When James Caan fought with Sam Peckinpah: “I told him I would kick his fucking ass”
Around 20 years before Quentin Tarantino was applying his stylised, ultra-violent eye to every form of pulpy genre under the sun, Sam Peckinpah was doing exactly the same thing. From westerns to WWII movies to crime thrillers, the late great director dabbled with every type of storytelling that would make the audience’s heart race – and did so with a distinct and authoritative expertise. Tarantino himself made no secret of his love for the director, citing the influences of 1969’s The Wild Bunch on multiple titles within his filmography.
Although his career lasted less than twenty years, the director cinched 14 features to his belt, working with a whole host of huge Hollywood actors at the time like James Coburn, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Oates – and even Bob Dylan, who made his feature acting debut with Pat Garret and Billy the Kid in 1973. While known for his artistic integrity and commitment to making the film he wanted to make, Peckinpah was also known for ruffling a few feathers with his no-nonsense and slightly gung-ho approach, and for one particular actor, his methods were a step too far: James Caan.
Probably best known for his role as the red-blooded Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, Caan was another Hollywood legend of the 1970s, working with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Howard Hawks and Alan J. Pakula – although he will probably be best remembered for his compelling turn in the 1990 Stephen King adaptation, Misery. Fifteen years prior to that career-defining turn, however, Caan and Peckinpah were working on the 1975 crime-thriller Killer Elite.
Co-starring Robert Duvaal as two elite mercenaries caught on opposite sides of a proxy urban war, the movie acted as a sort of ’70s precursor to Michael Mann’s Heat, depicting hard-boiled criminals raining terror and bullets on each other in an extremely populated Californian city. However, one of the first instances that stoked the fire between actor and director was when Peckinpah let off an explosive near Caan’s face. Not one to brush things under the carpet, Caan let his feelings be made clear.
“I said to Sam, ‘I’ll beat you like a redheaded stepchild,” the actor would tell the Bright Lights Film Journal decades later in 2022. Not unlike several other directors at the time, most notably Stanley Kubrick and his troubling and problematic treatment of Shelley Duvall in The Shining, Peckinpah had developed a habit of being particularly tough and relentless on his cast. But with Caan, he met his match.
“He was like a great intimidator,” the actor recalled in the same interview, before asserting that he could give as good as he got: “but he found out really quick – I told him I would kick his fucking ass.” And what did such a hard-nosed director like Peckinpah think of that? According to Caan, “he kind of liked that.” It seems he must have done; otherwise, the two wouldn’t have gone on to form such a devoted friendship.
“He was great, though, just insane,” the actor recalled. “As a matter of fact, when someone wrote a book about him, I was asked to give a quote for the cover. They had four quotes on the back. He called and said mine was the best. I had written, ‘Two more signatures and I’ll have him committed.'”
