I figure Cary is going to save them, but he is wounded and Victor MacLaglen is the strongest of the bunch but he is in shitty shape too, and here come the British, deeper and deeper into the trap, and the Indian killers are waiting there, and suddenly, Cary Grant looks at Gunga Din, this joke of a water carrier, and whispers these words:
"The colonel's got to know."
By comparison, I was poised at Porgy. Gunga Din's all shot to shit, but he takes that bugle from a dead guy and starts this climb up this golden temple and when he gets there he blows the bugle and saves the British and is killed.
I have seen that movie sixteen times, and the last time--true, I tell you nothing but truths--I started crying in the credits.
Why am I telling you all this?
Remember me saying that when I started I knew a lot of things but not enough? Well, one of the things I knew was this: I had, in my head, a moment of stupid courage. And I knew if I could just get my story there, I'd be okay.
It comes at the very end. Butch and Sundance have done a payroll robbery, have been given away by a brand on the mule they used to carry the money. In a small Bolivian town, the word goes out, hundreds of armed troops come. (They really did.) Butch and Sundance run out of ammunition, Butch goes for more, a stash they left on their horses, Sundance giving cover. But it all goes badly and they are both of them mortally wounded. They are in a small shack, while outside the troops continue to gather. They both know this: they are going to die of their wounds. This is their farewell conversation.
The Australia Scene
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, crouched close together by a window, peering out at the setting sun.
BUTCH
I got a great idea where we should go next.
SUNDANCE
Well, I don't wanna hear it.
BUTCH
You'll change your mind once I tell you--
SUNDANCE
Shut up.
BUTCH
Okay, okay.
SUNDANCE
It was your great ideas got us here.
BUTCH
Forget about it.
SUNDANCE
I don't want to hear another of your great ideas, all right?
BUTCH
All right.
SUNDANCE
Good.
BUTCH
Australia.
CUT TO
SUNDANCE. He just looks at Butch.
CUT TO
BUTCH.
BUTCH
I figured secretly you wanted to know, so I told you--Australia.
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.
SUNDANCE
That's your great idea?
BUTCH
The latest in a long line.
SUNDANCE
(exploding with all he has left)
Australia's no better than here!
BUTCH
That's all you know.
SUNDANCE
Name me one thing.
BUTCH
They speak English in Australia.
SUNDANCE
They do?
BUTCH
That's right, smart guy, so we wouldn't be foreigners. And they ride horses. And they've got thousands of miles to hide out in-- and a good climate, nice beaches, you could learn to swim--
SUNDANCE
Swimming's not important, what about the banks?
BUTCH
Easy, ripe and luscious.
SUNDANCE
The banks or the women?
BUTCH
Once we get the one we'll get the other.
SUNDANCE
It's a long way, though, isn't it?
BUTCH
(shouting it out)
Everything's always gotta be perfect with you!
SUNDANCE
I just don't want to get there and find out it stinks, that's all.
CUT TO
BUTCH.
BUTCH
Will you at least think about it?
CUT TO
SUNDANCE. He considers this a moment.
SUNDANCE
All right, I'll think about it.
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE. CLOSE UP.
BUTCH
Now after we--
(and suddenly he stops)
--wait a minute.
SUNDANCE
What?
BUTCH
You didn't see Lefors out there?
SUNDANCE
Lefors? No.
BUTCH
Good. For a minute there I thought we were in trouble.
CUT TO
THE SUN, dying.
PULL BACK TO REVEAL
THE SOLDIERS, tense and ready and
CUT TO
THE CAPTAIN, moving swiftly about the perimeter, gesturing his men forward, and as he does
CUT TO
ONE GROUP OF MEN, vaulting over the wall, then
CUT TO
ANOTHER GROUP OF MEN, vaulting over the wall, rifles at the ready.
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE on their feet. Slowly they move toward the door as we
CUT TO
MORE AND MORE SOLDIERS, vaulting over the wall.
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, into the last of the sunlight and then comes the first of a painfully loud burst of rifle fire and as the sound explodes--
THE CAMERA FREEZES ON BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.
Another terrible barrage. Louder. Butch and Sundance remain frozen. Somehow the sound of the rifles manages to build even more. Butch and Sundance stay frozen. Then the sound begins to diminish.
And as the sound diminishes, so does the color, and slowly, the faces of Butch and Sundance begin to change. The song from the New York sequence begins. The faces of Butch and Sundance continue to change, from color to the grainy black and white that began their story. The rifle fire is popcorn soft now, as it blows them back into history.
I can't do any better than that.
It's the best ending I've ever been involved with. And of course, what gives me the confidence to say this is I have such faith in the stupid courage part of the sequence--
--they don't talk about their situation.
