Tag Archives: The Towering Inferno (1974)

The Quippy Fun of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid

Over at film.avclub, Tom Breihan offers an interesting critique on the classic 1969 George Hill directed, Paul Newman and Robert Redford starring Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

You can trace the quippy fun of Marvel blockbusters straight back to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

It’s a fascinating –very fascinating, IMHO- look at the film. Here’s the movie’s trailer:

I love Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. While parts of the film may have aged (this is bound to happen with most films), it remains a beautifully entertaining quirky western/buddy comedy, with Newman and Redford positively shining in the title roles.

I added a comment to the article and will post it here (with a few minor alterations/additions for the sake of clarity):

Originally, Steve McQueen was intended to play the role of the Sundance Kid opposite Paul Newman. For those unaware of the fact, in the 1960’s Newman and McQueen were fierce competitors for the title of most popular movie star, and McQueen in particular viewed Newman as his greatest rival.

So the idea of having the two play in a movie was incredibly intriguing, though it ultimately didn’t happen. And yet, I wonder what Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would have been like had Steve McQueen taken on the role. Would it have worked quite as well? Would McQueen’s Sundance have been a little too serious versus the more charming Redford take? Not that McQueen couldn’t be funny/charming as well, but like a few other movie “near-misses” with actors who could have taken on a role (Frank Sinatra or Robert Mitchum as Dirty Harry, for instance), perhaps this end result was for the best.

Steve McQueen was pursued for the lead role in the 1978 Walter Hill directed film The Driver (no relation to the more recent Ryan Gosling film) but he turned the role down and they got Ryan O’Neal to play the protagonist. He… wasn’t right for it, IMHO. Had McQueen taken the role, I suspect that film would have gone down in history as McQueen’s last great role…

Steve McQueen and Paul Newman did manage to share principle roles in a film a few years later, The Towering Inferno. The issue of whose name should be presented as the movie’s “star” continued to be an issue, which was resolved in this way, by having McQueen listed “first” but lower than Paul Newman, who was listed “higher”!

Image result for towering inferno credits

This is a screen shot of the opening credits of the film, and here you have the poster itself, which also features that same staggered credit line:

Image result for towering inferno credits

Again, McQueen is listed “first”, but Paul Newman is listed “higher”!