Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid - Post-production Controversy

Post-production Controversy

By the time Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was in the editing room, Peckinpah's relationship with the studio and his own producers had reached the breaking point. Aubrey, enraged by the cost and production overruns, demanded the film for an unrealistic release date. Peckinpah and his editors were forced into a desperate situation in order to finish on time. Furthermore, Aubrey still objected to several sequences in the film which he wanted removed, forcing Peckinpah to engage in protracted negotiations over the film's content. Adding to the problems, Bob Dylan had never done a feature film score before and Peckinpah's usual composer, Jerry Fielding, was unhappy with being relegated to a minor role in the scoring process.

Peckinpah did complete a preview version of the film, which was shown to critics on at least one occasion. Martin Scorsese, who had just made Mean Streets (1973), was at the screening, and praised the film as Peckinpah's greatest since The Wild Bunch.

This version, however, would not see the light of day for over ten years. Peckinpah was eventually forced out of the production and Aubrey had the film severely cut from 124 to 106 minutes, resulting in the film being released as a truncated version largely disowned by cast and crew members. This version was a box-office failure, grossing $8 million domestically, of which the studio earned only $2.7 million in theatrical rentals, against a budget of more than $4.6 million. However, the film grossed a total of $11 million worldwide. The film was also panned by most major critics, who had harbored high expectations for the director's first Western since The Wild Bunch. Roger Ebert rated the film two stars out of four, beginning his review with "Sam Peckinpah attempted to have his name removed from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. I sympathized with him. If this wasn't entirely his work, he shouldn't have had to take the blame." Ebert went on to note, "Another alarming factor is that no less than six editors are credited. Not assistant editors, but editors; this sets a modern-day record, I think. My guess is that there was an argument over the movie's final form, and that Peckinpah and MGM platooned editors at each other during the battle. You'd think the executives would have figured out that their only chance was to release the movie as Peckinpah made it; audiences were more interested in the new Peckinpah film than in still another rehash of Billy the Kid."

The film remained something of an enigma for the next decade, with rumors flying about other versions and the nature of what had been left out of the release version. Peckinpah himself was in possession of his own preview version, which he often showed to friends as his own definitive vision of the film.