The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

44 Bill Condon
that great ending. It was just that idea of Bonnie starting to become more
and more obsessed with issues of mortality.
This movie pretty much ended critic Bosley Crowther’s run at the New
York Times. He attacked it three times in print and then they replaced
him with a twenty-six-year-old. Both Time and Newsweek reversed their
reviews. So were you aware of that and did it have any effect on you?
Condon: Part of the pleasure of it was a completely instinctual thing that
drew me into the world of writing about movies. Suddenly it became all of
your senses—your mind was engaged by it. The most pleasurable thing was
that you felt as if you were part of the movement and part of that fun.
With historical fidelity in mind, did you have a sort of a guiding philosophy,
either with Gods and Monsters or with Kinsey, about representing
history and how much license you could take?
Condon: I do think if there’s one big idea that viewing Bonnie and Clyde got
into my bones, it was that of the ability of a movie to shift tones, have radical
shifts of tones, and still remain as a piece. And I do think that informs both
Gods and Monsters and Kinsey—where there’s the level at which they play at
social comedy and also the play of ideas. Every movie is different, and Bonnie
and Clyde was probably less of a bio picture than the ones that I’ve made.
Do you have a guiding philosophy when you’re dealing with somebody’s
life on film?
Condon: There are obviously conventions all over the place in both of those
movies, but you hope that that gets to some kind of essential truth about
that person. Because that’s why you wanted to make a movie about them in
the first place because there’s something fascinating about them, something
kind of illuminating about their story.
We talked briefly about this before, but the violence of the film, it was
shocking to a great number of people. As a twelve-year-old, how did
that affect you?
Condon: I remember the first time I saw a character take a bullet in the eye,
it was so unbelievably shocking. That’s the thing about Bonnie and Clyde.