who’s just served four years in prison, is given parole in exchange for orchestrating a robbery for a local bigwig named Beynon (played in the movie by Ben Johnson), who sits on the parole board. The deal is brokered by McCoy’s robbery accomplice wife, Carol (it’s inferred in the movie it was her mistake that put Doc behind bars). Once out, Beynon partners him with two unstable accomplices, including a mad dog killing sadist named Rudy (played by Al Lettieri). The robbery turns into a bullet festival but the couple get away with the money. When they arrive at Beynon’s place to give him his cut, the power broker reveals to Doc that part of the arrangement to get him released was that his wife fuck him. Carol shoots Beynon after his revelation. Now the couple (with the money) make a mad dash across Texas to the Mexican border, with all of the Texas authorities, Beynon’s murdering henchmen, and a wounded revenge-minded Rudy all hot on their ass. But the couple have to contend with not only all the enemies after them, but also with each other, because Doc can’t forgive Carol for fucking Beynon.

The Getaway was put into production during a serious time of transition in Steve McQueen’s life. He and his wife, friend, and confidant Neile McQueen were finalizing their divorce. Steve had moved out of their Malibu home and taken up residence at the Chateau Marmont. During the making of the phenomenally successful Bullitt, Peter Yates had gone overschedule by thirty days. Which, before the movie came out and was a smash, prompted Warner Bros.-Seven Arts to end their association with McQueen’s production company, Solar Productions. So McQueen and his producing partner Robert Relyea brought the company to Cinema Center Films, a theatrical motion picture arm of the CBS Television network, and a very troubled relationship followed.

After passing at the last minute on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, McQueen embarked on three offbeat projects that all ended in disappointment for the actor.

His family-friendly William Faulkner adaptation with Mark Rydell, The Reivers, got good notices, but it was his costar Rupert Crosse who stole the show, the reviews, and received the Oscar nomination (never mind the fact both he and Crosse were way too old for the roles). Also comedy was never the actor’s strong suit, and the film required him to mug and overact shamelessly.

Le Mans, the second film on the Cinema Center deal, is today considered one of the key iconic pillars in the actor’s filmography and the McQueen mystique. And many (me included) think it’s the best racing movie ever made. But at the time it was a terrible disappointment for McQueen. And the town not only considered it a failure, but an ego-driven fiasco, with the financiers, Cinema Center Films, taking over the production and at one point even shutting it down.

And his last film of the three, Sam Peckinpah’s rodeo reverie, Junior Bonner (this time made for the ABC Television Network’s theatrical picture division, ABC Pictures International), was an outright box office bomb.

So a movie about a husband and wife bank robbing couple on the run was designed by McQueen and Bob Relyea as a way to manufacture a hit.

The project began life when producer David Foster (of the producing team of Truman/Foster) and Mitch Brown optioned Thompson’s novel.

McQueen was approached and he said yes.

Then the picture was set up with Robert Evans at Paramount.

The first director on board was Peter Bogdanovich.

He had just done The Last Picture Show, which hadn’t even been released yet. Nevertheless, in the town he was considered a big-time comer. So big in fact, he was able to line up his next film with Barbra Streisand, and his next film after that with McQueen.

So Bogdanovich hired screenwriter Walter Hill to adapt Thompson’s book.

Walter said the director, the producer, and McQueen hadn’t any notes, they just wanted a script as soon as possible. Meanwhile Bogdanovich was in San Francisco shooting What’s Up, Doc?, so The Getaway screenwriter was brought out there to work on the script and confer with Peter on set from time to time.

Walter Hill was a fan of Jim Thompson and had read many of his books. Peter wasn’t.

When I asked Peter what he thought of Thompson’s novel, he described it as “a good book with a lousy ending.”

Walter liked Peter, but right off the bat he started having questions about whether or not Peter was the man to direct this material. “Peter kept saying he wanted to turn it into a Hitchcockian type of adventure. Which, frankly, I never understood. To me it was obviously a movie that should be done more in the style of Raoul Walsh. High Sierra being a perfect example.”

But there was no denying Bogdanovich’s ability at handling a big production. Hill would be on the set of What’s Up, Doc?—usually in the morning—when he and Peter could confer about the script the easiest. And firsthand he watched Peter handle—at the absolute zenith of her superstardom—Barbra Streisand.

“Watching Peter’s handling of Streisand,” Walter told me, “was masterful. There really is no other word for it.

“She’d come on the set buzzing like a hornet about something or other. Then Peter would console her.

“Tell her how beautiful she was.

“‘Don’t worry, Barbra, you’re America’s sweetheart, none of this is important.

“‘You’re amazing in the picture.

“‘The critics are going to love you. The fans are going to love you.

“‘I watched the rushes last night and practically fell out of my chair laughing.’

