Benton on Books, Beatty, and Bond

Screenwriter Robert Benton looks a little like Warren Beatty and talks a little like Dustin Hoffman—which is fitting, since both have worked for him. Benton has a whole constellation of stars to his name, but he left them all behind for his talk with New York Times book critic Janet Maslin at Kirkland House on Monday.

Benton is wise in the ways of Hollywood as the martyred-then-hallowed screenwriter of “Bonnie and Clyde” and the beatified and Academy Award-winning writer-director of “Kramer vs. Kramer.” But rather than rehash his many successes, he and Maslin spent their 90 minutes together discussing the “grammar for films” he learned from the French New Wave masters François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Everything about their conversation, from the topic to the manner, was full of deference and humility.

“This may not be the truth for everyone,” Benton said, referring to his filmmaking philosophy, “but it’s the truth for me.”

Benton’s approach is composed of equal parts rural Texas upbringing—straightforward and slightly off-kilter—and 1960s New York—uncompromising and envelope-pushing. Benton was born in Waxahachie, Texas, and lived his first years during the Great Depression. All he wanted to do was read, and he said that he can still remember the look of the covers, the feel of the pages, and the smells coming from the kitchen the first time he sat down with a book.

“I don’t know whether I sat there for two minutes, or three minutes, or five minutes, or 20 minutes,” Benton said. “But as soon as I closed the book, I knew that I was stupid. I didn’t just feel stupid. I knew.”

It was not yet recognized as a medical condition, but Benton suffered from dyslexia, which severely impaired his ability to process written material. What he could do was draw, and the walls of his home were covered with sketches. In fact, drawing was such an important outlet for young Benton that he named one of the main characters in “Bad Company”—a semi-autobiographical film about the break-up of his first writing partnership—“Drew,” the past tense of “draw.”

When he wasn’t drawing, Benton was going with his father to the local movie palace, where—since he couldn’t read—he got his first lessons in narrative. He watched the John Huston film “Asphalt Jungle” twice, never even leaving his seat in the theater, to try and make sense of the opening documentary footage. Benton called movies a “substitute for life” in his early years, and said that his record for number of movies watched in one day was seven.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin, Benton served in the army (painting dioramas at Fort Bliss) before moving to New York in 1960 to work for Esquire Magazine. It was at Esquire that Benton met David Newman, a kindred cinephile spirit. When Benton was fired from his position as art director (for, among other things, spending his afternoons watching New Wave films at the Thalia movie theatre), he and Newman got together to write the screenplay for one of American cinema’s most respected and reviled films, “Bonnie and Clyde.”

“History is the best story,” Benton said when Maslin asked when “Bonnie and Clyde” finally became a “national treasure.” Co-star of the film and first-time producer Warren Beatty begged studios all over Hollywood to pick up the film. When Warner Bros. finally agreed to make it, they offered Beatty 40% of the total gross rather than the usual flat fee, thinking that it would save them money if the film flopped.

At first the public was revolted by what it deemed to be the film’s glorification of violence. “Bonnie and Clyde” was not the first film to depict violence, but it was among the first film to celebrate it. The film’s final scene, in which the famous pair of Depression-era bank robbers die in a hail of bullets, is balletically graceful but horrifyingly brutal.

According to Benton, it wasn’t until Newsweek’s Joe Morgenstern retracted his original review, which had called the film “a squalid shoot-’em-up,” that “Bonnie and Clyde” got any positive press. Film critic Pauline Kael’s fervid defense of the film in The New Yorker raised her status from lauded critic to legendary cultural bellwether. By 1997, the American Film Institute was ranking it as number 27 on its first list of the 100 greatest movies of all time.

While many of Benton’s subsequent films (“Kramer v. Kramer,” “Places in the Heart”) have had almost as much critical success as “Bonnie and Clyde,” many of them (“Billy Bathgate,” “Still of the Night”) have been utter failures. Rather than ride that roller coaster, Benton has approached both his high and low points as learning experiences.

“Survival is about adaptation, not who you kill off,” he said.

That, of course, applies to life and not films. As far as films go, Benton still has at least one person he’d like to take down.

“I’d to anything to make a James Bond movie,” Benton said. “He would trip and die in the first scene, and then Miss Moneypenny would be left to clean everything up. That’s what interests me.”

—Staff writer Jillian J. Goodman can be reached at jjgoodm@fas.harvard.edu.