‘Feast’ director enjoys freedom to tell story
Robert Benton cites Clint
Eastwood as an influence.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
“I don’t think they would have let me make ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ today,” the Oscar-winning writer-director Robert Benton confessed in a recent telephone interview. “Studios are dedicated to making one kind of movie, and they’re a lot smarter about business than I am. This is the sort of ‘middle-class’ movie that doesn’t get made much anymore.”
The “middle-class” movie Benton was referring to is “Feast of Love,” Benton’s beautifully crafted, splendidly acted, but not especially commercial new film. Based on the 2000 Charles Baxter novel, “Love” tells the intertwined stories of a group of friends and acquaintances in a small Oregon college town.
As the title suggests, love is the thing that everyone is searching for, but few actually find. Even with a cast that includes such heavy-hitters as Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear, Benton had to go outside the studio system for the first time in his illustrious career to obtain financing. MGM ultimately acquired the film’s distribution rights.
‘Small price to pay’
“Smaller budgets and shorter shooting schedules are a small price to pay for having freedom with casting and the type of story I want to tell,” Benton said. “I loved the way we worked on this picture; there was no drama within the work. It was the exact opposite of the 1970s where they’d shoot for 70 days, play with the script some more, then go back and do reshoots for another 70 days.”
Benton, whose credits span 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Kramer vs. Kramer” (the film that won him Oscars for writing and directing) and “Places in the Heart” (whose original screenplay won Benton his third Oscar), is a man who knows what he’s talking about.
“I’ve developed an enormous respect and admiration for Clint Eastwood, who works in a very simple, direct way without a whole lot of self-consciousness. He’s become a great influence on my work,” he said.
For someone who began his career writing only original material, the 75-year-old Benton has been doing a lot of literary adaptations in recent decades (including “Billy Bathgate,” “Nobody’s Fool” and “The Human Stain”). According to Benton, his preferred choice of recent material has been a pragmatic one. “The older I get, the slower I get,” he admitted with a self-deprecating laugh.
“When writing an original script, I often find myself beguiled by paths that aren’t always the right ones to follow. Plus, there are simply too many choices to consider. I wish I were a faster writer, but it’s one of those things that hasn’t gotten any easier with age. That’s why I find myself doing more adaptations and other people’s screenplays. I also enjoy the process of shooting more than writing these days.”
Controversy
The most controversial aspect of “Feast of Love” is the copious amount of explicit sex and nudity. “It’s taken directly from the book,” Benton claims. “One of the things that drew me to the material was its freedom and fluidity. The fight between David [Billy Burke] and Diana [Radha Mitchell] was one of the most original things I’d ever read.”
So how do you sell a movie that doesn’t scream “high-concept” or have a surfeit of CGI effects in this blockbuster age?
“I don’t know how to market a film,” Benton admitted. “But I think ‘Feast of Love’ is a movie that appeals to an adult sensibility; I have to believe it will find an audience. I won’t interfere with the studio’s marketing as long as they don’t interfere with my shooting.”