“And pretty soon Barbra was purring like a kitten. Now it sounds like I’m just saying he was kissing her ass. Or he was insincere. But that’s not it. She was good in the picture. And she was funny in the picture. Quentin, you know as a director, there is a certain amount of that type of handling required. Especially with huge stars of a temperamental nature. And I’d just never seen anybody handle it with the absolute skill Bogdanovich employed.”*

However, by this time, McQueen was getting seriously irritated that he had to wait for the ending of What’s Up, Doc? before he could make The Getaway. Of course he was aware that Peter was supposed to do the Streisand picture first, but as time went on, Hill said, “It made him feel like he was in second position to Streisand.”

So to make everybody feel like The Getaway wasn’t stagnating, a meeting between the producers, McQueen, Bogdanovich, and Hill—who was still writing the screenplay—was set up in San Francisco on Peter’s day off.

“By this time,” Hill said, “maybe Peter had read twenty or so pages of the script so far. Also, to be fair, Peter was tired from shooting and was probably just happy to have a day off. So it’s possible he wasn’t taking into account how important this meeting was to McQueen and the producers.”

So first question to Peter by the producers was, “How’s the script coming?”

Peter then turned to Walter and said, “So, Walter, how’s the script coming?”

And Walter said, “It’s coming along.”

Then McQueen asked Peter a direct question. “What kind of guns would I use in this?”

Peter laughed and said, “Oh, don’t worry about that now, Steve. We’ve got plenty of time to figure that out,” basically shining on McQueen the way he had gotten used to doing with Streisand.

But McQueen wasn’t Streisand.

And to Steve, who knew a lot about firearms and was expert at handling them, armaments were an important thing.

Especially on a movie like this and with a character like Doc.

Hill remembered, “You could just see from the reaction on Steve’s face to Peter’s answer that the actor was asking himself ‘was this the guy who should be making a tough guy movie?’

“And a few days later, Steve decided to cut the cord on Bogdanovich.”

Hill said he hasn’t had any problem with Peter over the years, but at the time there was a feeling on Peter’s part that since he’d been fired Walter should have quit.

Walter understood that moral sentiment.

But he didn’t necessarily think it applied in this situation.

Not only that, he received a memo from Peter Bart at Paramount that told him he should absolutely keep writing or he’d be sued. So now there was a big decision, who was going to direct the picture? After the experience with Bogdanovich it was decided that only a filmmaker adept at making tough guy movies would be applicable.

And in that regard there were only two choices, Sam Peckinpah or Don Siegel (either of which would have “thrilled” Walter Hill).

After Dirty Harry Siegel couldn’t have been hotter. But McQueen worked with Siegel in the sixties on Hell Is for Heroes and, as mentioned, at different points the two men almost came to blows.

Yet, McQueen had just finished working for Peckinpah on Junior Bonner and had a good experience and was very happy with his performance. But that film also ended up being not just unsuccessful, but a notorious bomb. The type a popular movie star like McQueen was unaccustomed to. Despite that, it was decided to send Hill’s finished script to Sam Peckinpah, with an offer to direct McQueen in the lead.

Sam read it on a flight and according to Walter said, “Absolutely. It’s perfect material for him. And Steve would be sensational in it.”

The first draft of Hill’s script was quite different from the movie that Sam eventually made. Following the book, the first draft was set in 1949. Hill mentioned, “It read very well, and everybody was pleased with it. But when the Paramount budget people did the numbers, the costs grew to an astronomical amount. So in an effort to bring down the budget, Sam suggested making it a contemporary film.

“But even by removing the period element, Paramount still considered the budget too high. Sam pushed back on the figures they were claiming. But both Steve and Sam had reputations for films that went over budget.”

Leading studio head Robert Evans to say, “Look, I pay my budget people to tell me what things are going to cost. If they say it’s going to cost too much I oughta listen to them.”

So Evans put the film into turnaround.

Evans was sure the other studios would run the numbers and come to the same conclusion, that the whole damn thing was just too expensive, then McQueen and company would be forced back to Paramount, and the studio could dictate better terms at a more reasonable price. But much to Evans’ chagrin, the minute it came on the market National General Pictures snapped it up as is.* So now armed with an exciting McQueen action vehicle, a critically acclaimed action director, a script everybody was thrilled about, a budget they could all agree upon, and a home at an enthusiastic studio, there only remained one giant unknown . . .

Who would play the female colead, Carol McCoy?

Well, from the moment Robert Evans became involved, he had been aggressively pushing the idea of a teaming between his wife, superstar actress Ali MacGraw, and Steve McQueen.

In retrospect, this is ironic, because it would be while she was making The Getaway she would leave the mogul and marry her costar Steve McQueen. Naturally the producers were excited by the commercial prospects of a McQueen/MacGraw team up, and for good reasons. Ali MacGraw was one of the biggest female movie stars in the world, and Love Story was the single biggest hit of 1970. But the actress had yet to do another picture. So The Getaway would be MacGraw’s follow up to Love Story.

During the time he was involved, Bogdanovich told me how aggressive Evans was in pushing him to cast MacGraw.

Naturally, Peter wanted to cast his own girlfriend Cybill Shepherd.

“I didn’t insist on it. It wasn’t like it’s Cybill or it’s nobody. But I thought Cybill was good casting and MacGraw was bad casting. And I told Evans that. I told him the movie will hurt Ali in the long run. Because since she’s miscast, the critics will kill her. Which is exactly what ended up happening. But the character is a barefoot, broad-shouldered Texas girl. That’s Cybill!”

