Who Are Those Guys?: How Butch and Sundance Helped Revise the Western and Defined a Cultural Landscape

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid debuted in New York, September 24, 1969.¹ The critics who had seen it a day earlier had not written positive reviews. The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael’s article, entitled “The Bottom of the Pit,” was one of a handful of critics who had less than appealing things to say about the film. As the weekend continued, it became clear that audiences loved the film.² In the coming months and years Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would become one of the highest grossing films, of all time.³ Though common now, in 1969 it was almost unheard of for a film with generally negative reviews to be successful. Films lived and died based on what the critics thought. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would subsequently be nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning four, most notably Best Original Screenplay (William Goldman) and Best Cinematography (Conrad Hall). The American Film Institute named it to both their 1997, and 2007 list of the greatest American Films.⁴ Finally, the National Film Preservation Board deemed the film culturally and artistically significant, preserving it in the national film registry.⁵ So why did a film that was generally disliked by the foremost critics of it’s time, attain such success? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid succeeded because it presented an alternative to the western genre, while it’s central themes and heros resonated with the youth movement in September 1969.

Looking back now at Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, it seems almost all too timely. In late 1969 the world was again changing. The decade of cultural revolution was coming to a close. The most trusted man in America, Walter Cronkite had done what the revolution had failed to do, mobilize the masses against the war in Vietnam. For The Beatles, the biggest music group the world had ever seen, the writing on the wall was growing all the more clear, as rumors of their impending break up spread like wildfire. What was supposed to be the climax of the cultural revolution, 15 million people gathering at a field called Woodstock, was missing one of the revolution’s seminal leaders, Bob Dylan.⁶ The importance of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lies not so much in the intentions of it’s makers but what it would come to represent to those who saw it.

Audiences full of teens and young adults went to the theater expecting a traditional western but got something drastically different. Like Bonnie and Clyde two years earlier, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, took a genre whose popularity was waning and revitalized it.⁷ Writer William Goldman pulls back the curtain on the classic American myth. Beginning the film with a silent film reel, Goldman acknowledges the legends, but rather than write the legend that one might expect, he revises it almost immediately. Roger Ebert was only partially correct when he wrote that the film “never gets the nerve, by God, to admit it’s a Western.”⁸ That is the point. The film became the “anti-western.”⁹ The film changed the rules about what a western could be.

The most obvious way in which the film revised the western, was making heroes of the outlaws. Much like Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, takes advantage of the sudden freedom that came from the abolishment of the production code, glorifying the outlaws. Westerns had been littered with a firm line between good and evil. Films like The Searchers explored the morally gray, but the audience knows that, in the end, John Wayne is the good guy.¹⁰ Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, completely flips the script, not satisfied with meandering in the gray, writer William Goldman turns white to black and black to white.

The introduction of Sundance occurs with a scene, executive producer Paul Monash called “basically familiar and traditional. It is the setting for innumerable shoot outs.”¹¹ What Monash fails to see is that it is not a shoot out. Butch talks Sundance out of a violent confrontation. This is a strong diversion from the western hero. First the hero becomes persuaded not to fight by someone outside himself. Butch and Sundance are not the typical heroes in that they must rely on each other rather than be the loner that typifies the western hero. Second, we have the heroes walking away from a fight without having harmed anything more than a belt buckle. This is just one example in a trend of running from conflict rather than confronting it.¹² This opposes the heroes played by actors like John Wayne and Gary Cooper, the embodiments of western masculine hero, who never ran from a fight. They ran towards it.^{13, 14}

The crucial revelation that Butch has never shot a man reveals the cracks in the western myth more than any other aspect of the film. The idea that these outlaws had killed scores of men, was generally false. Goldman addresses the legend head on, by revealing it’s fraudulence in Butch. Goldman humanizes the legend, makes it possible for the audience to identify with both Butch and Sundance. The audience takes the journey of killing for the first time with Butch. More important is the situation surrounding how Butch is forced to shoot someone. Only when he and Sundance follow the law are they forced to kill. In a sense, the writer calls into question almost all aspects of the traditional western myth by applying pressure to this one crack in the myth.

