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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a 1969 American Western film directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman (who won the Academy Award for Best Writing for the film). Based loosely on fact, the film tells the story of Wild West outlaws Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and his partner Harry Longabaugh, the "Sundance Kid" (Robert Redford). In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
In the late 1890s Wyoming, Butch Cassidy, the affable, clever, talkative leader of the Hole in the Wall Gang, and his closest companion, the laconic dead-shot Sundance Kid, return to the gang's hideout in Hole-in-the-Wall to discover that the rest of the gang, irked at Butch's long absences, has selected a new leader, Harvey Logan (Ted Cassidy). Logan challenges Butch to a knife fight over the gang's leadership. Using trickery, Butch defeats the much larger Logan, but embraces Logan's idea to rob the Union Pacific Flyer coming and going, agreeing that the second robbery would be unexpected and likely to involve even more money than the first.
The first robbery goes well. To celebrate, Butch and the Kid visit a favorite brothel in a nearby town berlin and watch amused as the town sheriff (Kenneth Mars) attempts to organize a posse to track down the gang. Sundance then leaves to visit his lover, the schoolteacher Etta Place(Katharine Ross). The next morning, Butch arrives, riding a bicycle, and takes Etta for a ride, accompanied by the Oscar-winning song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head".
Later, the second train robbery goes badly. Butch uses too much dynamite to blow the safeand the money flies everywhere. As the gang members scramble to gather up the money, a second train arrives ominously; it is carrying a six-man team that has been specially outfitted by Union Pacific head E. H. Harriman to hunt Butch and Sundance. The gang flees in multiple directions, but the posse only follows Butch and Sundance, who elude the posse and return to the brothel to hide out. The posse appears in town, and when Butch and Sundance are betrayed, the two escape on a single horse. They then try to arrange an amnesty with the help of the friendly Sheriff Bledsoe (Jeff Corey), but he tells them candidly that it's too late -- their notoriety can only lead to being hunted down and likely killed.
Still on the run the next day, they muse -- "Who are those guys?" -- about the identities of their relentless pursuers. They fixate on Lord Baltimore, a famous Indian tracker, and Joe Lefors, a tough, renowned lawman, recognized at a distance by his white skimmer, or straw hat. After reaching the summit of a mountain, they find themselves trapped on the edge of a canyon. They decide to jump into the river far below, even though Sundance cannot swim and would prefer to fight. Later they arrive at Etta's house and learn that the posse has been paid to stay together until they kill the two of them. Butch persuades Sundance and Etta that the three should escape to Bolivia, which Butch envisions as a robber's paradise.
The scene shifts to New York, where the three board a passenger ship, eventually arriving by train in Bolivia. A dismayed Sundance regards the country as little more than a backwater. Butch remains optimistic, however. Still, their first attempted bank robbery goes comically wrong because the outlaws know too little Spanish. Etta attempts to teach them the language, though their next robbery is clumsily executed, as Butch still needs a cribsheet. After more robberies, the duo, now known as the Bandidos Yanquis, are sought by the authorities all over Bolivia. In spite of their success, their confidence drops one evening when, while having dinner at a restaurant, they see a man wearing a white straw hat and fear that Joe Lefors is once again after them. Butch suggests going straight.
They land their first honest job as payroll guards for a mining company, run by a seedy, tobacco-chewing American named Percy Garris (Strother Martin), who needs protection from native bandits always robbing the payroll. The first time that Butch and Sundance accompany Garris to secure the payroll, the trio are ambushed by bandits, who kill Garris and make off with the payroll. Butch and Sundance in turn confront the bandits, killing them all in a fight that, to Sundance's surprise, turns out to be the first time that Butch has killed. The two decide that the straight life isn't for them, and return to robbery, but Etta decides to return to America, sensing that their days may be numbered.
A few days later, Butch and Sundance attack a payroll mule train in the jungle, taking the money and the mule. When they arrive in the nearest town San Vicente, a stable boy recognizes the brand on the mule's backside and alerts the local police. While Butch and Sundance are at a local eatery, the police arrive and a gun battle ensues.