He’s not entirely wrong. The character in both Thompson’s book and Hill’s script (which aren’t exactly the same) is a little closer to Shepherd than it is to MacGraw. But back then the number one person against the MacGraw idea (again, ironically) was Steve McQueen.

His attitude was, No fucking studio head’s going to tell me who’s going to be in my movie!

But even after the movie had switched hands to Warner Bros., Evans was still in there pitching for MacGraw, “I know it’s not a Paramount picture anymore. But don’t hold that against Ali. That’s not her fault. Her and McQueen would be dynamite together!”

Sam’s choice for Carol was his leading lady from The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Stella Stevens. For the character that existed on the page, Stevens was perfect. For somebody who could go head-to-head with McQueen, Stevens was perfect. But Steve McQueen didn’t want somebody who was perfect.

McQueen didn’t want Carol going head-to-head with him.

Stevens said she had a drink with McQueen when Sam suggested her, and Steve told her, “I consider you competition.”

And on a McQueen picture, Steve didn’t want competition.

That’s what had happened with Rupert Crosse on The Reivers.

He’ll be damned if he does The Getaway and watches Stella Stevens get nominated for an Oscar. So Stella Stevens didn’t work opposite McQueen in The Getaway. But in that same year she did star opposite another king of cool movie star—in a big iconic action film hit—when she costarred with Jim Brown in Slaughter. And in Slaughter, Jim Brown had a chemistry with Stevens that he never had or would ever have again with any of his other leading ladies.

Like McQueen and MacGraw, you can believe Brown and Stevens fell in love on the picture.

I asked Walter Hill who he thought would make a good Carol.

He said he liked the Stella Stevens idea, but he thought the obvious choice was Angie Dickinson. “I don’t mean this in a bad way, but I always thought Angie had a trashy quality to her. You could buy her as one half of a bank robbery team.”

Walter said the actress that got the most consideration was Lauren Hutton. And Neile McQueen told me at one time Geneviève Bujold was in the mix. But that idea ended up blowing up when Steve waited in a bar to meet Bujold to discuss the film, and she came walking in with Maximilian Schell.

You see, after being cheated on time and time again by Steve during their marriage, Neile had decided to retaliate by having an affair with Max Schell. So when Geneviève Bujold walked through the barroom doorway with the man who fucked his wife, Steve got distracted from the purpose of the casting meeting. Instead, after excusing himself from the French-Canadian actress, he asked the German thespian if he could speak with him outside. At which point, according to Neile, Steve proceeded to beat the living shit outta Maximilian Schell.

I related that story to Walter Hill, who told me, if that happened, he was pretty sure it would indeed have been a one-sided fight. So after that violent episode, that was it for Geneviève Bujold as Carol.

Hill told me there was a concentrated effort from everybody involved to make The Getaway a commercial hit.

After Steve’s last three movies, he needed a hit.

Sam had never had a hit, and he knew this was going to be his best shot at finding out what having a successful picture felt like.

It was the main reason so many of the darker aspects of the novel, including its surreal ending, were jettisoned in the adaptation.

But to the end of being commercial, an obvious choice for the part of Carol would have been Faye Dunaway. Of all the genuine female movie stars of the time, it’s Dunaway who’s the most like Carol McCoy. And since commercial considerations were at the forefront of everybody’s mind, the stars of The Thomas Crown Affair reuniting would seem a logical choice.

Walter Hill told me, “Well, yes, now that seems logical. But at the time, they felt they had to contend with the specter of Bonnie and Clyde, which they were afraid hung over the whole picture. It’s why, frustratingly for all, they were never able to even consider Faye Dunaway.”*

Not only that, Hill told me once Sam came aboard he had a completely different idea for the ending that he really wanted to do. He wanted to end the film in a Sam Peckinpah bloodbath.

He wanted Doc and Carol to cross the border into Mexico with the law waiting for them “and then shoot ’em dead!”

Walter said he told Sam, “That’s fine with me, because I know how you’re going to shoot it. You see, Sam really didn’t like Arthur Penn. And Sam’s critics implied Sam borrowed his whole slow motion violence technique from Arthur Penn’s ending to Bonnie and Clyde.” And nothing bugged the hard-drinking director more than being accused of swiping his signature style from, of all people, Arthur Penn.

Hill told me, “If you shoot ’em down, I know how you’re going to do it. You’re going to do it in slow motion.”

It would have been Peckinpah’s chance to outdo Penn with his own ending. But everybody else wanted to stay as far away from Bonnie and Clyde as they could. So the Slim Pickens “happy ending” was decided as the way to go.

But despite Steve not being into it, the idea of Ali MacGraw never went away. So Sam met with the actress and liked her. “Then suddenly,” remembered Hill, “Sam was pushing for MacGraw. And that really threw Steve for a loop. Personally, I think Sam did like her. Not so much for the part, but he liked her. And you must remember, Sam had never had a hit. And he wanted one. And since everybody thought Ali’s involvement would make The Getaway a great hit, he was prepared to go along with it. So once Sam said he liked the idea of MacGraw, that’s when Steve gave in.”

