The film vs. the historical events
Right off the bat let me say that Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid might be my favorite Western of all time, so none of what follows is a critique of the film. I'd simply like to point out where the film stayed true to the historical record and where it diverged from history for dramatic reasons. So please refrain from any, "it's not a documentary!" comments.
Potentially surprising things the movie gets right:
The friendship between Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett: While some historians go out of their way to debunk the idea that Garrett and the Kid were friends, Paulita Maxwell (likely one of the Kid's many lovers) said otherwise:
"Pat Garrett was as close a friend as [Billy] had in Fort Sumner and was on friendly terms with every member of [Billy's] gang. When we saw Pat and Billy together we used to call them 'the long and short of it.'...He ate and drank and played cards with [Billy], went to dances with him and gallivanted around with the same Mexican girls. I have seen them both on their knees around a horse blanket stretched on the ground in the main street gambling their heads off against a monte game. If Pat went broke, he borrowed from Billy, and if Billy went broke, he borrowed from Pat...Oh, yes, Garrett and [Billy] were as thick as two peas in a pod."
Would Garrett have actually gone and warned the Kid that he was coming for him if he didn't leave the territory? Perhaps not (the origin for that scene comes from the novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones, which Peckinpah adapted into a screenplay that, after many changes, became One-Eyed Jacks) but the historians who say that Garrett and the Kid weren't friends seem to be taking Garrett's word for it (the fact that Garrett kept going out of his way to mention that he wasn't friends with the Kid suggests to me that those accusations were flying around at the time). We'll never know how close Garrett and the Kid were, but their relationship in the film definitely aligns with Maxwell's account.
The escape from the Lincoln County Courthouse/Jail: Billy's escape from the Lincoln County Jail in the film is almost exactly from the historical eyewitness accounts. The film presents the theory that someone hid a gun in the outhouse for Billy, and while we don't know that for sure, many historians still hold to it. The rest of the events aren't up for debate: the fact that Garrett left to collect taxes during the Kid's escape, the shooting of Bell on the stairway of the courthouse, and the shooting of Ollinger with his own shotgun in the street (before smashing it and throwing the pieces at Ollinger's body). Some of the more outlandish parts of this sequence are straight from the historical record. For example, Bob Ollinger's final words (when someone shouted, "The Kid's killed Bell!" Bob Ollinger did reply, "He's killed me too."), the Kid's slow, unmolested escape after killing two deputies (the Kid did sing for a crowd of onlookers as he slowly gathered guns and cartridges and no one made any attempt to stop him), and the Kid did take a man's horse after the one he was given bucked him off (and in fact, the Kid sent the "stolen" horse back and it returned to Lincoln and its owner a few days later...which was too unbelievable for the movie even though it's true!). I'll touch upon a few of the minor things that are historically inaccurate about this scene later.
The chicken shooting: The controversial chicken shooting scene isn't just pointless animal cruelty on Peckinpah's part, it comes straight from Garrett's account wherein the Kid shoots a bunch of chickens while talking about wiping out his enemies.
A gang member named Alias: In Garrett's book, Billy is said to have rode into Lincoln with a guy calling himself Alias. There's not much more said about the character, but the wacky name is not an invention by Peckinpah or Rudy Wurlitzer.
One of Billy's friends did get killed while Billy chased wild turkeys: In the film, while the Kid and Alias ride off to chase wild turkeys their Mexican friend Silva is killed by some of Chisum's cowboys. His body is then propped up onto his dead horse's rear to make it look like he's having sex with it. While this particular scene never really happened, it does mirror a real incident in the Kid's life. Three years before the events of the film, John Tunstall, a friend of the Kid's, was shot to death by Dolan/Murphy gunmen while the Kid and a friend chased wild turkeys. John Tunstall's skull was then crushed by a rock and his body was placed next to his horse (which they also killed) in order to make it look like they were two lovers lying next to each other in bed. This event kicked off the Lincoln County War and sealed the Kid's fate as an outlaw as he swore to kill everyone involved in Tunstall's slaying. The Silva scene is clearly a nod to this event.
Garrett's shooting of the Kid: The scenes involving Garrett's shooting of the Kid come straight from Garrett's account. It's very likely that the Kid was making love to one of his senoritas right before he died (possibly Paulita Maxwell). Garrett did come with Deputies John Poe and Kip McKinney to Pete Maxwell's house in Fort Sumner and while Poe and McKinney were outside, Garrett did hide in the darkness of Pete's bedroom. The Kid entered with a knife (and possibly a pistol) and sensing someone there he asked "Quien es?" before Garrett shot him in the chest. Garrett fired a second shot that hit the mantle (not a mirror).
All of this is by memory, so feel free to correct me on any mistakes I've made.
I'll do an account of the film's inaccuracies next...
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