The two take shelter in an empty house, but are soon low on ammunition. Butch makes a run to the mule to fetch the rest of the ammunition while Sundance provides cover fire, but they are both wounded after a barrage of gunfire. While they tend to their wounds in the house, Bolivian cavalry arrives to surround their hideout.
The pair, unaware of the cavalry's arrival, discuss their next destination, with Butch pushing the English-speaking and wide-open continent of Australia. Butch tells Sundance that when they get outside and get to their horses to remember one thing. Before he can say it, Butch asks Sundance if he saw Lefors "out there". Sundance says that he did not and Butch replies "For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble".
The pair exit the house firing their guns; a voice is heard ordering, "¡Fuego!" (Spanish for "Fire!"). A barrage of gunfire is heard, as the screen freezes to show Butch and Sundance guns ablaze.
[edit]Cast
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[edit]Production
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The film was originally rated M (for mature audiences) by the Motion Picture Association of America. It was re-rated PG when 20th Century Fox re-released the film in 1974.
According to the supplemental material on the Blu-ray disc release, William Goldman's script, originally called The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy, was purchased by Richard Zanuck at 20th Century Fox for $400,000, double the price the studio's board of directors had authorized.[citation needed] The title roles were originally cast with Newman and Steve McQueen, but the latter left after a dispute over billing. The role of Sundance was then offered to Jack Lemmon, whose production company, JML, had produced the 1967 film Cool Hand Lukestarring Newman, who had been grateful for Lemmon's.[citation needed]. Lemmon, however, turned down the role; he did not like riding horses, and he also felt he had already played too many aspects of the Sundance Kid's character before.[3]Warren Beatty was then considered, as was Marlon Brando, but the role of Sundance eventually went to the lesser-known Redford. (Initially Newman was to play Sundance (whom he did not resemble) and Redford Cassidy.) Fox did not want Redford, but director George Roy Hill insisted. Redford later said this film catapulted him to stardom and irreversibly changed his career.
Butch Cassidy's outlaw gang was actually called "The Wild Bunch"; this was changed, in the film, to "The Hole-In-The-Wall Gang" to avoid confusion with Sam Peckinpah's recently released film The Wild Bunch.[citation needed]
[edit]Reception
[edit]Critical response
Vincent Canby called the film an "alternately absurd and dreamy saga that might have been fantasized by Truffaut's Jules and Jim and Catherine—before they grew up".[1] He continued: "Even though the result is not unpleasant, it is vaguely disturbing—you keep seeing signs of another, better film behind gags and effects that may remind you of everything from Jules and Jim to Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch....In the center of the movie is a lovely, five-minute montage—done in sepia still photographs of the period—showing Butch, Sundance, and Etta having a brief fling in New York and making the steamer passage to South America. The stills tell you so much about the curious and sad relationship of the three people that it's with real reluctance that you allow yourself to be absorbed again into further slapstick adventures. There is thus, at the heart of Butch Cassidy, a gnawing emptiness that can't be satisfied by an awareness that Hill and Goldman probably knew exactly what they were doing—making a very slick movie."
Time magazine 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."[4] Time also claimed that the "score makes the film as absurd and anachronistic as the celebrated Smothers Brotherscowboy who played the kerosene-powered guitar."
[edit]Box office
With a box office of over US$100 million (equivalent to over $500 million in 2009 dollars[5]), it was the top grossing film of the year.[2]
Adjusted for inflation, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ranks among the 100 top-grossing movies of all time and the top 10 for its decade, partly due to subsequent re-releases. The film grossed about $102.3 million domestically through 1974, and although no data on its worldwide gross is readily available, it is listed[citation needed] above Goldfinger (1964) – $124.9 million and below Thunderball (1965) – $141.2 million.
[edit]Awards and nominations
The film won four Academy Awards: Best Cinematography; Best Music, Original Score for a Motion Picture (not a Musical); Best Music, Song (Burt Bacharach and Hal David for "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"); and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced. It was nominated for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Sound.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid also won numerous British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Direction, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Actor (won by Redford though Newman was also nominated), and Best Actress for Katharine Ross, among others.
William Goldman won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay.