More important than the revising of the western myth, was what upsetting the myth, that myth in particular, represented to the generation that was coming of age. While William Goldman has explicitly stated that he did not intend to write an allegory to Vietnam or cultural events and rebellions of the time, this is exactly what the film came to represent to audiences.¹⁵ To the older generation, their western heroes were the sheriffs, and lawmen. They wanted to be Gary Cooper in High Noon, standing firm alone against evil no matter how high the odds. The younger generation on the other hand identified with the rebellion. Their heroes were outlaws and rebels like Bonnie, Clyde, Butch, Sundance, Wyatt and Billy.¹⁶ In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the lawmen are a group of faceless individuals who are trying to end the reign of the rebels. Joe Lafores, E. H. Harriman and his “super posse” were not characters but a symbol of the authority of another generation. Butch’s accusation that Harriman “probably inherited every penny he got,” resonated with the generation who had the guts to question inheritance and wealth as justification for authority.

Authority is given a face only once in the film. A bumbling sheriff trying to rally a posse to go after Butch and Sundance. As the sheriff makes a less than compelling case based on their duty and responsibility, a faceless voice from the crowd asks “What’s the point?” Indeed many in the younger generation were asking that very question, of their government.

Much criticism has been given to the musical interlude sequence with “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.”^{17, 18} Time Magazine called the song “absurd and anachronistic.”¹⁹ This seeming anachronism is intentional, serving to breakdown the lines between the then and now. The scene, featuring Butch and Sundance’s girlfriend Etta riding on a bike, captures the attitudes of both the characters in the film, as well as the youth of the late 60s. Butch has the attitude that although he has constant set backs, “Crying ‘s not for me/Cause I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’.” If he doesn’t like what is happening he is going to do something about it. He is always looking for a way out of seemingly impossible situations. He doesn’t complain or ask why. When Butch and Sundance are cornered, Butch doesn’t resign defeat. He jumps off the cliff into the rocky ravine below. This echoed the sort of drastic action that was seen in rebellions like the civil rights movement and the Vietnam protest. Change comes to those who do something. Lines like “But there’s one thing I know/The blues he sends to meet me wont defeat me/It wont be long till happiness steps up to greet me,” provided encouragement to the rebels of the late 60s. The song is just one example of an “anachronism” that makes the story even more relevant to it’s audience. The themes in this story transcend through time.

For that generation, the film served as a cautionary tale about rebellion and authority. Audiences saw themselves in Butch and Sundance. Just as Butch and Sundance were running away from ensuing doom, the young adults of that time were running away from Lyndon Johnson, and a war in Vietnam. Like the west for Butch and Sundance, the youth’s age of rebellion looked to be close to ending. Only a miracle leap off a cliff would save the revolution.

Jumping off the cliff represented the duo’s perseverance. They would not fold to the authorities. The biggest danger was not death but changing yourself to fit society. For Butch and Sundance, submission to the law resulted in their becoming murderers, which they had managed to avoid as outlaws. To audiences the film preached a message about standing firm in who you are and what you do.

In the end the rebels are silenced. The final scene serves as the ultimate symbol for the youth. The film chooses not to show their death but rather freezes them in time. While it symbolizes the end of the west and the end of their rebellion against that system, what they stood for, constant questioning the system, lived on. Through their death, in a hail of gunfire, they became legends. To the young generation, their rebellion is not famous for the banks they robbed or the men they killed, but for the way they died. Wedged historically between two events that many point to as the end of the 60s, the Manson murders, and the Rolling Stones’ free concert at Altamont Speedway, the film served as a reminder that if the revolution was going to end, it should go down as legend, in spite of these two horrific episodes, not because of them. The revolution should go down not with the likes of the hells angles and the Manson cult, but rather like Butch and Sundance, fighting for the ideas of the truest form of rebellion, against impossible odds.

In conclusion, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is one of the most important andrelevant films of the last century. Even more important than Bonnie and Clyde’s revision of the gangster genre, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s revision of the western genre was instrumental in not only destroying the classic American myth, but beginning to construct a new one. The historical context surrounding the release of the film not only helped add significant depth to the film’s symbols and themes, but also connected the film to it’s young audience. The creative forces behind the film could not have realized at the time that the amount of dynamite they used would be more than enough to blow apart not only the carefully constructed safe that held western genre, but also the boxcar of presuppositions and ideas in which the genre was enclosed.