That time Bob Dylan played Elijah the prophet in an underrated Western — and did a better job than you might think
Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’ is getting another look with the release of a new DVD box set
Dylan in Sam Peckinpah’s film, ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.’ Photo by Getty Images
A new four-DVD box set of Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid makes a strong case for the film — which upon its original released in 1973 was met mostly with criticism and indifference — as a neglected, overlooked masterpiece. It also suggests that Bob Dylan’s minor role in the film, overshadowed by lead performances by Kris Kristofferson as Billy the Kid and James Coburn as Pat Garrett, was more than a mere celebrity cameo. As it turns out, Dylan’s character, who goes by the name of Alias, may well be the central axis upon which the story revolves.
The new package, released by the Criterion Collection, includes the original theatrical version, which was cut by the studio to such an extent that it was repudiated by Peckinpah and others involved in the making of the movie. It also includes the Final Preview Cut, which is one of two incomplete versions that Peckinpah submitted to the studio before he quit working on it out of disgust over their interventions. But the true revelations of the film are contained in the 50th Anniversary Release version put together by several of the film’s original editors, who had worked closely with Peckinpah, restoring several scenes omitted by the studio and correcting color and sound issues that plagued earlier versions. The end result, as contained on a Blu-Ray disk that comes with the set, is a crisp, gorgeous movie with pristine dialogue and an impeccable soundtrack (composed and recorded by Bob Dylan) that reveals a much deeper and more profound narrative hidden in earlier versions, all of which were clearly incomplete.
In earlier films including The Wild Bunch and Ride the High Country, Peckinpah helped create what became known as the revisionist Western, in which the simple verities of earlier Hollywood Westerns are upended. Gone are the good guys vs. the bad guys. In fact, to quote a later Dylan lyric, they often express a dynamic wherein “What’s good is bad; what’s bad is good.” They subvert the antiquated notions that lawmen are squeaky clean, honorable actors protecting settlers from rowdy, disruptive, and dangerous outlaws. Again, an earlier Dylan lyric encapsulates the new approach to the Western, whereby “to live outside the law you must be honest.”
Other films in this genre include George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Arthur Penn’s The Missouri Breaks. In all these films, viewers tend to sympathize more with the conventional outlaws than with the governmental authority figures — not an unusual stance in context of the counterculture and the antiwar movement of the Vietnam era. One of Peckinpah’s trademarks was to slow down the action during gunfights, focusing tightly on the destructive and bloody nature of violence that was mostly covered up or ignored in old-fashioned Westerns.
The Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid story is well known; it was made into any number of movies and based on real historical figures. The two title characters had once been working the other side of the law together. Approached by local ranch owners and territorial leaders to switch sides and offered a hefty salary and bounty to boot, Garrett agrees to be deputized as a sheriff with the primary goal of bringing in Billy the Kid, whose gang of horse and cattle thieves are growing far too successful at their trade.
Once Garrett is given his marching orders, he meets with Billy and tells him the deal, giving him five days to clear out of the territory before he comes after him. Garrett suggests Billy cross over into Mexico, where he would be beyond the reach of Garrett and other American lawmen. Billy does not take Garrett up on his suggestion, and the two circle each other warily and sometimes violently until a final showdown. How the two get to that ultimate showdown is much of the work of the movie.
Kris Kristofferson was friends with Bob Dylan, who at the time was mostly in seclusion. He had not toured since his motorcycle accident in 1966 and only communicated with the outside world sporadically by releasing new albums, which tended to boast rootsier, more countrified arrangements than the fiery electric folk-rock that made Dylan a household name during the mid-1960s. Kristofferson suggested to Peckinpah that he invite Dylan to the set in Durango, Mexico, to observe the goings-on and potentially write some songs that could be used in the film.
While supposedly not initially impressed with Dylan, once Peckinpah heard the first song Dylan came up with — one of several versions of the song called “Billy,” addressed to the Kid and warning him about Garrett’s deadly intentions — he was won over. Not only was Dylan hired to write a few songs for the movie, but he was also asked to compose incidental soundtrack music for the film’s score. And Peckinpah dug Dylan’s personal vibe so much that he invited him to join the cast.
Some say that screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer always had Dylan in mind for a role in the film. Early in the movie, Garrett and Billy have this very Dylanesque exchange:
Pat Garrett: Times are changin’, Billy.
