Butch and Sundance in Tlayacapan

Rafael Aviña

A brief article related to the Pinkerton Detective Agency was the trigger for writer William Goldman to investigate the criminal life, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, of the "old west" criminals Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, their spectacular robberies of banking and railroad institutions, the siege they suffered from Pinkerton's detectives and their subsequent escape to Bolivia.

Goldman was aware that traditional cowboy movies were in decline. He understood that those tales halfway between legends and reality could be told from a contemporary perspective without losing their mythical and historical aura. Thus, the actions of Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as Butch and Sundance, and those of their followers (the renowned “Wild Bunch” or the “Hole-in-the-Wall Gang”) were seen as those of brutal killers. Instead, Goldman gave them a charismatic and charming personality: from villains he transformed them into sympathetic antiheroes forced to commit crimes and face ruthless justice, mixing the western with the buddy film.

20th Century Fox acquired the script from Goldman, who wrote it with Jack Lemmon as Butch and Paul Newman as Sundance in mind, after seeing Lemmon in Cowboy (1958, dir. Delmer Daves) and Newman in The Left Handed Gun (1958, dir. Arthur Penn), where he played Billy "The Kid". Producer Richard Zanuck, however, wanted two superstars and offered the role of Butch to Steve McQueen and Sundance to Paul Newman, and suggested the relatively new director George Roy Hill, who had directed among others: Hawaii (1966) and Millie (1967). However, Roy Hill had a different perspective and saw Newman as Butch. Later, when Steve McQueen turned down the role, Zanuck then thought of Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty, but George Roy Hill and Newman advocated for a promising young actor: Robert Redford.

Alejandro Ramírez, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Batel, Robert Redford, Daniela Michel