I saw Kris Kristofferson once, at what, at the time, was called the Red Robinson Show Theatre, back in 2013, and am very, very glad I did. I missed out on John Prine, despite multiple chances to see him; was grumpy about Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, when I saw them; and don't remember much of seeing Johnny Cash (when I was like, 8), but in terms of the great American singer-songwriters of the 1970s, I was delighted and grateful to have seen Kris. I wrote about him before the concert, here; I have very little to add, except that the show offered one of the happiest moments of my time with my mother, in the last six years of her life, after my father had died and I was more or less her caregiver -- she'd had a debilitating stroke: I got to hear her, beside me in the audience, singing along to Kris as he did "Why Me?" near the end of his set, off his album Jesus Was a Capricorn. It was moving in ways I don't think I can do justice to.
By the by, if you're not sure you want to acquire any of Kristofferson's records, start with the title track off that album, which was "owed to John Prine," as the full title puts it; or try "The Pilgrim (Chapter 33)," from The Silver Tongued Devil and I, which has a complex dedication that includes Dennis Hopper (and which Betsy and Travis discuss in Taxi Driver). And while we're at it. you might also consider this rock song about the impact of (and hysteria about) the Rolling Stones, set to the tune of "Bringing in the Sheaves," from his 1970 debut. That covers three of his essential early albums (I don't know Border Lord so well, actually!) -- though there is much else on those albums that stands the test of time. There are also sweeter songs in his catalogue, including on those records, that maybe are a little too-too with the swelling strings and so forth, a little too adult contemporary for immediate appreciation -- "Help Me Make It Through the Night," say, takes some coming round to, if you like things with a bit of gravel to them -- but actually, those will grow on you too, with the help of his true masterworks, like "Sunday Morning Coming Down" (but don't start with a comp; start with one of the three albums linked above, all of which pop up in thrift stores still at fairly reasonable prices).
Anyhow, I don't remember much else from that concert, except being very glad to be there and being pleased with his personality, which seemed gracious and humble. Occasionally, he cut songs short, giving us a taste of a tune that maybe he wanted to acknowledge, but didn't want to play through the end, interrupting himself with a story about the song; I have seen Frank Black do similar things, joking after cutting "Motorway to Roswell" off at the halfway mark at a show at the Media Club that he'd "tried hard," but he could not make it, playing on the lyrics of the song. But Kris treated his fans to a very fullsome, very generous set, overall, and was personable throughout. He thanked the audience for trying to clap along with some of the songs, but said, chuckling, that "it doesn't really work with me" (not "for" me, but "with" me -- like he was saying we could try if we wanted but his sense of rhythm, unaccompanied, was just a bit too idiosyncratic to make it work). I'm happy my wife was there with us, too! (We weren't married yet but sharing moments like these helped make that happen!).
Oh, I assume you all know about the Sinead O'Connor episode and his involvement... the world is a lesser place without Kris Kristofferson...
And then of course there's his film work... I recommend everyone seek out John Sayles' Limbo, trailer here, which has a terrific (if small) Kristofferson role that takes in his skill as a pilot (you also get to hear Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's singing voice, and there's a reference to the Butthole Surfers that will catch you off guard. David Strathairn does a fine job with the lead role, too). I like this film much more than Kris' other big Sayles role, in Lone Star.
And in case you missed it, as I did, until today, note that the new Criterion release of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is really far richer than I'd realized. It's somewhat ridiculous, in fact: having acquired it, I realize that I now own five different cuts of this movie, because nothing in this three-movie set replicates exactly what is on the old two-DVD version. The Criterion 50th anniversary edition offers:
...A new "final preview cut" of the film, distinct from what has come to be known as the Turner one, used as the basis of a blu-ray transfer (but not deemed sufficiently hi-res for 4K, if you care about that); it's too dark, too high-contrast, and has a fair bit of damage to it, but it's the version of the film you'll want to see, if you've seen all previous home video releases. I played only fifteen minutes and noticed some significant small differences (a few added moments in the scenes with Kris in bed with Rita Coolidge, say), and then -- because I'd read a bit -- checked out the obviously ill-advised tacked on end-crawl, which closes the film on a rambling historical note from Peckinpah, which is incomprehensible unless you know your history and maybe then even if you do (I don't; it might be very meaningful to a Pat Garrett scholar but it just seems like dense word salad to someone who only knows what's in the movie -- I would have to sit down and do research to figure out what Peckinpah is saying, before really evaluating it, because without research, I just come away going, "Huh?"). I do not know, as yet, if this cut, being apparently later than the previous version, is any better-paced -- I'll have to watch it and see. Do the scenes with Lemuel in the bar drag on like in the previous director's cut? Will I have nightmares after the film where Bob Dylan is standing in front of my pantry closet, reading the labels of the cans to me? (We do have some beans in there). Will it be as sprawling and ungainly as that other version, or feel a bit more focused? It clocks in at 122 minutes, the same length as the previously-known preview cut, but maybe that added end-crawl, absent in the previous, means that other scenes have been trimmed, made more focused? (It seems more likely that it will simply have a different "sprawl" to it, though it does seem to say something about Peckinpah's intentions that there was more than one sprawling version of the film...).