That made them courageous for me. Here they were, bleeding and in increasing pain, surrounded, outnumbered, all that good stuff. They knew they were going to die, it was over. And they could have had memories, not necessarily soppy stuff, but other tough spots would have been okay, they had decades of life to go over. But once I knew they would never talk about the present, I had confidence that I, who had been wrecked by stupid courage over the decades, could finally have a moment of my own.
(I'm a total sucker for them. The one thing I can look at in Marathon Man is in the novel--God, I wished it had somehow been in the movie, too--when Babe, the marathon man, has been tortured and there's not a lot left and the three bad guys take him out to a car to finish things--
--and feebly, he breaks free, tries to literally run for his life, and he was never a great runner, never mentioned in the same breath as his two heroes, Nurmi and Bikila, the legends he has pictures of in his room, and while he runs he calls up all kinds of fantasies to spur himself, he tries to inhale through his damaged tooth, to make the pain even more horrendous, and nothing works, or works well enough--
--and then Bikila and Nurmi are flanking him, telling him the pain is part of being great, only real marathon men understand pain--
--and they bring him on home.)
Anyway, there I am at Princeton, looking for salvation, and that ending was one, if I could just get the story there.
I also felt confident about the beginning.
Wonderful real-life stuff. Butch Cassidy, unknown to the world in 1965, was a legend during his lifetime, so popular he would actually do this when followed by the law: he would ride up to farmhouses and say who he was, and that he was in kind of a pickle, and would it be all right if he hid out in their barn till th
e sheriff went by.
Sure, Butch. And they hid him.
Maybe it was because of the force of his personality, the universally remarked-on affability, the fact that he never shot or killed anybody until he became a payroll guard in South America, people just did what he asked them to do.
But nothing made me as confident as when Butch was in jail.
This is early in his career. The famous Hole in the Wall gang is not what it became. And I forget the state but let's say it was Colorado. Okay. He is in prison and the governor calls him in. And says this: "Butch, if you'll promise me you'll go straight, I'll let you out."
And Butch's answer? "I can't do that."
Think for a second. Here he is, this young outlaw in prison. For God knows what reason, he is offered this: freedom. All he has to do is lie and say he'll go straight. And he answers thus:
"I can't do that."
I don't know about you, but for me, that's as brilliant an introduction to one of your heroes as any I've ever come across. But it gets better--Butch tells the governor this: "I'll make you a deal." Think for a second on that baby, too. The convict is offering the governor a deal. And here it was: "If you let me out, I promise never to work in Colorado again."
And the governor takes the deal.
And lets him out.
And Butch never worked in Colorado again.
Great great stuff. No wonder I was confident about the beginning.
Now, those of you who have seen the movie may be hard pressed to remember Paul Newman having any scenes with any governors. Because they were not there. Because I never wrote them. Because I could not figure how to get that great fucking scene into the story I was telling.
I tried, God knows. But my Butch was famous, he was not a kid, and in my story, the West was ending. And in order to get him out of jail, duh, I had to first get him into jail.
And there was no time for it.
It was wrong. Wrong at least for me. It would have screwed up my structure if I had put it in. I realized this while I was trying to get started with the screenplay. The one most confidence-building scene I had? Gone.
I had other reasons for feeling good about the start, stuff that did make the movie. The fact that Butch robbed two trains that had the same payroll guard, Woodcock, and blew him up twice. That happened. The fact that Butch put too much dynamite under a safe during another train robbery, and blew the safe apart so the money floated everywhere. Happened. Beautiful Etta Place, the Kid's girl. Existed. Trying to enlist and fight in the Spanish-American War. They did try. The bicycle scene was made up but at that time, bicycles really were a phenomenon, like rap today.
So when I set to work, back in the Princeton of thirty-four years ago, I was a lot younger, with enough confidence to get started. And I also knew the ending would keep me above the waterline.
My terror was this: the middle section was the one that would kill me.
Since the mid-sixties, the elements that make up a good story have not changed. But what has is the audience's knowledge. They are so much more experienced today. Cassettes have happened, cable has happened, the availability of flicks is so different from when I began.
My killer problem was that my guys had to do the unthinkable in a western: run away. It may not sound like much now, because Butch was such a hit, but then it was the block in my storytelling path.
Here is what happened in real life: E. H. Harriman, the railroad king, got sick of Butch robbing him, so he financed something new to the Wild West--a Superposse. He paid for half a dozen of the great lawmen to come together from all over the country to kill Cassidy.
Here is what happened then in real life: Butch took off for South America with Sundance and Etta.
He knew he had zero chance against an all-star team like that, so he left for sunnier climes till Harriman got bored paying all those guys and they disbanded. In other words, they never chased him. He fled.
Not the stuff of drama.
I had no great solution--I don't know that there is one--but here's what I decided to do with this: somehow try and make the audience want Butch and Sundance to run away. I had to make the Superposse so all-powerful, so impregnable to defeat, that people sitting out there in the dark would say yes, for chrissakes, go to Bolivia.
