Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Plot

In 1899 Wyoming, Butch Cassidy is the affable, clever, talkative leader of the outlaw Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. His closest companion is the laconic dead-shot "Sundance Kid". Irritated by Cassidy's long absences, the gang selects Harvey Logan as their new leader. Cassidy defeats Logan in a knife fight to retain the gang's leadership and uses Logan's idea to rob a Union Pacific train on both its eastward and westward runs, agreeing that the second robbery would be unexpected and thus reap more money than the first.

The first robbery is a success and Cassidy visits a favorite brothel to celebrate. The town marshal appeals to the townsfolk to organize a posse to track down the gang but his speech is hijacked by a friendly bicycle salesman. Sundance visits his lover, schoolteacher Etta Place and Cassidy joins them, taking Place for a ride on his new bike.

During the second robbery, Cassidy uses too much dynamite on the safe and demolishes the baggage car. As the gang scrambles to gather the scattered money, a second train arrives carrying a six-man team of lawmen. The crack squad pursues Cassidy and Sundance, who hide in the brothel but are found and have to make a getaway. The posse includes renowned Indian tracker "Lord Baltimore" and lawman Joe Lefors, recognizable by his white skimmer. Cassidy and Sundance elude their pursuers by jumping from a cliff into a river far below. Place tells them the posse has been paid by Union Pacific head E. H. Harriman to remain on their trail until they are both killed.

The trio escape to Bolivia, which Cassidy envisions as a robber's paradise. Sundance is contemptuous of the country and its living conditions. Place teaches them enough Spanish to pull off a bank robbery and they become successful bank robbers known as Los Bandidos Yanquis. Their confidence drops after seeing a man wearing a white skimmer, fearing Harriman's posse is still after them. Cassidy suggests "going straight," and they gain honest work as payroll guards for a mining company. They're ambushed by local bandits on their first run, and their boss, Percy Garris, is killed. They kill the bandits, the first time Cassidy has ever shot someone. The duo concludes the straight life is not for them. Sensing they will be killed should they return to robbery, Place returns to the United States.

Cassidy and Sundance steal a payroll and the burro used to carry it. A boy in a small town recognizes the burro's brand and alerts the police, leading to a gunfight with the outlaws. Cassidy and Sundance are wounded and take cover inside a building, unaware the local police have been reinforced by Bolivian Army troops. The pair charges out of the building, guns blazing, into a hail of bullets. The film ends with the sound of gunfire on a freeze-frame shot of the two running bandits.

Cast

• Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy
• Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid
• Katharine Ross as Etta Place
• Strother Martin as Percy Garris
• Henry Jones as Bike Salesman
• Jeff Corey as Sheriff Bledsoe
• George Furth as Woodcock
• Cloris Leachman as Agnes
• Ted Cassidy as Harvey Logan
• Kenneth Mars as Marshal
• Donnelly Rhodes as Macon
• Timothy Scott as "News" Carver
• Charles Dierkop as Flat Nose Curry
• Paul Bryar as Card Player #1
• Sam Elliott as Card Player #2
• Jody Gilbert as Large Woman on Train

Production

Screenplay

William Goldman first came across the story of Butch Cassidy in the late 1950s and researched intermittently for eight years before starting to write the screenplay. Goldman says he wrote the story as an original screenplay because he did not want to do the research to make it as authentic as a novel. Goldman later stated:

The whole reason I wrote the ... thing, there is that famous line that Scott Fitzgerald wrote, who was one of my heroes, "There are no second acts in American lives." When I read about Cassidy and Longabaugh and the superposse coming after them—that's phenomenal material. They ran to South America and lived there for eight years and that was what thrilled me: they had a second act. They were more legendary in South America than they had been in the old West ... It's a great story. Those two guys and that pretty girl going down to South America and all that stuff. It just seems to me it's a wonderful piece of material.

The characters' flight to South America caused one executive to reject the script, as it was then unusual in Western films for the protagonists to flee.

Development

According to Goldman, when he first wrote the script and sent it out for consideration, only one studio wanted to buy it—and that was with the proviso that the two lead characters did not flee to South America. When Goldman protested that that was what had happened, the studio head responded, "I don't give a shit. All I know is John Wayne don't run away."

Goldman rewrote the script, "didn't change it more than a few pages, and subsequently found that every studio wanted it."

The role of Sundance was offered to Jack Lemmon, whose production company, JML, had produced the film Cool Hand Luke (1967) starring Newman. Lemmon, however, turned down the role because he did not like riding horses and felt that he had already played too many aspects of the Sundance Kid's character before. Other actors considered for the role of Sundance were Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty, who both turned it down, with Beatty claiming that the film was too similar to Bonnie and Clyde. According to Goldman, McQueen and Newman both read the scripts at the same time and agreed to do the film. McQueen eventually backed out of the film due to disagreements with Newman. The two actors would eventually team up in the 1974 disaster film The Towering Inferno. Redford took the role as he liked the script. Jacqueline Bisset was a top contender for the role of Etta Place.

Filming

Filming locations include the ghost town of Grafton, Zion National Park, Snow Canyon State Park, and the city of St. George. These areas remain popular film tourism destinations, including the Cassidy Trail in Red Canyon.

