[HWBL]

Found an old interview with Robert Benton, co-writer of Bonnie & Clyde,
on-line. Here's the part on how the movie came about and some stuff
about Warren, too.

Source: The Hollywood Interview: Robert Benton: The Hollywood Interview
Original source: March 1998 issue of Venice Magazine

Tell us about meeting David Newman and Bonnie and Clyde.
David Newman was a young editor at Esquire. He was an incredibly
gifted writer, a good friend, and we both loved movies. I spun in
these sort of dreams of glory of the life of a screenwriter and we
decided to write a movie together. And by chance, we were both
reading a book by a man named John Toland on John Dillinger.
In that book there's a footnote about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.
My father had gone to their funeral. He was an absolutely straight-
arrow upright man, wouldn't cross the street if the light was red but,
he was a closet criminal. He had a brother who was a gangster, at
least according to family legend.
I grew up with all these stories about Bonnie and Clyde. So I started
telling David all these stories about them. So we decided to write an
American New Wave film for Truffaut to direct, since we loved his films.
We didn't know how to write a screenplay, so we wrote a treatment,
which was about 80 pages long, and I've still got it somewhere, and
through a woman named Helen Scott, who was a friend of Truffaut's,
got it to him...he liked it.
Truffaut came to New York, sat in a hotel room for two days with us,
Helen was there as translator, and gave us the only lessons we ever
had in screenwriting. He said he would like to do Bonnie and Clyde if
he didn't do Fahrenheit 451, which he did wind up doing, so he gave
the script to his good friend Jean-Luc Goddard.
Goddard came over to the States and said "I would like to do this film,
but I'm supposed to do a film called Alphaville, which I don't want to
do. I'll get out of it." Alphaville, of course, is now one of the greatest
films ever made!
The people who had optioned the script and had given us money to
do more research and have more time to write it, didn't have any more
money. They were doing something that's customary in the U.S., which
is, you option a script, get that script to a director, from there go to
an actor. The actor says 'yes' and then you go to a studio.
Goddard was used to the European way where the producer is really
the finance man and has the money when you have the script and
you just go right away. So Goddard says "Let's go make the movie now.
I'll go back to Paris and come back in six weeks and we'll do it."
So those people were stuck. In hindsight, they should have been more
straightforward up front. They said to Goddard, "Look, this movie takes
place in the summer. Wouldn't it be better to wait until the summer?"
Goddard said "I'm talking cinema, and you're talking meteorology." And
he walked out of the room.
So the picture just sat. It was submitted to every studio and countless
directors for close to four years. It was turned down by everybody.
Meanwhile, I'd gotten married. David and I would joke about how we
were going to be 85 years-old and still slogging this script around! (laughs)
One day Truffaut had lunch with Warren Beatty and told Warren
about Bonnie and Clyde. Warren called me and...said he'd come
over and pick up a copy of the script. Now my wife and I hadn't
even been married six months. She opens the door, and there
was Warren! (laughs) Her knees almost buckled.
So Warren read the script and said he wanted to do it. I'm really
very proud of that script, but it was Warren, and this is a great
example of a collaboration, Warren and (director) Arthur (Penn)
together, are really responsible for that picture. I can't tell you
what a strong influence Warren was in making that picture. They
were both just in the top of their form. And Bob Towne came
in and did some work on the script, also. It was one of those times
where it just worked.

What happened after it was released?
I remember turning to my wife after seeing a rough cut and just
being thrilled with it, and saying "Look, as much as we love this
picture, it's gonna come and go. It's a movie, it's gonna open, be
gone three weeks later. Don't get upset about it. Well it opened,
and it got the worst reviews you've ever seen. The Times,
Newsweek, everyone. Just vicious.
The only person who gave it a good review was Penelope Gilliat in
The New Yorker. Then critics started to slowly reverse themselves
and recant their original reviews. Warren got Warners to rerelease
the picture. Then we got the Time cover story. Then by early '68,
it was an enormous hit in Europe...and we were all nominated for
Academy Awards. All our friends told us we were going to win. What
we didn't realize then because we hadn't been nominated before, is
that everyone's friends tell them that they're going to win! That year
the Academy Awards were held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium,
which is a big, flat sort of set-up, not raised like the Shrine...
We got to the part of the ceremony where our names were called.
I started fixing my cuffs, doing my tie, remembering who to thank...
and they started reading off the nominees. "And the winner is..."
and I stood up, the only person standing up in this huge crowd, and
I hear "William Rose, for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (laughs)
You've never seen anybody sit down so fast! Subsequently, when
I've won, I'm always very careful and ask my wife "Did I hear right?
It's okay to stand up now?" (laughs) It's funny, because the whole
experience with Bonnie and Clyde was like being run over by a train.
It was just too much. And I became very depressed afterward, probably
because I thought it was all downhill from there.