Peckinpah's revisionist Western follows closely in the footsteps of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, combining comedy and satire to read Billy the Kid's death at the hands of a professional assassin as an expression of the corporatization of the West, a potent symbol of the frontier's transformation from a zone of anarchic freedom, where pre-modern values both good and bad can flourish, to a place of soulless commerce. Beneath Peckinpah's habitual themes of male friendship and its betrayal lies a rich subtext suggested by the presence of Kris Kristofferson as Billy and Bob Dylan as a mysterious trickster figure—suggesting that rock and roll may offer a new kind of Wild West, the rock star a new breed of desperado. MGM outraged Peckinpah by cutting fifteen minutes from the film, crucial footage that has been carefully restored in this new version, which approximates Peckinpah’s original.