9

FRIDAY

Warren Oates: What’s not to like about the guy? Just look at the Marine-turned-actor: You can all but smell the moonshine, cigarettes, and sweat. He’s the real-deal embodiment of a redneck peckerwood. Though he got plenty of work as a character actor from the ’60s through the ’80s, the Kentucky native made only a handful of features as leading man. And those appearances were classics, such as in Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter, a beautifully filmed piece of chicken-neck-snapping, exploitative ’70s gold. Oates’ big flicks all have greasy titles so brilliantly wrong that they must be good (Dixie Dynamite and Race With the Devil come to mind). But the best place to get the full, unbridled Oates experience is in Sam Peckinpah’s 1974 film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, a deeply weird morality play about a barroom pianist who sacrifices his soul in a greedy decapitation quest. It’s nightmarish ’70s cinema at its best. The film screens at 7 p.m. at the Library of Congress’ Pickford Theater, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free. For reservations call (202)

707-5677. (Brent Burton)