Which story, though? Which incidents? There was so much wonderful material. I mentioned the scene where Butch made the deal with the governor of Wyoming to let him out of jail. I loved that. I don't know if I've ever come across a better introduction to a character.
But it had problems.
Logically, in order to get out of jail, he had to be in jail first. Which meant he would have to be arrested. And tried. And sentenced. And serve at least some time.
Now add this: For the scene to have any credibility, Butch would have to be young. No governor would dare let so famous an outlaw free. But my story dealt with two guys who were already legends.
If you had asked me, a year before I began writing, what sequences I was positive would be in the screenplay, I would have come up with two: the shoot-out at the end and the scene with the governor.
But I couldn't make it fit. I fiddled every goddam which way; it kept falling out of the picture. I wanted it in. Desperately. I figured, "Well, what if I had him arrested quickly and then dissolved to a year later and made the governor an old friend and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,"
Stunk. Wrong. Silly.
There is a wonderful phrase of William Faulkner's that goes something like this: "In writing, you must kill all your darlings."
The scene with the governor was certainly a darling of mine, but eventually I realized I had to kill it. Because, probably not consciously, I was approaching what I believe to be the single most important lesson to be learned about writing for films and this is it:
SCREENPLAYS ARE STRUCTURE.
As I said earlier, there are two Roman numeral I's to this book--the first being that nobody knows anything. Well, this is the other, in well-deserved caps:
SCREENPLAYS ARE STRUCTURE.
Yes, nifty dialog helps one hell of a lot; sure, it's nice if you can bring your characters to life. But you can have terrific characters spouting just swell talk to each other, and if the structure is unsound, forget it.
Writing a screenplay is in many ways similar to executing a piece of carpentry. If you take some wood and nails and glue and make a bookcase, only to find when you're done that it topples over when you try and stand it upright, you may have created something, but it won't work as a bookcase.
The essential opening labor a screenwriter must execute is, of course, deciding what the proper structure should be for the particular screenplay you are writing. And to do that, you have to know what is absolutely crucial in the telling of your story--
--what is its spine?
Whatever it is, you must protect it to the death.
Sometimes the spine is pretty simple to locate--as in a private-detective movie. There is no story until the detective--Lew Archer, say--is called on to solve something. Archer meets his client early on, takes the case, invariably is given some information about the case by the client, and then begins to act on that information. He goes and talks to people. One interview leads to the next, on and on, you throw in a little action when things get slow (I think Raymond Chandler said something to the effect that every time he felt in trouble, he had a guy come barging through a door with a gun in his hand). Eventually, something is solved, though often not the original event that triggered the story.
Butch was not so simple.
The original thing that moved me--and whatever that is, it must always be kept tattooed behind your eyelids--was the story of these two guys whom I liked, but they were pretty much aimless. They drifted from job to job, unlike Lew Archer, who is always totally directed. Not only were they aimless, there was something worse to deal with: When they did act, they did something no one had ever done before--they went to South America.
Now today, looking back on it, with the success of the film a fact, that doesn't seem like much. But it was, for me in my job, the crunch. (The first time the script was shown, only one studio showed the least interest. And I remember an executive of that studio saying to me that South America had to go--that Butch and Sundance, in order for the movie to work, had to stand and fight the Superposse. Right here. In the Old West. I tried explaining that they really did go to South America, that what was so moving to me was these two guys repeating the past, then dying alone in a strange land. He replied, "I don't give a shit about that--all I know is one thing: John Wayne don't run away.")
So justifying the shift in locale was a huge problem--because not only don't movie heroes run away, they especially don't in Westerns because Westerns are based on confrontations.
Butch had another problem: For an action picture, it had almost no action. At least not action in the Western-movie sense: shoot-outs and fistfights between hero and villain, massive barroom brawls and stampedes with the heroine's life in danger. Following is a list of such moments in Butch, together with the screen time used:
Sundance shooting the saloon owner's belt off--4 seconds
Butch kicking Logan in the balls and knocking him out--9 seconds
Sundance knocking out the Superposse member (probably you forgot this moment was there)--6 seconds
The jump off the cliff--7 seconds
The mine owner getting shot by bandits--2 seconds
Butch and Sundance killing the bandits--40 seconds
In other words, up until the final shoot-out, the first hundred minutes of the movie contain approximately one minute of standard western action. (You could call the various train and bank robberies action, but I wouldn't agree: There's never a sense of jeopardy; it's fun and games time.) There was hopefully a great deal of tension under a lot of the movie--but not the kind of physical action we expect in a Western.
Another problem: Not only did it not have enough violence to be considered an action film, it also wasn't funny enough to be a comedy. First of all, I'm not that skilled at comedy. More than that, if the movie was too funny, the ending wouldn't work. We wouldn't care enough that they died, and since I felt that sadness--since more than anything that was the emotional core of my interest--I had to make the audience care too.
Do you know the game that goes like this? "If Jackie Onassis were a car, what kind of car would she be?" Or "If Jimmy Carter were a vegetable, which vegetable would he be?"
Well, if Butch Cassidy had been a performer, that performer would have been Jack Benny.
