Factual error: Near the end of the film Butch is complaining about the living conditions they have to endure - jungles, swamps, snakes, night work - and Sundance sarcastically retorts "Bitch, bitch, bitch!" In 1908 the term meant just what it literally means: "Female dog." It did not adopt its current meaning of "complain" until much later. At the time the film is set - outside the context of "female dog" - it was considered to be a serious obscenity, and it would not have been used to describe something as ordinary as someone moaning about his living conditions.
Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (1969)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: George Roy Hill
Starring: Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Katharine Ross, Strother Martin
Etta Place heads home after Butch and Sundance attempt to go straight. When the two arrive in town with some stolen houses, the Bolivian authorities are notified. Butch and Sundance are then caught in the middle of a shootout, with the Bolivian Police. After being wounded badly, Butch tells Sundance that if they survive the ordeal, they should travel to Australia. The Bolivian Army joins the fight. The film ends with Butch and Sundance running out into the open, and then the famous freeze frame shot just as they come out. Although multiple rifle and pistols bursts are heard, the fate of the two outlaws is left to the viewer.
Craig
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Trivia: Katherine Ross, (Etta Place) was caught operating a camera, filming some footage of the arrival of the train carrying the "super posse". In the late 60s the US film business was strict, closed shop union (to a great extent it still is) and Ross operating a camera was against every rule there is. Several senior crew members demanded her dismissal from the film but producer John Foreman and Unit Production Manager Lloyd Anderson, aware of the fact that a lot of scenes with her in it would have to be reshot at absurd expense, argued for a compromise to which the union agreed - none of the footage she shot would be used (it wasn't) and she would be asked not to be on set while scenes in which she was not involved were shot. Her gender was totally irrelevant to the issue. This is confirmed in William Goldman's excellent memoir, "Which Lie Did I Tell?"
Question: The beginning of the film states that most of it is true. Are there any specific happenings which can be pointed out as not true?
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Answer: It's doubtful Butch and Etta rode around on a bicycle together, and Butch and Sundance did not jump off a cliff into a river.
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