Stories: Not Too Far From The Ocean
The End of Polio? • I Was a Long-boarder • The Draft: What's Your Problem? • Timothy Leary? • To Ski or Not to Ski • Butch and Sundance • Dogs, Dogs, Dogs! • Arrivals • It's Just a Car • Fish On! • Music Musings • Walter Mitty Redux • Clamming and Crabbing • Grandpop: Can We Talk?
Butch and Sundance
One of the highlights of my education and early design career was studying and working with John Neuhart, who was both my mentor and professor at the then UCLA Graphic Design program. John had previously worked as a designer at The Eames Office, which only deepened my admiration for him. His passion, boundless energy, and incredible stories about typography, graphic design, and film were truly inspiring.
As a graduate student at UCLA, I felt honored when John invited me to collaborate with him on a montage sequence for the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Being involved in film had always been a dream of mine, especially since my father worked in the film industry in the early 1930s. John provided me with a copy of the film's script, and I was thrilled to learn that it would star Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Katharine Ross—not to mention the film's script was downright hilarious.
John had a small office at Twentieth Century Fox Studios on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, not far from where I lived in Santa Monica. I remember going to the Fox studio lot in the afternoons after my classes at UCLA. My task was to photograph stills submitted by photographer Larry Schiller, featuring Butch, Sundance, and Etta, using a Polaroid camera on a copy stand. I then cut and pasted these images together with early photographs of New York from the 1800s that John had researched for the montage.
The concept of the montage was to create a seamless transition, a segue from the U.S. to South America, since Butch and Sundance were being relentlessly pursued by Indian tracker "Lord Baltimore," lawman Joe Lefors, and The Union Pacific Railroad.
As far as creative input for the montage project was concerned, John was in charge but he did listen to my suggestions. We created a storyboard that accompanied our photo paste-ups that was sent to the animation department at Fox to film a rough cut of the sequence.
On a side note, I remember John once saying,
"The height of my creativity comes out of the end of an X-Acto knife."
The montage sequence for "Butch Cassidy And The Sundace Kid" feels a bit dated to me these days and I always thought it could have been a bit shorter. That said, I had an incredible experience working with John Neuhart on this project—we miss you John.
Below is a video clip of the montage.
