If They Move . . . Kill 'Em!: The Life and TImes of Sam Peckinpah - David Weddle

There is a place for criticism, but the starting point for understanding most artists and their work begins with a good biography. What a good biography can do is align the artist with his or her time period and best give a context to their work. Biographers are always favorable to their subject, but they are also more likely to speak about the artists intention with a given work before a critic is. Too many times a critic will give his idea of what the artist's intention should have been! Then the enormous details in a good biography is a happy bonus. This book is the best biography about Sam Peckinpah. It takes his excesses and doesn't try to rationalize them but instead explain them. David Weddle, the biographer, has a good filter in what perspective to give Sam Peckinpah the man that doesn't amount to neither a smear campaign or a blow job. It's level headed. But the best part about this book is the excellent story of how Sam Peckinpah came to be the filmmaker he was, mixing a cowboy-esque background with theater. The two contradictions in Peckinpah's life worked themselves out in a film career. Peckinpah was enough of a character in real life to make any biography a fun read, but this is an insightful rendering of an interesting man.