It's my opinion that is someone like Mike Nichols wants to say such things and make such allegations about William Goldman, he should at least name names. It's easy to say Goldman ripped off everything under the sun in constructing 'Butch', but unless Nichols names names and cites specific examples, it's a meaningless allegation.
I could say that Nichols ripped off every shot in The Graduate from other directors. But since I'm not citing examples, just disregard it as bitter rambling.
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Funny thing about The Graduate. I recall some critic saying somewhere about The Graduate that "the story of the older femme fatale seducing a young innocent male is as old as time."
And I remember ANOTHER critic somewhere saying about ANOTHER Dustin Hoffman movie -- Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs -- that "the time-tested story of the nerdy worm turning against his bullies is as old as Harry Langdon." Of course, that's an old review and nobody knows who Harry Langdon WAS -- a silent comedian who played wimpy guys who fought back against bullies.
Of course, The Graduate is from when the movies were just ABOUT to lose the Hays Code -- hence, split-second flashes of Mrs. Robinson's nude body (body-doubled) and the overall "near-incestuous adultery" plot(first for comedy, then for drama) -- and Straw Dogs is when the movies had LOST the Hays Code -- hard R, nudity, rape.
So..."everything old is new again" but in the "New Hollywood," they had more leeway, sex and violence wise.
But: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had very little sex (Sundance's fake rape threat towards Etta; Butch's cavorting with a hooker played by Cloris Leachman) and not all that much violence (one major shootout with banditos, one final shootout with the Army).
What was Butch Cassidy like?
Oh...it was like several OTHER buddy movies:
The Odd Couple (1968) ..a big hit from the year before Butch, but with two less handsome buddies(Lemmon and Matthau.)
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roger1 (3626)
a month ago
And "The Road to Rio" and "The Road to Zanzibar" and "The Road to Hong Kong" -- a series of comedies starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby as buddies -- Crosby the smoothie(and lady killer!), Hope the goof and coward(though he got girls too.)
And you could go back to movies with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy...
...but none of these fit, do they?
Neither Newman(Butch) nor Redford(Sundance) were goofy looking guys like Walter Matthau, Bob Hope -- and even Bing Crosby. Jack Lemmon -- first considered to play BUTCH CASSIDY(but rejected before he could say "yes") was handsome enough, but Newman and Redford were off-the-charts handsome at their ages in 1969. Women tore the covers with Robert Redford off all Life Magazines on the stand with him on the cover as the moustache man Sundance.
I think the world's most classic phrase accounts for the success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as Number One of 1969: "Women wanted to have them, and men wanted to BE them" -- especially men who wanted to be buddies(hey, there was a homoerotic angle, too -- even more pronounced in The Sting.)
But William Goldman's Oscar-winning, high auction script had something else going for it: great, GREAT one-liners and banter.
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