One-Eyed Jacks

Kubrick was hired to direct a Sam Peckinpah–scripted One-Eyed Jacks, but after six months of preproduction, he left the project two weeks before shooting. Brando took the reins as director and ordered a series of rewrites. He and Karl Malden fill the boots of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett (thinly disguised as “Rio” and “Dad Longworth”) in this Freudian VistaVision epic, which reviewers dubbed one of the first antihero Westerns. “That Brando never again directed a movie may or may not have been a good thing, but with One-Eyed Jacks he accomplished what more celebrated directors could seldom do: he made an unforgettable film” (Barry Gifford).