MJB SCRIPT REVIEW | BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID

“𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀 𝘆𝗮 𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘀𝘆 𝗯𝗶𝗰𝘆𝗰𝗹𝗲𝘀!”

Oscar winning western and sleepy Sunday afternoon TV classic, time to go back and take a look at an absolute legend. The one, the only...BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID.

Plot in a nutshell: Cowboys and bank robbers Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid lead a band of outlaws on a daring train robbery. When it goes wrong, they find themselves on the run with a superposse hard on their heels. Escaping to South America, things only get worse…

Ten pages in and already there’s something very different going on here. Very different. I feel like I’m sat next to the writer and we’re reading the script together, he and I. The action directions, whilst descriptive to the point of doing your thinking for you, read like your best mate is walking you through each scene. A nudge here, a friendly and suggestive bit of advice there. I can almost feel his arm round my shoulders! Not gonna lie, I’ve never read anything like it. A gentle and warming revelation.

Hell, page 16 is a series of descriptions of sights along the duo’s journey as their lives unwind together. Such an ease and deftless style, it sweeps you into its world long before you realise you’ve been kidnapped, with no desire for a ransom or release.

The dialogue is a joy. You can feel the characters comraderie, their history, their lives in every line. Real feelings, real dialogue and purpose in every word. Speech isn’t wasted here. It steers its course from planning, to play, flirting to despair. Such a gamut of emotions that run through every page, poetry is one of the few ways to clearly describe this scripts aesthetic.

Interestingly on page 30, Sundance leaping on to a moving train is surprisingly (and probably unknowingly) given the meta treatment. As Sundance jumps, lands and tries not to die, the writer mocks this sequence from previous western movies, where the action was laughed at as a simple stunt. But here it is very clear, can really kill. To mock other movies of the same genre within the script, whilst the very mocked action takes place is so ahead of it’s time and yet knowingly done, is mind blowing.

Right! What did I learn from this script?

1. P.53 has a marvellous introduction for a montage that plays out to a popular song (“Raindrops keep falling on my head” eventually, though here it goes unnamed), but spends more time describing the song than it does the scene that it plays out to. So while this short scene description gets sidetracked, it is a wonderful way to describe the type of musical accompaniment that can follow a scene. Cracking example.

2. Right slap bang in the middle of the script is quite possibly the most exhausting, riveting, nail-bitingly cloying chase sequences I’ve read yet. From the second train robbery, the superposse pursues Butch and Sundance across what feels like half of America. Canyons, Rocky tors, desert, brush and woodland, day and night, up-and-down. It is just utterly relentless. The energy never sags, even when the boys take a brief stop in a brothel. But the menace of the superposse constantly increases. This is chase sequence masterclass writing. An absolute must read for this sequence alone.

3. The tenderness in this script shows its colours in the most surprising places at times. There is a moment in this script where Butch and Sundance are pinned down by bandits firing upon them. For the first time in their lives, they are trying to hold down honest jobs as payroll guards, yet the whole thing feels so similar to their lives as bank robbers before their attempt at going straight, that both characters become momentarily self aware of their choices in life that have led to this point. Suddenly, neither party is sure of how they got there or what they are actually doing with their lives. It creates a wonderfully touching moment between the two characters. Sundance asks Butch “But are we outlaws?” To which the script states; “Butch doesn’t say anything.” Normally this is unnecessary, but this line speaks massive volumes. So I would argue that there is always time for some of these lines. The ones that you’re not supposed to write any more. Because, used correctly, they can carry massive weight. But only if they are used (this kind of) correctly.

There was one thing I couldn’t get out of my head as I was reading this script. It emerged faintly at the beginning, slowly building, ever so cautiously creeping in across the 185 pages of this draft. A mere shadow to begin with, it steadily filled every page and I could not escape it.

What was this feeling?

Then it hit me.

An impending sense...of doom.

Doom for our two heroes, that felt as inescapable as the grave. You never believe that Butch or Sundance are going to survive this way of life. It just doesn’t “feel” like that kind of script. Both sad and tragic, it is a testament to this script that you are rooting for both chaps right up until the infamous, gut-wrenching finale.

A bonafide classic and worthy award winner, seek this dusty legend out if you haven’t watched it already (it’s impossible to separate Paul Newman as Butch and Robert Redford as Sundance from the characters on the page) and be prepared to laugh and cry. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Link to the script;

https://thescriptsavant.com/.../Butch_Cassidy_And_The...