Sam Peckinpah and Robert Altman arrived on the film scene just before the so-called 'movie brat' generation of the 70s, and only after long development phases that didn't bring them to prominence until they were in their mid-40s. Though heavily inspired by maverick directors of previous years (such as John Huston and Orson Welles), Altman and Peckinpah each created unique and unprecedented filmmaking styles, making them among the last American auteurs who could make such a claim, and among the last whose very names denote a whole separate genre of films.