So what I did, hoping it would save me, was not invent the Superposse, but invent the Superposse chase. This thing had come from nowhere and was going to kill them and their world. This was my opening description:
The Superposse consist of perhaps a half-dozen men. Taken as a group, they look, act, and are, in any and all ways, formidable.
They appear approximately half an hour into the story, leave close to half an hour later. And all they do is track our heroes. Outthink them at every turn. Butch begins reacting to them early on, "Who are those guys?" and soon it becomes a litany. The posse tracks them, never losing a beat, coming closer, always closer, shrinking the playing field until finally Butch and Sundance are trapped on a mountain ledge. This is what happens then.
The Jumping-off-the-Cliff Scene
CUT TO
The path, ending.
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, standing there, just standing there gaping at the dead end the path has led them into.
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE
(together)
DAMMIT!
CUT TO
A long shot of the two of them standing there stunned, the sound echoing over and over and
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, whirling, starting back the way they came and
CUT TO
THE SUPERPOSSE, moving toward them.
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, watching them come.
BUTCH
What I figure is we can fight or we give.
(SUNDANCE nods)
If we give, we go to jail.
CUT TO
CLOSE UP. Sundance shaking his head.
SUNDANCE
(with all the meaning in the world)
I been there already.
CUT TO
BUTCH, nodding in agreement.
BUTCH
Me, too. If we fight they can stay right where they are and starve us out--
(he glances up now and)
CUT TO
The mountain above them. High up, there are open flat places where a man could fire down on them.
BUTCH'S VOICE (OVER)
-- or they could go for position and shoot us--
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.
BUTCH
-- or they could start a little rockslide and get us that way. What else could they do?
SUNDANCE
They could surrender to us but I don't think we oughtta count on that.
CUT TO
BUTCH. He laughs, but the moment won't hold.
BUTCH
(flat and down)
What're we gonna do?
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.
SUNDANCE
You've always been the brains, Butch; you'll think of something.
BUTCH
Well, that takes a load off; for awhile there I was worried.
(he looks back down the way they came and)
CUT TO
THE SUPERPOSSE. The man in the white hat is gesturing and now the Superposse begins to split, some of them moving onto a higher path that leads above where Butch and Sundance are.
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, watching them climb.
SUNDANCE
They're going for position all right.
(He takes out his guns, starts to examine them with great care)
We better get ready.
BUTCH
(getting his guns ready)
The next time I say let's go someplace like Bolivia, let's go someplace like Bolivia.
SUNDANCE
Next time.
CUT TO
THE SUPERPOSSE. They continue to make their way up, moving quickly a
nd silently across the mountain.
CUT TO
SUNDANCE.
SUNDANCE
(watching them get into position)
You ready, Butch?
BUTCH (OVER)
NO!
(and as SUNDANCE turns)
ZOOM TO
CLOSE UP--BUTCH. He is smiling.
BUTCH
We'll jump!
CUT TO
THE STREAM below. It is fifty feet down and going very fast.
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.
SUNDANCE
Like hell we will.
BUTCH
(really excited now--all this next is overlapping and goes like a shot)
No, no, it's gonna be o.k.--just so it's deep enough we don't get squished to death--they'll never follow us--
SUNDANCE
--how do you know?--
BUTCH
--would you make a jump like that if you didn't have to?--
SUNDANCE
--I have to and I'm not gonna--
BUTCH
--it's the only way. Otherwise we're dead. They'll have to go all the way back down the way we came. Come on--
SUNDANCE
(looking up the mountain)
--just a couple of decent shots, that's all I want--
BUTCH
--come on--
SUNDANCE
--no--
BUTCH
--we got to--
SUNDANCE
--no--
BUTCH
--yes--
SUNDANCE
--get away from me--
BUTCH
--why?--
SUNDANCE
--I wanna fight 'em--
BUTCH
--they'll kill us--
SUNDANCE
--maybe--
BUTCH
--you wanna die?--
SUNDANCE
--don't you?--
BUTCH
--I'll jump first--
SUNDANCE
--no--
BUTCH
--o.k., you jump first--
SUNDANCE
--no I said--
BUTCH
(big)
What'sa matter with you?--
SUNDANCE
(bigger)
I can't swim!
(Blind mad, wildly embarrassed. He just stands there)
CUT TO
BUTCH, starting to roar.
CUT TO
SUNDANCE, anger building.
CUT TO
BUTCH.
BUTCH
You stupid fool, the fall'll probably kill you.
CUT TO
SUNDANCE, starting to laugh now and
CUT TO
The two of them. BUTCH whips off his gun belt, takes hold of one end, holds the other out. SUNDANCE takes it, wraps it once tight around his hand. They move to the edge of the path and step off.
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, falling through the twilight.
CUT TO
The biggest splash ever recorded.
CUT TO
The stream, going like hell. Then