Alias Smith and Jones called the Devil's Hole Gang, loosely based on the Hole in the Wall Gang from which Cassidy recruited most of his outlaws. To lend them an element of audience sympathy, Heyes and Curry were presented as men who avoided bloodshed (though Curry did once kill in self-defense) and always were attempting to reform and seek redemption for their "prior ways". The names "Smith" and "Jones" originated from a comment in the 1969 film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", when before one of their final hold-ups, the characters are outside a bank in Bolivia and Sundance turns to Butch and
The Wild Bunch The film received two Academy Award nominations, for Best Original Screenplay (Walon Green, Roy N. Sickner, Sam Peckinpah) and Best Original Music Score (Jerry Fielding). At the 42nd Academy Awards ceremony, both awards went to crew members of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (screenwriter William Goldman and composer Burt Bacharach). Cinematographer Lucien Ballard won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography. Decades later the American Film Institute placed the film in several of its "100 Years" lists: The film is ranked #94 on "Empire" magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time. In 1999,