Walter theorized, “He [Steve] probably figured there were other people who could play this part better, but if everybody else is so hot on her, and it’s going to make it that much more of a hit, why not?”

And let the record state, “everybody” was right. The Getaway was a massive hit and MacGraw’s participation was a major factor to its success.

I first saw The Getaway in 1972 when it came out at the Paradise Theatre in Westchester, a Los Angeles town by LAX (the Paradise and the Loyola were the two theatres near where we lived in El Segundo that I saw a lot of movies at from 1971 to 1974). My mom would drive me to the cinema on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, then drop me off and come back and pick me up four or five hours later. And that’s how I first saw the PG-rated The Getaway when it opened opposite The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. I liked both films enough to see them again the next weekend. Then the next year, when I was living in Tennessee with my grandmother, I saw The Getaway a third time on the lower bill of a drive-in double feature with Walking Tall. Then back in Los Angeles one year after that, at a United Artists theatre in Marina del Rey on the lower half of a double bill with The Outfit. And all that was before I was fifteen. I later watched The Getaway at revival house screenings, not to mention on home video, and countless times since (I have my own IB Technicolor 35mm print).

But while I’ve always loved it, and I do love it more than some of the other more exalted Sam Peckinpah films (Ride the High Country, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Cross of Iron), I’ve always harbored misgivings too.

My main misgiving was that it wasn’t the book. It didn’t matter that I liked what Sam and Walter did, I held it in contempt for what it wasn’t. The changes from page to screen don’t affect the story, which stays basically the same. But the biggest difference between the story Thompson told and the story Peckinpah tells is the tone. The Peckinpah movie is tough. But the Thompson novel is far far far more vicious. The characters, the events it describes, and their eventual outcome. And on top of that viciousness (which is what most of us like about Thompson) is a thick layer of pessimism and cynicism, and on top of that is a light coating of surrealism.

The Doc McCoy of the novel is a stone-cold killer.

As Walter Hill said when I brought up the change in Doc from page to screen, “Compared to the Doc in the book, [Richard Stark’s] Parker is a moral paragon.”

The movie, on the other hand, even more than Hill’s script, seems to bend over backwards to portray McQueen’s Doc as not a killer. This change still bugs the shit out of me.

But the book Doc is different in other ways.

McQueen doesn’t say much as Doc.

It’s a very internal performance.

And I think it’s very real and very deeply felt.

But one of the most defining traits of the Doc in the book is his ability to disarm people with his folksy-sounding charm.

In the book, Doc could talk the birds out of the trees, then break their wings, and stomp on them with his boot.

The most puzzling omission from the book is the sequence when his treacherous accomplice Rudy gets the drop on Doc after the robbery. Rudy’s going to plug him, but Doc convinces the killer to take him to Carol because she’s got the money. Now convincing Rudy isn’t easy, because he doesn’t trust anybody, he’s a mad dog and he’s scared of Doc’s reputation. But Doc’s folksy-sounding bullshit is so convincing, so sincere, and makes such common sense Rudy, though never taking his gun off Doc, drives to where Carol is.

What’s really great about the scene is the drive to Carol’s.

What convinces both Rudy and the reader that Doc is on the up and up is during the whole drive Doc never stops talking. Doc just keeps shooting the shit with Rudy about anything and everything. He just keeps pouring on the jokes, the folksy stories, witty observations, and laughs, till the grumpy-jumpy Rudy is forced to (somewhat) join in. The car ride to Carol lasts about an hour. When they get there Doc gets out of the car, casually takes his hat off his head, removes a gun sitting inside of it, and plugs Rudy with it.

As anybody familiar with my work can guess, this is my favorite scene in the book and my favorite scene in any Thompson novel. And it’s made to order for a movie.

And yet two movies have been made from the book and neither one saw fit to use this scene. When I brought that scene up to Hill to find out why he didn’t include it, he had a good answer.

The screenwriter said, “I liked that scene too. But I was writing a movie for Steve McQueen. That scene is very good in the book, but it’s not McQueen. When you’re writing for an actor like Steve—or, for that matter, any actor—you gain a lot by being able to fashion the material to their strengths. But you lose some when it comes to characterization, because you’re going to avoid things that don’t show off that actor in the best light.”

Another difference is in the presentation of Doc’s double crossing nemesis Rudy. On both the page and screen Rudy is presented as a grotesque sadistic brute. But Thompson makes the character physically grotesque. In the book he’s known as Rudy the Pie Head because when he was born, his head was so large it got stuck in his mother’s birth canal. So he had to be yanked out with metal forceps. And those forceps smooshed the two sides of his head together, till the top of his head came to what looked like a point.

Like a piece of pie. Hence, Rudy the Pie Head.

Now I can see producers, studios, and movie stars rejecting this aspect of the story as ridiculous. But you would think the man that went rooting around like a truffle pig in the garbage dump that was Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia might be inspired by Thompson’s Dali-like paint stroke.*

Again, I asked Walter why he didn’t include it.