Billy: How does it feel?
PG: It feels like times have changed.
While Dylan’s music for the film has always been acclaimed — one of the songs he wrote was “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” which became a global hit, just missing the Top 10 in the U.S., and later recorded by the likes of Eric Clapton and Guns N’ Roses — his acting in the film has always been a subject of debate. Was his role simply underwritten to the point that he had nothing to do, or was he just plain bad?
The new 50th Anniversary version suggests both ideas are wrong. One of the first times we meet him in the film, Pat Garrett turns to him and asks, “Who are you?” to which he replies gnomically, “That’s a good question.” In a follow-up scene, he is again asked to identify himself:
“What’s your name, boy?
“Alias”
“Alias what?”
“Alias anything you please.”
“What do we call you?”
“Just call him Alias!”
“That’s what I’d do”
To describe that brief conversation as Dylanesque is an understatement. The question of identity, particularly Dylan’s own identity, is one of the through-lines of Dylan’s life and career. Bob Dylan itself is an alias for Robert Allen Zimmerman (although he did legally change his name). In a number of Dylan’s other films, he directly addresses the question, including Renaldo and Clara, in which he first appears wearing a Richard Nixon mask and later mostly appears with his face painted white like a circus clown, and in Masked and Anonymous, whose very title betrays the question of Dylan’s identity. Even Todd Haynes’s 2007 experimental biopic, I’m Not There, finds Dylan played by a half-dozen different actors.
From the beginning, Bob Dylan’s character Alias is set apart from the others due to his lack of clear identity. Throughout the film, Alias shows up in scenes as both a member of Garrett’s posse and Billy’s gang. His appearances with each group defy time and space and logic. But whenever he appears, something significant happens — a fight breaks out, someone gets shot, or an important message is conveyed, sometimes by Alias himself. Occasionally he takes part in the action: He goes on a raid with Billy the Kid, riding horseback and lassoing a turkey, and later helps save Billy from an assassination attempt by a trio of men by throwing a knife into one’s neck (earlier we saw him practicing his knife throwing). At one point, Billy the Kid says to him, “Mexico might not be bad for a couple of months.” To which Alias replies, “Depends upon who you are,” again raising the question of identity.
It is impossible to watch the movie and not connect Alias, played by Bob Dylan, to the ever-present soundtrack music, played by Bob Dylan. They work in tandem to help propel the plot, almost steering it from another dimension. Even though Alias/Bob Dylan is so present throughout the movie, there is something ghostly or angelic or prophetic about his role. He could be seen as a Greek chorus — certainly his soundtrack acts as one — but he could also be seen as something more. The entire movie could be the product of his imagination; he could, in a sense, be a stand-in for the director of the film; or he could be a divine presence or witness. Alias, after all, sounds a lot like Eliyahu; he could be the Biblical prophet Elijah, one of the only prophets believed to interact directly with human beings beyond the Prophetic age and to this day, where he could show up at any time anywhere.
Dylan’s participation in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid proved to be an integral element of his creative transition from the 1960s through the mid-1970s, which began with the very Biblical/Western album John Wesley Harding in 1967. Dylan followed that up two years later with the country album Nashville Skyline, featuring one of his greatest hits, “Lay Lady Lay.”
Dylan followed the release of the Pat Garrett soundtrack album with Planet Waves, reuniting him with the Band, with whom he had toured the world in 1965-66. Dylan’s 1975 album Blood on the Tracks included the very cinematic ballad, “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” a complex, nine-minute song that recounts a story right out of a revisionist Western. The next year, Dylan followed up with the album Desire, which included the number “Romance in Durango,” an obvious tribute to the making of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and which Dylan often dedicated to Sam Peckinpah when performing it live on the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975-76.
Even Dylan’s 1978 album Street Legal seems to refer back to the movie in the song “Senor (Tales of Yankee Power),” which opens with the lines, “Señor, señor, can you tell me where we’re headin’? Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?” Early in the film, Billy the Kid finds himself locked up in the Lincoln County jail.
Spoiler alert: At the end of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Garrett finally gets his man. Alias, of course, is hovering on the sidelines of the scene, leaving one to wonder: was Alias the Angel of Death all this time, a puppeteer pulling the strings that would bring Billy to his fateful end?
As Alias might say, “That’s a good question.” Bob Dylan would probably say the same thing, too.
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