Cover Art for Merkabah Rider 3

Hey all, just popping in to give you an advance look at Juri Umagami’s cover art for Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel, the third book in the reissue of the series.  As with the other covers’ homages to classic westerns, I asked her to base it on the famous promo still of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Back in eighth grade my parents and I took our first trip out to California and stopped by Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, where they had one of those gag photo booths at the back end. They superimposed my face on Paul Newman’s body and my dad’s on Robert Redford’s. I guess I’ve always had a soft spot for this pic since then, and I’m happy to see it here.

DT Moviehouse Review: Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid

After a prolonged hiatus, it’s time once more for my blog feature, DT Moviehouse Reviews, in which I make my way alphabetically through my 200+ DVD/Blu-Ray collection (you can see the list right here) and decide if each one was worth the money. Today I review the timeless classic, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid.

Directed by George Roy Hill

Written by William Goldman

Tagline: Not That It Matters, But Most Of It Is True.

What It’s About:

In the waning days of the American West, notorious bank and train robbers Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and The Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) see the writing on the wall for their way of life and head for Bolivia and a fresh start with schoolteacher Etta Place (Katherine Ross).

Why I Bought It:

The first trip I ever took the West Coast was with my parents. We did the tourist thing, walked Hollywood Blvd, and hit the wax museum. On the way out, my dad and I were pulled aside by the photographer in the gift shop, who put us in front of a screen (I think it was blue, maybe green) and snapped our picture, then put our heads on the bodies of Butch and Sundance, in that famous pose where they’re leaning against some crumbling Bolivian backdrop, possibly on the last day of shooting (no pun intended). And for probably the only time in my life, it was a perfect fit. My dad was Redford, and I was Newman. My mom bought it on the spot, and it’s hanging still in the basement of their house on the stairs going down to his model Santa Fe railroad layout, next to a framed photograph of the real life Hole In The Wall Gang I picked up somewhere.

I had never seen the movie at that point. I was maybe thirteen or fourteen and didn’t care a whit for westerns.

My love for the genre came much later, after I’d burned through Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns, John Ford, and the Duke and came the long long way around the barn back to the great American westerns of the late sixties and seventies, of which is this is one of the very best.

Rewatching this movie is like slipping on an old coat, or seeing a couple friends from the old bunch. You know, the guys you were inseparable with in high school – only neither of you has changed. This is a flick carried on the shoulders of two giants in, if not star-making, star solidifying roles; Paul Newman as the irascible, likable Butch Cassidy, and Robert Redford as the winsome, steely eyed  Sundance Kid.  It’s impossible to imagine William Goldman’s words coming out of any other pair of actors. The charisma, the affability of the two leads is irrepressible, inimitable. Newman and Redford are one of the greatest pairings in movie history, right up there with Bacall and Bogart, Flynn and DeHavilland, Tracy and Hepburn.  This is the touchstone of male buddy movies. Without it Shane Black could never have a career.

If it sounds like I’m taking this one up inordinately, it’s just that there’s nothing to  really say about BC&tSK except praise.  The word classic gets bandied about for every superhero movie and Disney cartoon that comes down the pike – but this is the real deal. A bona fide Hollywood classic. If you haven’t seen it, your repertoire has a great big hole.

Butch and Sundance is the father of bromance movies. It’s a platonic love affair between two guys who are so good together the people they rob step out of cover just to see them do their shtick.  The lawmen that should be arresting them on sight offer them a place at their table. They’re the ideal romantic outlaws, stealing from the modernizing, corporate juggernaut of the advancing railroad and somehow never having a dime to retire on because they frankly suck at it. They don’t kill anybody, take no personal effects, and spend what they earn like water on the myriad of fairweather friends and women who appear out of the woodwork after they pull a job and fade away when the money’s gone. It’s their fallibility that makes them loveable. For as renowned a train and bank robber Butch is, sometimes he uses too much dynamite. For as deadly a gunfighter as Sundance is, he can’t hit the broad side of a barn if he’s not bending, spinning and twisting while he shoots, like some kind of proto-Jon Woo heroic bloodshed protagonist.

