The Newton Boys
Director and co-writer Richard Linklater, historian and co-writer Claude Stanush, and actor Matthew McConaughey
Perhaps the last thing anyone might have expected from writer/director Richard Linklater is The Newton Boys (1997). After all, this is the filmmaker whose low-budget debut, Slacker, is a model for DIY American independent cinema. That 1991 film so effectively tapped the zeitgeist that "slacker" has entered the pop culture lexicon, signifying aimless young adults with more education than ambition.
So what's he doing making a $27 million Hollywood movie about little-known historical figures who, from 1919 to 1924, robbed more banks than any other gang in United States history?
"I've been waiting my whole life to do this," says Richard Linklater in Los Angeles. "In my mind, I always knew I'd do something period, something Texas."
"But when this came to me," he adds, "I was like wow, I really want to make this into a movie. It felt very natural to me. I know it looks different than that for people who'd seen my previous films, but to me it felt the same."
The 36-year-old Linklater sidestepped the limelight after the burst of Slacker publicity, where he was uncomfortably put in the position of being a spokesperson for the post-Baby Boomer generation. Instead, he's focused on creating a solid body of work that includes Dazed & Confused (1993), Before Sunrise (1995) and subUrbia (1996).
Still based in Austin (the ultra-creative college community that was the subject of and spawned Slacker), the Texas-born Linklater approaches filmmaking with an enviable combination of aesthetic understanding and work ethic pragmatism. He helped found the still-active Austin Film Society, but also worked a number of jobs before successfully launching his career, including a stint on an off-shore oil rig.
"One of the things that got me thinking about the Newtons and really attracted me to them," Linklater explains, "was they were obscure because of their methods: they were professionals and they were successful. If you look at outlaw history, usually the only people the American public knows — it's like anything else. You know, the best musicians aren't the most popular. These guys were the best criminals, but they weren't flashy, they didn't kill people, so subsequently, they never captured the public imagination."
Their story did capture Linklater's imagination when he read about the Newtons in the January 1994 issue of Smithsonian magazine. That article, written by Claude Stanush, detailed some of the exploits of the gang headed by the willful and charismatic Willis Newton which included his brothers Joe, Jess, and Dock as well as the low-key professional explosives man, Brentwood Glasscock.
The Texas-based Stanush, a former Life magazine staffer, had befriended the remaining brothers when they were old men and became fascinated by their story, which included not only a phenomenal string of successful bank robberies but the infamous Rondout Robbery in 1924, a mail train heist that yielded $3 million, which finally put the reticent criminals on the front pages of newspapers.
The brothers became the center of the book, The Newton Boys: Portrait of an Outlaw Gang, an oral history. Co-writers Stanush and David Middleton also used their extensive interviews for a documentary.
"Through the years, there had been a number of people interested in [making] this film," explains Claude Stanush, now 80, "but they all wanted to do cops and robbers. That wasn't the story."
"Richard was the one I liked best," he continues, "because I liked his work before, Slacker and Dazed & Confused. Also he was interested in the characters, not just in robbing banks. He was interested in who the people were and why they did it, and that's what I'm interested in: why people do what they do whether they paint pictures or rob banks or dance or whatever."
The screenplay was eventually written by Claude Stanush, Clark Lee Walker (who also spearheaded an extensive historical research project), and Richard Linklater who "turned out like 20-something drafts." Throughout this extensive project, the goal was to create a fiction film that would be as true to the known facts as possible.
"I think a film sets up its own rules and then you try to hit those rules," explains Linklater. "I tried to set up the rules that we were going to try to recreate something accurately. I mean, you can never quite get that, but you can sure try."
The biggest challenge was condensing the numerous robberies. "I just chose different aspects of different robberies," Linklater said, ones that showed the Newtons reaching the various moral and criminal thresholds, and then used a montage to cover the rest. He also chose not to utilize any composite characters (a common practice in historical films) or pump up the violence, something these professional thieves rigorously avoided.
"Everything you see really happened," he says. "I think, yeah, you could make it a shoot-em-up, but that wouldn't really be the spirit of them."
While Linklater stuck to the facts, his narrative reflected two prominent violent styles from American film history: the western and the gangster film.
"I was really conscious of those two genres," he explains, "and [gang leader Willis Newton] is like the last western hero, or the first gangster. It starts off as an old silent western sort of thing and at the end, it's in the tradition of gangster movies down to the Warner Bros montage."
Linklater sees the Newtons as part of an American cultural narrative that's full of stories about "outlaws and transgressors."
"People fantasize about this sort of thing," he says, "and the Newtons are the ones who actually did it. And look when they did it: a crazy time in American history where there was this open flaunting of all kinds of laws."
One thing that fed [Willis's] motivation," explains Claude Stanush, "he had a sense that the whole system of law was corrupt. As he said, he was just a small thief robbing from big thieves like the insurance companies. And there's a certain truth in that."
"What's that quote?" adds Linklater. "'Behind every fortune there is a crime.' That's the whole Willis point of view."
"I grew up in this country and I know the truth of how hard it was for the people to survive," continues Stanush, who spoke of Willis's previous career picking cotton and the harsh living conditions and few job opportunities for men in rural west Texas.
"It doesn't justify robbing banks," he adds, "but it was a tough way of life."
The life and times of the Newtons represent another "hidden" chapter of American history, one that was unknown even to Matthew McConaughey, who comes from their hometown of Uvalde, Texas (population 12,000). It was Linklater who told introduced McConaughey to their story.
"After that, I started asking my family and went back to Uvalde," says McConaughey, "and found out that my dad took my oldest brother to get his first horse from Joe Newton."
"That's where I was born and raised," he says with amazement, "and the Newton boys were right there down the street."
"Like good outlaws, they kept their mouth shut," adds Richard Linklater about the soon-to-be famous gang. "True professionals all the way to the end."
© 1997, Serena Donadoni. All rights reserved.