CS Weekly Archive > DVD of the Day > 06/02/06

Conventions are for Law-Abiding Nobodies

by jason davis

Intrigued by his discovery of a little-known outlaw from the turn of the century, novelist William Goldman broke all the rules of the Western genre while penning the tale of two legendary outlaws, and launched his own unparelleled career that would include films such as Marathon Man, Misery, and The Princess Bride.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
(The Ultimate Collector's Edition)

William Goldman

Robbing banks and railroads in the late 19th Century, the Hole in the Wall gang led by Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and his partner, the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford), garner the wrath of railroad magnate E.H. Harriman. After two back-to-back robberies of the Union Pacific Flyer, Harriman deploys a "super posse" of law enforcement experts to forcefully retire the bandits. Faced with overwhelming odds, Butch and Sundance, along with the latter's girlfriend, Etta Place (Katharine Ross), flee to South America to, in the words of screenwriter William Goldman, defy Fitzgerald's statement that "there are no great second acts in American lives." As Butch and Sundance broke the standards of the Western film by running away, Goldman cast aside the rules of writing such a film and created a classic.

As Goldman reiterates across the commentary and documentaries, the key notion that sparked his interest in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is that the two men, when confronted by impossible odds, gave up and ran away. In 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, such a notion was appealing to a world weary of a seemingly unwinnable conflict. The anti-establishment values of the screenplay are immediately evident in the character reversal that casts criminals as the protagonists and the authorities as the villains. The proverbial white and black hats are reversed and the audience is asked to root for the bad guys, though Goldman provides sufficient inducement in the form of two men viewers can't help but love. Through liberal banter and judicious deployment of imminently quotable dialogue, he creates a pair of characters who, aside from their iniquities, are genuinely nice guys. Butch, despite his infamous reputation, is an amiable joker with a loathing for violence. Sundance, an infamous gunslinger, evinces unexpected vulnerability when it's revealed that the cold-blooded killer has a soft spot for a schoolteacher. The film posits that the protagonists' tragedy is not their line of work, but that the two are essentially men for whom time has run out, with industrialization and bureaucracy encroaching on the diminishing wilderness where they ply their dubious trade. As Goldman notes, Butch and Sundance are victims of a dying era trying to stay alive by the only means they know.

Characterization is not the film's only break with convention. Goldman's script makes meals out of moments that would serve as padding between proper scenes in regular Westerns and indulges in meta-fiction in a genre often insecure with self-examination. From 27-minute chases wherein the heroes do everything in their power to avoid the dramatic necessity of conflict, to an excised post-modern moment when the two outlaws watch a movie about themselves ending in their deaths (a scene included with Hill's commentary), Goldman balks at the rules. The film's raiding of other genres, like romance and comedy, are not by any means spared Goldman's revisionist approach. By giving the film's most romantic scene to Butch and Etta while the latter's lover sleeps, even the most conventional aspects of the production fail to follow the established practice. The two men's incessant chatter wouldn't be out of place in a Woody Allen film, and anachronistic self-assessment is laced throughout their discussions. An ambiguous finale, freeze-framed before the inevitable, underlines the end of Butch and Sundance's renegade lifestyle. This moment abruptly changes the tone of the film mere moments after the last round of buddy-film banter, imbuing the whole picture a sense of lawlessness that questions the status quo by showing it ain't necessary in achieving something special.

- Commentary by writer William Goldman
- Commentary by director George Roy Hill, lyricist Hal David, documentary director Robert Crawford, Jr., and cinematographer Conrad Hall
- All of What Follows is True: The Making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
- The Wild Bunch: The True Tale of Butch and Sundance
- History Through the Lens: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- Outlaws Out of Time
- 1994 interviews with cast and crew
- Deleted scene with optional commentary by Hill
- Production notes
- The Films of Paul Newman
- Alternate credit roll
- Theatrical trailers

Combining supplemental materials from previous home- video incarnations alongside newly created material, Fox's collector's edition presents a cohesive view of this mold-breaking film. Writer William Goldman's newly recorded commentary explores the origins of the screenplay and its development throughout the film's production, offering nostalgic insights and screenwriting tips from a master of the craft. A wealth of documentary features interview Goldman along with director George Roy Hill (who would go on to shoot Goldman's next, and much less successful, script, 1975's The Great Waldo Pepper, also starring Robert Redford) and actors Paul Newman, Redford, and Katharine Ross, all of whom offer their take on the characters and the film's runaway success. Some anecdotes are duplicated due to the compilation of bonus materials from a 1994 laserdisc release and the previous DVD version, but the material is entertaining and illustrates differences in recollection over the intervening decade. A 90-minute installment of A&E's History Through the Lens contrasts the historical facts of Butch and Sundance with the movie's portrayal. The program, replete with interviews with the real Butch Cassidy's sister and Old West historians, is a fascinating look at adapting historical material and serves to unintentionally highlight Goldman's prowess at dramatizing fact. Production documentation previously presented on the laserdisc provides a studio- administrator's-eye view of the production from the paper trail up.

As revolutionary now as upon its release, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid breaks all the rules and gets away with it by proving that a craftsman who understands the conventions is the best candidate to circumvent them.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

(The Ultimate Collector's Edition)
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Rated PG; 330 min.
$26.98

Buy it now

At the age of 21, Jason Davis was hit in the face with a car. He has since devoted his life to writing. His words have appeared on TBS, MSN.com, and CS Weekly, where he serves as DVD manager. He lives in Burbank.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (The Ultimate Collector's Edition) courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

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