Bonnie & Clyde (1967) initiated and produced by Warren Beatty (then 30).
When he was dating Leslie Caron, Beatty spent much of his time in Europe.
He and Caron had lunch with French director Francois Truffaut one day,
who'd acquired a rough screenplay/story on Bonnie & Clyde.
They talked about it, and Truffaut admitted thinking that he as a French man
might not be the right person to make a movie or documentary out of it.
Warren ended up with the transcript, was immediately interested in its
possibilities and sought out two relative newcomers to screenplay writing and the rest is history.
His instincts sure paid off!
See this article>
http://www.cinetropic.com/bonnieandclyde/times97.html
Funny facts:
Did you know that the real Bonnie Parker was a 4'10" brunette and the real Clyde Barrow 5'7", opposed to the blonde 5'7" Faye Dunaway and above average 6'2" Warren Beatty?!!!
Bonnie’s true poem, “The story of Bonnie & Clyde” can be found here, with some facts>
http://www.historybuff.com/library/refbonnie.html
The TRUE story about why Clyde’s alleged homosexuality was not played upon in the movie
was NOT because Beatty didn’t want to play a homosexual, NOT because any of the
screenwriters had a problem working the fact into a script, but because the studio censors
a) did not want to make the entire movie AT ALL, saw it as a predictable flop
because as they assumed “the gangster genre is over”
b) hated both the amount of violence and the alleged homosexuality as strong themes
in the script, but if they had to choose, they preferred the violence over the theme of homosexuality.
After all, this was 1966/1967 and most studio bosses had been in power since the thirties and forties!
Making Clyde impotent was difficult enough for them to accept!
Warren first wanted to make the movie with his then lover Leslie Caron, but obviously her
strong French accent was a big minus.
He also approached his ex-lover Natalie Wood, said it would be a total departure from what
people were used to seeing of her, but she was depressed and didn’t want to work at all,
not even when he offered she could take her therapist with her on the set.
The studio gave Warren an unprecedented 40% share in the movie’s gross intake.
Not because they believed in him, but because they were certain the movie would bomb.
Warren’s still raking them in nicely from this almost 40 year old movie!
Warren was a one man promotion team. He singlehandedly assured a second release of the
movie, working tirelessly without sleep for weeks, after the first release was hardly promoted
by the studio.
Only the second time around did the movie become a success.
And now for some grabs, hehe.
