Wild Bunch

The Grammy Awards show is always the most flamboyant fashion parade of the awards season. But tonight's event promises to be even more no-holds-barred than before, thanks to a new generation of pop stars who have brought individual style back to the red carpet. Led by Lady Gaga, who has shrouded herself in red lace, worn a coat of many Muppets and ignited a fire bra, today's music artists don't just rely on top luxury brands to dress them. They go out of their way to find esoteric designers for video, stage and red carpet appearances -- one-upping each other with leotards by Thierry Mugler, see-through dresses by Gareth Pugh and pagoda-shouldered tops by Alexandre Vauthier.

They are now the coolest kids in the cafeteria -- or if you want to take the school analogy one step further -- on campus. (Not that they'd all make it to class consistently.) Forget the guys from the conventional, old-school sports. The men's snowboarders, not exactly a news flash, are hip at the Winter Olympics. Maybe because they aren't forcing the issue in some contrived way. "We were the outsiders, and the jocks are cool in high school and now [it is] the board people," said Peter Foley, coach of the U.S. snowboarding team.

On Bundy Drive just north of Sunset Boulevard, in the leafy, hillside section of Brentwood, a postage stamp-sized Tudor-style lodge lurks unobtrusively behind a row of hedges. In a block of rebuilt insta-mansions and multimillion-dollar homes, there is little about this low-key cabin to suggest that it was, at the height of Hollywood's Golden Age, headquarters to a clan of the movie industry's most famous names and its most celebrated group of over-the-hill scalawags.

The Grammy Awards show is always the most flamboyant fashion parade of the awards season. But tonight's event promises to be even more no-holds-barred than before, thanks to a new generation of pop stars who have brought individual style back to the red carpet. Led by Lady Gaga, who has shrouded herself in red lace, worn a coat of many Muppets and ignited a fire bra, today's music artists don't just rely on top luxury brands to dress them. They go out of their way to find esoteric designers for video, stage and red carpet appearances -- one-upping each other with leotards by Thierry Mugler, see-through dresses by Gareth Pugh and pagoda-shouldered tops by Alexandre Vauthier.

The testosterone was oozing at an opening-day showing last week of "The Wild Bunch," the classic Sam Peckinpah shoot-'em-up-real-good Western re-released in celebration of its 25th anniversary. The crowd outside the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood confirmed this was definitely guys' night out. Men abounded--old, young, Western gear-wearing nerds, leather-jacketed yuppies, goatee-sporting Bohemians. Women were scarce, and the few we spotted had unmistakable "What have I gotten myself into?"

I want to commend Jane Galbraith for her excellent article about the MPAA re-rating of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" ("Sam Peckinpah Meets the Mild Bunch," March 14). The history of "The Wild Bunch" is complex and, considering deadline and space limitations, Galbraith did an excellent job of reporting it. She is absolutely correct when she writes that the MPAA rated Peckinpah's uncut version R in 1969, and now has turned around 24 years later and rated the exact same cut of the movie NC-17.

Rustling up the 25th--make that the 26th anniversary--of Sam Peckinpah's bloody Western classic "The Wild Bunch" has been a wild ride for Warner Bros. A 26th-anniversary re-release (March 3, followed by a new, stereo videotape and laser-disc version later this year) is not the usual milestone marked by a studio, but, in this case, Warner Bros.

'The Wild Bunch" never fails to get a reaction out of people, but never was the response to Sam Peckinpah's visceral Western drama as strong as it was at the film's initial public showing. According to "If They Move . . . Kill 'Em!," David Weddle's authoritative Peckinpah biography whose title is a key line of "Wild Bunch" dialogue, that 1969 Kansas City preview audience barely remained coherent. "Thirty people bolted up the aisle and out of the theater, some to vomit in the adjoining alley. . .

