Buddy, buddy

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

(1969)

I'm always aware of May 2 because on that date in 1970 when I rolled my father's red sporty (no, really!) Falcon on the way to my girlfriend's prom. (Yes, you're right: the relationship didn't last long after that, even though her injuries were even more minor than mine--in those seatbelts-aren't-cool days, we were both thrown from the car before its roof got squashed down onto the seats.)

Anyway, this year I noticed early enough that May 2 was coming up to boost something I already had in my Nf queue to the top slot: the movie this girl and I saw on our first date. This is a film I loved dearly for years--probably watched it a half-dozen times between 1970 and maybe about 2000 before the scene that was titillating when I was 16 just became unwatchable: you know the one: Butch's rape-fantasy scene with Etta, which she finally defuses with the punchline that reveals that she's in on the joke. (There's other stuff that was always unwatchable, of course, but for aesthetic rather than political reasons: what the fuck is that B. J. Thomas VH1 video of a lame Bacharach-David song doing in there? Ugh.)

So tonight, watching again for the first time in years, I studied that scene closely, to see whether director George Roy Hill gives us any clues that it's all good clean fun. Butch does address Etta as "teacher lady," so it's clear that he knows who she is, at least. But no: he cocks his revolver; she trembles in a convincing simulation of terror: it's an indefensible scene, ratcheting up the adolescent fantasy of me and countless other 16-year-old boys with safely-PG-suggestive glimpses of Katharine Ross flesh and the promise of power as sex, sex as power.

Still, the good is awfully good: the opening blackjack sequence, Butch's dismissal of the challenge to his leadership, the camaraderie between the boys as they wonder of their pursuers, "Who are those guys?" Oh, and Strother Martin, full stop. I guess I'll watch it again sometime. But I'll never watch it again without feeling a little dirty.