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 and 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
CUT TO
BUTCH AND SUNDANCE, alive in the water. Music begins, the same music that went on during BUTCH and ETTA’s bicycle ride, and as the music picks up, so does the speed of the current as it carries them along, spinning and turning and
CUT TO
THE SUPERPOSSE, frozen in the twilight on the mountainside.
If you were in movie theaters back in those days, it was not hard to tell the scene worked—as Butch and Sundance jumped, as the cry of “Horseshiiiit” echoed. There were shouts of joy and surprise and laughter, and, yes, applause. Audiences loved the two guys so much now they would follow them anyplace. They wanted to know the crucial question from all audiences since we left the muck: What happens next?
They never questioned South America. And guess what—the movie runs a little out of steam halfway through South America. Didn’t matter.
The people wanted to be there.
When that happens, and it happens rarely, at least for me, it’s very hard to screw up your movie. I believe it would have been easy to screw it up if that scene had not worked. People might have felt uneasy about the trip the guys were taking, or might have said, well, the first stuff was fun but the rest of it wasn’t as good. Might have said a million things.
But they didn’t. They wanted to be there.
The movie became a phenomenon, changed a lot of lives. Redford, so marvelous, became, soon after, the biggest star in the world. Newman, already the biggest star in the world, and a joy to work with, had a terrific time, began a relationship with George Roy Hill that later encompassed both The Sting and Slap Shot. Hill, for me the most underrated director of the last thirty years, became one of the two Giant Apes in the world of moviemaking, along with David Lean.
And I became, well, you fill in the blank. Doesn’t matter. All that does is: I’m still here …
* * *
Originals
An original screenplay? Nothing to it, really.
Just come up with a new and fresh and different story that builds logically to a satisfying and surprising conclusion (because Art, as we all know, needs to be both surprising and inevitable).
Do you know how hard that is?
I’ve tried a bunch and I’ll talk about some of them briefly, but remember this—those two crucial questions that need answering for an adaptation? Well, they must both have already been answered positively by you before you embark. Yes, you love it and yes, you can make it play.
Butch—what I loved was the fun and games, the sadness, taking the girl with them, all that—but mostly I loved the becoming legends again. Plus, of course, the confidence their dying gave me.
I researched it for eight years before I’d sucked up enough. Articles on the west, books, etc. Basically what enabled me to go after it was my love of westerns. From Stagecoach on. To be able to write the guy who really really was the fastest gun in all our history, well, how often does that happen?
The Great Waldo Pepper—not something I would have written had George Roy Hill not loved old airplanes so much. It was his need that drove me, plus we had done Butch.
I made up this guy—Waldo—who looked golden and was golden except really he was a failure. And finally gave him his shot at having a dream come true, even if it killed him.
The other confidence builder was that it fell logically into three acts. The barnstorming first act, the air-show second act, the Hollywood-stunts third act. That was what happened to a lot of pilots in those days, and I followed along. I fucked up some and Hill and I had a huge falling-out for a year in the middle of the screenplay, but I can look at the movie now and feel glad that I went there.
The Year of the Comet—if Butch had its basis in my love for westerns, Comet was my shot at romantic comedy: Grant and Kate, Grant and Audrey, Grant and Roz, Fred and Ginger, dozens of others from the ’30s into the ’50s.
There aren’t so many these years. Cleese’s Wanda, Curtis’s Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, I think Ramis’s Groundhog Day. Ephron’s Harry and Sally, Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s Mary. I think those are my main five for the last dozen years.
I love the form, I love red wine, I invented with plausibility what would logically be the most valuable bottle of wine in history. I had a decent-sounding mismatched pair of lovers, I set the chase in the most romantic places I know, London, the French Riviera, the Scottish Highlands.
I did everything right—and it all just lay there.
Conclusion? I did next to nothing right. That’s why it all just lay there.
I can be very tough with my own work since I don’t like it all that much—and I have thought a great deal about how I screwed this up. I cannot come up with a satisfactory answer.
I guess, to quote Frank Gilroy’s great line from The Gig, where one character yearns to be a wonderful jazz musician but isn’t: Passion ain’t enough.
The Sea Kings—my pirate flick. The audience has to love those, and I don’t think kids do today. Who could blame them? Errol’s dead.
So what made me write it was the genre, plus this: as great a kernel for a movie as any I’ve known (see the “Leper” chapter for a recap of my passion for the idea).
And the script, you will have to take on faith, is not so terrible. But it never got made.
After Joe Levine failed with it in the ’70s, Dick Donner took a run at it in the ’90s.
I don’t expect it to ever happen. Expensive as hell, and each time you think, well, just maybe, something like Cutthroat Island comes along and you’re dead for another decade.
Mr. Horn. If that title rings even a little bell, yes it was a four-hour miniseries starring David Carradine and Richard Widmark.
Hope it was good. Never saw it. Couldn’t bring myself to.
Tom Horn. Bounty hunter. (A rock under a dead man’s head was his signature.) Indian fighter. (Brought in Geronimo.) Sentenced to death for a murder he never committed. (Escaped at the last minute; it was impossible but he did.) Gave himself up. Finally got hanged. (He
lost so much weight in jail that he hung alive at the end of that rope for half an hour.)
Just some of the high spots.
In terms of the talents that were needed to survive in the Wild West, this was the most talented man who ever lived there. Redford (wrote it for him) was going to do it, didn’t.
This was one of my bad experiences. What I regret so terribly was that this great story never had its shot. I remember deciding that it would be the last original I’d ever work on. And I prayed I’d never come across anyone as blazing as Tom Horn again.
But it wasn’t the last original I ever worked on, because we are all slaves to material, and when I heard the story of the Tsavo lions, I was hooked again. You can read the chapter on The Ghost and the Darkness to find out what happened. I think of all six, I regret most that this story never found its proper audience. No, I regret most that Tom Horn is still unknown to most of America. No, I regret—
—when we write scripts and they don’t happen or happen less well than we want, we regret them all. And always will.
The last one really broke my heart. Danny DeVito came to me and wondered if I wanted to do a basketball movie he could direct. I lucked out, wrote Low Fives, for Danny and John Cleese. Danny was to play a down-and-out coach at the antithesis of an Ivy League school. (I think in Texas, but I remember it was somewhere hot.) Danny, on a recruiting trip in Africa, discovers an amazing basketball talent, enrolls him in his school.
John Cleese was to play the dean of this awful place, who was in deep agony there, and just as desperate to get out as Danny. A lot of nice stuff happened. We had a cast reading and Barry Sonnenfeld, now a star director, then with just Addams Family behind him, was set to direct. I remember a fabulous actor, now dead, J. T. Walsh, read the part of a racist basketball coach.
Was Low Fives perfect? Nope. Did it work? Bet your ass. One of my all-time movie afternoons, listening. Then Barry got offered a ton to do the Addams sequel, took it, Danny began to cool, it died.
I still have hope. Someone has to.
As I look back on these seven, I realize my age. If you are thirty or under, all you know about westerns might be David Peoples’s glorious Unforgiven. (Aside: I remember reading the rave review given by Roger Ebert in Cinemania. He talks about Eastwood and Jack Green’s shooting, mentions Hackman and Harris and Freeman and Fisher and Wayne and Ford and even gets around to Godard. Never mentions Peoples, though. Why should he? All Peoples did was make it up. Jesus, Roger, it was an original screenplay. You know why that’s such a disgrace? Because you expect ignorance from most, but Ebert’s supposed to be one of the good ones.
Which Lie Did I Tell? Page 25