I call it a love affair. It’s definitely about the relationship between Butch and Sundance (I think, without any of the homoerotic subtext that you’d expect), but moreso, it’s a love affair between them and us, the audience. It doesn’t take long to fall for Butch and the Kid. They’re devilishly good looking, but again, their fallibility makes them seem real, like a pair of guys you’d like to hang out with, not movie stars aping real people. Katherine Ross has an admittedly light role as schoolteacher and Sundance’s paramour Etta Place, but she’s almost like the blank protagonist character in a video game. She’s the audience, wooed by these two guys into participating in their crazy lives for the thrill. But she’s also, I think, a stand-in for Goldman and George Roy Hill. Everybody falls for Butch and Sundance. You just can’t help it. The filmmakers can’t help it. I think the actors couldn’t even help it. That’s why Newman’s charity for mentally disabled youths was called Hole In The Wall, and Redford’s continuing film festival is named for Sundance.  These are such well written parts. It’s a lightning strike. Perfection.

The rest of the cast is a cornucopia of familiar faces, all memorable even in their minute roles. The Addams Family’s Ted ‘Lurch’ Cassidy as Butch’s enormous, ambitious, and surprisingly clever underling Harvey Logan. Strother Martin rasping through Sweet Betsy From Pike. Jose Torvay, the bandit with the watch from Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, playing a bandit again here. In the opening scene where Butch defuses an ornery gunfighting gambler with a mere mention of Sundance’s name, you can just about make out Sam Elliot’s left hand as he vacates the card table.

One of the more ingenious elements is Burt Bacharach’s swinging, playful score which on paper sounds like a recipe for disaster, but plays perfectly, lending the three montage sequences in which it’s specifically brought to the forefront a fun, airy quality, particularly the song, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head, which plays over a brilliant scene of Newman and Ross just playing around on a bicycle. There’s an underlying sadness to the musical numbers too in their down moments, which matches the images excellently. There’s a sad clarinet and accordion duet during the travel montage in which, via a series of still photos, we see Sundance and Etta dancing at a New Year’s ball on the passenger liner while Butch looks on a little sadly, then dozes in a chair. Very lyrical without a word spoken.

I once heard James Coburn tell a story about working on Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid in which he said that the day before they were to shoot Kristofferson’s death scene, Sam Peckinpah confided to Coburn, “I just don’t wanna kill him.”

We don’t want to see Butch and Sundance get their inevitable comeuppance. Yet when the boys brutally gun down a gang of Bolivian bandits, we know they’ve somehow crossed a line they won’t return from. It’s the heartbreak of the movie that is telegraphed by the bicycle salesman and the relentless, never in focus superposse led by the ominous night tracking Lord Baltimore and Joe LeFors in his white skimmer, and by Jeff Corey’s Sheriff Bedsoe, who warns them, “Your times is over and you’re gonna die bloody. All you can do is choose where.” Etta tells them before well before parting ways, “I won’t watch you die. I’ll miss that scene if you don’t mind.” And whether by some mercy of Hill or reluctance of Goldman, we are spared the final heartbreak of say, The Wild Bunch. Butch and Sundance are surprised by Bolivian troops and after a desperate rush for the horses, are repelled and wind up surrounded by the Bolivian Army. Already bleeding from a half dozen wounds, Butch suggests they try Australia next. They trade a quip about LeFors and rush out shooting. We hear the Bolivian commander give the order to fire, we hear the crash of the guns, but like Bruce Lee forever leaping at the camera in the final shot of Fist Of Fury (no doubt lifted from this), the boys are washed in sepia, not blood, and we get to remember them as we loved them, game and daring, framed in the same daydream magic tones of the clever, old timey cinematograph opening credits.

This movie made legends of the real Butch and Sundance as much as it did the men who portrayed them.

It’s also, on a personal note, a movie I will forever associate with my father.

Best Bit Of Dialogue:

“If he’d just pay me what he’s spending to make me stop robbing him, I’d stop robbing him!”

Best Scene:

The escape from the superposse via the jump from the cliff is hilarious, and deserving of the description classic, but my personal favorite is the moment Butch and Sundance first attempt to rob a Bolivian bank. This has been Butch’s big brainchild the whole movie, and their reason for retreating the heat in America for this tiny but booming South American nation. The first time they try to size up a bank, they are discouraged by a friendly teller who fends them off with simple Spanish, which neither of them can speak or understand.  This necessitates Etta having to tutor them in Spanish. Sundance neglects his lessons for amorous pursuits with her, and Butch scrawls his answers on a crib sheet in the next room when she quizzes them.

They burst into their first job, guns drawn, Butch yelling “Estu es un robo!”

