- TitleDavid Weddle collection
- Collector
- Description
4 linear ft. of papers
1. Subject files, subseries A-B as follows: A. General; B. Tape logs and transcripts
- Summary
Research material, primarily in the form of audio interviews and transcripts, concerning director Sam Peckinpah.
- BiographyDavid Weddle was born in Irvington, New York in 1956. His family moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and settled in Southern California by the time Weddle was in his teens. He spent much of his childhood going to the movies to see Westerns with his father and found THE WILD BUNCH (1969) particularly memorable. He was also a fan of slapstick comedy and hoped to one day write as a gag man for a comedian. He studied communications at California State University, Fullerton for two years before transferring to the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema where he met his future writing partner Bradley Thompson. After graduating from USC in 1978, Weddle managed to deliver his script about the life of Buster Keaton to Marty Feldman, and for a year the two of them revised the script while Weddle worked as an errand boy for Dino De Laurentiis. The Buster Keaton project was never produced and following Feldman’s death in 1982, Weddle worked as a journalist for several years, writing for such publications as “Rolling Stone,” “The Washington Post,” “Variety,” “Sight and Sound,” “Film Comment,” and the “San Francisco Chronicle,” among many others. Ken Kesey, whom Weddle befriended not long after the publication of Kesey’s novel “Demon Box,” was the subject of several articles.
Weddle’s family had become acquainted with Sam Peckinpah’s family following their move to California, and Weddle visited Peckinpah on the set of his last feature, THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND (1983). Following Peckinpah’s death in 1984 and the donation of his professional papers to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Weddle set to work researching and writing a biography of the filmmaker. “If They Move... Kill 'Em!: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah,” was published ten years after Peckinpah’s death. The biography led to a meeting with Ira Behr, executive producer of STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE and a Sam Peckinpah fan. Behr and Weddle became friends, and Weddle was given the opportunity to pitch story ideas for the series. He contacted his former USC classmate, Bradley Thompson, and the two ultimately joined the writing staff for the show, co-writing a dozen episodes and serving as story editors for the series. When the series ended in 1999, Weddle and Thompson continued to collaborate, writing episodes for such series as THE FEARING MIND and THE TWILIGHT ZONE. In 2004 Ronald D. Moore, a producer on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, hired the duo for his new show, BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA, a reimagining of the series from the 1970s. The two wrote over two dozen episodes for the show and served as story editors and supervising producers as well. They have continued to write and produce for several notable television series, including CSI: LAS VEGAS, FALLING SKIES, THE STRAIN, and FOR ALL MANKIND. Weddle has continued his non-fiction writing as well, most notably with “In the Valley of Shadows,” an article about the death of his mother for “San Francisco Chronicle Magazine,” “The Good War,” an article about the death of his father for “Los Angeles Times Magazine,” and “Among the Mansions of Eden – Tales of Love, Lust and Land in Beverly Hills,” a bestselling book published in 2003. - Subjects
- Acquisitions InformationGift of David Weddle, 1994.
- Preferred citationDavid Weddle collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
- DepartmentLibrary
- 1280
- AvailabilityFor information on the contents and availability of this collection please contact the Reference and Public Services department at ref@oscars.org.
- Moving Image Items
- Library Holdings