George Hill's "Butch Cassidy..." (1 Viewer)

[Seth Paxton]

It's the "let's make Billy the Kid and Bonnie and Clyde types into heroes" syndrome all over again.

Sure, but what's wrong with that? Not all films must, nor should, come from the same moral stance.

The characters are heros simply because they are the protagonists. Even Clint becomes the hero in Unforgiven and that's a film where he is heavily painted as a dirty bastard. Being the protagonist creates that natural stance as the "good guy", but I don't think the film intended to take a moral stance at all. It didn't preach about the ills of the villans, but then The Sting didn't bash us over the head with the evils of lying and cheating others for money.


FWIW, I think BCSD is better than The Sting, though they are both top notch.


For those who haven't listened to the commentary. When they are being hunted at night and they look down to see the posse coming with laterns/torches glowing - that is day for night and the torches are ultra-bright spotlights being pointed right at the camera position. So it was all daylight but by underexposing (or is it underdeveloping) it becomes night.

 

[RobertR]

The Sting didn't bash us over the head with the evils of lying and cheating others for money.

I think what I find so objectionable about BCSD is Butch's attempt to justify being a robber, and the "going straight caused us to kill" scene. The Sting didn't try to make that justification. It also omitted scenes of innocents being cheated out of their money. The victims were all gangsters who were thieves themselves.

 

[Jefferson Morris]

I guess "blatant star vehicles" sounded so tacky I wanted to try and separate it from this film.

I meant the term affectionately, although I suppose you're right - though he already had Barefoot in the Park to his credit, I guess Redford wasn't really a "star" until after Butch Cassidy was released. For some reason I always mentally date the film back to the early seventies, rather than the late sixties.

--Jefferson Morris

 

[Aaron Reynolds]

Here's how much I love Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:
Back in the "old days", the only way to get an OAR copy of BC&tSK was to buy the Fox 25th Anniversary LD box set...which contained the following:
- a widescreen transfer of the film, approved by Conrad Hall, in CLV on one disc
- a sporadic commentary edited in such a way as to cease making sense at times (thought the parts with Hall are a fantastic insight into how he shot the film)
- a documentary made during the film's production (by Robert Evans, I think), in such wretched shape that it was impossible to understand what people were saying half the time, about half an hour long
- short new interviews with Bacharach, Hill, Hall, Newman, Redford, Goldman, Ross and a few others, maybe 40 minutes worth of stuff
- some memos to and from the production, detailing cost overruns
All that bonus stuff was on a second disc. And that was it.
Now here's the painful part:
It was $129.
For reference, The Abyss: Special Edition (also from Fox) cost me $99 and had tons of extras, and the Alien CAV box set with tons of extras (and the film in CAV) was $89.
I bought it anyways, because I love the film. The extras, while not horrible, were tainted for me by their enormous cost. Also, two discs would have fit nicely into a gatefold jacket, but we got this big ol' box instead. To be fair, it was a really nice looking box.
The only boxed LD set that I'd say delivered less value for money was Schindler's List.
If I had to do it again, though, I'd still buy it. I've definitely watched it $129 times.

 

[MichaelAW]

I just watched this tonight: great movie.
One question, why is there a song in the film, about twenty minutes in? Yes, I'm talking about the "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" bit. I turned to my wife during it and said "why is this here?"
Neither of us could figure it out. Was this a late-60s western style, to put songs in the middle of movies where they don't fit?

 

[ShawnF]

I took a film class in college and this was one of films we studied.

They showed Butch on AMC a couple of months ago w/ an information bar running at the bottom. Learned lots of interesting stuff about the movie.

I'm a big William Goldman fan (Princess Bride, Marathon Man).

 

[Patrick_M]

Truly one of my favorites, and it was the first movie my family ever owned on VHS back in the late 70's. I about wore the tape out watching it, since the only other movie we owned was 9 to 5 (or something like that) and I always though outlaws were much cool