Robert Benton has come to town to hype his latest motion picture, ”Billy Bathgate,” and, first off, he would like to take care of business.
Starting this summer, speculation and hearsay have been thrown against a wall, with some of it sticking. For openers, the Los Angeles Times reported in July that the movie-estimated to have cost around $50 million-was an ongoing
”major headache,” and that an insider from Disney`s Touchstone Pictures division considered the rough cut to be a ”mess.”
And just last week, Entertainment Weekly magazine ventured that Disney had pulled it from the summer lineup because of difficulties involving the reshooting of the ending, then ”suddenly” rescheduled it for early November (it opened here Friday) following speculation in the New York Times` fall arts preview that ”Billy Bathgate” was going to be Disney`s own ”Heaven`s Gate.”
Now sitting in a Near North hotel suite, Benton-a soft-spoken veteran writer-director (”The Late Show,” ”Kramer vs. Kramer,” ”Places in the Heart”)-calmly answers the charges one at a time as he slowly works on an oversized club sandwich.
”It`s all like the question, `Who ever starts a joke?` I don`t know who started these rumors. The only answer to them is whether the movie works or it doesn`t. And I don`t even want to comment on `Heaven`s Gate` because (Michael) Cimino is a friend of mine.
”The thing is, we knew in July that `Billy Bathgate` would be opening either Nov. 1 or Nov. 8. It was way before the New York Times article. Originally, Disney wanted to release it in July, but I said I couldn`t have it ready by then. They then said, `Let`s just announce it; we can always move it back.` I said fine, even though I knew the chances that a picture as complicated as this would come out in July were minimal. I mean, I know how I work, and I know how I edit.
”In fact, we shot this a little faster than I usually would. Normally, I wouldn`t have this picture up until December, but we really worked on a crash program because `Hook` (the Steven Spielberg version of `Peter Pan` which features `Bathgate` star Dustin Hoffman) is coming out in December, so we needed some space in there.”
Written by Tom Stoppard and shot in Saratoga, N.Y., New York City and North Carolina, ”Billy Bathgate” is an adaptation of the 1988 best-seller by E.L. Doctorow about a Bronx boy (played by newcomer Loren Dean) coming of age in the Depression after ingratiating himself with the mob headed by Dutch Schultz (Hoffman). The cast also features Nicole Kidman as an off-the-wall socialite with a thing for gangsters, and Bruce Willis as a double-crosser who winds up swimming with the fishes.
”Normally, on any picture, I do four or five days of reshooting,”
Benton continues. ”On this, I did seven or eight, which included a new ending. So there really wasn`t that much difference. The problem is that everybody was so successful. Dustin was working on `Hook,` so he wasn`t available until September. Nicole went right into Ron Howard`s movie in Ireland, so I had her for two days in July and one in September. Stanley Tucci, who plays Lucky Luciano, wasn`t available until mid-September. Loren was about to go into the John Patrick Shanley play (`Beggars in the House of Plenty`), so I had a deadline on him.”
Another piece of speculation was that Hoffman, a legendarily
”difficult” star whom he had directed in ”Kramer vs. Kramer,” had caused considerable tension on the ”Bathgate” set by constantly demanding retakes. ”Nothing like that happened that I was ever aware of,” Benton says. ”Now, both Dustin and I-left to our devices-would probably reshoot endlessly. But I said specificially, `This is what I want to reshoot,` and that`s what we did.
”I have heard those stories about Dustin`s `taking creative control`
that have come out of `Kramer,` `Tootsie,` `Rain Man,` `Hook.` I know Dustin works in a very collaborative way, and he`s great at that. He has a million ideas, and most of them are extraordinarily good. But he never tries to take creative control. He really doesn`t. He`s the first one to back off.”
Finally, asked about his own characterization in the press as a
”leisurely filmmaker,” he laughs heartily (and uncharacteristically). ”I suppose I am. I`m not one of those people who drives the crew forward. I`m not somebody who says that we have to have the first shot by 8 or 9 o`clock. I don`t think I shoot slowly, but I do tend to go back and re-do things.”
