Thanks to the big financial success of Easy Rider, Peter Fonda was given full artistic control over his directorial debut, the 1971 western called The Hired Hand. Directed by Fonda and written by Scottish novelist and screenwriter Alan Sharp, the film tells the story of a man who returns to his wife after seven years of working around the country, but the abandoned wife will give him a place to stay only if he starts working for her as a hired hand. However, it turns out he may change his lifestyle, but the lifestyle is not so keen on letting him go, as some bad men from his past come looking for retribution.
Shot in Mexico in the summer of 1970 for a budget of a million dollars, The Hired Hand was a carefully developed and beautifully designed western with great performances from Fonda, Warren Oates, Verna Bloom and Severn Darden. It was shot by the legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and even though its initial reviews were rather mixed, The Hired Hand experienced a much-deserved revival at the beginning of this century when it was restored and shown at a series of festivals.
In 1972 a neophyte Spanish media company created a rare platform for artists to explore classic genre imagery with a sophisticated cinematic sensibility.
After Peter Hyams made a successful TV movie called "Goodnight, My Love", producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler approached him with the desire of...
