Goin' Crazy with Sam Peckinpah and All Our Friends

Max Evans · Robert Nott

Oct 2014 · UNM Press

About this ebook

Almost as famous for the legendary excesses of his personal life as for his films, Sam Peckinpah (1925–1984) cemented his reputation as one of the great American directors with movies such as The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Max Evans, one of Peckinpah’s best friends, experienced the director’s mercurial character and personal demons firsthand. In this enthralling memoir we follow Evans and Peckinpah through conversations in bars, family gatherings, binges on drugs and alcohol, struggles with film producers and executives, and Peckinpah’s abusive behavior—sometimes directed at Evans himself.

Evans’s stories—most previously unpublished—provide a uniquely intimate look at Peckinpah, their famous friends (including Lee Marvin, Brian Keith, Joel McCrea, and James Coburn), and the business of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s.

About the author

Max Evans, a novelist, artist, one-time cowboy, miner, and dealer in antiquities, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Among his many lifetime achievements are the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Western Writers of America’s Owen Wister Award for lifelong contributions to the field of western literature, and, most recently, the Texas Institute of Letters Lon Tinkle Award. His novels The Rounders and The Hi-Lo Country were made into feature cult films.

Robert Nott has been a reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican for more than fifteen years. Among his previous books are The Films of Randolph Scott and He Ran All the Way: The Life of John Garfield.