By Alejandro Adams
“If we do not reunite Sykes and Thornton, which shows that people do side together, that they do stick with each other…then perhaps we have destroyed everything we have been talking about in this picture.” — Producer Phil Feldman in a letter to Sam Peckinpah regarding the the final scene of THE WILD BUNCH *
It’s not every day that a notorious bruiser of a director gets along with his producer. But it’s equally rare that a producer respects a filmmaker and his vision to the degree illustrated by the note above–Feldman had even protested Peckinpah excising some of the film’s more violent bits. Directors are usually the ones who get so far up the ass of their own work they can’t see clearly. In a somewhat alarming inversion, Feldman was a producer exhibiting more concern for the integrity of the film than for the paying audience. **
I’ve started with an anecdote about a producer not only because this quasi-promotional outing is brought to you by Ted Hope’s kind invitation but also because filmmaking is about relationships, sometimes just one relationship, and it can feel like the scene that reunites Sykes and Thornton. Or not.
