The 1969 movie moment Robert Redford couldn’t stand: “What a stupid idea that is”
Only the most supremely confident, and some might say arrogant, of actors would look at the finished cut of a movie and declare it as cinematic perfection. Robert Redford was not one of those stars, and his first thought when watching one of the most iconic moments of a legendary career was one of utter bemusement.
It was about the only issue he had with the picture as a whole, which Redford immediately knew would be a transformative experience. Those instincts were proven right on the money when the picture became a critical, commercial, and awards season sensation that launched him straight towards the top of the A-list, but there was still one scene that gave him serious reservations.
He wasn’t even near the top of the studio’s wish list to play the secondary title role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid either, only for Paul Newman to insist that Redford was the perfect candidate to play the other lead. Not only did it work wonders for Redford’s standing in the industry, but it instigated a decades-long friendship between the two Hollywood icons.
George Roy Hill’s western recouped its budget more than 15 times over in the United States alone, won four Academy Awards and earned another three nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, made history by winning more Baftas than any movie before or since, and endures as one of the finest and most famous pictures that Redford and Newman have ever been in.
And yet, there was one thing that gave Redford cause for concern, and it was Burt Bacharach’s ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head. “When I saw a rough cut and the song was in it, I said, ‘What in the hell is this?'” he admitted to The New York Times. “I said, ‘Jesus, it’s not even raining, what a stupid idea that is.'”
This is the same song that won the Oscar for ‘Best Original Song’ as part of a soundtrack that scooped an Oscar, Bafta, and Grammy for ‘Best Original Score’. Not only that, but Bacharach’s track spent four weeks at the top of the Billboard charts and sold over two million copies. Needless to say, that placed Redford firmly in the minority of people who thought it wasn’t the right fit for the movie.
Part of Redford’s hesitation came from how unconventional the sequence felt within the context of a western. At a time when the genre was still largely associated with sweeping orchestral scores and dusty realism, inserting a light-hearted pop song into the middle of the film seemed almost absurd on paper. Yet that tonal shift became one of the movie’s defining strengths, giving Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid a playful charm that separated it from the grittier westerns arriving at the end of the 1960s.
It also highlighted the chemistry that made Newman and Redford such an irresistible pairing onscreen. The bicycle montage with Etta Place injected warmth and humanity into characters who otherwise spent much of the film robbing trains and fleeing the law.
Audiences weren’t just watching outlaws anymore. They were watching friends joke, flirt and stumble through ordinary moments together. In hindsight, the scene helped transform the film from a stylish western into something timeless, even if Redford initially thought the whole thing sounded ridiculous.
Redford may not have been involved in the scene where ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’ plays, with that honour reserved for Newman’s Butch Cassidy and Katharine Ross’ Etta Place, but it’s still one of the most memorable sequences from any film in which he’s starred. And to think, the first time he saw it, the actor thought it was a terrible idea to include a contemporary song in a period piece, only to hold his hands up and admit he was wrong.
