Goin' Crazy with Sam Peckinpah and All Our Friends - by Max Evans & Robert Nott (Paperback)

About the Book

In this enthralling memoir we follow Evans and Peckinpah through conversations in bars, family gatherings, binges on drugs and alcohol, struggles with film producers and executives, and Peckinpah's abusive behavior--sometimes directed at Evans himself.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Biography--Other

Almost as famous for the legendary excesses of his personal life as for his films, Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) cemented his reputation as one of the great American directors with movies such as The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Max Evans, one of Peckinpah's best friends, experienced the director's mercurial character and personal demons firsthand. In this enthralling memoir we follow Evans and Peckinpah through conversations in bars, family gatherings, binges on drugs and alcohol, struggles with film producers and executives, and Peckinpah's abusive behavior--sometimes directed at Evans himself.

Evans's stories--most previously unpublished--provide a uniquely intimate look at Peckinpah, their famous friends (including Lee Marvin, Brian Keith, Joel McCrea, and James Coburn), and the business of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s.

Review Quotes

"A remarkable memoir by a true westerner, Max Evans, on the wild, turbulent life and career of the great Sam Peckinpah, a man who created so much, and destroyed so much, in his all-too-brief life."--John L. Simons, coauthor of Peckinpah's Tragic Westerns: A Critical Study

"Director Sam Peckinpah, the mad genius of film, managed to drive away almost everyone who worked with him or drank with him. Max Evans stayed loyal to the end. His graphic reflections in Goin' Crazy with Sam Peckinpah and All Our Friends make you wonder how he did it."--Richard Gaughran, James Madison University