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For the fiftieth anniversary of the film, W.K. Stratton's
definitive history of the making of The Wild Bunch, named one of
the greatest Westerns of all time by the American Film Institute.
Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch is the story of a gang of
outlaws who are one big steal from retirement. When their attempted
train robbery goes awry, the gang flees to Mexico and falls in with
a brutal general of the Mexican Revolution, who offers them the job
of a lifetime. Conceived by a stuntman, directed by a blacklisted
director, and shot in the sand and heat of the Mexican desert, the
movie seemed doomed. Instead, it became an instant classic with a
dark, violent take on the Western movie tradition. In The Wild
Bunch, W.K. Stratton tells the fascinating history of the making of
the movie and documents for the first time the extraordinary
contribution of Mexican and Mexican-American actors and crew
members to the movie's success. Shaped by infamous director Sam
Peckinpah, and starring such visionary actors as William Holden,
Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, and Robert Ryan, the movie was
also the product of an industry and a nation in transition. By
1968, when the movie was filmed, the studio system that had
perpetuated the myth of the valiant cowboy in movies like The
Searchers had collapsed, and America was riled by Vietnam, race
riots, and assassinations. The Wild Bunch spoke to America in its
moment, when war and senseless violence seemed to define both
domestic and international life. The Wild Bunch is an authoritative
history of the making of a movie and the era behind it.
Honorable Mention, Carr P. Collins Award for Best Book of
Nonfiction, 2006 Grover Lewis was one of the defining voices of the
New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s. His wry, acutely observed,
fluently written essays for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice set
a standard for other writers of the time, including Hunter S.
Thompson, Joe Eszterhas, Timothy Ferris, Chet Flippo, and Tim
Cahill, who said of Lewis, "He was the best of us." Pioneering the
"on location" reportage that has become a fixture of features about
moviemaking and live music, Lewis cut through the celebrity hype
and captured the real spirit of the counterculture, including its
artificiality and surprising banality. Even today, his articles on
Woody Guthrie, the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones concert at
Altamont, directors Sam Peckinpah and John Huston, and the filming
of The Last Picture Show and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest remain
some of the finest writing ever done on popular culture. To
introduce Grover Lewis to a new generation of readers and collect
his best work under one cover, this anthology contains articles he
wrote for Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Playboy, Texas Monthly, and
New West, as well as excerpts from his unfinished novel The Code of
the West and his incomplete memoir Goodbye If You Call That Gone
and poems from the volume I'll Be There in the Morning If I Live.
Jan Reid and W. K. Stratton have selected and arranged the material
around themes that preoccupied Lewis throughout his life-movies,
music, and loss. The editors' biographical introduction, the
foreword by Dave Hickey, and a remembrance by Robert Draper discuss
how Lewis's early struggles to escape his working-class,
anti-intellectual Texas roots for the world of ideas in books and
movies made him a natural proponent of the counterculture that he
chronicled so brilliantly. They also pay tribute to Lewis's
groundbreaking talent as a stylist, whose unique voice deserves to
be more widely known by today's readers.
"Filled with delicious rodeo tidbits. Stratton's the perfect tour
guide, a natural-born storyteller whose prose is as lean as a
cowboy and as poetic as a sunset, rendered with a delight and
wonder that are downright infectious."--"The Boston Globe" Rodeo
has grown into an international, prime-time television sport.
Steeped in tradition and Western spirit, it calls aspiring cowboys
and cowgirls to its rough-and-tumble fame as they repeatedly risk
their lives for eight seconds of triumph. In "Chasing the Rodeo,"
Kip Stratton takes us into the addictive core of rodeo, bull
riding, and the circuit. Immersed in this world, he collides with
the specter of his "rodeo bum" father, finding part of the cowboy
dream that was his father's legacy. "Chasing the Rodeo" is a
tribute to the famed characters of the old West and a riveting look
at the superstars of the new. And best of all, it's one bucking,
riveting, glorious ride.
"If you love the sound of the bell, the thud of hooves, and the
sight of a twisting ton-and-a-half bovine, round up a copy of this
book. "Chasing the Rodeo" is a mighty fine book for any
cowpoke."--"St. Louis Post-Dispatch"
W. K. (Kip) Stratton is a native of the Southwest. His journalism
has appeared in "GQ, Sports Illustrated, Outside, Southern
Magazine," and the "Dallas Morning News." He lives in Austin,
Texas.
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