How the West Was Shot: Six Westerns, Six Decades
Date: Saturday January 31, 2009, at 7:30 pm
Location: Harold M. Williams Auditorium, Getty Center
Admission: Free. Reservation required



The western landscape has long provided a raw and encouraging palette seemingly created for the artist. This six-part film series complements the exhibition Dialogue among Giants: Carleton Watkins and the Rise of Photography in California. Free, reservations required.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). Directed by Sam Peckinpah.
Fifty years after John Ford initially celebrated the birth of the west, Sam Peckinpah, a true lover of the west and the western, elegizes it here. Progress in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid equals the dehumanizing take over of wilderness and the end of the way of life inherent to the western. As James Coburn as Pat Garrett claims, "This country's getting old and I'm getting old with it." Not, however, without a fight.

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