All language subtitles for Passion.Poetry.The.Ballad.Of.Sam.Peckinpah.2005.1080p.BluRay.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX].eng

For seven years, good and bad

Hänschen was away

But then he changes his mind

And hurries home

But now he no longer is a Hänschen
No, he is a grown up Hans

Tanned face and arms

But he is easily recognised

I was invited to a regular casting
in the Hotel Königshof.

He sat there with a young lady.
I thought she was his secretary.

This young woman was very pretty.

It seems I looked at her quite frequently,

which he noticed and he said...

I think I blushed a little. He said...

I think I blushed deeply.

I made some gesture and he said...

It was Sharon. By that time, my face
had turned blue with embarrassment.

He laughed heartily and said...

Peckinpah was preparing this movie
and he called me,

because he had seen a film with me in it,
MÄDCHEN MIT GEWALT,

where Klaus Lowitsch and Arthur
Brauss played the lead characters.

Klaus Lowitsch was awarded
the Bundesfilmpreis for it at the time.

And he had liked the movie a lot

and he really wanted to meet me,
so I drove to the Königshof,

where he lived,

and he sat there, already writing the script.

What should I do?
He asked whether I could help him a bit

and talk to him about German actors,
and that's how we got together.

Then I had to show him the movie.

We booked a theatre.
He insisted on seeing it.

Klaus Lowitsch and Arthur Brauss
were hired straight away.

We sat in the Kénigshof forever,

and I helped him a little with the script

and one day I said...

"It needs something a bit more human in it."

And that's how the little boy
got into the movie, the little Russian.

He said, "Right, it needs another tone,"

and that's how the Russian boy was written.

I was supposed to become
the second unit director.

I was supposed to film
the details of all the explosions

and all the soldiers overrun
by tanks and so on.

So we went to Yugoslavia
and checked it out,

then I drove back. Then, for a while,

we were working here
on preparing the stories.

And I got the role,
which I never was meant to play.

I only was given the role of Triebig

because Helmut Griem,
who was the first choice for this role,

was stuck on another film,
which didn't get finished on time.

That's when I took over the role.

As long as he was here in Munich,

we had good, personal contact,
but when the whole shooting process began,

it was no longer
such an exciting connection.

Except for one time, when we ran
into a load of trouble in a casino there.

When there was no shoot,
everybody went gambling,

and I went gambling, too, and at some point

they didn't give us all of the winnings back.

He said, "Jump on the table!" So I did,

and we got into a lot of trouble.
He smashed the glass on it, too,

and he was raving,
and I also screamed at the top of my lungs.

The whole hotel crew came running.

I ran away,
but I was forced to the police station

and was sentenced
to being banned from Yugoslavia,

but only for that night.

And I had to pay a penalty.

We met by chance in Munich at the Filmball.

He was there, Coburn, Michael Anderson Jr,
and I think Mario was there as well.

And he was so happy.
He didn't want to be alone.

He was afraid of being alone.

To sit around a table
with friends and to catch up...

His joy was quite sincere.
And he did the same thing

he did with MAJOR DUNDEE,
he wrote a role for me.

Because this role didn't exist before.

And of course, I had already noticed
that he was a wreck.

And I also saw
that he was surrounded by yes men,

that he was surrounded by people
who benefitted from his weakness.

I was sorry to see he didn't notice that
and had lost perspective regarding that.

I didn't really want to go to Yugoslavia.

I didn't like the book.
I didn't like the script or the movie.

I don't like these
romantic soldier movies at all.

Of course, I knew that Peckinpah

wasn't going to make a war movie
in the usual sense,

although I do not think
it's such a brilliant film.

I am of the opinion that it is a war movie,
sure, and that he shouldn't have made it.

I stretch my tired limbs

And send into the night

My songs to my beloved

As long as he is not

From my own company

In the field quarters on hard stones

I stretch my tired limbs

And send into the night...

May he get old

Three times as old

Hip hip hooray!

NO PHOTOGRAPHY!

Here was a situation
that nobody could understand.

Whether it was another European,

or a Jew or an American.

I never heard him say
anything "anti-German".

