Behind the Camera - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Goldman and the actors had high praise for George Roy Hill's direction. Goldman wrote that he couldn't say what the producers' contributions were to the picture because "on a George Roy Hill film, George is the giant ape. Because of his vast talent, his skill at infighting, his personality, he runs the show." Newman said Hill never displayed "any hesitation or indecision; he knew precisely what he wanted in a scene, what he wanted from an actor."
Newman, who was reluctant to do a comic role, said he thought he was scaling his performance "a little too high, a little too broad," but Hill got him to do less and find his own level of wry humor that fit the character.
Goldman, who had worked with Newman on Harper (1966), said of him, "Newman is the least star-like superstar I've ever worked with. He's an educated man and a trained actor and he never wants more close-ups. What he wants is the best possible script and character he can have. And he loves to be surrounded by the finest actors available, because he believes the better they are the better the picture's apt to be, and the better he'll come out. Many stars, maybe even most, don't want that competition."
In an on-set interview, Newman discussed his daily routine with columnist Rona Jaffe, including getting up at 5:30 each morning, spending an hour in the pool and sauna, and phoning his wife Joanne Woodward three times a day.
Newman and Redford hit it off right away. Redford: "We found a common ground of humor and values off the set that could be worked into the work on the set." Newman said he and Redford "drank a lot of beer in Mexico and had a great deal of fun...probably the most fun I ever had on a film." The two actors, and screenwriter Goldman, have all spoken about how rewarding and enjoyable the experience was. Redford has said he "felt guilty getting paid," and Newman said the making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was more valuable to him than the lasting impact of it.
Redford did not agree with Newman on the need for rehearsal, feeling that it lessens the spontaneity, but he conceded out of respect for his co-star.
Newman often kidded Redford about his tardiness, once suggesting they should rename the movie "Waiting for Lefty" (Redford is left-handed).
Practical joker Newman sawed Hill's desk in half "because he wouldn't pay his bill for liquor which he borrowed from my office."
The only major conflict between Newman and Hill occurred over what became known as "the Bledsoe scene," a break in the extended superposse chase when Butch and Sundance go to visit an old sheriff hoping to get his help enlisting them in the Army to fight in the Spanish-American War. Newman felt the scene should come at the end of the chase and be the motivation for their flight to South America. Hill disagreed strongly. Every day, Newman came on the set with fresh arguments for why it should be done his way and with increasing passion for his opinion. "Paul was becoming almost anal about it," noted Redford, who at one point jokingly suggested they rename the film "The Bledsoe Scene." Ultimately, Hill won the argument.
The use of music in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was also a controversial point. Burt Bacharach worked at writing something that would fit the mood, but it was definitely a modern pop sound and not of the period. The most discussed aspect was the insertion of the musical bicycle scene interlude, something that wouldn't work in a conventional Western. Still, Bacharach thought Hill had "guts" to attempt that in the genre. The song "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" was written after the rough cut was completed, and when Redford first saw it in the movie, he thought it was terrible. The agents for singer B.J. Thomas regretted letting him do it, and thought it would ruin his career.
The second extended musical interlude was the photo montage of the trio's visit to New York. Goldman initially planned it as a live-action sequence and hoped to shoot it on the sound stage at Fox built for this production of Hello, Dolly! (1969), which was set in the city in roughly the same turn-of-the-century period. The Dolly producers refused but did allow Hill to shoot stills there.
Robert Redford wanted to do all his own stunts. Paul Newman was especially upset about Redford's desire to jump onto the train roof and run along the tops of the cars as it moved. Redford said Newman told him, "I don't want any heroics around here...I don't want to lose a co-star."
Redford and Newman did jump off the cliff in Colorado, but they actually landed on a mattress-cushioned ledge six feet below. The full jump was performed by stunt men at another location.
Newman also did his own stunts in the bicycle scene, except for the final backwards crash through the fence, which was reportedly performed by cinematographer Conrad Hall.
Much has been made over a scene written by Goldman that was shot but never put into the final version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Hill had used several devices (such as the opening newsreel footage and the sepia sequences) to call attention to the film as a piece of fiction, thereby foregrounding the effect of media and popular culture on the creation of the Butch and Sundance myth. This was an important element of a scene in which Cassidy, the Kid, and Etta are in a Bolivian cinema and see a screen re-enactment of their gang, depicting Butch and Sundance as ruthless killers gunned down by the law. As the two men watch incredulously, shouting at the screen that it didn't happen that way, Etta walks off to the station to catch the train that would begin her journey back to America. In an earlier scene, she had told the men she would do anything for them except stay and watch them die, and Hill felt that this was sufficient and that the inclusion of the movie theater scene would have been "a little heavy-handed and unnecessary." Many others wanted him to keep the scene in, but he decided it was contrived. Unfortunately, the scene would have probably given Etta's character more depth and dimension.
Although Goldman wrote the dialogue for the final scene in which the characters, instead of showing awareness of their doomed situation, talk about a possible move to Australia, it was reportedly Hill who had the idea of showing them tenderly bandaging each other's wounds. About halfway through production, Hill told Screen International magazine he also decided to end the picture on a freeze frame, "leaving them in almost mythic form...I have no stomach for real violence. My back was out when I was working on the film, and so they padded me around on a stretcher. While being driven to and from location, I managed to figure out the whole ending, and I don't think I would have done so had I not been so incapacitated."
Cinematographer Conrad Hall said he overexposed much of the film because he thought the lightness of the story did not require dramatic lighting and color, but that Fox and DeLuxe (the color film processing company) brought back a lot of the richness of tones, as was their trademark style.
Hall said it was Hill's decision not to show the posse very clearly and that radios were used to coordinate shooting them from a great distance. He was especially pleased with the fortuitous timing in some of those scenes, such as one shot where Newman and Redford come over the rocks, just before they leap, and the posse is seen at the last moment, far off in a small clearing. "I operated [the camera for] that one myself," Hall told interviewer Leonard Maltin. "I'm a good operator, and I love to do it....I like to do it whenever I can."
Hall was not pleased with the night shots in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, such as the one in which a man is selling bicycles down on the street. He thought they had too much light and shadows and told Maltin he preferred really dark night shots, such as the ones in Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
by Rob Nixon
