Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

Paul & Amy make a last stand for 1969’s mythic Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid! They praise the film’s use of montage, discuss how the unusually light tone sets it apart from other Westerns, and contemplate whether Steve McQueen could have played Sundance as well as Robert Redford. Plus: Author Thom Hatch (The Last Outlaws) tells us the stories of the real life Butch and Sundance he wishes made it into the film.

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[sycasey 2.0 2301]

 

 

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

I like this movie a lot, but it was a bit of a borderline call for me. I think some of that is because this is the fourth or fifth movie the podcast has covered from the same time period (most of them from the same year!) that handle very similar themes:

Butch Cassidy
Midnight Cowboy
The Wild Bunch
Easy Rider
Bonnie & Clyde

So a part of me is wondering if I should really support ANOTHER movie that deals with the Old West and American myth and the deconstruction of such. The thing is that for me, Butch Cassidy is actually the one I like the best. It's not by a huge margin, but I like how it deals with these themes in a kind of interesting and nuanced way: not quite reverent, but not quite ready to burn it all down either. It's probably the most polished of these movies, just in terms of screenwriting and directorial style. I could also see how someone might prefer the messier, revolutionary style of a Wild Bunch or the more modern approach of a Midnight Cowboy. So perhaps that's why all of these movies wound up here: everyone wants something to represent this era, but different people prefer different examples.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

I've been grouping it with Westerns in my head, and there's A LOT on this list. I think, easily, too many. High Noon, Butch Cassidy, Wild Bunch, Unforgiven, Searchers, Shane. I don't know if Easy Rider, Bonnie & Clyde and Midnight Cowboy are quite actually Westerns, but they're close enough. This is almost 10% of the list! And there's good ones not on here, like Stagecoach or Red River or whatnot.

So yea like @sycasey 2.0, Butch is probably my favorite of all of these (I like High Noon too). But I almost think most of these others should be on the list ahead of it, even those I don't like. So it's in a weird place in my head right now. I'm not sure exactly where I sit with it in regards to this list.

 

 

 

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

9 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

I don't know if Easy Rider, Bonnie & Clyde and Midnight Cowboy are quite actually Westerns, but they're close enough.

I'd say they're riffing on Westerns thematically, though they're not actually taking place in the Old West.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

2 minutes ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

I'd say they're riffing on Westerns thematically, though they're not actually taking place in the Old West.

Yea, and since they came out at the same time basically as Butch, they compare well to each other. 

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

1 minute ago, AlmostAGhost said:

Yea, and since they came out at the same time basically as Butch, they compare well to each other. 

Yup, there are literally four from the same year that are all thematically similar: Butch Cassidy, The Wild Bunch, Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider.

I like Butch the best, but as noted above I can see why someone might prefer the style of one of the others.

[Stewart M 1]

Ultimately, there are two scenes that ruin the movie for me, and they happen right next to each other:

The scene introducing Etta was super upsetting. Etta enters the room and the SK is just waiting in her room with a gun pointed at her! Even though they were being playful about it, the scene played out way too long before revealing that.

The other scene is the “Raindrops” bike riding scene. Having a contemporary song playing completely took me out of the film.

[FictionIsntReal 79]

It seems really implausible that Butch Cassidy was the first western to "humanize" its characters or to have a buddy dynamic. I don't think Paul has any kind of enyclopedic knowledge of the genre.

[DannytheWall 196]

7 hours ago, Stewart M said:

The other scene is the “Raindrops” bike riding scene. Having a contemporary song playing completely took me out of the film.

Yes, it was a bit jarring, and it's a common criticism. I would point out that with such an effort to do things like sepia tones and old timey photo montage, it's a bit out of place. That being said, it makes it feel like a modern-day movie, as this kind of incongruity wouldn't feel so out of place if it were made in last ten years or so.  Another way this movie is part of an American New Wave at the time? 

 

2 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

It seems really implausible that Butch Cassidy was the first western to "humanize" its characters or to have a buddy dynamic. I don't think Paul has any kind of enyclopedic knowledge of the genre.

I'm certainly no expert in Western movies (it's not a favorite genre unless there's some twist or subversion in its presentation) but I don't think it's necessarily implausible. I remember that the movie took a while to get produced, as studios didn't like the "non-John Wayne"-ish elements of his heroes. In that respect, it seems that Westerns even up to 1969 were still expected to be quite tropey, more melodramatic/ less nuanced in its presentations of characters. 

Hmm. This makes me think that the faceless "white hat" chasing Butch/Sundance gets raised to the level of metaphor-- our "heroes" of the movie are literally fleeing the archetypes that want to do them in.  

 

 

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

I didn't rewatch for this episode, but my memory of the posse chasing them was basically, they were portrayed as mythically competent to the point of being inhuman.

Following myths around usually undermine the vibe of the silent adversary. At least, I think John Carpenter commented on the silent nature of Yule Brenner's character when he came up with Michael Myers for Halloween. 

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

On 7/10/2020 at 10:23 PM, DannytheWall said:

Yes, it was a bit jarring, and it's a common criticism. I would point out that with such an effort to do things like sepia tones and old timey photo montage, it's a bit out of place. That being said, it makes it feel like a modern-day movie, as this kind of incongruity wouldn't feel so out of place if it were made in last ten years or so.  Another way this movie is part of an American New Wave at the time?

Probably. Though Leonard Cohen's The Stranger did work a lot more seamlessly when it was used in a Western.

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

On 7/10/2020 at 10:23 PM, DannytheWall said:

I'm certainly no expert in Western movies (it's not a favorite genre unless there's some twist or subversion in its presentation) but I don't think it's necessarily implausible. I remember that the movie took a while to get produced, as studios didn't like the "non-John Wayne"-ish elements of his heroes. In that respect, it seems that Westerns even up to 1969 were still expected to be quite tropey, more melodramatic/ less nuanced in its presentations of characters. 

So, there's a Western Noir selection on Criterion right now, and most of those were the 50's, I think. I suspect the studio complaining about it not being John Wayne-sy might be one of those, opinions of studio execs on what they think is the safest mode for a western (to generate a box office).

For the buddy trope, I guess I don't really know either the buddy genre or the western genre that well (particularly from before this era), but I thought the whole sidekick trope was basically a buddy. In terms of paling around, I thought that was stuff like playing the guitar and singing a song.  But, that's more me thinking of tropes that I don't know if I've ever really seen in a movie (mostly because I'm not that interested in those movies, I think).

ETA: googling buddy Western, I did get results from before Butch Cassidy, but, one of them was A Few Dollars More. I mean, they worked together, but I don't recall LVC and Clint Eastwood really being buddies, so I don't know about those results.

[DannytheWall 196]

Well, depending on what one counts as "trope," there's a lot that's covered for this movie in TvTropes.com: 
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/ButchCassidyAndTheSundanceKid 

 As for a buddy movie, it certainly ticks the boxes, although not necessarily in a formulaic way (such that there's a big fall out with the two buddies going separate ways then reuniting, etc etc.)  It probably would have been more common in Westerns to have the "singing sidekick" that you mention instead of a more purely two-hander protagonist-- that fits with the mythos of the lone cowboy hero after all.  One more way for this movie to be breaking a mold? 

I hesitate to "go there," but squinting a bit and one can make a case for a polyamorous relationship between the characters, and that makes me think of the interpretation of Clyde (of Bonnie and Clyde) as asexual, which, when put against, Cabaret, Easy Rider, Lawrence of Arabia, etc., lets there be more "alternative" representation than first glance.