Skip to main content

The Wild Bunch



I have a confession to make. I love Sam Peckinpah's films. I shouldn't of course, he glorified violence to the nth degree, he was deeply misogynistic in ways that should make my blood boil, and he a plethora of personality issues that were amplified by drug use which made him paranoid and suspicious at the best of times and downright megalomaniac at his worst. So why am I bringing up this particularity dark pleasure now? Well it came to my attention on a recent Truepenny Show recording session that Tetsuya Naito is in fact reliving Sam Peckinpah's films via a live action role play of the California director's finer moments.

It was Marcus Green that clued me in, "Those suits man. . . ", said Marcus as he described Naito's big show finery. Where had I seen that suit before? It was the character Bennie from Peckinpah's lost love child "Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.". The white linen broad collared affair was perfect for Naito, as it was for Bennie, the retired army officer who eked out a living as a lounge bar man and who was charged with the seemingly impossible task of transporting the grim disembodied cranium of the unfortunate Mr. Garcia to an undisclosed location. 






LIJ are obviously a Mexican influenced concoction, they were founded in CMLL, not New Japan. The small group of outsiders who have lost there connection to society are echoed throughout Peckinpah's films. Everything for them would be simpler if it all went back to a simpler time. Setting a large swath of his films on the southern border of the United States, if everyone could just get to Mexico, representing something and somewhere more pure, in the end everything will be alright. Either they make it like Doc and Carol McCoy, professional bank robbers in The Getaway, or they end up blown to Kingdom come on the last bridge like The Rubber Duck in Convoy. Peckinpah's films use the wider structures of the classical era of film making; time based task narratives, to further that effort to get back to a simple life, and Naito follows that trait. 
Everything would be fine if he could just get back to being champion. He craves the glare and the bright lights, but these nonsensical obstacles get in the way. Okada, Omega, Tanahashi, Suzuki and Jericho. The small time cops, corrupt Sheriffs, neighbourly busy bodies of the New Japan world, the things that Peckinpah railed against in his movies. 

Naito to has his own Wild Bunch, LIJ themselves. The parallels were there at King of Pro wrestling, Naito saved Evil from a Jericho beating, just as Evil had saved him months before when he lost the IC Title. The singular narrative of the Wild Bunch was that by the end of the movie they had to go and get their man despite impossible odds and certain failure. They were going to do it there way and here is Naito spitting in the face of tradition at every turn. 

It may of course all be my mind finally turning to chum. However consider this. In 1975 after an incredible run of success Pecinpah was tasked with making a thriller about contract killers. Starring James Caan and Robert Duvall, it would be a a divisive film, but the title was perfect. The Killer Elite. Remind you of a certain Suzuki Gun tag team? Only Gedo knows for sure. 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dr. F.R. Leavis and the literary wrestling fan

  Do you know who Dr. Frank Raymond Leavis is? He has had more cultural impact through his writing than perhaps any British Humanities scholar of the 20 th Century. He was the leading light in a movement that lent credence to the idea that novels were of artistic value.  Seems silly doesn’t it? Obviously novels are important, The Bronte’s, Dickens all that. Surely someone must have read them before and thought these things are quite good? Well they may have done, but it was Leavis who was the first person to give them academic weight. He propagated the belief that popular literature was as important if not more so than the classical texts so prevalent in the education systems of the time, because they were reflective of the culture that produced them. He is the reason you probably didn’t spend days slaving over Latin grammar in secondary school. So why am I battling on about a long dead Cambridge lecturer? Well it’s to do with the methods we use to appreciate popular culture....
Post a Comment
Read more

The Forgotten Tag Teams; The World Class Tag Team

Today marks the 30th Anniversary of the World Class Tag Team Gedo and Jado, to celebrate I'm re-releasing this article I wrote for Wrestle Talk TV as part of my Forgotten Tag Teams series. Who is the most influential tag team in wrestling today? The Usos with their family friendly outlook, history and work rate? Or is it The Wolves with their American Strong style approach to Impact? Or is it the state of the art spot driven offence of The Young Bucks and Time Splitters in NJPW? Well they are in NJPW, in fact you could argue they ARE NJPW. They are the reason for the whole companies success and growth after hitting rock bottom in the early 2000s. They are Gedo and Jado, one of the most successful tandems in wrestling history, a fact overlooked by their success as bookers. In fact so successful are they with the pencil they have taken the Wrestler Observer Booker of the year awards from 2011-2014, no one else has got a look in. If you examine the story of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mae, Mildred and Moolah; Putting Women First

The history of women's wrestling is not always pleasant, and in this article I tried to outline its complete history in North America to bring people up to date on the whole story as women's wrestling began to rise. Tomorrow four women will wrestle for a recognised world title at Wembley Stadium, which would have been impossible the last time a major company played the same venue. While there are plenty of things to fix, here is a revisit to my story of how things got started. This was first published on WrestleTalk.Tv sometime in 2015.   The recent passing of Mae Young closes the book on a story of professional wrestling that should never be forgotten. It is easy to see her as a lovable old rogue passing her last days by having some fun on an international stage. Picking up a few last pay days to ease her retirement, one might say being exploited for comedic gain, but her story starts at the very beginning of big time women's wrestling in North America and if you like tale...
Post a Comment
Read more