Follow the Leader: It very clearly follows the lead of Smokey and the Bandit, featuring a Southern setting in which a driver who has to evade a corrupt sheriff, and both films are supported by a country/western novelty song, the only difference being that Smokey and the Bandit was a light-hearted comedy while this films plays it straight as an action film. In fact, it was originally conceived as a light-hearted comedy before it shifted towards action.
The film was an attempt to cash in on the trucking and CB radio fad of the late '70s, using C.W. McCall's "Convoy" as a hook. B.W.L. Norton wrote the original script, a light-hearted action comedy similar to Smokey and the Bandit. He pitched the script to EMI, who offered it to Peckinpah, then finishing post-production on Cross of Iron. Though dubious about the project's potential, Peckinpah agreed on condition that he had complete control over the film. The studio agreed, and trouble promptly began.
Peckinpah immediately started rewriting Norton's script, re-envisioning it as a modern-day Western with truckers fighting against crooked lawmen and unfair interstate regulations, while also adding heavy-handed political satire. Unable to give these ideas much weight on their own, Peckinpah encouraged his stars (Kris Kristofferson, Ali McGraw and Ernest Borgnine among them) to write their own dialogue. James Coburn, working as Peckinpah's assistant director, admitted that "There was no conflict. They didn't know what the fuck was going on."
Production began in May 1977 and almost immediately spiraled out of control; within two weeks, Peckinpah was already behind schedule. Peckinpah refused to deal with producer Bob Sherman, enlisting his actors and crew members to run interference. The budget exploded as Peckinpah spent absurd amounts of time on individual scenes. One major set piece, a barroom brawl, took ten days to shoot. Entire action scenes were re-structured around accidental wrecks and botched stunts which Peckinpah left in the finished film. Then, production halted for several weeks when Kris Kristofferson left the shoot for a concert tour.
But Convoy's biggest bugbear remained Peckinpah, whose substance abuse spiraled out of control. He was taking heavy amounts of cocaine, Quaaludes and vitamin shots that left him both irritable and irrational. At one point, Peckinpah called his nephew David from the set, ranting that Steve McQueen and the Executive Car Leasing Company were conspiring to kill him. On the day the climactic funeral scene was set to film, with the cast, crew and 3,000 extras assembled, Peckinpah locked himself in the trailer for twelve hours, refusing to communicate with anyone. He also fired several crew members and assistants as filming dragged on. With their director incapacitated, Coburn and the other assistant directors essentially finished directing Convoy themselves.
Filming finally wrapped in early September 1977, two months behind schedule and $3,000,000 over-budget. A month later, however, Peckinpah was assigned to re-shoot several scenes, which he did without incident. After several months of editing, Peckinpah delivered a rough cut without bothering to include the final half-hour of the movie. EMI finally lost patience with Peckinpah and took over editing; yet again, Peckinpah was barred from finishing his own movie.
Amazingly, Convoy became a box office hit when it was finally released in the summer of 1978. However, Peckinpah's meltdown convinced Hollywood studios that he was unemployable. It would be five years before Peckinpah made his next (and last) film, The Osterman Weekend, where he was given little control over the finished product.
Throw It In!: The overturning of Widow Woman's truck wasn't supposed to happen and was subsequently written into the script after it occurred. Moreover, stuntman Bob Herron was originally supposed to crash into the barn after Sheriff Lyle Wallace's car goes through the billboard.
Steve McQueen was offered the lead role, but turned it down. This would have been the second time he starred opposite his then-wife Ali MacGraw in a Sam Peckinpah film, the first being The Getaway.
