WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — You can chart the extent of Sam Peckinpah's pleionosis (see below) by the date of the interviews collected in "Sam Peckinpah Interviews" (University of Mississippi).
He starts out in 1963 giving reasoned answers to intelligent questions. Ten years later, he sounds like Billy the Kid with his drink on, full of braggadocio and blather ("I'm like a good whore; I go where I'm kicked"), trashing "The Searchers" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" like a rebellious child angry at his father, and starting fistfights with Tom McGuane.
The usual.
The question about Peckinpah is whether he would have made more great films without the tequila and cocaine diet, or whether his psychological mix was inherently volatile and not conducive to the long-distance run. He was 59 when he died, looked 20 years older and was washed up in his profession.
On the other hand: "Ride the High Country," "The Wild Bunch" and "Straw Dogs" — not to all tastes, but once you've seen them, you know you've seen something. These are movies you carry with you for the rest of your life, and that's what an artist is supposed to do.
Then there are the James Bond films, candy pure and simple. "Licence To Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films" is a revised edition of a book first published in 1999, now taking us through the Pierce Brosnan years and into the Daniel Craig period. James Chapman's book is sharp and well-written, but doesn't have much humor, which is unfortunate. It does, however, have a lot about money, which is all to the good, and a lot about the Broccoli family, who have defined the Bond character for audiences far more than Ian Fleming did.
Mike Browning's Word of the Week...
pleionosis: self-aggrandizing; a tendency to exaggerate one's own importance.
Scott Eyman writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail; seyman AT pbpost.com