How they pulled off the cliff jump scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]A scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where they jump off the cliff into the river is the definition of movie magic. The cliff they shot at was in Colorado, but the water wasn't deep enough for the stunt men to jump into. So what they did was build a platform for Butch and Sundance to jump onto. And then back in LA, they shot the wide of the stunt men jumping from a 70ft crane into water. But they had to make that body of water look like a river. So they used 12 boat motors to stir up the water. And then they also used a matte painting that looked like the cliffs that they were shooting at in Colorado. So they shot through that matte painting and then flipped the image to match their scene. Just sometimes I wish the CGI wasn't an option.