At some point in several of director Sam Peckinpah's films - Deadly Companions, Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, and others - one of the characters refers to another character or group of characters as a "Two-bit peckerwood," or "Two-bit redneck peckerwoods." It's a minor motif, I guess you could say. Since Peckinpah was known to do a lot of work on the scripts to his films, I have no doubt that this reference to the "two-bit peckerwood" comes straight from him.
I'm not exactly sure what he was trying to say with this phrase, probably just something someone he knew growing up used to say would be my guess, but the reason why he thought it was important and/or interesting enough to use so often is a mystery. The character who uses this phrase to describe someone else in these movie is always one of the protagonists - or what passes for a protagonist in one of Peckinpah's films - and they use it in reference to the sleaziest, scummiest, lowest of their enemies in the heat of battle.
Now, the fact that Peckinpah's heroes were often pretty low-down themselves means that when someone is low enough to be considered a "two-bit peckerwood" in one of his films, well, then they must be the lowest of the low, the absolute bottom of the barrel - someone so damn low that even the heartless, violent scumbags that Peckinpah considered the heroes of his movies would look down on them. Hill trash, scavengers, dry-gultchers, inbred scum i.e., Two-Bit Peckerwoods.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I just deleted all blog posts but this one... again! First of all, blogging you stupid assed personal opinions has got to be one of the most pointless, useless things one can possibly do. Feels that way to me, anyway. Seems something is always getting me angry, setting me off, and before I know it there I am typing out a log, long rant that nobody gives a shit about. Most people are either too WEAK to truly have and express a personal opinion, and too many of the rest are too fucking STUPID to have a worthwhile opinion. I may not be a genius or a great writer (how many bloggers are? certainly there are a few out there, but most are a total waste), but at least I have something like a reasonable and strong position on things and the balls to fucking put it out there! No one EVER comments on anything here, even if I say something totally crazy and offensive just to piss people off. I have to delete all that shit later because usually I don't really believe what I say, or don't care enough to back up my own strongly offered perspective. Like take religion, for instance. I acknowledge religion, in one form or another, as part of human nature, but that doesn't make it not bullshit. Just because we need beliefs of some kind and have a need to explain nature and existence in the form of a story does NOT makes those stories TRUE. But then I'll go off, write a thousand word anti-Jesus rant, and then delete it two weeks later when I realize that I really don't give enough of a shit to really maintain such anger and that no one will really care enough to read it, much less comment. And the ONLY people who will comment are ALWAYS bat-shit crazy True Believers, and if there is one thing in the universe I am NOT interested in (because it has no meaning) is the bullshit opinions of bat-shit crazy believers! Also, I don't wanna offend the people I know who are bel;ievers but NOT bat-shit crazy. So, what's the fucking point, right? Anyway, I'm powerless to have any affect in this world, anyway, so who care... why do it? Why "blog"? Fuck it.
ReplyDelete