Death of a Gunfighter (1969)

Marshal Frank Patch: Do you want to know something, Dan?
Dan Joslin: What?
Marshal Frank Patch: You're a bad liar. If you want to succeed in this world, you got to learn to be a good liar.

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[discussing Frank Patch]
Lester Locke: There's that mayor over there drumming up a meeting with all those rich and proper jackasses - hollering and shouting around, quoting some stupid law or bylaw. Then they'll all go stomping down to the jailhouse, take a look at God Almighty, then he'll take one good look back at 'em, and they'll all wet their britches and go on home.

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Wil Oxley: Why did my father kill himself?
Marshal Frank Patch: I don't know, son.
Wil Oxley: Tell me! Tell me!
Marshal Frank Patch: A long time ago, a man was killed... shot in the back.
Wil Oxley: My father did it?
Marshal Frank Patch: Nobody knew for sure who did it.
Wil Oxley: You knew. Why didn't he hang?
Marshal Frank Patch: There was nothing to be gained by hanging. The dead man had a child - a son. Your father agreed to raise him as his own.

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Star Richard Widmark and original director Robert Totten had "artistic differences," and Totten was replaced by Don Siegel. When the film was completed, Siegel, saying that Totten directed more of the film than he did, refused to take screen credit for it, but Widmark didn't want Totten's name on it. A compromise was reached whereby the film was credited to the fictitious "Alan Smithee" (originally to be called Al Smith, but the DGA said there had already been a director by that name), thereby setting a precedent for directors who, for one reason or another, did not want their name on a film they made.
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