Butch and Sundance: The Early Days Butch and Sundance: The Early Days Butch and Sundance: The Early Days is a 1979 Western film and prequel of sorts to the 1969 film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". It stars Tom Berenger as Butch Cassidy and William Katt as the Sundance Kid. It was directed by Richard Lester and written by Allan Burns. It generally received mixed reviews but was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design. Wyoming. Wannabe outlaw Butch Cassidy joins forces with sharpshooter Harry Longabaugh (who renames himself the Sundance Kid) and they carry out a series of robberies. However, Butch is
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid says he wrote the story as an original screenplay because he did not want to do the research to make it authentic as a novel. Goldman later stated: The whole reason I wrote the ... thing, there is that famous line that Scott Fitzgerald wrote, who was one of my heroes, "There are no second acts in American lives." When I read about Cassidy and Longbaugh and the superposse coming after them—that's phenomenal material. They ran to South America and lived there for eight years and that was what thrilled me: they had a second act. They were more legendary