Growing Up With The Wild Bunch

The life of Josie Bassett was nothing short of a female pioneer adventure. Josie came west in a wagon train at the age of four. Settling in rugged Brown's Park in the extreme northwest corner of Colorado, Josie learned to ride and rope by the age of six. Like all girls, as a young teenager she discovered boys, but Josie's first real boyfriend was a future outlaw, none other than Butch Cassidy. As a young rancher's wife with two young boys, Josie witnessed first-hand the strong-arm tactics of the cattle barons trying to steal the land from smaller ranch owners. When it happened to the Bassett family, Josie's husband and father fought back. Murder occurred at the ranch when a man was hung from the gate post at the entrance of the Bassett ranch. Following a bitter divorce and a few more marriages, Josie moved to the remote area of Cub Creek in western Utah. Here she managed to make a living by hunting, making moonshine and possibly cattle rustling. (She was brought up on charges but acquitted.) Josie married a few more times, running off one husband with a frying pan. He later said, “Josie gave me fifteen minutes to get off her land, I only needed five!” Josie was the feature of a LIFE magazine article in 1948 and was a rodeo queen when she was in her 70s. Josie Bassett lived a long adventurous life, dying in 1963.

This is an eclectic array of seventeen essays, all of which will evoke a direct and immediate response. Ranging from humorous to satirical, from persuasive to sarcastic, Flynn moves from preaching to the choir to preaching at the choir. Trained as both a Baptist and a Marine, he explores the concepts gleaned from a world that this training did not equip him to control, improve, or escape. Flynn admits he has tried to meld the pretty presumption of the Baptists that "all men are brothers" with the hard presumption of the Marines that "you will attack until I say you are dead." He calls the result an unholy view of the world in which he lives and survives, alternating between humor and anger.

For the fiftieth anniversary of the film, W.K. Stratton's definitive history of the making of The Wild Bunch, named one of the greatest Westerns of all time by the American Film Institute. Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch is the story of a gang of outlaws who are one big steal from retirement. When their attempted train robbery goes awry, the gang flees to Mexico and falls in with a brutal general of the Mexican Revolution, who offers them the job of a lifetime. Conceived by a stuntman, directed by a blacklisted director, and shot in the sand and heat of the Mexican desert, the movie seemed doomed. Instead, it became an instant classic with a dark, violent take on the Western movie tradition. In The Wild Bunch, W.K. Stratton tells the fascinating history of the making of the movie and documents for the first time the extraordinary contribution of Mexican and Mexican-American actors and crew members to the movie's success. Shaped by infamous director Sam Peckinpah, and starring such visionary actors as William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, and Robert Ryan, the movie was also the product of an industry and a nation in transition. By 1968, when the movie was filmed, the studio system that had perpetuated the myth of the valiant cowboy in movies like The Searchers had collapsed, and America was riled by Vietnam, race riots, and assassinations. The Wild Bunch spoke to America in its moment, when war and senseless violence seemed to define both domestic and international life. The Wild Bunch is an authoritative history of the making of a movie and the era behind it.

For many, the Westerns of 1930 to 1955 were a defining part of American culture. Those Westerns were one of the vehicles by which viewers learned the values and norms of a wide range of social relationships and behavior. By 1955, however, Westerns began to include more controversial themes: cowardly citizens, emotionally deranged characters, graphic violence, marital infidelity, racial prejudice, and rape, among other issues. This work examines the manner in which Westerns reflected the substantial social, economic and political changes that shaped American culture in the latter half of the twentieth century. Part One of this work considers shifting themes as the genre reacted to changes unfolding in the broader social landscape of American culture. Part Two examines the manner in which images of cowboys, outlaws, lawmen, American Indians and women changed in Westerns as the viewers were offered new understanding of the frontier experience.

Here, readers will witness how it is like to live in a rural area, where life remains simple amidst the modern world. Martin begins by introducing a few essential things in rural Florida, such as cow whips. Used to drive cattle, a cow whip is part of a cowboys work tools. Anyone who could really work one was something special. Where there are cowboys, there are also horses and saddles, and the author shares how he and his brother yearned to have one in their youth. He also takes readers on Florida summers and fi shing trips, where some of his most treasured childhood memories took place. From remembering the chickens at their backyard, hot peppers as staple condiments, hunting trips, holiday food, family, and more, Martin gives readers a nostalgic feeling of familiarity and memories of home. Growing Up In Rural Florida is not only a book that features culture, but also encourages people to look back at their own past and relive moments as if it were yesterday.

Robbers Roost was a hideout for outlaws and hunted men long before Butch Cassidy found it in 1884. The impenetrable wastes and wilds of this high desert country in southeastern Utah, cut through by canyons along the Green and Colorado rivers and bounded on the west by the Dirty Devil, discouraged lawmen from pursuit. Growing up on a ranch that included Robbers Roost, Pearl Baker heard many of the legends about?and talked to many who remembered?the notorious Wild Bunch. In the 1890s they spread over Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, and Arizona rustling cattle, stealing horses, robbing banks and trains, and often taking cover at Robbers Roost. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Flat Nose George and the Curry boys, Elzy Lay, Gunplay Maxwell, the McCarty boys, Peep O'Day, Silver Tip, Blue John, and Indian Ed Newcomb?they all come to rip-roaring life while courting death in The Wild Bunch at Robbers Roost. In his introduction to the Bison Books edition, Floyd A. O'Neil, director of the American West Center at the University of Utah, discusses landscape, the law and the Wild Bunch, and Pearl Baker's lifelong preparation for this lively book.

One of the most controversial films of its time, The Wild Bunch is the epitome of the no-holds-barred filmmaking of the 1960s and 1970s. Since its 1969 release, it has come to be recognized not only as an iconic Western, but as one of the most important films in the American cinematic canon. Over the years a parade of filmmakers have tried to imitate its gut-punch effects but none have equaled it. The Wild Bunch revived the floundering career of volatile, self-destructive director Sam Peckinpah--it also hung on him the label "Bloody Sam." This book tells the complete story of the film's production, reception and legacy.

Three unlikely friends—brainiac Hector, bullish Jack, and sarcastic Paul—find themselves braving the wilderness in search of the mythical Beast of Bear Falls in this hilarious MAX novel. As far as Paul Adams is concerned, the idea of a weekend camping in the nearby state park with his dad’s two college friends and their sons, Hector and Jack, sounds like a nightmare. But even he finds the myth of the Beast of Bear Falls—a legendary Bigfoot creature—intriguing. The trip gets off to a rough start, and calamity and disaster follow catastrophe. Against all odds, arguing most of the way, the crew face all sorts of obstacles natural and man-made. Can the three boys make it to Bear Falls and uncover the truth about the Sasquatch living there?