He said he felt that weird “Rudy the Pie Head” thing was of a piece with the novel’s infamous El Rey epilogue. You either go the weird route with it all the way, or you don’t.

“We didn’t.”

Speaking of the Rudy storyline—I’m not a fan. I really don’t like Lettieri in the role. It’s not that he’s a bad actor or gives a bad performance. It’s more I find his performance physically repellent.

Now for a character like Rudy, that should be a good thing, no?

No. It’s still a movie. I still should want to watch the movie and enjoy it. Certain actors can play grotesque bad guys, yet they still have a connection to the audience. We still enjoy them as performers. They do cruel deeds, they’re monsters, but we enjoy their monsters because when they’re on screen we know something exciting will happen.

For instance, the year after The Getaway came out, Neville Brand played a degenerate, murdering serial rapist in the film The Mad Bomber. His character is one sick son of a bitch. But he also gives the most enjoyable performance in the film. Every time the film cuts to Brand—as opposed to either Vince Edwards’ one-note Dirty Harry clone, or Chuck Connors’ rock-terrible performance of the title character—you’re not only relieved, you’re thrilled.

Al Lettieri didn’t have that relationship or connection with the audience. I’ve watched The Getaway many times with theatre audiences, and whenever the film cuts to the Rudy/Fran section—you can feel the audience lean back in their seats.

The whole section is ugly, and both Lettieri and Sally Struthers as his hostage turned sub Fran, make you physically repel from the screen.

Again, wasn’t that the idea?

I doubt it.

There’s a sense of sadistic black comedy at play in the Rudy and Fran dom/sub theme in Thompson’s novel that’s absent in Peckinpah’s film. If William Smith, or Robert Blake, or Jack Palance had played Rudy, the subplot could have been just as cruel, but it probably would’ve come off as the sick joke Thompson intended.

Lettieri seems to be trying to give the type of performance that Richard Boone specialized in during the latter part of his career.

But Boone was a gregarious, ferocious bear with tremendous audience empathy. They once asked Elmore Leonard did any actor ever say his great dialogue the way it was in his head. And he said, “Yes. Richard Boone. And he did it twice.” (In The Tall T and Hombre.)

Plus Boone had that great powerful folksy voice (it’s a slightly younger Boone who could have pulled off the Doc of Thompson’s novel). Al Lettieri’s Rudy is intimidating, he’s a force, but he’s also a bummer.

Every time Sam cuts back to Rudy, you’re like, “Oh, this fuckin’ guy!”

I revealed my misgivings about Lettieri to Walter Hill, curious what his response would be. And was a little surprised he agreed with me.

“I will address Lettieri’s performance. I never really cared for it either. But you see originally it was going to be Jack Palance. Whenever we talked about it, it was always the Jack Palance role. Then they offered it to Palance and he said yes. But then they got into a big fight about price. And once that happened, they just didn’t want to refuse Palance—they wanted to punish him. So they pulled the offer. They got into a big fight about it. And Palance sued them and collected!

“So they ended up paying him anyway, but they didn’t get his Rudy.

“And I think the problem was, we thought about it as the Jack Palance role for so long, nobody could ever move off of that idea. At least I couldn’t. At one point Jack Nicholson was brought up. And at that time we could have still probably got ’em—you hafta remember he wasn’t quite Jack yet. But Sam didn’t like ’em. I think he watched Five Easy Pieces and he said—I’ll never forget it—‘He’s a poor man’s Henry Fonda.’ Yeah, Lettieri was—I hate to say it, but he was kind of repulsive. I mean guys like Lee Marvin and Neville Brand, who I love, played characters like Rudy, and they were always fun to watch.

“But having said all that, I feel I must point out, Sam loved him in the role.”

The other thing that the movie famously loses is the surrealistic postscript chapter in El Rey. In the book, El Rey is a getaway no-man’s-land that crooks hightail it to on the other side of the Mexican border. El Rey is a pretty unique creation on Thompson’s part. A Latin American no-man’s-land, where crooks or men on the run end up in, is a staple of both pulp and art. It describes the hellhole that both Yves Montand and Roy Scheider end up in, in The Wages of Fear and its vastly superior remake, Sorcerer. As well as Tennessee Williams’ mythical last stop Camino Real, where his ex-boxer hero Kilroy cools his heels with Camille, Casanova, and Lord Byron.

But Thompson’s El Rey has different art direction, if not a different outcome. Thompson’s El Rey is closer to a luxury resort than the mosquito-infested, mud-and-urine shantytown of Sorcerer. But the place really is a Catholic purgatory on earth. It’s a destination out of Luis Buñuel or Ken Russell that tips the hard edge crime novel into the territory of science fiction.

Those on the run are offered in El Rey safety and sanctuary.

But at a high price.

Every room, every meal, every drink costs and costs a lot (it sounds like the Cannes Film Festival). And since the people who choose to go to El Rey can never leave . . . eventually . . . the money runs out.

And those people are reduced to beggars and eventually even cannibals. The fate—eventually—of all who enter El Rey.

