Before ‘Brokeback:’ that -other- gay cowboy movie…
Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a re-watch.Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lands on just about every list of the Best Films of the 60s.
The movie snagged four Academy Awards and became a major hit for the era, thanks in no small part to its two leads: Robert Redford and Paul Newman.
The plot: a pair of outlaws, Butch (Newman) and Sundance (Redford) struggle to control their gang in 1890s Wyoming. The pair plot to rob a pair of trains to make off with enough loot to sustain themselves for a good long while, and so Sundance could finally marry his longtime sweetheart, Etta (Kathrine Ross).
All doesn’t go according to plan with their heists, and Butch, Sundance and Etta end up on the run from the law.Director George Roy Hill, working from a script by William Goldman, uses the simple premise as a pretense to stage some wild action sequences, and as a prism through which to view masculinity.
