The iconic movie scene Robert Redford originally thought was dumb: “How wrong I was”
As an Academy Award-winning director and Golden Globe-winning actor with honorary lifetime achievement prizes from both organisations, Robert Redford has extensive and trophy-laden experience in what it takes to craft a successful feature.
The star has lent his name to a litany of all-timers, including The Sting, All the President’s Men, Ordinary People, Out of Africa, Barefoot in the Park, and The Candidate, becoming one of the defining leading men of his generation into the bargain, not to mention the succession of unforgettable scenes he’s performed along the way.
However, when it came to one of the most iconic moments of his entire career, Redford initially operated under the assumption it wasn’t going to work. A single musical interlude was never going to crater a film that won four Oscars and set a record at the Baftas as the single most decorated movie in the ceremony’s existence, but the co-lead of the timeless western thought it might.
The last shot of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is cemented in cinema history as one of the most legendary endings there’s ever been, but Burt Bacharach’s ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’ managed to seize longevity of its own by becoming one of the singer’s most well-known songs, topping the charts in multiple countries around the world and selling over two million copies in the United States alone.
On the surface, it seems ill-at-ease to serve as the soundtrack to a gun-toting and bullet-riddled Western even during one of its more tender and romantically inclined moments, which is exactly what Redford thought when he first heard the track. “When the film was released, I was highly critical,” he admitted to USA Today. “How did the song fit in with the film? There was no rain.”
Struggling to wrap his head around Bacharach’s stylings, the star was at least happy to admit he’d been proven wrong when ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’ became a monster. “At the time, it seemed like a dumb idea,” Redford explained. “How wrong I was, as it turned out to be a giant hit.”
Bacharach would win two Oscars for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for both the score and the song, as well as a Golden Globe, a Bafta, and a Grammy. Suffice to say, Redford could have despised ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’ with an intense passion until the end of eternity, and he’d still be firmly in the minority.
The songwriter was eventually aware of the potential backlash, though, confirming it wasn’t until after the film’s release he discovered “the entire board over at 20th Century” and Redford “didn’t like the song,” but success simply can’t be argued with. In terms of awards won it ended up being one of the most successful movie songs ever written.
