Sam Peckinpah

"I did this one script for that turned down--said it was a piece of shit! I knew it was one of the best things Id written, so I took it back and reworked it and at Four Star bought it as a pilot for . Dick Powell was really a fine gentleman and the eagle behind Four Stars success; he helped me a great deal. I didnt direct the first Rifleman; did that. I just wrote it. I did direct four of them before I left, however. The first one I directed I also wrote, called "The Marshal." It was the episode that brought in as the reformed drunk who became the marshal--a part he played for five years."

"Weve all grown up with the idea that gunning a man down is just fun and games. All of us, as kids, played cops and robbers, with toy pistols or pointing a finger at somebody and saying, "Bang, Bang. Youre dead!" Both the movies and television have perpetuated the idea that shooting a man is clean and quick and simple, and when he falls down there is only a small hole, or a blood-stain, to show how he died. Well, killing a man isnt clean and quick and simple. Its bloody and awful. And maybe if enough people come to realize that shooting somebody isnt just fun and games maybe well get somewhere about violence on the screen in the first place. [...] No, I dont like violence. In fact, when I look at the film myself, I find it unbearable. I dont think Ill be able to see it again for five years."

"The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws--everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But hes only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But dont say to me were not violent."

"I walked from the series because Jules Levy and that group had taken over my initial concept and perverted it into pap. They wouldnt let Johnny grow up; they refused to let it be the story of a boy who grows to manhood learning what its all about."

"The Losers was a funny show. We had and locked up for a series with it until Tom McDermott wouldnt pay Lees price. Well, after the show continued to draw a large segment of the audience around the sixth time out, McDermott called Lee and raised the ante to something like a million dollars and Lee told him to go stick it up his ass! Ive always liked Lee for that--it cost me a lot of money at the time but I wouldve done the same thing in Lees place."