Including Doc and Carol, who when we take leave of them not only hate each other, but are plotting each other’s death in order for their loot to last longer and hold off the inevitability of their hopeless destiny. It seems Thompson, after so much pitilessly presented violence, does have a moral center after all. While we may be bummed out this is how Doc and Carol end up, it’s clear the author thinks they and others of their ilk are just getting what they deserve. The cannibal twist demonstrating Thompson’s true feelings about the couple.

Now for most readers the last chapter has proven to be the moment of truth. Some people hate it, think it ruins the book.

Some people don’t hate it, but they think it spoils the story.

While others love the book, particularly because of the ending.

And still others think it’s because of the ending that the book reaches masterpiece status.

I used to like the ending more than I do now. Just the whole perverseness of it appealed to me. But now I feel if Thompson was going to pull such a presto chango he needed to write it better.

Frankly, as the book goes on how grim it gets becomes a drag. You may have to force yourself to keep reading. And that’s coming from me—someone who equates transgression with art.

Now maybe the book’s Doc and Carol deserve this fate, but under no circumstances do you want the movie’s couple, McQueen and MacGraw, plotting each other’s murder, only for them to eventually end up cannibal beggars. I asked Walter if the El Rey ending was ever considered.

He said, “Well, I was never told not to include it by the producers. But I was also aware what they were looking for. And that ending wasn’t it. Had I included the ending in the book the movie would never get made. And even if Paramount did make the movie, which is extremely doubtful, it would have been a very strange movie. And nobody wanted to make a strange movie. They wanted a good tough guy crime picture starring Steve McQueen, that would do well commercially. But I like Jim Thompson’s novel very much. Somebody should do a dark version of The Getaway.”*

While I love Peckinpah’s The Getaway there are irritating flaws that are the filmmaker’s fault. Dramatic turns of events that clue the authorities on to which direction the fugitive couple are heading are based on plot contrivances (Richard Bright’s cowboy con man/locker thief). It seems like through the whole movie the couple can’t pass a single Texas extra without them holding a newspaper with their picture in it and that extra doing a double take. Also everybody in the state seems to know not just what Doc looks like, but the make and model of the car he drives. It practically becomes an unintentional running joke (the TV appearance in the repair shop is convenient, but that one Peckinpah pulls off). Also there really wouldn’t have to be a getaway at all, if Beynon didn’t force Doc to use two unstable half-wits like Rudy and Jackson (Bo Hopkins).

Doc says, “I pick my own men.”

But Beynon makes him use those guys.

Why?

We know the minute we see them in that stupid paddle boat they’re unreliable.

If Doc is such a “smart operator” and a big time pro and Beynon wants to keep his hands clean, why not let Doc pick the men?

As Robert Prosky says in Thief, “If they beef on you, that’s your problem. If they beef on us, that’s your problem.”

Because it’s a movie, stupid. Or is it because it’s a stupid movie?

But, for me, the single biggest problem with the film is the casting of Ben Johnson as Beynon. I don’t like Al Lettieri as Rudy, but he still works in the role.

For Sam Peckinpah, Carol fucking Beynon was more important than anything else in the picture. For first time viewers it’s easy to assume, to get her man out of Huntsville, she was forced against her will into the sexual bargain. She did what she had to do.

But Peckinpah decidedly does not dramatize it that way.

The film insinuates she was not just willing to do it for Doc; she was willing to do it to Beynon. It even tries (very unsuccessfully) to insinuate that Carol has to debate her choice of which man to stay with. And in the confrontation scene where Carol shoots Beynon, the movie ridiculously tries to convince us that maybe Carol is in league with the Texas power broker against her husband.

Later Doc accuses her, “I think you liked it. I think he got to you.”

Carol answers Doc back, “Maybe I got to him.”

If Beynon wasn’t played by Ben Johnson, this whole three-way sexual dynamic could have worked. Not putting down Big Ben or doubting his significant masculine charisma. It’s not just you can’t imagine Ben Johnson having sex with Ali MacGraw, you can’t imagine Ben Johnson having sex. No less Ali MacGraw’s Carol seriously considering leaving Steve McQueen’s Doc (who she loves) for Ben Johnson’s Beynon.

“I think you liked it!”

Yeah, right, Ali MacGraw liked fucking Ben Johnson.

“I think he got to you!”

I didn’t buy Richard Benjamin getting to Ali MacGraw in Goodbye, Columbus, let alone Ben Johnson.

This whole subplot could have been far more effective if Beynon had been played by somebody a little closer to McQueen in age and dynamic. Joe Don Baker would have been the fantastic natural choice. But I can also see Robert Culp or Stuart Whitman delivering what was required to make the triangle dynamic work.*

Now obviously, more was at stake than just sex appeal.

Beynon represented money, security, stability, and comfort. With Beynon, Carol could have a child and the means to raise it properly. Is she going to have a child with Doc? Probably not. Would Doc be a good father? Probably not. With Doc she’ll always be looking over her shoulder for the heat just around the corner.

With Doc, him doing another jail stretch is a possibility, if not a probability.

She waited four years the last time.