Of course, the odd "fucking Krauts!"
was uttered,

but I never took that very seriously and...

The way he treated us German actors

was very much like a good colleague
and equal to all the others.

With Maximilian, he may have had

the odd disagreement,

but that wasn't anti-German.

The Americans tried to understand, after all.

Why do such

disasters happen to humanity?

But then again,
there are people like Steiner, too.

It started with the fact that Peckinpah was
annoyed about the bad food in Yugoslavia.

So, what did he do?
He had some people collect wood,

had it stacked up in front of this hall
and lit a huge fire.

He sent a driver to Italy,
who bought half a cow there,

and then he made steaks
for the whole cast and crew.

He cut them himself, barbecued them himself

and even dished them out himself as well,
and during that time, the shoot stopped.

Mr Hartwig didn't know
who he was dealing with.

He didn't know how to deal with him.

It was a big misunderstanding for both.

I wanted to find out whether
it was possible in Germany

to finally make a huge movie
with German interests

and German actors,
because it can't go on like this.

In the whole world,
there are only three or four directors

who are able to make movies of such quality.

Peckinpah is one of them.
And also, I must say, I have established

a very strange connection to Mr Peckinpah,

one could call it a love-hate relationship,
if you will.

That was the reason we got together
and are making this movie.

It's possible that one of us will die
in the attempt, we don't know that yet.

The fights were quite drastic.

Neither of them was very tall.

I think Peckinpah was 1.70 m

or 1.72 m, if that,

and Hartwig also was a short and small man,

and it was very funny to see them
have a go at each other like game cocks.

The whole crew stood around
and cracked up with laughter.

This production started very small.

And then more and more people arrived.

He wasn't happy with the German experts
and had some flown in from America,

and if I remember correctly,
the Yugoslav and German crew members

added up to about 40 people
in the beginning.

And later the crew consisted
of about 200 people.

Constantly, new people arrived.

Constantly, new specialists
arrived from the USA

and the production costs of the film
rocketed to such heights

that the producer, Hartwig,
was basically broke.

So he travelled the whole of Europe
to find somebody

who would be his partner
for the end of this film

and gave that person a huge percentage

so he could have the last five million
to finance the rest of the film.

Friday was payday.

And Hartwig was in trouble

because Peckinpah had blown the budget.

But I have to say, Hartwig, that was great.

He said, "Kids, I'm not here on Friday.

"I will bring it on Monday. I promise."

And on Monday,
he was there with his bookcase

with a few hundred thousand dollars in it.
So we believed him.

Sometimes he didn't pay until Tuesday.

That was a bit more difficult then.
There was a rumour that he was broke

and on the hills surrounding the location,

little men in black suits
and dark sunglasses were sitting,

or with binoculars,
and watched what he was doing.

It was a Japanese group who waited
for the moment that Hartwig would give up.

But Hartwig did make it

and one has to show great respect for that.

That was originally my idea,

that Kern gets into this tub with this soldier.

He was really baffled.

She was a very pretty girl

and it was a strangely erotic incident.

Spontaneously, he came to us
and looked at her through the water

and also stepped into the bath.

He joined us
and we interrupted the shoot for an hour

and sat in the water, which got
colder by the minute. The girl was shaking.

And he said, "Yeah, good. I like that."

He was very open,

as relentless as he was in other things.

This was in an old gymnasium
or something similar,

in an old garage, in a big room,

and that's where they built the bunker.
The difficulty was

the bunker was immovable and it being
the middle of the war, it had to move.

So the whole bunker was torn out again

and they got old dinghies
from the Yugoslav military,

which were blown up and put in there

and then the whole bunker
was rebuilt on these dinghies,

so you could rock it. During the shoot,
10 men with huge beams stood outside

and rocked the thing
so the bomb impacts would be felt and seen.

Filming in Yugoslavia
was, of course, cost-effective,

and we also had...

I don't know, is it a battalion?

There were about 800 soldiers.

On some days, not every day.

They had fun doing it.
It was like a manoeuvre for them,

and they were even paid for it.
Things like that were possible at the time.

Studio Belgrade had these options.

It was incredibly well made
and here were all these points of entry,

and at my back, from my shoulder blades,
all these little pieces of bone flew off.

