Daily Dialogue — July 18, 2015

Sundance Kid: It’s your great ideas that got us into this mess. I never want to hear another one of your great ideas. Ever!
Butch Cassidy: Australia. I thought that secretly you wanted to know so I told you.
Sundance Kid: That’s your great idea?
Butch Cassidy: The latest in a long line. We get out of here alive, we go to Australia. Goodbye, Bolivia. Hello to Australia.
Sundance Kid: Australia is no better than here.
Butch Cassidy: That’s all you know.
Sundance Kid: Name me one thing.
Butch Cassidy: They speak English in Australia.
Sundance Kid: They do?
Butch Cassidy: That’s right, smart guy, so we wouldn’t be foreigners. We’d blend in more easily. They got horses in Australia and thousands of miles of countryside that we can hide out in, and good climate. Nice beaches. You can learn to swim.
Sundance Kid: No. Swimming isn’t important. What about the banks?
Butch Cassidy: Very easy. Easy, ripe, and luscious.
Sundance Kid: The banks or the women?
Butch Cassidy: Well, once you get one you get the other.
Sundance Kid: But… Australia is quite a long way from here.
Butch Cassidy: Oh, please! Everything with you has got to be perfect!
Sundance Kid: I just don’t want to get there and realize that it stinks, that’s all.
Butch Cassidy: At least think about it.
Sundance Kid: All right… I’ll think about it.

They pull themselves to their feet.

Butch Cassidy: Ready? OK, when we get outside and we get to the horses, whatever happens, just remember one thing… hey, wait a minute.
Sundance Kid: What?
Butch Cassidy: You didn’t see Lefors out there, did you?
Sundance Kid: Lefors? No.
Butch Cassidy: Oh, good. For a moment there I thought we were in trouble.

— Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), written by William Goldman

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Survival.

Trivia: According to screenwriter William Goldman, his screenplay originally was entitled “The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy.” Both Steve McQueen and Paul Newman read the script at approximately the same time, and agreed to do it, with McQueen playing the Sundance Kid. When McQueen dropped out, the names reversed in the title, as Newman was a superstar.

Dialogue On Dialogue: This is one of the greatest endings in all of movie history as it works on so many levels. Butch coming up with yet another plan drives home a central point of the story: These two men are stuck in the past and their unwillingness to change is what does them in. It’s also a great example of audience foreknowledge: We know what awaits the pair while they don’t. It’s this creative choice — by the great William Goldman — that gives the final interchange such poignancy. They think they are going to survive… but we know they’re not.