Let's fill The Guild Cinema - they are doing this in honor of KUPR's tenth year.
Tickets are $10 and are available here
"It’s a feel-good movie about American camaraderie going up against injustice and abusive, overreacting tyranny."
Armond White, National Review. Watch the trailer here.
Tickets are $10 and are available here
"It’s a feel-good movie about American camaraderie going up against injustice and abusive, overreacting tyranny."
Armond White, National Review. Watch the trailer here.
The great Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch) directed this action classic based on the runaway hit song, Convoy. Martin "Rubber Duck" Penwald (Kris Kristofferson, Vigilante Force) who, in pursuance of a feud with Sheriff Lyle "Cottonmouth" Wallace (Ernest Borgnine, Marty), unites scores of his fellow-drivers via Citizen Band radio into a gigantic mile-long convoy which, powered by pent-up frustrations and resentments as much as by diesel-fuel, rolls irresistibly along highways towards the freedom of the Mexican border.
"Whatever Peckinpah filmed he filmed in such a way as to show its heroic qualities. His westerns directly descended from the work of John Ford and John Huston, depicting a world that was grittier and less honorable than the frontier myths that most Americans had been fed. His films were mostly about individuals attempting to cope with a mad, chaotic world. Kris Kristofferson’s Rubber Duck is not unlike the character Humphrey Bogart portrayed in more than one film–wanting to be left alone to carve out his own existence in an unfriendly universe, but dragged into heroic action by his humanity... Convoy is a love letter to America in many ways, thanks in large part to the cinematography of Harry Stradling, Jr. The shots of trucks driving the highways and deserts of New Mexico are stunning, with the same kind of big skies and open roads that audiences are used to seeing in westerns. In one memorable sequence the convoy takes a back road that is little more than a trail, and the shots of trucks driving over the soft dirt, leaving cop cars in the literal dust, are like an eighteen wheeler ballet. Eventually the trucks dissolve into each other and, as daylight turns to dusk, their headlights merge with the moon in an eerie display of mechanized beauty." Sifting Through the Ashes of Sam Peckinpah's Movie Convoy by Marshall Bowden
"Whatever Peckinpah filmed he filmed in such a way as to show its heroic qualities. His westerns directly descended from the work of John Ford and John Huston, depicting a world that was grittier and less honorable than the frontier myths that most Americans had been fed. His films were mostly about individuals attempting to cope with a mad, chaotic world. Kris Kristofferson’s Rubber Duck is not unlike the character Humphrey Bogart portrayed in more than one film–wanting to be left alone to carve out his own existence in an unfriendly universe, but dragged into heroic action by his humanity... Convoy is a love letter to America in many ways, thanks in large part to the cinematography of Harry Stradling, Jr. The shots of trucks driving the highways and deserts of New Mexico are stunning, with the same kind of big skies and open roads that audiences are used to seeing in westerns. In one memorable sequence the convoy takes a back road that is little more than a trail, and the shots of trucks driving over the soft dirt, leaving cop cars in the literal dust, are like an eighteen wheeler ballet. Eventually the trucks dissolve into each other and, as daylight turns to dusk, their headlights merge with the moon in an eerie display of mechanized beauty." Sifting Through the Ashes of Sam Peckinpah's Movie Convoy by Marshall Bowden
The single “Convoy” was released in 1975 and soon became a hit on AM radio stations across the country. But its singer, C.W. McCall, didn’t actually exist. He was a character invented by an advertising man for Metz Baking Company’s Old Home Bread, and was portrayed in the commercials by a Dallas actor. Fries wrote a song for one of the commercials, “Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep on a-Truckin’ Café.” The song was so popular that Fries and his songwriting partner Chip Davis (who went on to form the group Manheim Steamroller) wrote more songs and recorded their first album, Wolf Creek Pass, with a bunch of studio musicians. Fries again did the vocals and became C.W. McCall for their live and television performances. The second album, Black Bear Road, was released nine months later and included the song “Convoy” which peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in January 1976.
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We drove to Coyote, NM to interview Kathy Roberts, long-time Placitas resident who built the first dome on Mustang Mesa - and was an extra in Convoy. There are still some in the area who watched or took part in the iconic bar scene at Raphael's Silver Cloud in Algodones, the roll over at the 4-way in Bernalillo (313 at 550) and the hilarious barn crash off the S-curve in Placitas. |
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