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mericans like historical outlaw figures because they’re a rare example of a David overcoming a Goliath, even if just for a minute. These outlier elements of our country who are seen as unacceptable show up on the scene and change the whole idea of what mainstream means. That type of self-reliance and rugged individualism — as different as everybody is, most Americans have some belief in that idea.
With outlaws, and I’m talking real ones, the public tends to mythologize them. But sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. With Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, there is not even a definitive historical consensus on where those boys died. Billy the Kid’s story is even murkier. These guys would show up “dead” in the newspaper, all those journalists in a hurry to sensationalize some shit. Imagine you’re Butch Cassidy seeing yourself in the paper, and it’s saying you’re dead, but you’re damn well alive. Woody Guthrie sings about that on songs like “Poor Lazarus”: “How do I look, boys, dead or alive?”
The other day, I was watching footage of Robert Redford talking about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He was saying [something like] how Bob Dylan said, “To live outside the law, you gotta be honest.” It’s true, that idea of honor among thieves. Redford was saying that an outlaw Butch Cassidy-type would probably do a better job running the government than the politicians he had in mind in the early Seventies. There’s some truth to that. Then there’s Davy Crockett. [Editor’s note: Charley claims to be a descendant of the legendary Texan.] He’s a complicated individual. He was, at first, an Indian scout. Then, later, he became at odds with the American power structure and sided with the Native American interests on the so-called frontier. He’s infamous for opposing the Indian Removal Act. But it’s all very true that he stood there on the Tennessee parlor floor and said, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” That’s America’s first celebrity.