Benton was reared in Waxahachie, Texas, where the most prominent resident was major leaguer Paul Richards, who eventually would become manager of the White Sox. ”He was a great hero. When I was in high school, the Tigers were in the (1945) World Series against the Cubs, and he was catching. They would stop school and we would all go into the auditorium and listen to the game.” Benton`s own ambition as a youngster was not to play ball but to be an animated cartoonist for Walt Disney. Later, he studied painting and art history at the University of Texas and Columbia University, and became assistant to the art director of Esquire magazine. Segueing into film, he wrote his first screenplay, ”Bonnie and Clyde,” with David Newman, and made his directorial debut in 1972 with ”Bad Company,” starring Jeff Bridges.
In a recent review of a new biography on Meyer Lansky, novelist Mordecai Richler asserted that ”the enduring American pop myth is not of the cowboy but of the gangster.”
Benton concurs. ”When I grew up, the cowboy myth meant something because there was still a rural America. Now that we are an urban nation, we`ve had to find a form that has some meaning to the world we live in. It`s a reflection of coping with violence and with moral complexities. There is no real cowboy equivalent for Jimmy Cagney, a man of complicated morality. John Wayne is hardly that kind of person; he`s a very simple, moral character, and gangster films are about more complicated kind of guys.”
”Billy Bathgate,” he points out, after pushing aside his sandwich, is not strictly a ”gangster” film. ”It`s a film about growing up in this country, and a film about fathers and sons. I think it`s very romantic-I don`t mean in the sense of a love story-and I think it`s Dickensian. It`s about a young man coming of age. That it happens in a world of gangs and violence makes it more theatrical. But it`s not a gangster movie any more than `Oliver Twist` is a movie about Fagin or Bill Sikes.”
Casting the title role appeared to be the toughest challenge but, as it turned out, it was actually the simplest. ”Loren Dean was the second boy I saw. I couldn`t believe it, so I kept looking and looking and looking. If he`d been the 50th, I think I would have signed him like that. I not only liked his looks, but he had an extraordinary quality as an actor. I also needed a boy who could stand up against Nicole, who is a very sexy woman. There are a lot of kids who just couldn`t take it. They`d crumble, and suddenly become 12 years old.”
Benton says that Hoffman was always the first choice for the Mob boss.
”Early on, we were sitting talking and his voice got lower and lower and I told him, `What you`re getting is that smoker`s voice, and that`s what you have to keep doing.`
”Dutch is a very complex character, and I think Dustin is absolutely dead-on. It`s not quite Doctorow`s interpretation, though. His Dutch is a slob-just not the same. Our Dutch is charismatic in a different way. Dustin was meticulous about his research. We tracked down every piece of information about Schultz we could. We wanted the audience to understand him, but we didn`t want him to be lovable. We didn`t want him to be a lovable maniac.”
For the part of Drew Preston, the off-the-wall socialite who has a thing for gangsters, he picked Kidman, who is married to Tom Cruise and who had grown up in Australia. ”A friend told me to see this movie, `Dead Calm,` and Nicole was great in it. I met with her and asked her two questions: `Can you cross your eyes and can you lose your accent?` It turns out she could do both. It`s a difficult role, because this woman can never explain herself. She has to be enigmatic from the beginning to the end. I just didn`t want her pinned down because she`s-God forgive me for using this word-mythic.
”Now that I think of it, the character who is really at the heart of
`Billy Bathgate` is Otto Berman, the mob`s accountant who, with Dutch, is one of Billy`s surrogate fathers. He`s played by Steven Hill, who`s now on
(NBC`s) `Law & Order,` but I`ve known his work for a long time. I think he`s one of the great American actors.
”You know, one of the best things about directing is if you cast it well, you just sit and let them do what they have to do, and basically enjoy yourself.” Benton laughs again, although this time not nearly as openly.
”With other people doing the work for you, I can afford to be leisurely.”
