100 Movies in 2020: #12, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Westerns aren’t my thing. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the dust. I am allergic to dust. I’m also typically allergic to any general consensus on something being all that. That being the case, let me offer my counter-consensus opinion: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is not great.
- Release: 1969
- Starring: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
- Directed by: George Roy Hill
- Screenplay: William Goldman
- Spoilers: Yes, but you probably already know them.
This one’s allegedly a classic, but apart from Paul Newman, who, to quote the delightful Heather Havrilesky, offers “a comfortable resting spot for my eyeballs,” I don’t find a whole lot to savor. That’s okay. We can agree to disagree.
Synopsis
Loosely based on a true story, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid follows the adventures of Cassidy (Newman) and his sharpshooting sidekick (guess who, played by Robert Redford and a vile mustache) as they rob trains, steal horses, and hide out from the law. They connect up with Etta Place (SK’s lover, played by Katharine Ross), an old maid schoolteacher who at age 26 apparently has nothing to look forward to, and the three run off to Bolivia to keep on crimin’. Conducting business as usual in absurdly poor Spanish (they use a crib sheet to conduct a holdup) and not exactly blending into the crowd, the two men make a halfhearted effort to go straight, serving as payroll guards for a mining company. Bolivian law enforcement eventually catches up with them, and BC & SK die in a blaze of glory. Now you know.
The screenplay by William Goldman is considered a classic. It did, in fact, take home the Oscar for best original screenplay. I can appreciate from a historical perspective the fact that this was, according to Scott Myers, the first Western-genre film to blur the line between good guys and bad. Okay, that’s a transformational genre shift. The dialogue is dry and funny, and I think it’s more compelling as a buddy movie than as a groundbreaking Western. But apart from a few chuckle-inducing scenes, most of the movie is Just. So. Boring.
Why can’t I care?
Everyone loves this movie but me. The question why I don’t like it is honestly more compelling to me than anything else about the film.
It’s not because the ending lacks surprise. The ending is a foregone conclusion in dozens of movies I like. It’s not because of any moral investment in the outcome; I couldn’t care less whether they get captured or killed or keep on criming.
Maybe I don’t get it because I lack a Y chromosome. Whatever the reason, I’m not likely to suss it out because to do that would demand a second viewing, and to paraphrase Etta Place, I don’t want to watch it.
Miscellaneous lessons
As an historical note, the aspect of the story that first attracted Goldman– the fact that the men flee to Bolivia and begin again–is what initially repelled the studios. Goldman went back and tweaked a few things, but not that aspect of the story. He submitted it again, and suddenly the studios commenced a bidding war. It seems a key takeaway lesson is that if you’re writing screenplays, don’t give up because apparently the studios’ whims change with the wind.
Also, Butch Cassidy was Goldman’s first original screenplay, and the first spec script sale, for which he was paid $400K and got an Oscar. Maybe another key takeaway lesson is that it’s good to be William Goldman.
Storytelling lesson
As I was trying to figure out what storytelling lesson to take away from this movie, I came across this article that points out that, contrary to conventional wisdom, character arcs aren’t actually necessary. Citing some of my favorite movies, the author observes that it’s not necessary for the character’s inner nature to change in order to have a story. The story itself has to have an arc to compensate. Otherwise we have the (in-)famous 27-minute chase sequence that is as pretty to look at and everyone else in the cyberuniverse seems to love but to me feels a lot like this:
Once the article’s author points this out, it seems patently obvious. However, this character-arc lesson is treated in the writing world almost like a law of physics, so it’s refreshing to have evidence to the contrary. I don’t agree with the author’s assessment that these two characters are chickensh– for running to Bolivia; I think it’s symbolic of the persistence of the myth of the frontier. But they don’t change; they’re bandits to the end, and so they don’t grow in any traditional sense.
Fiction writing lesson from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Characters don’t have to have arcs, as long as the story does. But you’d better have one or the other, or you’ll write a whole lot of endless running.
