Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid's Classic Song Had A Whole Lot Of Haters
George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid" arrived at a moment when the Western, the most American of movie genres, was being appropriated by Italian filmmakers and Hollywood-bred revisionists like Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood. Baby Boomer moviegoers were rejecting the old-fashioned white hat/black hat simplicity of their parents' unquestioning era, and finding resonance in the violent, unsentimental depiction of a manifest destiny recklessly pursued and ruthlessly realized. Tonally and thematically, the new Westerns jibed with their counterculture sensibilities.
While "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid" wasn't overtly political, it did appeal to the counterculture audience by teaming one of Hollywood's hottest movie stars in Paul Newman with a ready-to-explode Robert Redford as a couple of carefree outlaws. Hill wisely embraced the aesthetic freedom of the burgeoning New Hollywood revolution, and played directly to his target audience's authority-and convention-flouting tastes. He screwed around with camera placement, noodled about in the editing room, and, to the bewilderment of many (including one of his stars), dropped in an anachronistic pop song to score a scene that does nothing to forward the plot.
This moment remains divisive (younger viewers tend to find it unbearably cheesy), but if you're on the film's loosey-goosey wavelength, it shouldn't be that jarring. Just don't tell Robert Redford this.
'What the hell is that song doing in this film?'
During a Q&A for "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid" at the 2019 TCM Classic Film Festival, songwriter supreme Burt Bacharach remembered the film's unforgettable use of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" causing quite a stir with Redford and a sizable chunk of 20th Century Fox's executives. According to Bachrach, "I heard [...] after the picture was made and done, Robert Redford said, 'What the hell is that song doing in this film?'"
The song –- written by Bachrach and lyricist Hal David, and sung by B.J. Thomas –- accompanies a scene where Newman's Cassidy whisks Sundance's girl Etta Place (Katharine Ross) off on a bicycle, and tries to seduce her by performing a series of tricks on the vehicle. It's a loopy moment that syncs up with the Hippie-fied "free love" movement, and gives Newman the opportunity to perform his own bike stunts for the amusement of his fans. It's also a sequence that likely inspired a slew of corny music videos in the 1980s, but it fits in the context of Hill's movie (and Ross has never looked more luminous onscreen, thanks in part to the scene being shot by her then boyfriend Conrad Hall).
Despite plenty of high-level pushback, Hill stood by the song, as did studio chief Richard D. Zanuck.
Hill's unusual creative choice inspired Sam Raimi
Per Bacharach, he encountered Zanuck at a restaurant after the film's release and learned that "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" almost dropped straight out of the movie:
"[Zanuck] said, 'Let me tell you something Burt, half of the board of 20th Century voted to not have that song in the picture.' So he stood up for it and said, 'I stand by that song.' It wasn't hard to stand by; it was already number one."
Zanuck's instincts were spot-on. "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid" became the top grossing film of 1969, and Bachrach wound up winning two Academy Awards –- one for the song, and another for his jaunty score. Yes, some people still hate the song and its usage in this classic Western, but it has plenty of noteworthy fans. One prominent admirer is Sam Raimi, who paid homage to Hill's idiosyncratic choice by playing the tune over Peter Parker's brief break from web-slinging in his 2004 superhero classic "Spider-Man 2." And, yes, loads of people (killjoys, I say) groaned during that scene, too.