Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would say yee-ha!

Bernie is exactly the kid of bastard they would love to take off: rich, greedy and full of himself. The kind of guy who, back in the day have spent most of his time trying to figure out the best way to cheat farmers and Indians out of the land they worked for a lifetime. They would have taken his watch and his wallet and done it with relish.

Butch and Sundance didn’t much care for judges: but if they were around today I think they would take one look at Bernie and another at his victims and figure that the wise jurist was exactly correct in the imposing of the seven score and ten.

I heard a woman on the radio today who said she lost everything in ol’ Bern’s scheme. Money, pension, home, the work product of a lifetime.

I wish Butch was still here to do what he was said to often do for poor widows: put a few dollars in their hands and tell them not to worry.

Paul Newman & Katharine Ross.

Judging by the amount of radio interviews I’ve been doing, people really care about the Sundance Kid.

Ever since news got out that Utah filmmaker Marilyn Grace and physical anthropologist John McCullough had unearthed the remains of one William Henry Long, wireless hosts from coast to coast have been asking me for my opinion. I guess they figure it’s worth something because of all the research I did for ETTA.

Do I think, they ask, that this Bill Long could actually be the Kid? What do I think of the photo comparisons between the two men? Can DNA evidence prove that they’re one and the same?

I answer the questions as well as I can – after all I’ve got a novel to sell – but I don’t flatter myself that all this interest is a tribute to me or ETTA or even the intrepid souls digging up that body in Duchesne, Utah.

It’s actually a tribute to George Roy Hill, William Goldman, Paul Newman and Robert Redford: the team responsible for the great film, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid.

Does anyone really think that there would be enough interest in Sundance for radio guys to call me if it hadn’t been for this classic movie? Believe me, nobody outside of western nuts would care if Grace and McCullough had found Marion Hedgepeth (who?).

It was Hill’s direction, Goldman’s script and the star power of Redford and Newman that made the two outlaws real to us. For most people Paul and Bob are Butch and Sundance and will be forever more. Photos of the real guy or not, most people will picture Redford when the DNA results are finally announced.

Truth may be stranger than fiction, but it’s nowhere near as powerful. Two screen legends were responsible for creating a western legend so strong that it’s lasted 40 years…and can still get radio types from Minneapolis to Portland to call an author in Philadelphia just to see if he’s got anything new to say about it.