In Arthur Penn's 1958 film The Left-Handed Gun, Billy The Kid (Paul Newman) was portrayed as a neurotic, self-destructive teen rebel who behaved like James Dean with a six-gun. Penn threw in the framing device of having a journalist follow Billy through his career of crime. Little Big Man (1970) also features a journalist looking to embroider the facts, but this time the writer meets his match in the shape of the wizened, 121-year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman hidden behind several layers of make-up).
