Two Kinds of Emptiness: Thoughts on Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid
Transcript of Introduction to Jokermen's 50th Anniversary screening with American Cinematheque
Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid is an infamously complicated film to discuss. Because of a troubled production, there are three different versions of it, and none of them are representative of exactly what the director intended. But it's a testament to the power of this film and its subject its every iteration clearly bends toward a certain humor and tragic grace.
Peckinpah’s films are often thought of broadly as violent and bleak, but if they are it’s an impression left because he makes you feel the weight of violence done to characters who feel so alive. Because a glint in the eye here or there, or a bit of frustrated muttering, or a character’s moment alone strikes us as so immediate, the harm done by or to them feels likewise. a baffling shock, seeming to emerge from thin air. At the center of this story are two variations of emptiness. A kind that is like a dead end and a kind that is wild and free. And the world is a town that’s not big enough for both.
Pat and Billy, not unlike Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky or Michael Mann’s Vincent and Neil in HEAT share an intimate awareness of the other, which can't be outrun or outdrunk. And all the while, worldly obligation encroaches. On Pat, and on a country with a growing intolerance for its own wild emptiness. Their tale of loyalty and betrayal is as much one of inspiration versus resignation. Of a country “busy being born or busy dying” depending on what side of the law you happen to find yourself.
It's no wonder that Bob Dylan’s score so perfectly compliments the picture. Like Peckinpah, Dylan approaches his chosen art form as a veil draped over timeless symbols. The revolver only appears to be changing hands, but all will hold it sometime. “Knockin on Heaven’s Door” written for the film, is a song that emanates a profound weariness. A yearning to lay down the guns that have become so heavy, to and escape a closed-in world made empty in all the wrong ways.
Despite all this darkness, the film is buoyed by a gregarious, earthy sense of humor brilliantly articulated by a score of elite character actors and newcomer to the screen Bob Dylan whose performance is as odd and mysterious as anyone could hope for. If there was an Oscar for a scene where a character reads labels of cans out loud in a store, it would be his to lose.
Michael Ondaatje’s excellent book The Collected Works of Billy the Kid imagines a poetic overview of William Bonney’s life and death as a series of free verse poems and prose. The following is a quote that the book attributes to Miss Sallie Chisum:
“I knew both these men intimately. There was good mixed in with the bad in Billy The Kid and bad mixed in with the good in Pat Garrett. No Matter what they did in the world, or what the world thought of them, they were my friends. Both were worth knowing.”
I think Sam Peckinpah could've said the exact same thing.