Could she wait eight, ten?

Working as his accomplice, she’d probably be sent up the river too. Beynon’s probably not going to jail. And even if he did, she’d have the money and property to handle that.

Still . . . I’d swallow the whole thing a helluva lot easier if it wasn’t Ben Johnson.

Walter Hill informed me it was supposed to be William Holden as Beynon. Which would have gone a little way to dealing with my concerns, though I still like my Joe Don, Culp, and Whitman idea much better.

I told Hill my problems with this storyline, and he laughed.

“Boy, Quentin, you’re really moving the boulder away from the mouth of the cave to see where all the bodies are buried.”

He went on to explain, “I liked Sam and I enjoyed working with him. And I really appreciated the opportunity to work with him. And it was the success generated from his film that allowed me to be a director. But the whole situation with Carol and Beynon was our only real bone of contention. You see, that was how it was in Thompson’s book.

“She had sex with Beynon, she did it to get Doc out, but maybe her loyalties, for a moment, were divided.

“I didn’t think that’s the way it should be. I thought it should be clear, it was a condition to the deal of getting Doc out of jail. And that’s why she did it, no other reason. I thought it made her side of the argument stronger.

“Carol could have told him, ‘Look, that was the deal. So to get you out of Huntsville, I did what I had to do. I did it for you. So grow up and get over it.’

“But Sam said, ‘No, it’s got to be like it was in the book.’ I didn’t agree, but it was his movie so I did it the way he wanted it.”

The old-school genre movie directors dealt within a movie industry I can read about in books, but I really can’t imagine. They’d get assigned a producer from the studio that they couldn’t stand. They’d get assigned actors they didn’t think were right for the part. They’d work with 1st AD’s, costume people, directors of photography, production designers who weren’t working for them. They were working for the studio.

And it worked the other way around too. Producers and actors would get stuck with hack directors with no feel for the material they were directing, that were just shooting a schedule. Charles Bronson once claimed that was three out of five directors he worked with. Back in those days people would work together and they’d finish their projects despising each other.

Especially Sam Peckinpah.

Peckinpah once said, “A director has to deal with a whole world absolutely teeming with mediocrities, jackals, hangers-on, and just plain killers.”

That’s not been my experience in the industry.

Directors like Sam Peckinpah and Don Siegel were genre film masters.

But they didn’t make genre films the way Jean-Pierre Melville did. The way I do. The way Walter Hill does, the way John Woo does, the way Eli Roth does. As students of genre cinema, we make genre films because we love genre films. They made genre films because they were good at it and that’s what the studios would hire them to do.

Sam Peckinpah made The Wild Bunch, but he would have rather made Rashomon. Sam was happy to adapt Jim Thompson’s novel. He knew it would make a good picture. It would be terrific for McQueen. And it would possibly deliver him his first hit. But he would have rather adapted Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays.

So since this generation of genre directors were forced to make what at the end of the day they considered silly stories about cowboys and cops and robbers, in order to make those silly stories mean something to them, they based them in metaphors that pertained to their own lives.

Sam also came of age in an industry when men cheated on their wives and wives cheated on their husbands and there were violent repercussions, but the show kept going on. A world where producer Walter Wanger would shoot agent Jennings Lang in the balls for sleeping with his wife Joan Bennett. Wanger would go to prison for a few years. Later Jennings Lang would become the head of Universal Studios and Walter Wanger would produce Riot in Cell Block 11 and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, both movies Peckinpah would work on as a young man.

Look at The Getaway as a story about Sam Peckinpah from a paranoid Peckinpah’s perceived perspective of persecution.

Sam Peckinpah is Doc McCoy. A writer-director sitting in movie jail, unable to get work. Beynon, a studio executive he despises, wants Sam to make a movie for him. The executive stands for everything the director has contempt for . . . yet . . . he’s the only one who will hire him. The only one to unlock the cell door to movie jail. Doc’s wife brokers the deal for the movie. Doc writes the movie. Beynon forces him to work with people the director doesn’t want to work with (Rudy and Jackson), but the boss man makes it clear the hired hand has no choice. Due to these incompetent inferiors, the movie ends up being a disaster, and the director is blamed by the executive who placed him in the position to fail from the very beginning.

Then, after the movie is over, the director discovers that his wife, who brokered the deal, as part of the deal, was sleeping with his enemy.

How would Sam Peckinpah react to that situation?

Similar to Doc McCoy in the movie?

Probably.

I think Sam Peckinpah only cared about one thing, his truest expression of artistic self. As Walter Hill told me, “Sam was a serious guy and he was in it for serious ambitions.”

In Neile McQueen’s autobiography, she wrote McQueen was reluctant to do the movie because “the main thrust of the story dealt with his wife’s unfaithfulness.” She told Steve, “Look at it this way, honey. You’ve been through it, you know how it feels.” Then she laughed as she told me, “I think he knocked me on my ass after I said that line.”

“The Getaway was the last time Steve was in a movie as ‘the Steve McQueen’ we liked to see,” Walter Hill stated. “He did a few other movies and he did good performances, but that special quality that made Steve—‘Steve’—was really never on display again.”

