Few New Haveners know or remember this, but when "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" hit the screen 40 years ago, it had its world premiere right here at the Roger Sherman Theater.
Our town had a local connection: the film's director, George Roy Hill, was a Yale graduate, class of 1943. When he unveiled his work at that downtown theater, he brought along the film's stars, Paul Newman (also a Yale grad) and Robert Redford.
Yale's Whitney Humanities Center commemorated the event this weekend (Oct. 23-25) by showing that movie, Hill's "Slaughterhouse-Five" and two documentaries, "The Making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Making of Slaughterhouse-Five."
"Slaughterhouse-Five," based on the great novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., is one of my favorite movies and who doesn't like watching Butch and Sundance? Who can forget Newman on that bicycle with Katharine Ross to the tune of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"? But I was more interested in seeing the two behind-the-scenes documentaries, so I made it to the Humanities Center Saturday afternoon to check them out.
Here's a great thing about living in or near New Haven, even if you're not a Yalie or an alumnus: for many events such as this one, you can just walk in, no admission asked, sit down and take in some fine work as well as hear insightful discussion in follow-up question-and-answer sessions.
That's what I did on a rainy Saturday afternoon, although I was stunned to see only about 15 other people in the auditorium. Where is the Yale film community? Maybe more people showed up Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon to see the actual films; I hope so.
But for those select few who turned out Saturday afternoon, we got a rare chance to see those two documentaries, especially the one about the making of "Slaughterhouse-Five," as it isn't available to the public. Yale has it and is taking good care of it until, one hopes, legal issues can be resolved and it is released to the public.
On hand to talk about the documentaries was Robert Crawford, who directed "The Making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and co-directed "The Making of Slaughterhouse-Five." Nick Doob, the other co-director of "The Making of Slaughter-house Five," was there too.
Both guys were personable, candid and generous with their time. Crawford told us, as was evident from the documentaries, that making a movie is "organized chaos, like going to war. It's moving 200 people and tons of equipment. So it's a very anxious process."
But Crawford said Newman always wanted to have fun and was able to lighten up the atmosphere. Watching Hill at work, the viewer sees an intense, focused but kind man who appreciates input from his actors. (Hill died in 2002 but won fame and recognition for these two films as well as "The Sting"; he got an Oscar for that one.)
Vonnegut was interviewed for the "Slaughterhouse-Five" documentary and he avidly endorsed the film of his book. He was clearly amazed Hill had pulled it off; this was a novel that jumped back and forth from World War II and the bombing of Dresden, Germany (which Vonnegut witnessed as a prisoner of war) to present day and then the far future on the planet Trafalmadore.
Crawford told a great anecdote: Hill asked Vonnegut to do a cameo in the film, playing the crotchety author who is preparing a book on the Dresden bombing. The guy is in a hospital bed next to Billy Pilgrim, protagonist of "Slaughterhouse-Five" and the author keeps talking about his great book project. Pilgrim (played by Michael Sacks in his first screen role) turns and says softly, "I was there." The author gruffly replies, "The hell with him; let him write his own book." Well, Vonnegut delivered the lines and Hill, in the editing room, had to conclude it didn't work -- Vonnegut was too nice to convincingly play that part. And so Vonnegut's scene ended up on the cutting room floor (where it is now?) and another person was called it to play that part.
I suggest you go out and rent "Slaughter-House Five" (but first read the book, if you haven't already). This is a great humanitarian anti-war statement. It's fitting it was shown at a Humanities Center.