time, William Goldman's screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had recently been purchased by 20th Century Fox. An alternative screenplay available at the studio was The Wild Bunch. It was quickly decided that The Wild Bunch, which had several similarities to Goldman's work, would be produced to beat Butch Cassidy to the theaters. Writing By the fall of 1967, Peckinpah was rewriting the screenplay and preparing for production. The principal photography was shot entirely on location in Mexico, most notably at the Hacienda Ciénaga del Carmen (deep in the desert between Torreón and Saltillo, Coahuila) and on the Rio Nazas. Peckinpah's epic work was inspired by his hunger to return to films, the violence seen in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), America's growing frustration with the Vietnam War, and what he perceived to be the utter lack of reality seen in Westerns up to that time. He set out to make a film which portrayed not only the vicious violence of the period but also the crude men attempting to survive the era. Multiple scenes attempted in Major Dundee, including slow motion action sequences (inspired by Akira Kurosawa's work in Seven Samurai (1954), characters leaving a village as if in a funeral procession, and the use of inexperienced locals as extras, would become fully realized in The Wild Bunch. Casting Peckinpah considered many actors for the Pike Bishop role before casting William Holden, including Richard Boone, Sterling Hayden, Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, and James Stewart. Marvin actually accepted the role but pulled out after he was offered more money to star in Paint Your Wagon (1969). Peckinpah's first two choices for the role of Deke Thornton were Richard Harris (who had co-starred in Major Dundee) and Brian Keith (who had worked with Peckinpah on The Westerner (1960) and The Deadly Companions (1961)). Harris was never formally approached; Keith was asked, but he turned it down. Robert Ryan was ultimately cast in the part after Peckinpah saw him in the World War II action movie The Dirty Dozen (1967). Other actors considered for the role were Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Ben Johnson (later cast as Tector Gorch), and Arthur Kennedy. The role of Mapache went to Emilio Fernández, the Mexican film director, writer, actor, and friend of Peckinpah. Among those considered to play Dutch Engstrom were Charles Bronson, Jim Brown,