On June 18, 1969, "The Wild Bunch" premiered to critical success. Over the past 50 years it has been rightly recognized as one of the landmark films from the end of the Hollywood studio system. Yet it was developed out of chaos, with a controversial director who had already largely burned his bridges with Hollywood studios. Sam Peckinpah worked for years to film a story that both illustrated the end of the “Old West” and also showed how newer filmmakers wanted to proceed with their newfound independence. W. K. Stratton’s book The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film (Bloomsbury, 2019) describes all of these activities as it wonderfully tells the story of the film.

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