Soundtrack

Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the song "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" for the film. Some felt the song had the wrong tone for a Western, but George Roy Hill insisted on its inclusion. Robert Redford, one of the stars of the film, was among those who disapproved of using the song, though he later acknowledged he was wrong:

Personnel

• B.J. Thomas - voice
• Marvin Stamm − trumpet
• Pete Jolly − piano
• Hubert Laws − flute
• Bob Bain, Bill Pitman − guitar
• Tommy Tedesco − ukulele
• Carol Kaye − electric bass
• Emil Richards − percussion

Release

Premieres

The world premiere of the film was on September 23, 1969, at the Roger Sherman Theater, in New Haven, Connecticut. The premiere was attended by Paul Newman, his wife Joanne Woodward, Robert Redford, George Roy Hill, William Goldman, and John Foreman, among others. It opened the next day in New York City

Home media

The film became available on DVD on May 16, 2000, in a special edition that is also available on VHS.

Reception

Box office

The film grossed $82,625 in its opening week from two theatres in New York City. It went on to earn $15 million in theatrical rentals in the United States and Canada by the end of 1969. According to Fox records, the film required $13,850,000 in rentals to break even, and by December 11, 1970, had made $36,825,000, so made a considerable profit to the studio. It eventually returned $45,953,000 in rentals.

With a final US gross over $100 million, it was the top-grossing film released in 1969.

It was the eighth-most-popular film of 1970 in France.

Critical response

After release, reviewers gave the film mediocre grades, and New York and national reviews were "mixed to terrible", although better elsewhere, screenwriter William Goldman recalled in his book Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade.

New York Times film reviewer Vincent Canby wrote that the film is "very funny in a strictly contemporary way", but said that "at the heart of the film there is a gnawing emptiness that can't be satisfied by an awareness that Hill and Goldman knew exactly what they were doing---making a very slick movie". He described the "Raindrops" sequence as part of an effort to "play tricks on the audience" by "taking short cuts to lyricism". The performers, Canby wrote, "succeed, although the movie does not".

A Time reviewer said the film's two male stars are "afflicted with cinematic schizophrenia. One moment they are sinewy, battered remnants of a discarded tradition. The next, they are low comedians whose chaffing relationship—and dialogue—could have been lifted from a Batman and Robin episode." Time criticized the "Raindrops" sequence and the "scat-singing sound track by Burt Bacharach at his most cacophonous", which it said made the film "absurd and anachronistic".

Roger Ebert scored the film at two and a half out of four. He praised its beginning and the three lead actors, but felt it progressed too slowly and had an unsatisfactory ending. After Harriman hires his posse, though, Ebert thought the quality declined: "Hill apparently spent a lot of money to take his company on location for these scenes, and I guess when he got back to Hollywood, he couldn't bear to edit them out of the final version. So, the Super-posse chases our heroes unceasingly, until we've long since forgotten how well the movie started." Ebert reaffirmed his review in 1989 stating that he still thought it was a "turkey" and was baffled by its success.

Gene Siskel was also not a big fan of the film, stating he thought it was predictable and that it was "too cute to be believed … not memorable". Siskel later admitted in 1989 that publishing his negative review was one of his first challenges as film critic, recalling that the editorial assistant was shocked that he was giving a bad review to a film starring Paul Newman and would give him a lesson that he had to be honest as a critic, no matter how unpopular his opinion.

Accolades

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid also appears on several of the American Film Institute's 100 Years lists.

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (1998) – #50
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills (2001) – #54
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains (2003)
  • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – #20 Heroes
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs (2004)
  • "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" – #23
• AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores (2005) – Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes (2005)
  • "Kid, the next time I say, 'Let's go someplace like Bolivia', let's go someplace like Bolivia." – Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) (2007) – #73
• AFI's 10 Top 10 (2008) – #7 Western Film

Legacy

American movie reviewers have been widely favorable. The film holds an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 61 reviews with an average score of 8.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "With its iconic pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, jaunty screenplay, and Burt Bacharach score, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has gone down as among the defining moments in late-'60s American cinema".

In 2006, the Writers Guild of America ranked William Goldman's screenplay 11th on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.

The February 2020 issue of New York Magazine lists Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as among "the Best Movies that Lost Best Picture at the Oscars".

In 2003, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was selected by The New York Times as one of The 1000 Best Movies Ever Made. In the same year, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2008, British film publication Empire ranked the film at number 32 on their list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.

The film inspired the television series Alias Smith and Jones, starring Pete Duel and Ben Murphy as outlaws trying to earn an amnesty.

A parody titled "Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid" was published in Mad. It was illustrated by Mort Drucker and written by Arnie Kogen in issue No. 136, July 1970.

Also in 1976, a made-for-television sequel to the film was released. Wanted: The Sundance Woman more heavily features Katharine Ross as Etta Place.

In 1979, Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, a prequel, was released starring Tom Berenger as Butch Cassidy and William Katt as the Sundance Kid. It was directed by Richard Lester and written by Allan Burns. William Goldman, the writer of the original film, was an executive producer. Jeff Corey was the only actor to appear in the original and the prequel.

Television adaptation

In September 2022, Amazon Studios announced a television adaptation, starring Regé-Jean Page and Glen Powell. Joe and Anthony Russo were to be executive producers under their AGBO production banner.

References

Bibliography

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