Straw Dogs (1971 film) Straw Dogs (1971 film) Straw Dogs is a 1971 psychological thriller film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. The screenplay, by Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman, is lightly based upon Gordon M. Williams's 1969 novel, "The Siege of Trencher's Farm". The film's title derives from a discussion in the "Tao Te Ching" that likens people to the ancient Chinese ceremonial straw dog, being of ceremonial worth, but afterwards discarded with indifference. The film is noted for its violent concluding sequences and a complicated rape scene. Released theatrically in the same year as "A Clockwork Orange",
The Best of Everything (novel) The Best of Everything (novel) The Best of Everything (1958) is Rona Jaffe's first novel. It is the story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. The novel was one of the first to be bought for film adaptation before the manuscript had been edited so the film company would be involved in the marketing of the book. It was also one of the first novels to use the author as a marketing tool—complete with full-color jacket photography of author Rona Jaffe by photographer Philippe Halsman. In 1959, the novel was adapted into a film of the