Friday, January 21, 2011

TODAY'S NUGGET: #99 WGA Script of All Time - The Wild Bunch (1969)

[Quick Summary: Aging outlaws try one last run as the code of the Old West crumbles, & a new impersonal era begins.]

This was a head scratcher.

I didn't get the senseless killings. Nor connected with characters who betrayed each other.  And maybe that was the point.

So why does Roger Ebert call this:

- "one of the most controversial films of its time--praised and condemned with equal vehemence" AND
- "one of the great defining moments of modern movies"?

I think it was the first of its kind.

The first to show that much violence.

The first to cause that violent of a reaction (whether you agree with the film or not, it does stir up discussion).

In the confusing age of the 1970s Vietnam War, it might actually have been a wistful longing for an Old West with a code.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED: I don't understand all the scripts on this list.

I probably would've passed if I were reading this today.

The Wild Bunch (1969)
by Walon Green & Sam Peckinpah

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