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Permalink Robert Benton, the Academy Award-winning director and writer, has been associated with such "adult" major-studio films as "Kramer vs. Kramer," "Places in the Heart," "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Bad Company."
He wouldn't be able to make such sophisticated fare for a major company now, he suspects.
"I don't think this movie could've been made at a major studio," Benton said during a Detroit-area visit to promote his latest directorial effort, the ensemble drama "Feast of Love," which opens in the Flint area on Friday.
"Someone jokingly said the other day, 'I don't think you could get "Kramer vs. Kramer" made nowadays,'" Benton said. "At this point, to do a movie about the emotional life of ordinary people is not easy. The only recourse you have is the independents."
The "ordinary people" in "Feast of Love" endure life, life and loss in a tight-knit Oregon community. Morgan Freeman plays Harry Stevenson, the grieving philosophy professor whose character anchors the film; Greg Kinnear is Bradley, a coffee-shop owner who can't stop looking for love in wrong places.
Radha Mitchell, Selma Blair, Billy Burke, Toby Hemingway and Alexa Davalos also are in the cast. Allison Brunet ("Autumn in New York") adapted the screenplay from Charles Baxter's acclaimed novel.
Benton, who turns 75 on Saturday, had designs on writing his own script, but when he inquired about doing so, he learned the rights to Baxter's book had been sold to Tom Rosenberg, whose Lakeshore Entertainment company produced Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby."
"I had worked with Tom before, but I was told there already was a screenwriter and director (attached to 'Feast of Love')," Benton said. "They called me back a month later and said the director had a scheduling problem and asked if I would direct. I said, 'You bet!'
"I think I saw in reading the book 'Feast of Love' and in reading 'Kramer vs. Kramer' and in reading 'Nobody's Fool' (the book based on his 1994 film) that you were dealing with characters both human and humane, that I could relate to," he said.
"When you do a movie, you spend a couple of years with those characters. You have to like them. You don't have to approve of them, but you have to take a two-year trip on a boat with them. ... You can't get bored with them."'
Casting is the key to staying interested in the characters, Benton said.
"It's a very complicated process. You have to cast, to the degree you can, all of the actors in the same weight class," he said. "If you cast a heavyweight, all the other (actors) have to be heavyweights. If you cast a middleweight, they all have to be middleweights. Middleweights can't come up to the level of a heavyweight.
"So once we cast Morgan Freeman, who was the first person cast, and who was absolutely right for the role because he holds to the emotional line that's in Baxter's novel. Once we cast a heavyweight, you must put a heavyweight next to him. Otherwise, you force Morgan Freeman to go down to go down to the level of a middleweight. It's like an Aston Martin with the brake on."
Freeman's character was one that particularly connected to Benton, considering the director's age. Harry is coping with the loss of a loved one as his adoring wife (Jane Alexander) tries to break through to her husband.
"In one way, I certainly understood that comes with love when you reach the age when you don't have an infinite amount of time stretched out in front of you," Benton said. "That drew me to the novel and especially the film. I also think in different ways -- although I've been married for 43 years this October -- before that I was a fairly good blueprint for Bradley, who is always in love but never wisely."
Benton was very impressed with Davalos, a 25-year-old French-born actress whom he believes is an emerging star after her performance as a young newcomer who dares to romance a co-worker (Hemingway) from an abusive past.
Davalos wasn't the first actress the director had in mind, "but she was so good, I took her aside and said, 'Look, I don't know if you're right for this. There's a lot of nudity involved. ... (But) whether you get this role or not, you're going to be a major star.' I'd said that only twice before about someone, and both times was right."
"Feast of Love"'s status as an independent film (it's distributed through MGM) was a major reason its setting of Ann Arbor in the novel was changed to Portland.
"Especially in an independent movie, you're governed by cost," Benton said. "We all wanted to make the movie here (in Michigan) but we couldn't afford to. Oregon offered a tax incentive, and we looked at other cities and chose Portland. If we had been able to make a movie for roughly the same amount, we would've chosen Ann Arbor; it would've been the perfect place."
Benton has been nominated for six Oscars and won three, for the direction and adapted screenplay of "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979) and his original screenplay for "Places in the Heart" (1984). He's been somewhat choosy as a director: "Feast of Love" is only his 11th film, spanning time from "Bad Company" (1972) to "The Human Stain" (2003).
His first Academy nomination came for his original screenplay -- written with David Newman -- for the seminal 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde," which has influenced a generation of filmmmakers.
"I get asked a lot about it because it's a film that has retained the ability to become controversial," Benton said. "That picture was turned down by every studio in Hollywood, and if you had told me then that I would be answering questions about it 40 years later, I'd have said you were out of your mind. My writing partner and I used to make jokes about it, saying whan we were 87 years old ... we'd still be trying to pitch 'Bonnie and Clyde.'
"We were very impressed with the films coming out of Europe at the time, from (Francois) Truffaut and (Jean-Luc) Godard. American films, with the exception of (Elia) Kazan, Arthur Penn, (John) Cassavettes ... were moribund. We wanted to make an American European film."