The patrons raise their hands and go to the wall, Sundance covering them.

Butch fumbles through a couple false starts of Spanish, then furiously digs out his wrinkled crib sheet and reads;

“Manos arriba!”

Sundance, exasperated, yells;

“They GOT ‘em up! Skip on down!”

“Arriba!”

“SKIP ON DOWN!”

“Todos ustedes arrismense a la pared!”

“They’re AGAINST the wall ALREADY!”

Butch squints at the paper.

“Donde es….AWWWW You’re so damn smart, YOU read it!”

He flings it down and stalks forward with his gun. Sundance empties the drawers and they run out of the bank, bickering all the way, Sundance muttering “A goddamned CRIB SHEET.”

Would I Buy It Again?

Undoubtedly.

Next In The Queue: Cabin In The Woods

The Big Giveaway Contest

Saludos amigos!

With the Christmas holiday approaching and me having completed the last of my convention appearances for the year, I thought it’d be fun to clear out a little book stock and give you all an end of the year contest.

Normally I just do the usual first five postings thing, but I decided to do something interesting this time out. Below is an excerpt from the final book in my Judeocentric/Lovecraftian weird western series, Merkabah Rider: Once Upon A Time In the Weird West. I like to include little easter eggs in my books, references to things that have inspired me, links to other worlds and characters in the grand fictional multiverse of the collective consciousness, and Merkabah Rider is full of them. Besides the historical characters who pop up from time to time, in the various books I’ve tied the world of the Rider to among other things, Solomon Kane, King Arthur, Quantum Leap, and Doctor Who.

The following passage contains seven references to various books and movies (a hint: three of the names mentioned are part of one reference). Send a list of what they are and where they come from to emerdelacATgmail.com. It’s an open internet test so it probably won’t be too hard. The person with the most correct answers gets the whole enchilada – a signed set of the complete Merkabah Rider series….so if it’s something you’ve been curious to try and haven’t yet, here’s your chance to get the whole series free of charge.

If multiple people get all seven, I’ll choose four winners at random. First place gets the set, second place gets a signed copy of my latest release, Coyote’s Trail. Third place gets a signed copy of Terovolas. Fourth gets a signed copy of Buff Tea. Take a look at the links on the right, click on the book covers to see what each title is about and read a sample from each, if you like.

In the excerpt below there is also an eighth, bonus reference not to a book or a movie. Name it with your picks and I’ll include something random.

And here’s another thing. Even if you don’t feel like looking all this up/don’t know it/don’t care….from now until 11:59PM Pacific December 19th, just drop me an email and you can have one e-copy of anything I’ve written (that I have e-copies of) abso-smurfly free. Limit one per response/email.

I’ll leave the contest open from now until midnight December 20th when I’ll pick and announce the winners and get ‘em in the mail for you by the 21st.

Here’s the excerpt….

In the Todos Mis Amigos cantina, the jeers and passions rose to a fevered pitch around the starkly lit fighting sand, as the black rooster Zorro rose fluttering and sunk its spur into the red shoulder of Gallo del Cielo. Blood flecked out on the sand and fortunes quivered and changed hands.

Among the shadowed patrons sweating tequila over fistfuls of hard earned money, swirling in the dreamy clouds of cigarro smoke, dozens of dramas unfolded that had no bearing upon the mortal battle of the roosters, and yet were reflected in their combat. Red Headed Slim Reezer pondered the betrayal of his partner Jesse McLaughlin. Young Oscar Diggs swore if the black won he would never set foot in Kansas again. A miner named Richard Wilkins III sipped mescal, guessing if the world were still here after tomorrow, maybe he would see what California was like. Lin McAdams waited for High Spade to return with the beer, and thought about the woman sleeping in his hotel room, wondered whether she could love a man that killed his own brother. Freddie Sykes propped a fresh corpse in the corner, pulling the dead man’s hat over his staring face and wiping his knife on his knee, trying to decide if this would affect the bank job he and Dog Kelly had planned for tomorrow, wondering for the twentieth time why he didn’t just find a señorita somewhere and retire. John Russell watched the barbaric exultations of the Indah stoically, inwardly aghast that he was one of them. A giggling woman passed a little white card back to the bespectacled gringo on whose knee she was perched and asked;

“What means ‘Electricisto y Aventurero?”
—–
Hasta pronto! Good luck, and Merry Christmas.