March 31, 2007
Nothing is more sobering than the realization that time simply disappears and entire decades pass “quicker than a wink”.
What brought me to this latest revelation about time passing by so rapidly was a story I noticed a few months ago. It concerned Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.
I saw the article last year while surfing the web, printed it out, and slipped it into a bright orange file folder marked “Ideas.” There it sat all this time until the other night when the two of them decided to appear in an otherwise uninteresting dream.
I had been talking to my brother before I went to bed that night, and I am quite sure they popped into my dream because we were discussing their famous western film and this article just before I went to sleep.
Well, there in my dream as youthful and strong as you please were these two legendary stars. They were confidently displaying their trademark, irresistible braggadocio and swagger. We fans adored them for it back then not to mention their striking blue eyes, all of which they still have by the way.
In my dream, they looked just like they did nearly four decades ago!
Since I happened to remember this particular dream, probably because of their drop-dead gorgeous good looks, I went searching for the aforementioned article post haste.
Sure enough, there it was long forgotten in the orange folder.
The story’s title caught my attention immediately, “Crutch Cassidy and the Sunset Kid!”
Clemmie Moodie was the web author on a site originating in the UK.
She wrote about the fact that Sundance (Robert Redford) now looks more like Sunset than Sundance. She assumed that the 80-something Paul Newman probably needed a crutch because he had to lean on Redford at the 25th anniversary (in 2006) of the Sundance Institute.
I must admit that the title of the article “Crutch Cassidy and the Sunset Kid” was indeed humorous.
Moodie argued “even Hollywood superstars, of course, are not immune to the ravages of time.”
Paul Newman says that is not so bad.
Moodie quoted him as saying, “I’m not vain and insecure like many of my fellow actors and actresses. Quite frankly, I like the way I look. I’m not jumping on the Hollywood bandwagon and turning the clock back with a facelift. So what if my face is falling apart? I don’t give a damn. Everyone thinks they can stay pretty for ever, but some come out of Beverly Hills surgeries looking scary to me. Everyone in Tinseltown is getting pinched, lifted and pulled. For many, it has become a sick obsession. They lose some of their soul when they go under the knife and end up looking body-snatched.”
See, “Crutch” still has his strut! And as for “Sunset”, he doesn’t admit in the web story to any facelifts either. He says he just splashes cold water on his face to tighten his facial muscles.
In my dream, 38 years after the movie’s unveiling, I could still see one memorable scene as though it was yesterday. Butch and Sundance were about to jump off a cliff into a raging mountain river in a desperate attempt to escape the relentless pursuit of a posse.
I called my brother the morning after the dream to help me reconstruct that scene since he had committed their parts to memory nearly 40 years earlier.
Just as I expected, he didn’t miss a line.
Butch Cassidy to Sundance when he refused to jump off the cliff: “What’s the matter with you?”
Sundance Kid: “I can’t swim.”
Butch Cassidy: “Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you.”
And with that, they jumped from who knows how high, maybe 75 feet, and survived.
Crutch and Sunset? Phooey. On film or in my dreams, Butch and Sundance will never lose their swagger.
