There have been many tales of their escape from Bolivia,
including one that Butch returned to the United States and spent his late years
under another name in Spokane, Washington. All of these have been effectively
debunked by Buck and Anne Meadows, in several editions of Digging Up Butch and Sundance, but there’s
a new Butch story out in cinematic form that depicts an aging Butch – portrayed
by Sam Shepard – brought out of retirement in Bolivia.
I haven’t yet seen Spanish director Mateo Gil’s Blackthorn, but Buck has sent
me some commentary that I think is worth passing on. “Blackthorn is fictional, not that there's anything wrong with that, most
movies are, but as a drama, not very entertaining. Plodding and preachy, though
the Bolivian scenery is breathtaking. The film will most certainly
deliver a jolt to tourism there. Rachel Saltz's review
in The New York Times last week pretty much identifies Blackthorn's
dramatic problems. That said, a lot of critics liked the film.
“Although there are
dozens of folkloric stories of Butch's (and Sundance's) resurrection in various
parts of the world (inventoried in "Butch and
Sundance: Still Dead?") there are no tales of his continuing to live
in Bolivia. Likewise, the idea of an ex-Pinkerton agent (played
wonderfully by Stephen Rea in the movie) residing in Bolivia is
fictional. In interviews, Blackthorn director Mateo Gil said that they
made a decision to depict Cassidy as a social bandit. That they
did. The viewer all but expected Cassidy to pull Das Kapital out of his
saddlebags.
“The real bandit,
though, was just that, a bandit, who robbed banks and other financial
institutions because, as Willie Sutton said, "that's where the money
is." Finally, a major plot point revolves around the workers
expropriating the mines in the late 1920s; in fact the mines were not
expropriated until 1952, and then not by the workers but by the government.”
“Coincidentally, the
was a major mine payroll holdup in the late 1920s, in Pulacayo, by the Smith
gang, a trio of UK and Americans, ex-mine workers. They were all captured
and went to jail. Bolivian filmmaker Antonio Eguino worked that story
into his 2007 film, Los
Andes No Creen en Dios, an adaptation of Adolfo Costa du Rels's novel.”
Despite Dan’s critique,
I’ll probably see the film myself – I’m a sucker for Westerns, even
counter-factual ones, especially if they involve South America and Butch
Cassidy. I might wait until it’s out on DVD, though.
Moon Patagonia on
the Road
Starting tonight, I
take the new third edition of Moon Handbooks
Patagonia on the road, with a series of digital slide presentations
on southernmost South America. In addition to covering the capitals of Buenos Aires
and Santiago,
the gateway cities to Patagonia, I will offer a visual tour of the Chilean and
Argentine lakes districts, Argentina's wildlife-rich coastline and Chile's
forested fjords, the magnificent Andean peaks of the Fitz Roy range and Torres del Paine,
and the uttermost part of the Earth in Tierra del Fuego.
I will also include the Falkland Islands,
with their abundant sub-Antarctic wildlife.
The first event will
take place at 7 p.m. tonight, October 18, at Wide World Books
(7 p.m), 4411 Wallingford Avenue North, Seattle,
Washington 98103, tel. 206/634-3453. Tomorrow, Wednesday, I will be Village Books,
1200 Eleventh Street, Bellingham, Washington
98225, tel. 360/671-2626, also at 7 p.m. On Friday October 21 at 6:30 p.m., I will at the San Mateo County
Library, 620 Correas Street, Half Moon Bay, California
94019, tel. 650/726-2316. On Saturday the 22nd, at 5 p.m., I will be at the Travel Bug, 839 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, New Mexico
87501, tel. 505/992-0418.
For those planning
trips to the south, there be will be ample time for questions and answers.
Books, including my other titles on Argentina, Chile and Buenos Aires, will be
on sale at all the events. Admission is free but seating is limited, so it’s a
good idea to get there early.
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