Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)

Released in 1973 in a truncated form, Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid has had a long, contentious history. We’ll be talking about that as well as the film itself in which Kris Kristofferson plays the titular Billy the Kid. He’s the friend and eventual enemy of James Coburn as Pat Garrett. The film stars a host of familiar faces and character actors with this speaking to the passing of the torch from one generation of Westerns to the next... Or perhaps snuffing that flame.

Author Mike Faloon (opens in a new tab) and artist David Lambert (opens in a new tab) join Mike discuss Peckinpah's film. Interviews include screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer (Two Lane Blacktop), Bob Dylan scholar David Wolf, and author/editor Paul Seydor (opens in a new tab) (The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: The Untold Story of Peckinpah's Last Western Film).