And I agree.

Now a lot of things in the Jim Thompson book I still like and some I prefer, especially Doc’s cold-blooded propensity, the sequence where he talks Rudy into driving him to Carol then shoots him through his hat, and even Rudy’s head shaped like a piece of pie.

But now, while I feel they’re good, except for Doc being a cold-blooded killer, they’re not necessarily better than the movie that was made. Because watching the movie now, I don’t see it as a bank robbery story anymore. I don’t even see it as a crime thriller about a pair of on-the-lam robbers, trying to make good their escape, with a massive manhunt coming from both sides hot on their trail.

I now realize what Sam made and what McQueen and McGraw performed was a love story.

The crime story is literal.

The love story is metaphorical.

But it’s on the metaphorical level where the filmmakers (and I include the actors in that title) operated most successfully.

Thompson wrote not only a getaway story, he spends the entire book, chapter by chapter, page by page, putting the couple through hell and tearing them apart.

Sam does the complete opposite.

He spends the entire film, reel by reel, scene by scene, putting the couple through hell, then bringing them together.

Nevertheless, when it comes to Peckinpah fans, Jim Thompson fans, Steve McQueen fans, or just fans of seventies crime movies in general, the one thing everybody seems to agree on is that in the role of Carol McCoy . . . Ali MacGraw was lousy.

And for the last forty years, I too was one of those Ali MacGraw bashers.

That is until recently.

It took me over forty years, but now I see Ali MacGraw’s performance differently.

First off, let me start by saying, she’s not the Carol McCoy of the book or Walter Hill’s screenplay.

If you want that Carol, if you need that Carol, then nothing is going to replace Sam’s first choice of Stella Stevens (except, possibly, star of Rolling Thunder Linda Haynes).

No, MacGraw’s Carol might not be one-half of the greatest bank robbing couple in crime film literature.

But instead of concentrating on what she’s not . . .

Let’s examine what she is.

She is one-half of one of the greatest love stories in crime film cinema.

While she doesn’t offer the characterization of a professional armed robber, she does offer up the minute by minute, scene by scene, emotional reality of a woman trying to keep a relationship from crumbling into pieces. The couple pass through a physical and emotional gauntlet, and lurch from one catastrophe to another.

While McQueen alternates between keeping his cool and losing his cool, Carol feels, Carol bleeds, Carol hurts, Carol is afraid.

She’s heartbreaking and heartbroken when she loses the suitcase full of loot to Richard Bright’s cowboy con man thief. She waits there in the train station for Doc, not knowing for sure if he’s going to return, in utter despair. Did I blow it? Did I just ruin everything? How could I be so stupid?

It’s my feeling that Ali MacGraw’s moment to moment work in this film is sensational.

In real life she was living through everything that she was hired to portray as Carol.

She’s a young woman in over her head—so was MacGraw.

Carol with Doc and this robbery—MacGraw with McQueen at the height of his iconic prowess in a genre film like this.

She’s a woman living through a painful betrayal.

Carol with Beynon—MacGraw with her husband Robert Evans.

She’s a woman having to deal with a very difficult, mercurial, masculine man amidst a grueling endeavor.

Carol on the lam with Doc—MacGraw making this incredibly difficult movie with McQueen and Peckinpah.

She’s a woman in love—so was MacGraw.

When the film came out in the States and England, MacGraw was roasted by the critics.

Torn apart and ridiculed, everywhere.

Everywhere . . . except France.

From the very beginning, the French always saw the film as a love story. And in France the critics praised the emotional content of her performance.

The best piece of adaptation that Hill does with Thompson’s manuscript is the garbage dump scene. In the book Carol and Doc hide away in one miserable, degrading hovel and hole and cave after another. Hill reduces it down to one moment: while eluding the cops they hide in a garbage dumpster. Then the dumpster gets picked up by a garbage truck, and they’re dumped in the back. They spend all night in there and in the morning are dumped out with all the other Texas garbage at the landfill. While they rest in that torn apart Volkswagen bug at the garbage dump, Carol threatens to “split.”

If Carol loses faith, all is lost.

It’s Doc’s savvy and survival prowess that keeps them from getting caught. Keeps them getting a little further down the road.

But it’s Carol that keeps them together.

It’s Carol that saves Doc from his self-destructive impulses.

It’s Carol that knows if they don’t make it together . . . they don’t make it.

If she throws in the towel, it was truly all for nothing.

Until Doc can not only forgive her for Beynon, but trust (completely) that she did it for the right reason, he’s still in Huntsville.

Finally, Doc comes to this realization. But Carol demands from her husband, “No matter what ever else happens, no more about him.”

And he agrees, “No matter whatever else happens—no more about him.” And the two (fucking finally) are reunited.

Walking together, one arm draped around her, holding her close. His other arm carrying the pump-action shotgun he stole from the sporting goods store. Backed by a sea of garbage, those terrible trash-eating birds flying around in the sky, and the dump trucks moving mountains of trash . . . yet . . . for the first time in the movie . . . we know they’re going to be alright.

“Whatever else happens.”