 Adler was the first writer to discuss the symbolic significance of Billy the Kid's nickname as a cultural totem.Arthur Penn's film, "The Left Handed Gun" (1958), portrays Billy the Kid as a misunderstood youth, played by Paul Newman in the manner of James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause", according to the film critic Robert Kolker.It similarly addresses the psychological motivations of those of its characters who resort to violence, in a pseudo-Freudian treatment of the subject characteristic of certain 1950s movies.