The Wild Bunch - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[kristen]

The "modern" sidearms (the film's setting is 1916) that the Bishop gang carries are Colt M1911 automatic pistols and Winchester M1897 pump-action shotguns. The water-cooled heavy machine gun is the Browning M1917. US and Mexican soldiers use M1903 Springfield rifles. All of the aforementioned weapons were used in World War I by the US Army. While the 1897 Winchester shotgun was featured prominently, they were not used exclusively by the Bunch. The shotgun that Crazy Lee had at the start of the movie in the railroad office did not have an exposed hammer, which is something all 1897s have. Neither the 1897 nor the Winchester Model 12 had a trigger disconnector, which means that the trigger could be continually depressed and every time the the slide was pumped it would fire. Since this was what we see the Bunch doing as they are firing through the railroad office windows at the bounty hunters on the roof, at least the shotgun that Crazy Lee loaned briefly to Abe must have been an M12, based on it not having an exposed hammer. This can be seen most clearly when Crazy Lee is firing at the three people he was holding in the office, after they tried to escape.

[phyllis]

Sam Peckinpah, notorious for being a demanding director, fired 22 cast members during the course of the shoot. According to producer Phil Feldman, "Sam had no compassion for a guy with a job who had a family at home who makes a mistake; that wasn't his concern--Sam had no tolerance for that . . . He had no understanding of a mistake that the guy made that is correctable, after all. He was volatile, and if a guy committed a mistake on the set or elsewhere, he was ready to jump on him. And that's too bad".