I saw Benny toward the end of his great career when he did a short engagement in a Broadway theatre. And he was superb. Those fabulous takes, his unique sense of timing, he had it all. And the audience was knocked out--
--but he wasn't all that funny.
Sure, there were laughs. But not like Bob Hope gets laughs, or Rodney Dangerfield. Jack Benny was, is, and always will be one of my favorite comedians. Never more than that night in the theatre. And whatever I felt, so did everyone around me. After all, how often do you get to see a master? But it wasn't his comedy that won us--
--we enjoyed being with him. No matter where he led us, we wanted to follow along.
And that, I ultimately realized, had to be the spine for the movie--the relationship between Butch and Sundance. And I don't mean just liking them. I'm sure that when the people responsible for Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman sat around spitballing, they said to each other, "Hey, we've got to like the fifty-foot woman, at least a little, so we can feel something when she cashes in. Maybe she likes elephants or giraffes, something to make her seem human."
Butch and Sundance shared almost every scene in the movie, and just like Jack Benny was special, so their relationship had to be special: No matter where they led us, we had to want to follow along. (And the movie had to work off the give and take of the two stars. If they'd been Newman and Brando or Redford and McQueen, the acting would have been fine. But I don't believe the audience would have risen to the film in the same way.)
All had, then, were the two guys. And it was my job to make them as inviting, and at the same time as unusual, as I possibly knew how.
As I've said, the most important minutes of any screenplay are the first fifteen and what
I'd like to do now is talk about the structure of the first quarter hour of the screenplay, the first four scenes.
SCENE ONE: BUTCH CASING THE BANK.
Very short scene. A guy walks up to a bank that is very modern-looking and ugly and heavily barred. (The guy is Butch and he's an outlaw, but we don't know that yet.)
He looks at the bank sourly, then talks with a guard.
BUTCH
What was the matter with the old bank this town used to have? It was beautiful.
GUARD
People kept robbing it.
BUTCH
(walking off)
That's a small price to pay for beauty.
Not much unusual here. What it really is is a statement of theme: Times are changing and you have to change with them--if you want to survive.
(I happen not to believe Butch's final retort--I don't think he'd say it and I think it's smart-ass. There's a lot about the screenplay I don't like, the smart-assness just being one of them. I also find there are too many reversals and that the entire enterprise suffers, on more than one occasion, from a case of the cutes.
But the quality of the dialog is not at issue here; proper structure is what we're after and I feel the first scenes will illustrate my point.)
The first little scene is crucial for theme statement--something that gets repeated again and again as the story moves on.
SCENE TWO: SUNDANCE PLAYING CARDS.
Now I think we're starting to move into strange terrain. But it doesn't look like it at first. It looks like the standard cornball card game we've seen a zillion times.
We're in Macon's Saloon, and Macon, written as a strong, tough guy, is involved in a game of blackjack. A stranger is dealing. The stranger is also winning. He cleans out the table and Macon accuses him of cheating.
We don't know yet that the dealer is the Sundance Kid, but the Kid knows who he is. And he also knows three things: He hasn't been cheating, his honor and integrity have been insulted, and he is also the fastest gun in the history of the West.
Make this a John Wayne movie and you're into a "When you say that, smile" situation. Direct confrontation. Wayne, more likely than not, would pick up the card table and clobber the enemy.
What does the Kid do? He just sits there, silent and sad, while his tormentor stands, guns ready, and says, basically, get the hell out of here.
Now Butch comes tearing up. The Kid tells him he wasn't cheating. Butch could not care less about Sundance's being unjustly accused. He wants out. The Kid is stubborn: "If he invites us to stay, then we'll go."
And what does Butch do next? He tries to undermine Sundance's confidence. "You don't know how fast he is....I'm over the hill--it can happen to you." Anything to avoid a confrontation. Butch knows who the Kid is and what he is capable of; there's no way the Kid's going to lose.
Finally Butch, with no other cards to play, tells his secret--the Kid's name. "Can't help you, Sundance," he says. And we still don't know what that means--
--but Macon, the guy who's accused the Kid, sure does. That's why he's written as a hero: big, rugged, powerful. It can't be Donald Meek across the table, not if the next moment's going to work. And that moment is panic: "I didn't know you were the Sundance Kid when I said you were cheating....If I draw on you, you'll kill me."
Now the reader is hopefully saying, "What's with this Sundance Kid anyway? I never heard of him, but maybe I better pay attention."
Macon backs down, invites them to stick around, but they've got to be going. There wouldn't be any gunplay at all if Macon didn't ask for it:
MACON
Kid?
(a little louder now)
Hey, how good are you?
CUT TO
Butch, between Sundance and Macon, but not for long, because the minute Macon asks his question, Butch gets the hell out of the way fast as we
CUT TO
Sundance, diving left and dropping, and his guns are out and roaring and as the sound explodes--
CUT TO
Macon as Sundance shoots his gun belt off and as it drops
CUT TO
Sundance, firing on, and
CUT TO
the gun belt whipping like a snake across the floor as Sundance's bullets strike. Then, as the firing stops--
CUT TO
John Macon, breathing the biggest sigh of relief anyone ever saw and
CUT TO
Sundance, standing now, his guns quiet.
