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Cool pair of films right there.
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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
) at a repertory theatre in 1977 (it was already a cult item) - I hated it. Of course, I was in my "literal" phase - I took things mostly at face value, didn't look that hard at things metaphorically, etc. (Some of you will say I'm still in that phase!) Anyway, it just came across as a convoluted, meaningless, boring mess, and I'll admit that I still feel that way about much of it today, except it is meaningful, both to the Warren Oates character and to me. I might not be as rabid a fan boy as Holds, but I love me some Warren Oates. He's perfect for this role, and no wonder - he's doing a sly takeoff on Peckinpah himself! So you not only get Oates' strong performance, but it's almost as if it's Sam (via Warren) talking to himself (via the head). If you watch the film in this context, I think you'll get more out of it, but if you're an existentialist, you'll probably like it anyway. Oh, one more thing. The opening of the movie is beautiful and lyrical, coming across as an idealized setting for a western set over 100 years ago, but then all of a sudden we see a plane and modern cars and the illusion is broken. That's not a spoiler since Holds included a picture of a car. 
