Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in search of a more successful criminal career. In 2003, the film was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The American Film Institute ranked "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" as the 73rd-greatest American film on its "AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)" list. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were ranked 20th greatest heroes on "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains". In late 1890s Wyoming, Butch Cassidy is the affable, clever, talkative leader of the outlaw Hole in the Wall Gang. His closest companion
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