CUT TO
Butch and Sundance. Butch glances at. Macon's gun belt for a moment, then shakes his head.
BUTCH
(to Sundance as they head for the door)
Like I been telling you--over the hill.
(and they are gone)
So now we've seen the Kid in action and we know one thing: You don't want to mess with him. The man is a bomb, capable of exploding at any time. Handle with care.
Although we learn something about Butch and the two men together, this is essentially Sundance's introductory moment.
SCENE THREE: THE RIDE TO HOLE-IN-THE-WALL.
This is the first time they've been alone. And it may not seem like much, but there's a lot we learn.
Butch hates what he's doing: "How can I be so damn stupid as to keep coming back here?"
This is not news to Sundance: "What's your idea this time?" Clearly "this time" means he's heard this kind of bitching before.
And now--essential--the first mention of where the movie's going to take us: this lunatic destination, Bolivia.
Sundance is no genius: "What's Bolivia?"
Butch is not afraid of Sundance exploding around him. "Bolivia is a country, stupid."
Butch is also no genius: "Bolivia is a country, stupid--in Central or South America, one or the other." I mean, he's the one who brought up the subject, and his knowledge of geography is anything but encyclopedic.
Sundance has a crucial setup line: "Why don't we just go to Mexico instead?" Crucial because it gives Butch a chance to explain about Bolivia, and also because it wasn't unheard of for a Western movie to deal with Mexico. All the Alamo retellings, the Villa stories. In other words, Sundance is saying, "Well, moving someplace foreign isn't all that weird." He's greasing a path we have no idea we're going to follow.
Butch's reply is not just the most important line in the scene but one of the most vital in the movie. He talks about the California gold rush--which everyone knows about. And then he says, "When I say Bolivia, you think California."
That line gives the reader something to cling to. It makes comprehensible, even kind of logical, what's going to come.
And just as Butch isn't afraid of Sundance, Sundance doesn't have a lot of respect for Butch's notions. He laughs and says, "You just keep thinking, Butch, that's what you're good at."
At this point, we're eight minutes into the movie and what do we know? Times are hard, maybe a change wouldn't be a bad idea. Sundance is famous and deadly. But we don't really know a whole lot about Butch yet. Or who and what they are.
And what makes their relationship different and special.
SCENE FOUR: THE KICK IN THE BALLS.
Just as the blackjack game was Sundance's scene, this is where we really meet Butch Cassidy.
He returns to Hole-in-the-Wall to find that his leadership has been usurped. He has headed a famous gang, but now the giant, Logan, has assumed control.
Butch tries first what he always tries first: to talk his way out of trouble. That attempt fails.
He is forced into a knife fight and we're into one of the staples of Western films: mano a mano, good versus evil, honorable virtue versus unspeakable vice, maybe to the death. But just before combat, Butch begins talking about what rules they should follow, and while Logan is distracted, Butch kicks him full out in the balls.
I don't know if anyone who never saw the movie in a theatre can appreciate the reaction the kick-in-the-balls moment got. There was this huge gasp, followed by the enormous laugh of relief and surpri
se. Especially, I think, surprise.
Western heroes didn't fight sneaky, Gary Cooper would have turned in his badge before he stooped to such a thing. Can you imagine Randolph Scott doing it? Or Gene Autry?
And then after the fight Butch not only doesn't show any anger, he decides to do exactly what his enemy had suggested they do all along. He is, above all else, a totally practical man doing his best. A leader, without rancor, as affable a fellow as you're apt to meet. I think, after this, you really like him.
This scene underscores again the theme: Everything's harder than it used to be. And there are probably other odds and ends I could mention.
But what the scene does, most of all, is set the Butch-Sundance relationship. From here on, hopefully, we know we're into something different.
Logan, of all people, sets it in motion. He has told Butch that he gives the orders, then suddenly he says, "This don't concern you."
He means, of course, Sundance.
Logan goes on, ordering Butch to tell Sundance to stay out of their fight. So far we're merely underscoring what we've seen in the card game: Sundance is Dangerous.
Butch's reply though is odd: "He goes his own way, like always."
Now, a few moments later, Logan has his knife out and Butch begins to take off his jacket. He goes to Sundance, who is remote, seated on his horse, above it all.
Logan is a massive man, incredibly powerful. Butch makes an attempt at a joke: "Bet on Logan." Sundance replies: "I would, but who'd bet on you?" Then comes what for me is the essential exchange of the picture.
LOGAN
(calling out to the Kid)
Sundance--when we're done, if he's dead, you're welcome to stay.
BUTCH
(quietly, to Sundance)
Listen, I don't want to be a sore loser or anything, but when we're done, if I'm dead, kill him.
SUNDANCE
(this is said to Logan but in answer to Butch)
Love to.
When we were in preproduction and rehearsal, there was more pressure over this exchange than any other--the producers insisted it be altered: The audience had to know, they felt, that in the crunch, Sundance would come to the rescue.
Adventures in the Screen Trade Page 20