It was sponge, but it looked like

blood and flesh and bone flying off.

I was experienced as far as dying
in films went. I died in 90% of my films.

So that was good.

He yelled "Cut!" and I jumped up, took a deep
breath after holding it in for my film death.

And he said...

The first day I was shot,

I had to shake myself
and Lowitsch poked a dagger into my chest.

The second day,

I was tied to a highly complicated device

with ropes and so on,
and people tugged on them.

I didn't shake and wiggle myself,

but the ropes were pulled
according to the gunshots.

That meant this scene
took two days to shoot.

Here they used slow motion,
600-metre cameras.

Until they reach the necessary speed,
lots of material runs by

before it works,

and that is why he used such a crazy amount
of material, about 250.000 m.

A normal film, edited, is about 2.600 m.

It cost the producer lots of money.

But he knew since WILD BUNCH

that Peckinpah shoots like that.
And he depicts this moment of death,

this destruction not in a brief moment.

He wanted to build it. The brutality,

he wanted it to be seen.

He wanted choreography

that showed beauty in dying, consciously.

Life drifts away, the soul drifts away,
the body falls to the ground.

This theory,

this kind of aesthetic,
that he had found for himself at some point,

one had to understand,
and it was of impressive

beauty, or maybe rather clarity.

And I really liked that a lot.

Very often, he had four,
five or six cameras running, enormous.

And he was slightly perverted.

I don't know whether the scene is in the film.
I had to jump over a ditch.

They had installed small explosives in it.

Any other director
might have ignited before I jumped,

or slightly after, but he sat on his controls

and waited until I jumped
and then he pushed the button.

The dirt exploded around me.

And it was massive,
my trousers were torn and such things.

Sometimes he had a small sadistic streak.

He noticed immediately
when someone didn't function.

He fired many, who were replaced
by others from Los Angeles.

I think he didn't want too many Europeans.

Germans even less. He preferred Yugoslavs.

For four months,
every day the same intensity.

It was crazy.

And through this tension on set,

maybe something was created.
He improvised a lot,

at least as far as I was concerned,
I never stuck to a page of this book.

He asked me what I would do, how I would
react, whether something was possible.

I liked Coburn. We got along well,
and he also drank quite a lot.

But he survived it, and Peckinpah did not.

Most days we stopped shooting
at 6:00 or 7:00 p.m.

Then he went to the hotel,
to the bar, had one, two whiskeys,

but then went to his bungalow,
around 8:00 or 8.30 p.m.,

and took lots of downers and went to bed,

woke around midnight, took lots of uppers,
and opened the first bottle.

Then I think he prepared the next day,

and around 2:00 or 2:30 a.m.,
that was his usual time,

he came back to the hotel.

I lived with the editors,
Tony Lawson and the others,

on the same corridor. He kicked in the doors.

They, of course, knew he was coming,
so the doors were already open.

They were already dressed and knew

it was time to go to the studio
to watch the dailies,

and there he opened his second bottle.

He probably didn't drink it alone,
but it was the second bottle.

At 9:00 in the morning the shoot started,

and one saw him opening the third bottle.

It was either vodka or Slivovitz
or something like that,

and around lunchtime,
he opened the fourth bottle.

He drank four bottles a day. You could
watch him. He didn't hide his drinking.

My last impression of him was...

He was beautiful in a dramatic kind of way.

He had rented
a big, beautiful apartment in London.

When I arrived, the flat was full of people.

Partially people from our movies,

partially his so-called friends,

and partially just freeloaders
that had hooked their claws into him.

He wasn't there and...

Everybody drank and smoked a lot.

It was afternoon. The sun was shining,
maybe around 4:00 or so.

-Where is Sam?
-Have a look in his bedroom.

I went in there and he was totally naked,

behind a wall of vodka.

The whole room reeked of vodka.

He was often wearing a bandana.

He was really beautiful, really thin,

and he was lying there so peacefully
that I thought he was dead.

I was startled

and didn't dare touch him.
That lasted a second.

Then I left the apartment.

I never saw him again. I didn't think
he would survive that afternoon.