I stumbled upon what has to be a very rare Sam Peckinpah interview, courtesy Dennis Hunt (on his YouTube channel) who had a Las Vegas-based interview show:
The date was May 17, 1984 (Peckinpah was visiting the annual Las Vegas poker tournament). Sam was trying to get a film going with the suited gentlemen beside him, a producer, which didn’t come to pass.
He was only 59 here, but he looks eighty. He died on December 28, 1984.
He mentions Jerry Fielding and his rejected score to The Getaway at 6:45.
There are a lot of interesting interviews archived on the channel. Here’s one with Peckinpah’s frequent actor, Ben Johnson, who says, “I don’t like to work with pot smokers or hop heads.”
Thanks to Ben Johnson, and the Internet, I now know that “hop heads” is slang for drug addicts. Yay!
And one with Garry Shandling:
I love it when these interviews are archived on YouTube, as I’ve come across a few local hosts who have taken the time to do that.
When actors get out of L.A. and sit down to talk, they can occasionally get away from their canned replies and say something interesting—especially back in the old days.