It began with dusty film cans, lying forgotten on the back shelf of a Warner Bros. vault, where they had languished for nearly 30 years. Once likely to be destroyed, their contents have become the spine of an Oscar-nominated documentary. The film offers a rare, behind-the-scenes study of a legendary filmmaker, working at the height of his powers.

Some backpackers shoot us evil looks. The bears steer clear. Who can blame them? There are 13 of us -- three men, 10 teenage boys -- rambling through the remote reaches of the high Sierra with all the stealth of a tank brigade. Each campsite we claim threatens to become Party Central. There are card games and football, and mealtime resembles a busy Italian kitchen. I'm getting an education in what the rangers call "social impact."

"Hurt Locker" screenwriter Mark Boal remembers running around the Jordanian desert with director Kathryn Bigelow, watching her scale hills in 115-degree heat to set up shots for their modestly budgeted film. By the end of the day, when everyone else was exhausted, Bigelow would look like she was just beginning her morning, raring and ready to go shoot the next scene. "She's got those Viking genes," Boal says. "I'm serious. They live forever, those people. It's the Viking genes and a whole lot of salmon."

Though some critics hated it when it was released in 1969, Sam Peckinpah's seminal western "The Wild Bunch" is today considered one of the most influential, poetic -- and yes, violent -- sagebrush sagas ever made. "The Wild Bunch" changed the face of filmmaking with its bloody scenes shot in slow-motion from multiple angles and its innovative, quick-cut editing style. Many have imitated the violence, but few have been able to capture its spirit and beauty. "It's something you will never see in a western before, and you will never see it again," says Ernest Borgnine, who played the vicious outlaw Dutch Engstrom in the film.

"Madagascar," the 2005 animated film that brought us pampered zoo critters Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Melman the paranoid hypochondriac giraffe and Gloria the hippo (and the penguins, don't forget those crafty penguins) pulled in about half a billion dollars at the box office. The sequel, "Madagascar: Back 2 Africa," is a better film, though -- less manic, more easygoing.

It is easiest to see the wild, isolated Robbers Roost country where Butch often hid out from Angel Point, overlooking the Dirty Devil River. A rough dirt loop road leads here from Utah 95 about five miles south of Hanksville. There are occasional signposts and a small parking lot at the trail head. The hike to the river is about three miles; the views of the Roost's deeply incised canyons get better all the way.

"Most of what follows is true. " That's the opening of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," the 1969 movie about two bandits born as the sun was setting over the mesas and buttes of the old Wild West. Morally ambiguous, the movie struck a chord with Vietnam War-era audiences who stood and cheered when Paul Newman as Butch and Robert Redford as Sundance met a hail of bullets in a dusty Bolivian town, etching the final freeze frame onto my 15-year-old heart. I didn't know it then, but the movie wrote something else there: a love of the sumptuous Western scenery, which I rediscovered on a trip last month to southern Utah.

The USC versus UCLA rivalry has produced many legendary players who are remembered for making great offensive plays in the series -- from O.J. Simpson's 64-yard touchdown run in 1967 to Gaston Green's 224 yards and four rushing touchdowns in 1986 to Erik Affholter's debated touchdown catch in 1987. But the rivalry also has had more than its fair share of stars on defense, starting with last year's instant legend, UCLA's Eric McNeal.

I enjoyed reading "The Wild Bunch," by Leslie Allyson Ward (March 13): Unfortunately, last year the zookeepers received bad publicity with the flamingo disaster. At that time I realized how important these people are in safeguarding these special creatures. Thanks for a great insight into their jobs. LAURIE STONE Van Nuys

At first, Richard Johnston thought nothing of an online auction house's offer to sell a letter written in 1900 by a member of Butch Cassidy's infamous Wild Bunch for $5,999. Later, the Old West history buff from Reno made a surprising discovery: The two-page letter from outlaw Willard E. Christiansen to Utah Gov. Heber Wells had been stolen from the Utah State Archives. "I checked my files and discovered that I had seen the letter there in 1976," Johnston recalled.