There is also a new (?!) Paul-Seydor-led revision of the film, distinct from the previous, possibly superior, but (I checked) still missing the line, "What you want and what you get are two different things," the most egregious and ill-advised omission. I am not alone in this judgement: Jonathan Lack observes, here, that
It is the final spoken line of dialogue in Peckinpah’s cut, and Coburn delivers it with a truly disarming amount of venom. It is astonishing, and essential. It ties the entire film together. I cannot imagine the logic for cutting it, except that it is such a raw and confrontational moment of fury and self-loathing that I wonder if the studio simply balked at the intensity of it.
Discovering that Seydor has revisited the edit of that film and not attended to the most serious problem with it -- he had a second chance to reinstate that line, and chose not to -- makes me just want to double-down on rejecting his efforts as misguided and irrelevant; he may have improved his version in other ways, but I'm not really all that curious as to how. Lack, who has watched the whole of it, describes the new Seydor cut as "a muddle, unclear in its intentions and less effective on its own terms than either of the other two versions." See also this Reddit thread, especially TheRealProtozoid, who is very lucid, saying that
Seydor has twice been given the chance to restore the film, and both times created a fan edit where he made arbitrary changes based on his own ideas. Like he straight up admits to cutting lines of dialogue just because he doesn't like them. Criterion shouldn't have let that heck [sic] anywhere near this new set. Peckinpah fans already went through this with Seydor in 2005. His actions are shameful.
who attempted to improve on the preview cuts by shortening and rearranging them failed... I don't think the Seydor cuts are any more ethical than the theatrical cut. Nobody asked for them. For decades people wanted a restoration of what Peckinpah intended. The Seydor cuts are what Seydor wants. I'm amazed anyone defends them.
All of which I raise a glass to. For me, it really comes down to that one line of dialogue -- it was wrong to omit it when the film played theatrically, it was wrong for Seydor to omit it when he meddled with the film the first time, and it's inexcusable that he's revisited his edit, apparently admitting it had problems, without attending to this most serious one. Best to just watch the last version of the film Peckinpah had a hand in, sprawl and all.
But finally, if you want to experience every permutation, new to blu-ray on the Criterion is the old theatrical cut of the film, which sort of gets retroactively ruined by exposure to the long cut of the film, feeling quite rushed and strangely-paced; but because of this, it's the version you really should watch first if you're new to this movie, since you won't know what you're missing (this will also have the bonus effect of introducing you to the film the way its contemporaries first saw it; that Turner preview cut didn't surface until the mid-1980s!). Watch the theatrical, then the final preview, and -- well, see the Seydor if you want, but it remains an unsatisfying footnote. Still, in any cut, the film is one of the best things Kristofferson did as an actor, even if there are a maddening number of versions of it (there's also talk on a Reddit somewhere about a sixth version of the film that played on TV, omitting much of the sex and violence, but five is more than enough!).
Actually, people who are wanting to enjoy a Kris Kristofferson/ Sam Peckinpah movie while dodging all these complexities have another place to look: the very enjoyable, shamelessly lowbrow Convoy. I expected nothing of the film -- perhaps a fiasco -- and was very pleased; it's a fun watch, especially if you're an Ernest Borgnine fan. We gather Peckinpah was somewhat drunk/ coked-up during the shoot for that film, so it may not be his true vision either, but it's immature enough in its brawls and car-vs-truck stuff that even talking about "vision" feels misplaced. It's pretty much a lowbrow antiauthoritarian romp -- the sort of film that has upbeat, twangy country music to accompany a bar fight -- and works as such; plus there's only one cut of it available, so you don't have to choose between anything!
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