NEW YORK - Oscar-winning filmmaker Robert Benton resets the rules as co-creator of "Bonnie and Clyde" in Hollywood, and later gains mainstream verification as author and director of "Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Kramer" and "Kramer" and died at the age of 92.
Benton's son, John Benton, said he died Sunday at his home in Manhattan, calling him a "natural cause."
In a 40-year screen career, the Texas native has won six Oscar nominations and won three championships: Writing and directing "Cramer vs. Cramer" and Writing "The Place in the Heart." He is widely appreciated by the actor's attention and trust and is directed by Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Sally Field. Although severe dyslexia caused him to read more than a few books at a time as a child, he wrote and directed the film adaptation of the novel in novels by Philip Roth, El Doctorow and Richard Russo.
Benton was the artistic director of Esquire Magazine in the early 1960s, and his love for French New Wave films and stories of old gangsters (and news that a friend got $25,000 for Doris Day scripts, inspired him and Esquire editor David Newman to draft a treatment for the lives of Robbers-Robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker and Bonnie Parker in the Depressed Age to show that it was 196,000,000.
Their project took years to complete, as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were among the directors who rejected them in a movie Warren Beatty agreed to produce and star. Directed by Arthur Penn and starring Beatty and Faye Dunaway, “Bonnie and Clyde” overcame the initial critical resistance of 1967, defeated the film’s shocking violence and became one of the hit rocks of the culture of the 1960s and became the beginning of a more open and creative era in Hollywood.
Benton and Newman’s original story is even more bold: they made Clyde Barrow bisexual and formed a tee relationship with Bonnie and his male vacation driver. Both Beatty and Penn are resisted, while Barrow is portrayed as powerless, uncredible Robert Towne makes many other changes to the script. "Honestly, I don't know who 'Auteur' of 'Bonnie and Clyde' is," Benton later told Mark Harris, author of 'Revolutionary Pictures,' a book about 'Bonnie and Clyde,' and four other films from 1967.
For the next decade, Benton's films weren't close to the influence of "Bonnie and Clyde," though he continued to achieve critical and commercial success. His writing credits include "Superman" and "What's wrong, Doc?" He directed and co-wrote carefully examined works like "Bad Company," a revisionist featuring Jeff Bridges, and "The Late Show", a melancholy comedy for which his script earned an Oscar nomination.
His career soared in 1979, when he adapted Avery Corman's novel Kramer and Kramer, about a self-absorbing advertising executive who became his youngest son's loving parents after his wife walked out, just to let her return and ask for custody. Starring Hoffman and Streep, the film was praised for changing family roles and keen, emotional portraits of expectations, and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Hoffman was ruthless with the film business at the time and would quote “Cramer vs. Cramer”, while Benson’s guidance was to restore his love for film performance.
Five years later, Benton returned to the Oscars with a more personal film, Plote In The Heart, where he wrote family stories and childhood memories in a 1930s drama, a mother of two in Texas who had played in two in Texas who struggled to stick to their land after her husband was killed.
"I think when I saw this all tied together, I was surprised by the romantic views of the past," Benton told the Associated Press in 1984.
Benton was born outside Dallas in Waxahachie, Texas. He owed his early love for the film to his father, Ellery Douglass Benton, a telephone company employee, and instead of asking about homework, he brought his family to the picture. Elder Benton will also share memories of attending funerals at Barrow and Parker, Texas, who grew up in the Dallas area.
Robert Benton studied at the University of Texas and Columbia University, and then served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956. Benton helped win the magazine’s long-standing questionable achievement award and dated Gloria Steinem, then got the staff with the help of Humor! He married artist Sallie Rendigs in 1964. They have a son.
Betton often endured a long dry spell between hits. His latter films include disappointing thrillers Billy Bartgate, Human Stains and Twilight. He had a greater success in the 1994 release of The No Man's Fool, starring Paul Newman, and in his last Oscar-nominated performance, he was a small town troublemaker in upstate New York. Benton's film is based on Russo's novel and is nominated for the best adaptation of script.
“When the Academy Awards nomination, I once asked me once, I was nominated, ‘What is the biggest thing about the Academy Awards?’” Benton told Venice Magazine in 1998. "I said 'When you go to the awards ceremony, you see some people, some people dealing with some of them, some people with you who are over 10 years old, some people, some people, some people, some people, you have two days of people, and this is your family,'This is my life."