The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage

When director Paul Seydor was researching the seminal Sam Peckinpah movie The Wild Bunch, he discovered the film which forms the basis for this short documentary (it is approximately 30 minutes long). Some unknown person, probably a cameraman, shot over 70 minutes of film showing how key scenes in The Wild Bunch were set up and shot. Only the shot preparation is filmed. Because the actual shots themselves are not filmed, Seydor suspects that the person who shot the rediscovered footage ran one of the cameras and was not free to document the filming with his personal camera. One highlight of the documentary is footage showing how Peckinpah came up with the shot now known among film buffs as "the walk thing." Footage from the final film is incorporated at appropriate points in this largely black-and-white documentary, and important personnel in the making of the film offer their commentary on what we are seeing.