In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The American Film Institute included the film on several of its AFI 100 Years... series lists:
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #50
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #73
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #54
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains #20 on the heroes list (for Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid)
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs #23 (for "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head")
- AFI's 10 Top 10 #7 among Western[6][7]
[edit]Legacy
 | Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (November 2009) |
The Sundance Film Festival, begun by Robert Redford, is named for his role in this film, as is his Utah ski resort, Sundance; neither is related to the Wyoming town in whose jail Harry Longabaugh was confined and from which he drew his nickname.
The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for seriously ill children that the late Paul Newman organized and operated for most of his remaining years drew its name from the gang in this movie.
Two made-for-TV sequels premiered in 1974 and 1976, titled, respectively, Mrs. Sundance, with Elizabeth Montgomery in the starring role, and Wanted: The Sundance Woman, starring Katharine Ross as Etta Place working with Pancho Villa. In addition a TV movie called The Legend of Butch & Sundance premiered in 2006, with David Clayton Rogers as Butch, Ryan Browning as Sundance, and Rachelle Lefevre asEtta Place.
To cash in on this film's vast popularity, an unrelated 1969 Italian Spaghetti Western about two buddies (Vivi...o Preferibilmente Morti) was retitled Sundance and the Kid for its US release.
A prequel to the film, Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, starring Tom Berenger and William Katt as the respective title characters, was released in 1979.[8]
The film also inspired the television series Alias Smith and Jones, starring Pete Duel and Ben Murphy as outlaws trying to earn an amnesty.[9] It has also been spoofed in films such as Shanghai Noon[10] and Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and TV shows such as The Simpsons (in the episode "Duffless"), Futurama, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, The Venture Bros., and Full Metal Panic.[citation needed]
In the 1984 film Beverly hills cop during the final assault that takes place on the antagonist's mansion, Detective Rosewood of the BHPD quotes as they are being pinned down by two (& possibly more) gunmen: "You know what I keep thinking about? You know the end of Butch Cassidy? Redford and Newman are almost out of ammunition, and the whole Bolivian army is out- out in front of this little hut?"
In Kevin Smith's 1995 film Mallrats, protagonists Jay and Silent Bob are constantly pursued by an aggressive and stoic mall security guard named La Fours, who also wears a signature white Boater hat, as does Lefors in the original film.
The series finale of British science fiction show "Blake's 7" finds the main character Kerr Avon surrounded by guards, the episode ending with a freeze-frame and the sound of shots fired in several consecutive volleys.
The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! has an episode titled Butch Mario and the Luigi Kid, an obvious nod to that film's title.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is directly referenced in episode 8, "Time", of the 2009 series, Stargate Universe, during a sequence in which Dr. Nicholas Rush, before leaping through an unstable Stargate, proclaims, "Hey, for a moment there I thought we were in trouble."
In the anime series Pokémon, the characters Jesse and James, a reference to Jesse James, are rivaled by characters named Butch and Cassidy.
In The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. the character of Lord Bowler, a bounty hunter and phenomenally expert tracker, was inspired by Lord Baltimore, the full-blooded Indian who could track anyone over any terrain.
In the TV series Fantasy Island, two friends, who were guests on the island, had a fantasy to be Butch and Sundance.
In Tom Clancy's book Clear and Present Danger, John Clark and his partner Carlos Larson witness a laser-guided bomb destroy a drug lord's mansion, after which Clark quotes the film, quipping, "Think you used enough dynamite, there, Butch?"
In the 2008 TV miniseries adaptation of Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, the characters of Rincewind and Twoflower parody the final scene of the movie when they are pinned down by a squad of enemy wizards, including the line, "For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble", before they jump out and face an onslaught of magic spells.
In a 2001 second-season episode of The West Wing, "The Fall's Gonna Kill You", the title comes from a speech in which CJ Cregg compares the public reaction to a poll about the president having lied to the reaction to the president actually announcing that he has lied. "You guys are like Butch and Sundance peering over the edge of a cliff to the boulder-filled rapids 300 feet below, thinking you better not jump 'cause there's a chance you might drown. The President has this disease and has been lying about it, and you guys are worried that the polling might make us look bad? It's the fall that's gonna kill ya."
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